Combating Complacency — When Good Enough Isn’t Enough

Complacency kills — manifested as a preference for convenience, caused and aggravated by a lack of preparation, compounded by loss of composure, with fatigue as accelerant.

This weekend provided some gratifying aviation, but also a reminder of its endless capacity for surprise, and in that its value as a lens to ponder risk management broadly.

Friday brought my first ever solo airplane flying which went smooth as butter… except when a thermal drilled me so hard that I accidentally yanked the throttle and thought I had killed the engine. No matter — what airplane pilots call an “engine out landing drill”, paragliders just call “flying” — yet better still that I quickly and calmly reapplied full throttle.

Sunday brought a paragliding flight with a novel failure mode: post-launch I found my harness’ foot plate flipped such that I could not do the customary heel-dig to reverse-bicycle motion to get fully seated. This, compounded by poorly adjusted straps, left me in luge-pose-but-worse while dangling from a bedsheet.

Such a misconfiguration often serves as prelude to a distracted pilot stuffing one brake and spinning their glider into the hill. Thankfully the memory of such stories sufficiently trumped my FOMO that I “donated” the first few potential climbs in exchange for the terrain clearance to sort myself out relatively safely (and was rewarded with a pleasant flight afterwards anyway).

I have historically done a last-second check of the foot plate, but somehow never added that to my formal checklist, and that seemingly compounded with some bad luck into a sketchy situation backstopped only by other disciplines. I guess that item wants a proper home in the pre-flight.

On Monday morning I tightened the upper back straps of my harness at home… and failed to do a fully-clothed fit check until, sweating on a scorching launch, I found now my waist straps with so little margin that my not-fully-healed rotator cuff lacked the power to do the job unassisted — “help, I need an adult!”. In my eagerness I had broken my own “test gear changes only in low commitment situations” rule. Dumbass.

Having launched, the universe then treated me to a “two tragedies” story arc wherein first I clung to weak lift in disorganized thermals then only to find myself in lift so powerful at 10k’ that I switched from big wingovers to a deep spiral in a desperate bid not to bust KSLC’s airspace at 10.5k’. I suppose I greedily waited too long to look for an exit and was thus suitably chastened.

At least when sinking out I resisted the siren call of an Uber-convenient yet treacherously tight grass park, opting instead for a “safe” if inconvenient mountain-side dirt road, drawing what smug satisfaction I could from the cold snacks and damp neck gaiters nestled against the ice-water filled bladder of my CamelBak, enjoyed during a descent to civilization eased by collapsible trekking poles and regular training under a similar load.

Aviation — this Systems Engineer’s favorite form of cross-training.

[For related reading, consider another aviation inspired piece from last year, Protecting Oneself From Oneself.]