Risk Management Magazine

Once I looked back to the front, I was in shock. I had an Apache, no more than a few rotor disks away, conducting a dive and banking right in front of me. I immediately pulled more power and banked to the left, hoping the other Apache was not flying nearby.

As the saying goes, the difference between a Class A and Class C mishap is inches and seconds. To add to that, total Class A-C mishaps can be predictive of the health of our safety programs.

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 (SP). Flight school had given me just enough experience to make me dangerous, so there were good days where I was nearly competent, and bad days where I was a liability in the cockpit.