Risk Management Magazine

“Two to fly; systems, you good in the back?” As a junior aviator, statements like this were commonplace in my cockpit, but never resulted in an incident or accident.

I’ve always been impatient to get on the road. On this journey, I let that get in the way of proper trip planning and risk assessment.

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.