Risk Management Magazine

As the saying goes, the difference between a Class A and Class C mishap is inches and seconds. To add to that, total Class A-C mishaps can be predictive of the health of our safety programs.

I showed up at my first assignment as an aviator right as we were headed out the door for a deployment in Regional Command East. I was excited and nervous. My Readiness Level 3 to 2 progression took two flights and suddenly I was flying combat missions with my troop standardization pilot (SP). Flight school had given me just enough experience to make me dangerous, so there were good days where I was nearly competent, and bad days where I was a liability in the cockpit.

Nothing will make you reflect on how lucky you are more than escaping a bad situation unscathed and beating the odds that were stacked against you. Predicting weather in Iraq was difficult at best. And even though the Air Force weather forecasters were highly trained professionals, if they gave you a weather brief, it could change quickly.