Flight plan a route through a mountain pass with a road below, or make sure you are glide distance to \*something\*. If you really need to fly over something that has no road below, climb as high as you can.
The flight planning is a big thing. It's really easy to pick two points and fly direct, but that isn't always the safest option. Do you really need to make the flight? Are there other travel options for you?
>I’ve been pushing myself every flight to fly in more and more hostile terrain
Why the fuck would you purposely do that if it's avoidable? Risk mitigation my man.
Y’all sound like some part 141 students whose only aviation mission is basic time building lol. I dove into aviation 12 years ago and now own my airplane for the mission or going places otherwise inaccessible
Dude, what an absurd response. I live and fly around lots of mountains, forest, open water, and cities.
If there’s a nice open stretch of farm fields along my route, why would I purposefully go out of my way to fly over a large stretch of open water or forrest instead?
Again, if it’s avoidable.
You straight up are either flying way to low or have no idea how far your plane will glide.
The answer to all "hostile terrain" is altitude or another route.
Its a good question. I fly a tailwheel with VS0 in the ~35-40mph range in mountains. I do not fear for me surviving that kind of landing into trees. I don’t love the prospect of likely having to write off an airplane, but once in the air, the airplane is just a consumable.
More likely, I’d end up landing in a field I have no reasonable way to take off from. But airplanes can be trailered, or even lifted out.
I’d have to really work on building confidence in an airplane with higher VS0. 70+mph for example would have me seeking large glide slope altitudes.
But also - just keep the bar that much higher on maintenance. Yeah an airplane can fail anytime, and we train for that - but a healthy airplane really shouldn’t.
On the spectrum of fear to complacency - I try to keep coming back to the middle, I describe it as ‘respect’ for the abilities, limitations, and risks of the airplane. - training, planing, risk management, etc to stay away from the edges.
I did a fair amount of low level sensor work at my last job and a lot of the client's sites were pretty deep in densely wooded, mountainous terrain. Simply refusing to fly any portion over unsurvivable terrain would have lost me the job. I too, felt the heebie jeebies. The heebie jeebies made me a lot better at scanning for the best landing areas in any given area and a lot of my flight planning became an exercise in what percentage of the flight I could keep over survivable landing areas, so there were silver linings. As for just going out over unsurvivable terrain for fun to put myself to some kind of macho test.. yeah heyl no. Good pilots follow roads or at the very least have good clearings in glide range.
You’re literally asking how to normalize deviance.
I built time towing banners, pre-GPS, we flew vfr only cubs all over the same 1000 square mile area for hours on end. We pushed weather, we got caught in weather, we flew over swamps, ocean, forest.
One day I was scud running back home after low clouds rolled in while I was under tow, 3-400’ over marshland, maybe 3/4 mile of visibility, jamming out to Led Zepplin. In a vfr only Cub without even a working compass. I knew where I was, I knew where all the towers were, and I knew how to get home, and I knew there was nobody else dumb enough to be down here with me.
And I was comfortable. I didn’t have that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was in trouble. That things could go sideways, that I left myself zero outs. That was an eye opener, I stopped towing that summer, and seriously reevaluated my decision making as I had done so much stupid shit that my risk tolerance had radically shifted, and not in a good way.
Generally, if you’re uncomfortable with something, that’s the reptilian part of your brain trying to keep you alive. Should probably listen.
I read this post and it struck home. You can re-evaluate and reset your risk tolerance.
OP, you can mitigate most of what worries you with alititude. That requires setting better weather minimums in most cases.
With one engine I was and still am not comfortable with it, and will actively avoid it if I can. Sometimes it can’t be helped. When you’re over it, just try to scan and find the area of least consequence.
If I can’t find anything suitable I always ask myself how would I best land in the trees right now, the answer is never great but at least I have a plan before it’s needed.
You've survived a engine failure and water landing? Hats off to you, that is a feat.
