Comment by wolvoleo
4 hours ago
Most human error happens because pilots knowingly ignore safety. "Get-there-itis" for example. You really wanna get home but the weather is an edge case. If you were flying for fun you would stay on the ground but you convince yourself it's not that bad. That kinda thing. Or an engine running a bit rough, "but it's probably ok I'll have it checked next week".
What you need is discipline to say no. That's the root cause of most of these errors. And yes that can be learned.
Every flying club has a few of these people that are talked about in hushed tones at the end of the day when the beers come out. And almost never was the problem their flying skill.
Even if it was it's usually something preventable too. Trying to fix an approach when going around would have been the clear choice. Letting mistakes pile up and not restarting from a known safe position.
But as they already said: unjustifiable hubris to assume it can't happen to you.
Humans make mistakes all. the. time., and you're a human. It is pretty much guaranteed that you are making the exact same kind of mistakes in your day-to-day life. It just doesn't kill you because a broken car merely leaves you stranded and a broken pipe in your home merely causes some financial damage.
Do the same with flying and you'll crash so you'll die. In my opinion private planes should be treated like they are actively trying to kill you, and it is only a matter of time before you will become complacent and make a mistake.
Most of the time it's the decisions that kill, rather than pure mistakes. It's possible to mitigate that risk. Good decisions (such as using checklists) can also mitigate some of the mistakes.
Of course when you're dealing with a light twin with geared turbocharged engines, there are additional risks from mechanical failures (such as engine fires), as well as mistakes that can happen when addressing an engine failure (shutting down the wrong engine, getting too slow and doing a Vmc roll, etc).
To be honest I would never fly in any light twin other than a Seminole (which I did my multi rating in).