Risk Management Magazine

As time goes on, our comfort and confidence with our aircraft inevitably grows, and what used to take intense concentration becomes simple. We all strive to become exceptional pilots, and it is easy for us to fall prey to the vanity of demonstrating our hard-earned skills. However, we must remember the inherent dangers that are easy to forget, which can have deadly consequences.

Unless you’ve experienced spatial disorientation while flying an aircraft, it’s difficult to truly understand the feeling. Fortunately, I’m still here to talk about the night it happened to me.

We shot another visual approach and landed the plane without incident, but as we talked about what happened after shutting down, I had a lot of questions as to why things unfolded the way they did. That was my first true go-around situation, and I just couldn’t understand why the tower would clear the Cessna to land in front of us.