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 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.

It started out like most any other night in a Balad — same mission, same timeline, same hot preflight. My co-pilot/gunner and I were to be the trail aircraft in a flight of two Apaches for yet another ground support mission over Baghdad.