Risk Management Magazine

All too often in aviation, we are hesitant to admit when we don’t know something or, even worse, that we made a mistake. This was never more evident to me than when my unit began to turn in our OH-58A/Cs and transition to the UH-72 Lakota.

Risk management, safety and constant planning are a way of life for the military, but so are chaos, deadlines, demands and stress. When leaders forget to follow basic principles, people could get hurt or killed.

Everything was going fine until my cellphone rang. We had just had an accident on the flight line. One of our pilots partially degloved his finger as he was stepping down from the cockpit of a UH-60 and the medics were taking him to the hospital.