Page 141 - Never Fly Solo

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maneuver, he passed his go/no-go point and crashed. He left
behind a wife and two children.
The fighter pilot community was shocked and deeply sad-
dened by this loss. How could such an experienced pilot have
made such a mistake? What went wrong? Dozens of factors
could have played a part in the accident. Perhaps he was
cross-checking his airspeed more than his altitude. Or maybe
he was worrying about his alignment with the runway. Per-
haps his situational awareness had dropped due to some
minor systems malfunction.
Unfortunately, Moose was flying solo. He didn’t have an
in-flight wingman to check his six and tell him to cross-check
his altitude or airspeed. No one was there to radio “Bail out!”
in time. Had there been, perhaps he would still be with us.
As I mentioned in Chapter 3, we all have our blind spots.
When we’re focused on the task at hand, blind spots develop,
and we may not see the big picture. We may even be “tumble-
weed,” flying along thinking everything is perfect. We may
not see the ground coming or even realize we’re close to crash-
ing. In those cases, we need our wingmen to help build our
situational awareness by calling out “Break right!” And if
necessary, we may need them to tell us to bail out.
As wingmen, we owe it to our team of partners to make
the bail-out call if we see they need it. Perhaps we need to end
a long project draining us of critical resources. Or we may
need to change jobs and find work that has more meaning for
us. Perhaps that little “personal habit” we have is a lot worse
than we realize. We have to think outside the cockpit and
extend mutual support to others in our lives. And most impor-
tant, we need to be willing to call out for help.
Will you have the awareness and the courage to put your
ego aside and bring your problems and challenges to a wing-