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Should I Be Doing This?

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • The article highlights the potential disconnect between what is "legal" and what is truly "safe" in aviation, where regulations don't always align with optimal safety practices.
  • Pilots are advised to use two mental tests for decision-making: imagining how their actions would appear in an accident report and how an examiner would evaluate them to ensure prudence.
  • In critical situations where safety might conflict with regulations, prioritize preserving life by choosing the safest and most defensible action, even if it means declaring an emergency or deviating from standard procedures.
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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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