1
Mar
2015
One night, I was on a night vision goggle training flight with my company instructor pilot and two crew members. The IP was a very experienced NVG aviator who was trained at the High-Altitude Army Aviation Training Site in Gypsum, Colorado, and made it a point to demonstrate mountain flying and pinnacle operations.
The following incident happened a few years ago while I was an AH-64A instructor pilot at the Western Army National Guard Aviation Training Site at Silverbell Army Heliport in Marana, Arizona. It demonstrated to me that when things happen, some of them go the way you want and others don’t.
In aviation, from our very first exposure, we are all taught to focus on the task at hand regardless how routine it is. Humans, however, just aren’t programmed to act that way.
The majority of military aviators know the pressures of flying in a combat environment. The number and frequency of deployments our country’s military has endured to help rid the world of future insurgent attacks ensures that.