We all know the hazardous attitudes the FAA wants us to understand. Concepts like anti-authority, impulsivity and invincibility have no real place in the cockpit. Now, I’m going to add one more: the desire to be helpful, or the motivation to please others. One of my big motivations in life is to be helpful to others. I enjoy writing for this magazine, for example, because it is helpful to other pilots. I also get great pleasure in being a solution to other people’s problems.
Sometimes, however, trying to be helpful has the opposite effect. Rather than help get someone out of a tight spot, you become ensnared in one. This is my mea culpa confession—and the story of how we need to add helpfulness to those hazardous attitudes.
