The 100 hour pilot

[February]

I have a young friend who is just past the 100 hour mark and I fear he his showing signs of complacency.
He has good hands and feet but is getting a little over confident.
As we all know this is a very danagerous time for him.
I have been looking for some stories or anecdotes relating to the dangers of being an over confident low timer that I can give him to read.
Can anyone direct me to any such stories or scripts?

[ether]

The robinson safety DVD was shown to me as I was going through my license, there are some stacks in there that make the reality of it all hit home. And there is another book which name escapes me (another slapper may be able to help me out) that has a bunch of accident tales in it, it talks about the amount of hours each pilot had, why it happened and the science behind each incident. Biggest lesson to take from that book I believed was that every accident involved complacency of some degree or another.

And I dare say the slapper forums. Plenty to be learnt from the 'when things go bad' posts.

Ether

[Eric Hunt]

A pilot goes through 3 stages in his flying life.

The first is when he reaches 100 hours. He thinks he knows it all now. Instructors can't tell him anything new, and he has his own ideas of how things should REALLY be done.

if he lives through that stage, he reaches the next stage at about 300 hours, when he KNOWS that he knows it all. He is now truly dangerous.

If he lives through the first two stages, the third is when he reaches about 1000 hours and a miraculous change has taken place, though so subtly that he hasn't noticed it. He finds that in order to make the aircraft DO something, all he has to do is form the thought, and it just happens.

If a surgeon was told to pick up a scalpel and separate the pilot from the aircraft, he wouldn't know where to start the cut.

[Hughesy]

The book you may be after is Fatal Traps for helicopter pilots. If that isn't the one your after then its well worth a read.
Sounds like the low time pilot has just got his licence and thinks he knows everything. I Have heard it from other guys also, but there is a 25000hr heli pilot here in NZ that still says " you learn something new everyday". And he (and others) are absolutely right.
If this pilot is showing signs of complacency then that is a attitude that will hurt him/her later on. Especially when they get upto about 500-700 hrs. If you can dig up some fatal accident reports for him to read. And also point out that he now has a licence to learn. Perhaps in these current times with the recession, customers pilot requirements, insurance and so on a potential employer would be looking for someone who is conservative over cocky.
I know in my place of work the last pilot I would hire would be someone showing signs of complacency ( or a cowboy attitude).

[Jabberwocky]

I was fortunate enough to attend a Tim Tucker Robinson Safety Course; he had similar viewpoints to the above posts. Although he tended to rationalise that 100 - 500 hours is the most dangerous period - 'as you think you know everything by then'.
So some good points here. And I intend on reading the 'Deadly Traps' book in the very near future.
Personally, I was a little un-nerved by the fact that I was soon able to be let loose upon the industry with only 100-ish hours. It just didn't seem right, if that makes any sense?? Some wise words from some very experienced instructors has since steered me in a more positive direction. But I don't think this period of my 'career' is the time to be too confident or cocky, I'll save that for a few thousands hours time when I'll already have learned by then that there is never a time and place for it

Safe flying

[Nathan Covey]

For all we know he could be having the best sex of his life , and feeling great about it !!! and his over all confidence is up there ,
What has he done or been doing that requires such a forum discussion, on how a 100 hr pilot is over confident and is showing signs of complaceny ...

is he still in flight school ? / jerk the eol auto's into him

is he overtaking you in the ability stakes /compared to you at the same age?

[February]

He has developed a "ho..hum" attitude about the flying. "Been there done that" Doesn't seem to get the idea being the repetition of emergency procedures. Doesn't seem to want to particiapate in any de-brief or discussion about his performance. Just rather "ho..hum"
Just my feelings, and I'm not his instructor, but I do have a few thousand hours under my belt.

[Yakking]

When I was instructing I came across a few students who had similar characteristics.
I believe the key here is that he should probably be challenged a bit more.

Fly with him through some complicated airspace, get him to land at a major airport or organise an off airport landing in C Airspace. If not near any busy airspace then challenge him with confined areas, or advanced precision maneuvers.

When he doesn't perform the maneuvers perfectly, be tough/ firm on him. Though I don't like to put it in print, you've got to humble/ overload him whilst still in a learning environment. Make him realize that he’s not as good as he thinks he is.

Better to do this now with an instructor on board, than by himself with paying punters.

Just my two cents.

Yak.

[PlankBlender]

Agree with Yak, a good kick up the butt flying-wise will bring the biggest ego back down to earth so to say.

Great book is also 'The Killing Zone', instills a healthy respect of complacency into the reader, and confirm from a comprehensive analysis of decades of accident data in the biggest aviation market in the world that the most prone to killing themselves are those with more than a bit and less than 500 hours of total time..

I'll hit those 500 probably later this year, and although I know I am a much better pilot than I was at 200 hours, I know I am only a few rungs up a very tall ladder, and I know I know very little about a lot of things in aviation. Which on the other hand makes it so exciting too, as there's so much else to try and learn, e.g. aerobatics/gliding, more complex/faster machines, etc. Bring on the fun