I'm curious about the collective's opinion on something, because I think I'm not the only one who might experience this.

Let me preface this question by saying that I've been flying for 14 years (on and off), am very comfortable in an aircraft as PIC, and reasonably confident commensurate with my hours. I started my hobbyist flying career in open cockpit ultralights and have always enjoyed the visceral, wind-in-your-face raw element of aviation, but have only had my PPL since 2003. Only in recent years have I studied accidents and flying fatalities very closely, and have had the misfortune of losing more than a couple friends to crashes. I'm quite conservative as backcountry pilots go, more interested in living a modestly exciting life to a ripe old age rather than a very exciting life until tomorrow. I can't really say that I've yet had a flying experience where I really felt like I screwed up or came close to buying it.

Occasionally, prior to a flying trip or even just a planned local excursion the next day, I will experience a short stab of anxiety. Not really tossing and turning poor sleep kind of anxiety, but an occasionally subconscious statement of: "What you're doing is extremely dangerous, and you could die tomorrow." The kind where your eyes open suddenly in a brief respite from REM sleep, and the little voice inside your sense of self-preservation utters: "WTF are you doing, you idiot??"

I do not feel this at all while conscious and awake, no anxiety, no fear, no trepidation. I am a competent and confident pilot, and it comes naturally to me (the simple flying that I do.) I do remind myself mentally not to fuck it up and bend the plane, but that's just par for the course with every pilot I think who makes an effort to avoid complacency.

So what is it that leaks out of the subconscious at night? I've always thought dreams to be the brain's way of coping with real anxiety and processing the memories and experiences of something possibly traumatic, intimidating, or uncertain...or even exciting. I can remember the night after my first ever day of snow skiing, and my sleep was tortured-- All night I dreamed the same sequence over and over of skiing Mt Ashland. It was a wonderful day in my life, but the brain couldn't turn off even after I fell asleep.

Anyone else? This is some real campfire shit.

After skydiving professionally for 15 years, and flying now as a licensed guy for 3....I've always had something like this. Mostly I've experienced the anxiety, subtely, after a period of inactivity. If I hadn't jumped in a while, I'd get a little anxious on jump run, but as soon as the door opened it went away. I've noticed it with flying as well, especially this past year from when I had my surgery. I was fairly active before, but then nothing. It was bad enough that when flying with MountainMatt, I declined his offers to take control for some takeoff and landings. It wasn't until this past March, in a Clipper of all things, that I expressed my anxiety to the owner and he made me go be PIC. Turns out, no problem and no reason for the anxiousnous. I think I started noticing more after my jump accident which could've taken my life happened a couple months before my daughter was born. I seem to think about this stuff a bit more now than before that.

A wise old pilot still flying in his mid-eighties once gave me some advice that stuck with me:

"Make sure you're competent. Know that you're competent and allow yourself to be be confident in that. But *never* let yourself feel comfortable in an airplane."

So, while I'm never anxious when flying, I work really hard not to get complacent. Sounds like your subconscious is helping you do that as well.

I think about it all most everyday....From my business to my personal life, even more so now having a kid. From my flying, jumping, skiing, surfing, you name it. The anxiety is what also makes you focus and channel your energy into the moment of focus. I have always had a thought on this as: Fear causes hesitation and hesitation can cause your greatest fears to come true. In my line of work far to often is that true. Hesitation can cause very bad things to happen. All the more reason to practice, train and repeat that daily until muscle memory is purely your reaction.

I have lost countless friends over the past 20 years. Many are some of my very best of friends. Most are whom you read about or see in films and documentaries. You cant but think is it all worth it? I believe it is. If your not living how you choose to live, your not living. You could get it just by walking down the stairs in your house by tripping and falling just as easy. You can go through life trying to mitigate any and all hazards in your life but then would you really be living? You feel life at its best (in my opinion) when you are there in the moment doing what you do, even if your moment is drinking a beer on the beach (here comes the tsunami).

I have said this far to often at funerals: Who says the world is round? It sure feels as though it is flat. Most people are focused in the middle trying not to fall off the edge. Most of my friends are the ones hanging on the edge. We are the ones truly living life.

Maybe I am crazy but I dont think so. We are just doing what we do (with the utmost care and respect to the consequences). Things happen and thats just how it is...even when you have done everything correctly.

AKT

Rarely do I consciously question whether flying is worth it or not, mostly because (in violation of Oregon180's quote) it feels comfortable.

The subconscious is different though. It's not a controllable thing, almost like having another personality inside your head. There is no way to consciously reason with it, because it's like a backup mainframe computer constantly running the show in the background, impervious to user control.

I was just curious if anyone had experienced that voice during sleep, one that contrasts with your awake/conscious feeling on the matter. This is more of a curiosity about the oddities of human mind than it is a cry for help.

Hey Z, maybe you need to up your medication.

mountainmatt wrote:Hey Z, maybe you need to up your medication.

More oreos... I think you're right.

Every flight, I get slight jitters in my stomach. Seems that after I have flown once for the day (like flew in the AM, then went again later that day), I don't anymore, but I know EXACTLY what you feel. I think any way you look at it, we put our faith in imperfect machines (and may our imperfect skills and judement)and our bodies remind us of that.

I have wanted to ask pro pilots the same question.

I was once told that the day you stop getting that feeling or that little voice in your head it's probably time to either crash or hang it up. I've been having nervous feelings about our upcoming trip to Idaho. Weird since it's my third trip over the same route. It's not going to go away until I'm in my folding chair on the strip with a beer out of Robs cooler in my hand Then it'll start all over as talks of Mile Hi landings starting flying around.

