Should I Be Doing This?

Frank Bowlin

Friday, December 06, 2024 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

The article explores the critical disconnect between what is "legal" and what is truly "safe" in aviation, noting they are not always synonymous.
Pilots should evaluate questionable actions by imagining how they would appear in an accident report or to an examiner, to gauge defensibility and prudence.
In no-win or emergency situations, the primary responsibility is to preserve life by choosing the safest or least dangerous action, even if it deviates from regulations.
Declaring an emergency can serve as a "get-out-of-jail-free card," as long as subsequent actions are reasonable and justifiable.

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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.