Forums are the best place for learning lessons about whatever you like and want to know more about. Many thanks to the OP for putting down in words your experience, so we all can learn from them. I read every post after, to also learn as much as possible from other's experience - thank you to those posters as well.
Even with all those posts, I would like to add one more thought. Nearly all tragedies or near-tragedies are never caused by a single failure. In any endeavor, especially in moderately dangerous situations, almost always there are a series of mistakes, malfunctions or unforeseen problems. Usually the accumulation of these adverse moments leads to very dangerous situations or poor outcomes.
The goal in our everyday life, as well as in these special situations is to listen to our "gut" (which is just slang for accumulated experience, judgement and knowledge) and not "tune-it" out. In nearly all situations, we are with other people and we tend to ignore our gut in group situations because we don't want to be judged, impact the fun/experience of others, feel constrained due to schedule, or we just believe our gut is not logical. In today's environment, where all input is loud, colorful and dramatic, it's too easy to shrug off our own quiet alarm bells. Yet I believe it's this quality - the ability to assess a situation at any point as it unfolds and abort it, or change course of action without much hesitation that really makes someone good at whatever they were doing.
I had always dreamed of learning to fly and took about 12 hours of flight lessons before I accurately assessed I did not have the appropriate multitasking skill set to be a good pilot. But I had a very proud moment during that 12 hrs. I was pre-flighting the aircraft and found something mechanical not to my satisfaction; the Instructor said not to worry about it - it was fine; I said OK. Running through checklist and became apparent the radio was not working; the Instructor said not to worry about it (radio was not required at this airfield); I said OK. As I was running the aircraft out the taxi, the plane had a very weird bounce to it when I applied the brakes; the Instructor said not to worry (light plane, brake rotors a little warped - no big deal). I aborted the flight - there were three relatively minor maintenance issues with the aircraft, but my gut said why would believe there only minor issues? Parked the aircraft and called it a day; lost my hour of flight-time and I'm 99.9999% certain there would not have been an issue, but I also know I made the correct call for my level of risk.
I used to ride in a lot of commercial planes for work and "the best pilot" I ever had was one who "missed" an approach at Miami. We were descending, close to landing and then he applied full power and got back into the pattern to try again. He got on the intercom and calmly said (paraphrasing) "folks, sorry about the slight delay; sometimes a landing just doesn't feel quite right and you always much better trying it again rather than trying to stick a poor landing anyway." You know he took a lot of **** from other pilots, caused delays, etc., etc. - but he followed his gut. I have always thought I would fly anywhere with a pilot willing to "look bad" in order to do it safely.
Thanks again to everyone for sharing and when thinking about accident prevention, remember the little bells going off in your head before things unfold are the ones you should never ignore. Safe and fun adventures, Kevin.
