This observation matches mine on technical topics I've observed mass media commentary about. Breaks my heart.

That comment reminded me of a time when I participated in a survey at my local Rotary Club. About 90% of us believed that the media did a very poor job of accurately providing information about the fields that we knew the most about. About the same number of us generally trusted the media as a source of information for those fields that we knew little about. Think about that for a moment.

The title is a line from a flight-safety newsletter (page 8), discussing the mental state of a pilot in a common story. This pilot was slowly getting into more airborne trouble with worsening weather. Normally, people sort of start losing their minds, looking for more elaborate/risky measures in order to still conclude their originally planned flight. Some of these people die.

The fictional pilot instead had a fixed set of constraints, set prior to the flight, so that when the conditions worsened to below those constraints, the flight was "automatically" cancelled. At once, everything became much simpler.... There were no more tricky decisions to make, heading into worsening conditions, only a simpler set answering how to land safely. The new goal was simple, stark, and communicated an acquiescence to the urgency of the situation.

I've lived this scenario personally, and can testify that the feeling of burden lifting off of the mind is glorious.

What's more, this scenario occurs before many flights too. The anticipation of imperfect conditions, the sheer number of unknowns and alternatives, is boggling sometimes to the point of paralysis. In general aviation, private pilots have (for better or for worse), complete discretion as to where/when/how they fly, so the responsibility to plan and perform safely rests only on their shoulders. Ahead of many long/bad-weather flights, I recall hesitating and flipflopping between choices, for hours or even days. Yet, as soon as a best-guess decision is settled, everything became much simpler: there is a plan, now one just has to carry it out.

In commercial aviation, the needs of customers, company dispatchers, mounds of formal processes and governmental regulations take most of the ground-side discretion away from the pilots. Once airborne though, that responsibility is back in the pilots' hands, with a team of dispatchers and co-pilots available to assist. This results in an exemplary overall safety record for that sector. Here is one such story. There are many more. (Come back to blogging, Capt. Dave!)

But for what it's worth, I am stuck with, and am happy with, the full freedom & responsibility. Many agree.