Sometimes the most difficult thing for a pilot to do is to do nothing. As in, whenever we're in an airplane piloted by someone else. If we're up front and know the left-seater, we may be granted some support role such as tuning the radios, but mostly we sit and watch. If we don't know the pilot, we can only do just that—sit and watch. So it was for me recently. I didn't know the pilot of the Cessna 182—he was employed by the charter company operating the airplane. Not much chance of striking up a friendly conversation, either. He was Costa Rican and knew about as much English as I do Spanish, which is to say pequeno.
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