"Could Not Duplicate" as a way of clearing any maintenance writeup.
Mechanics who aren't. Since when did we become a community of parts-changers, rather than airplane fixers?
Anybody who doesn't believe in craftsmanship? Whatever happened to pride in one's work, and living behind one's signature?
People who can't seal a deal with a handshake, and mean it.
Politics.
My ex mother-in-law. Okay, she's not in aviation (unless I get lucky enough to find her on my flight one day, and then she'll be in free fall), but she's still a pet peeve. A big, ugly one. With one eye.
Anybody who strikes children. One of these days I'm going to be in an FBO or terminal somewhere, and someone is going to strike their child in front of me, and they'll be hauling me out in cuffs and that person on a gurney.
Thunderstorms that follow me around when I'm working in the hills. What's the deal?
People who think it's cute to say "why jump out of a perfectly good airplane?"
Jumpers who do hook turns.
Pilots who taxi too fast.
Helicopter pilots who think it's okay to air taxi, hover, or overfly my aircraft on the ground, or land too close.
Chief Pilots who call to put pressure on to take a flight with known mechanical discrepancies or bad weather.
Operators that falsify maintenance.
FAA inspectors who haven't taken their meds.
Incompetence.
Pilots in FBO's who are so above other pilots that they won't dignify them with a reply...I used to get a real kick out of taxiing in a Lear 35, and finding that the GIV driver wouldn't lower himself to speak to me.
Pilots who use their radio to spot traffic. You know who you are.
Arriving at the perfect drop point and discovering a failed to arm the system.
Stalling due to windshear and rotors on a tight base to final to drop downwind.
Spending 45 minutes trying to get my legs to bend enough to climb out of the cockpit at the end of the day and then listening to some near-retirement yahoo talk about how he'd like to do it for fun, in two years.
The Phillips Head screw.
People who release copious quantities of gaseous semi-digested chilly in an enclosed airplane packed with skydivers on a long ride to altitude on a hot day. Whomever says that capitol punishment is not justified as never been there.
People who overtorque the Phillips Head Screw.
Cheap tools, and people who use them.
A life so boring that the biggest worry is how other people talk or don't talk on the radio.
Extreme turbulence.
Stuck altimeters in free fall.
Unions.
People who overtorqued the phillips head screw ten years ago without any antisieze, and all the people who haven't touched it in the intervening years...until now.
Anybody who says, "That's good enough."
Pilots who invent proceedures...every year I run into a few. The ones that are flying a type that's been around for donkey's years, but think that somehow they know more than anybody else...here, try this, I'll show you a little secret...how come nobody else knows, teaches, or tries this "little secret?"
Cracked wings.
Corrosion.
Speculation.
Ground troops that insist on standing too close to a drop and then whine about getting hit.
Government lunch on a quick turn. I'm thankful for the effort, but what mind conceived the idea that someone flying in severe turbulence in a high workload cockpit with both hands already full would like to try to eat a four inch thick sandwich full of sauce, all the vegetables some liberal Republik could hope to offer, and half-cooked bacon, being held together by a single toothpick with a little frilly plastic yellow thing on the end?
White shirts around airplanes.
Pilots who really don't believe that navigation is possible without GPS.
The use of the phrase "any inbound traffic, please advise."
That's a few to start. I'll think of more when I'm awake.
