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Should I Be Doing This?

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • The article highlights the frequent disconnect between "legal" aviation procedures and genuinely "safe" practices, noting that regulations don't always align with optimal safety.
  • Pilots are advised to evaluate questionable actions by imagining how they would appear in an accident report or to an examiner, ensuring their choices are defensible and prudent.
  • In situations where safety might conflict with strict regulations, declaring an emergency or taking demonstrably reasonable and justifiable actions focused on life preservation is paramount and typically accepted.
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Many times in these pages we’ve discussed the disconnect of safe versus legal. As our regs guru, Mark Kolber, in this issue covers lost-comm procedures and their examples of what’s legal versus what makes sense, I again mused on this.

While the regulations usually mandate safe actions, there are exceptions where safe isn’t legal and legal isn’t necessarily safe. How can you tell the difference? I have long used two different, but related, measures.

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