Best thread yet, and here I thought it was just me.

When I was flying two to three times a week I didn't get that feeling. But when it rains for a month and I keep reading report after report of how guys with thousands of hours keep finding ways of turning their planes into a smoldering piles, that first walk to the plane makes you wonder.

I get that too occasionally.

Mine manifests itself in a (relatively recent) irrational fear of hard turbulence pulling a wing apart. The educated and trained side of my mind tells me that the odds of a wing coming off of a certified airplane in flight, in anywhere near normal conditions, are microscopic. But the side of my mind that has seen airplane accidents, and the side of me that has lost friends in airplanes, can very easily imagine the scenario and play out the entire failure in HD color, and then subject me to the mental video clip of the terror during those moments between the failure and the impact. This is pretty ironic, because in a pervious lifetime I was the guy who went out flying an unpowered airplane LOOKING for this same turbulence in mountains.

On a related note, I too fly in a very suspicious state of mind. I'm always looking to get the jump on the gremlins before they get the jump on me, because I know that one half-second of complacency in my mind will be the monent it happens. I'm watching oil pressure, temps, and listening for the engine to miss with the intensity of a guard dog. It's like I know the other shoe is gonna drop in the next 30 seconds, and it's up to me to be ready for it. When I take a passenger flying, this usually makes them nervous because I'm not exuding that smooth overconfident airline pilot vibe.

A wise gray haired pilot once told me that the reason for this is because age end experience seeing bad things makes it so you can easily imagine how bad things happen. The younger pilots, or those who have not yet seen tragedies or needless loss etc., don't have that experience to give them the clear vision of something bad happening.

Anyway, you're in the correct frame of mind. I'm sure most of the high timers here will agree. The over-confident thing is of course the killer.

sic transit confidence I guess.

My wife feels it to, but it all seems to go away in the air then we both feel at ease and safer than if we were in a car or on a bike. I think it’s like an old biker once told me about his bike, he said that he had an agreement with it, they agreed that if he stopped doing stupid stuff the bike would not through him in the street.

Yes and I am very familiar with the Shepard's Prayer - Alan B Shepard's Prayer.

Maybe it is the more I learn the more I find out how much I didn't know. Maybe because I enjoy and take so much pride in flying that it is one of the last things I want screw up. Maybe because I have read too many Ernest Gann books.

I guess maybe I didn't communicate what I am getting at very well. I'm more curious about the conscious vs subconscious mind.

Any pilot free of severe mental disorder feels a healthy anxiety about flying, it keeps us alive. That's normal, I hope you get that too.

But I'm talking about the half-dream state, the other voice that is momentarily exposed while your conscious rationale is disabled during sleep, freely entertaining the worst things your mind can imagine. It's certainly much more unpleasant than any waking anxiety.

Zane,

Good post, good question.

I feel the same anxiety occasionally myself ... it's sort of there, on the edge of conscious thought, but not quite expressed in my mind. Once in awhile, usually while flying, I'll sense a sudden attempt by my "mind's eye" to picture what it would be like in those final seconds of a doomed flight, hurtling toward a very hard landing, wondering what the doomed pilot and passengers must be thinking knowing the end fast approaches. And then I put it out of mind very quickly.

I probably would not have such thoughts if it were not for the pervasive reports and analysis of fatal aviation accidents that are so much a part of aviation ... whether they're the monthly FAA accident summaries posted verbatim in various pubs, or news articles and analytical articles published in various flying mags, or posts on this and other aviation websites. Really, if you're a pilot, and if you read anything at all about flying, it's hard not to be exposed to a steady diet of horrible aviation accident stories that certainly make your brain think of, "what if that were me?" And it's logical therefore that such a steady input of horror-inducing stories would have some effect on our subconscious thoughts.

What's the solution? Don't read aviation stories? No, that wouldn't be very practical, sort of like the ostrich thing ... and we pilots do learn vicariously how not to do many of the sorts of things that would make the horror quite personal.

It's good, I think, that we have some of this information planted in our heads, helping to consiously or unconsciously shape our daily decision making that leads to good or not so good outcomes ... as long as it doesn't become obsessive or controlling, or chase us out of our airplanes altogether. It helps to make us safer pilots.

I know that when I served on a nuke attack submarine back in the Cold War 70s, and my shipmates and I lived and worked in an unfriendly environment where our actions or inactions could spell the difference between life or death at any moment, and our machines and our ability to operate them were critical to our survival, I felt the same twinges of occasional anxiety ... and played the same movies in my head of guys like me in other boats where it didn't turn out so well ... thinking of the sailors who are still on "eternal patrol". It sometimes helped me to focus on getting the job done so I could get the hell out of there while still breathing.

Motivation matters ... and weighing risks and consequences in one's mind from time to time is often a necessary ingredient of proper motivation.

Duane

It is quite possible that THE event in September is leaking into your subconscious and causing you to toss and turn, quite normal IMO>

My anxieties are common to what the other guys have stated. If I have any subconscious anxieties, I am not aware of them. If it really bothers you I'd suggest talking to someone who knows what they are talking about. Not us. If you're just curious, then I wouldn't really worry about it.

Zane, lay off the pipe dude.

FloatFlyer wrote:It is quite possible that THE event in September is leaking into your subconscious and causing you to toss and turn, quite normal IMO>

Referred pain?