Judgment From Experience

Good judgment comes from experience, which often comes from bad judgment." One sees that quote in many places and, on one level, its easy to understand. The irony is one must obtain some experience before understanding it on other levels. Like most young aspiring pilots of the day, I was building time flight instructing. This was in the early 1960s, when the trainer of choice was the Piper Colt. This was a very forgiving airplane, even though it didnt look like one. After shepherding a student through his private certificate, he purchased half interest in a Bonanza. He needed 25 hours of training to satisfy the insurance company, so off we went. After the required training, I endorsed his logbook. Soon, however, I watched him make a very short pattern with steep turns. Despite lecturing him many times on the respect he must have for this aircraft, I decided to show him first-hand.

Key Takeaways:

• A flight instructor, attempting to teach a student a critical lesson about respecting a powerful Bonanza aircraft, intentionally put them into a dangerous approach-to-landing stall scenario.
• The instructor's plan went awry, immediately sending the Bonanza into an uncontrolled spin and subsequent vertical dive, nearly resulting in a fatal crash.
• Their survival was attributed to one good decision—climbing to a higher altitude—underscoring the article's theme that good judgment often emerges from profound, sometimes bad, experiences.

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