King Air 90 Training

[Lead Sled]

Let's not get our panties in a bunch here. I simply meant that too many people follow the FARs and don't have enough common sense to think about safety.

Experience doesn't give you license to ignore or dismiss the FARs. It's exactly as Avbug said...

The first (legal) does not negate the second (safe), nor does the second preempt the first. Both are possible, all the time, or you do not fly. Period.

His final observation is spot on as well...

The regulation is [are] written in blood. Failure to respect the regulation may result in both legal trouble, and the use of your blood to write more regulation.

I'll take Avbug's explanation one step further...
A pilot has to simultaneously operate within 3 specific spheres to maintain an acceptable level of safety:

1. The pilot’s individual limitations. A freshly soloed student pilot will have different personal limitations than a 500-hour private pilot, who will have different personal limitations than a 10,000-hour corporate or airline captain.

2. The aircraft’s limitations. There will always be aircraft that are more suited for a particular mission than another. A Super Cub might be just the ticket for flying off of a sand bar in Alaska, but you wouldn’t want to try shooting an ILS to minimums in icing conditions in one. A Lear is one fine airplane, but it isn’t the machine you want to be operating if your runway is only 3,000’ long. All aircraft have limitations whether they are a Super Cub or a B747. A Cessna 172 is probably one of the finest general aviation aircraft ever built and it has one of the best safety records. Can it be misused? Of course – fill it with fuel, put four people in it, and try taking off from an airport in Colorado during the middle of summer. You’ll probably make the headlines in the local papers.

3. The legal limitations imposed by the FARs.

Where pilots get into trouble is when they attempt to operate outside of the area where all three spheres intersect. The accident record is full of reports where highly experienced airline or corporate pilots “bought the farm” trying to operate in conditions that the aircraft wasn’t suitably equipped to handle. (For example, trying to shoot an ILS to minimums in icing conditions in a Super Cub.) The same thing goes for “VFR only" private pilots continuing into IFR conditions in suitably equipped aircraft. The same would be true of an experienced pilot trying to operate a light twin under conditions that would leave him/her “hanging” if an engine quit.

Don't misunderstand the value of experience - you don’t manipulate the controls “better”, you just fly “smarter”.

'Sled