The Sphinx was a mythological monster who forced passing travelers to answer her riddle, eating those who struggled to find an answer. “Which is the creature that has one voice, but has four feet in the morning, two feet in the afternoon and three feet at night?” Oedipus’s correct answer was that the creature is a human, who starts by crawling on all fours, transitions to walking on two feet, but finally needs a cane, adding a third footprint.
A pilot’s career can be like that, too. A student crawls, staying close to the ground on short trips. Later we move higher and faster, and with a little luck fly a well-equipped turboprop or jet in the flight levels. Eventually, though, age or illness or economics or who knows what forces us to come back closer to the ground, perhaps to scale back our flying ambitions and downsize. It’s easy to think that our vast experience will make one more airplane easy to master, especially if it’s a “small” one. But things don’t work that way, so let’s talk about why. And let’s also talk about how to get ready to answer any riddle.
