Trust Thyself...And No One Else

摘要

He was a good man, a good pilot, and a trusting fellow. And his Bonanza was laden with ice one raw February day near Minneapolis, growing slower and more unmanageable as each second went by. The trusting Bonanza pilot had advised Center of his situation, and ATC vectored him to an approach at a nearby airport, a few places in line behind bigger iron. Minutes in the frozen clag turned to a quarter-hour and more, and still the pilot patiently waited his turn for the localizer, staring at his declining airspeed, and believing in the system. Finally the Bonanza could bear the accumulating load no longer, and fell out of the sky like the iced-up hulk it had become, hurtling to the ground with all the dignity of a hangar door. "He was such a good guy, such a reliable pilot. If only he had taken charge," the hangar flyers had said. "He trusted those controllers too much. Did he know that less than half of them are actually pilots? That less than half of them really knew the difference between airframe icing and an artichoke? That a Bonanza, as great an airplane as it is, can hold a fraction of the ice load of a Cessna 182, that venerable lawn mower of the skies?"