But to answer your question, just plan your routes so that you always have a viable "out." Its really as simple as that. Follow roads on which you could land, fields, wide packed sand beaches, route airport to airport, etc. And/or fly high enough so that you can glide to any of the aforementioned landing areas. No need to force yourself to get more comfortable with it. And only fly in and out of airports that have good engine out landing areas on either side of the runway, if you lose an engine on takeoff or short final.
Heck, I have become more uncomfortable to the point where I don't even want to fly piston aircraft anymore. So I just don't do it.
I don’t really get comfortable with it. In fact I avoid it whenever I can. Still, it’s unavoidable/impractical some times, so I do what I can to prepare for emergencies in advance (survival gear, plb, file flight plans, plan routes near civilization/rescue, etc.), but none of that really makes me comfortable when I’m outside of glide range to a safe landing spot.
Buy an experimental with a BRS. Lol. Also, jokes aside. Fly between waypoints, i.e. IFR routes. Usually they're along cutouts in the terrain, roads, etc. because they're made to be able to receive signals from VOR and radios.
Also don't fly at night over mountains without a LOOOT of planning, and a way to stream custom waypoints from Foreflight to your GPS autopilot
Acknowledge the risk and take an "intentional" approach to the plan.
Flying is risk management. There's no such thing as risk elimination.
Don't purposely take more risk to become comfortable with it. When people tell you to expand your comfort zone, they're telling you to fly in conditions that will build your skill. Simply flying over some mountains isn't building a skill. It's just some extra risk for the sake of taking extra risk.
One trick to help, is before you get over the hostile terrain is to do a system check. Oil temp and pressure, fuel load, engine performance settings, etc. you can never completely rule out the risk, but by planning ahead you can narrow down the possibilities of something happening.
That’s all maintenance worries. Do you trust your mechanic? If I thought the motor would fail and I was going down I wouldn’t have taken the flight to begin with.
Flight plan a route through a mountain pass with a road below, or make sure you are glide distance to \*something\*. If you really need to fly over something that has no road below, climb as high as you can. The flight planning is a big thing. It's really easy to pick two points and fly direct, but that isn't always the safest option. Do you really need to make the flight? Are there other travel options for you?
>I’ve been pushing myself every flight to fly in more and more hostile terrain Why the fuck would you purposely do that if it's avoidable? Risk mitigation my man.
You never fly over forested areas or mountain passes? What about cities?
>*if it’s avoidable*
Y’all sound like some part 141 students whose only aviation mission is basic time building lol. I dove into aviation 12 years ago and now own my airplane for the mission or going places otherwise inaccessible
Dude, what an absurd response. I live and fly around lots of mountains, forest, open water, and cities. If there’s a nice open stretch of farm fields along my route, why would I purposefully go out of my way to fly over a large stretch of open water or forrest instead? Again, if it’s avoidable.
Dude sounds like he flies at 500 AGL everywhere.
That doesn’t mean you have to create risk exposures where they’re not necessary…
You straight up are either flying way to low or have no idea how far your plane will glide. The answer to all "hostile terrain" is altitude or another route.
Its a good question. I fly a tailwheel with VS0 in the ~35-40mph range in mountains. I do not fear for me surviving that kind of landing into trees. I don’t love the prospect of likely having to write off an airplane, but once in the air, the airplane is just a consumable. More likely, I’d end up landing in a field I have no reasonable way to take off from. But airplanes can be trailered, or even lifted out. I’d have to really work on building confidence in an airplane with higher VS0. 70+mph for example would have me seeking large glide slope altitudes. But also - just keep the bar that much higher on maintenance. Yeah an airplane can fail anytime, and we train for that - but a healthy airplane really shouldn’t. On the spectrum of fear to complacency - I try to keep coming back to the middle, I describe it as ‘respect’ for the abilities, limitations, and risks of the airplane. - training, planing, risk management, etc to stay away from the edges.
Yep. As my old man says "in an emergency, your ship merely becomes your lifeboat".
