Aviation has almost as many sayings and witticisms as there are pilots. One of my favorites is that pilots should never do anything in a cockpit quickly. To me, this means that responding to typical challenges—even an engine failure or fire—requires deliberate thought before acting, preferably along with the relevant checklist. Another way to state it, of course, is that haste makes waste: We easily can do the wrong thing in the cockpit at the wrong time.
Securing the perfectly good engine of a twin after the other one fails is a textbook example of the kinds of things that have happened when we’re in a hurry. Some might think that rushing through a procedure, especially in an emergency, is the hallmark of good airmanship. That’s rarely true even if the procedure is correct, successful and achieves the desired result. The problem is that there’s no way all of us can achieve that level of cockpit performance all the time.
