Risk Management Magazine

Fatigue can cause a minor mistake to turn into a fatal error, whether it’s flying a multimillion dollar aircraft, shooting at the M4 range or even driving home after a long day at work.

Talking to your crew about in-flight issues is a good idea. It could prevent an unplanned landing in hostile territory. Here’s how I learned.

My unit had been fighting fires with as many as five other crews at once for a little over a month when the following incident happened. During this time many of us had logged between 50 and 70 hours on the fires, which is an extremely intense environment for all crewmembers.