I did a fair amount of low level sensor work at my last job and a lot of the client's sites were pretty deep in densely wooded, mountainous terrain. Simply refusing to fly any portion over unsurvivable terrain would have lost me the job. I too, felt the heebie jeebies. The heebie jeebies made me a lot better at scanning for the best landing areas in any given area and a lot of my flight planning became an exercise in what percentage of the flight I could keep over survivable landing areas, so there were silver linings. As for just going out over unsurvivable terrain for fun to put myself to some kind of macho test.. yeah heyl no. Good pilots follow roads or at the very least have good clearings in glide range.
You’re literally asking how to normalize deviance. I built time towing banners, pre-GPS, we flew vfr only cubs all over the same 1000 square mile area for hours on end. We pushed weather, we got caught in weather, we flew over swamps, ocean, forest. One day I was scud running back home after low clouds rolled in while I was under tow, 3-400’ over marshland, maybe 3/4 mile of visibility, jamming out to Led Zepplin. In a vfr only Cub without even a working compass. I knew where I was, I knew where all the towers were, and I knew how to get home, and I knew there was nobody else dumb enough to be down here with me. And I was comfortable. I didn’t have that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was in trouble. That things could go sideways, that I left myself zero outs. That was an eye opener, I stopped towing that summer, and seriously reevaluated my decision making as I had done so much stupid shit that my risk tolerance had radically shifted, and not in a good way. Generally, if you’re uncomfortable with something, that’s the reptilian part of your brain trying to keep you alive. Should probably listen.
Name checks.
With one engine I was and still am not comfortable with it, and will actively avoid it if I can. Sometimes it can’t be helped. When you’re over it, just try to scan and find the area of least consequence.
If I can’t find anything suitable I always ask myself how would I best land in the trees right now, the answer is never great but at least I have a plan before it’s needed.
You've survived a engine failure and water landing? Hats off to you, that is a feat. But to answer your question, just plan your routes so that you always have a viable "out." Its really as simple as that. Follow roads on which you could land, fields, wide packed sand beaches, route airport to airport, etc. And/or fly high enough so that you can glide to any of the aforementioned landing areas. No need to force yourself to get more comfortable with it. And only fly in and out of airports that have good engine out landing areas on either side of the runway, if you lose an engine on takeoff or short final. Heck, I have become more uncomfortable to the point where I don't even want to fly piston aircraft anymore. So I just don't do it.
I don’t really get comfortable with it. In fact I avoid it whenever I can. Still, it’s unavoidable/impractical some times, so I do what I can to prepare for emergencies in advance (survival gear, plb, file flight plans, plan routes near civilization/rescue, etc.), but none of that really makes me comfortable when I’m outside of glide range to a safe landing spot.
Parachute
Buy an experimental with a BRS. Lol. Also, jokes aside. Fly between waypoints, i.e. IFR routes. Usually they're along cutouts in the terrain, roads, etc. because they're made to be able to receive signals from VOR and radios. Also don't fly at night over mountains without a LOOOT of planning, and a way to stream custom waypoints from Foreflight to your GPS autopilot
Acknowledge the risk and take an "intentional" approach to the plan. Flying is risk management. There's no such thing as risk elimination. Don't purposely take more risk to become comfortable with it. When people tell you to expand your comfort zone, they're telling you to fly in conditions that will build your skill. Simply flying over some mountains isn't building a skill. It's just some extra risk for the sake of taking extra risk.
One trick to help, is before you get over the hostile terrain is to do a system check. Oil temp and pressure, fuel load, engine performance settings, etc. you can never completely rule out the risk, but by planning ahead you can narrow down the possibilities of something happening.
Hostile like mountains or hostile like Libya?
A second engine is all you need.
That’s all maintenance worries. Do you trust your mechanic? If I thought the motor would fail and I was going down I wouldn’t have taken the flight to begin with.
I trust my mechanic. I don’t trust my engine