Personal Minimums.

ppragman said:
if there are close alternates that could be used nearby I'd have no problem with it if the crew was proficient and didn't think that the safe completion of the maneuver was ever in doubt.
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Sounds like personal minimums to me.

Can we just tell you how badass you are and call this thread complete?
 
Fly_Unity said:
I fly corporate in a Cirrus some, and I completely ignore Cirrus's "recommended personal minimums". Its a joke in my opinion.
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I usually add 100' to make sure I can get in. That is at launch. I will fly it to mins. Worse case i can just pull the chute, right? It usually gets worse here in NEO and I have an ILS 8m away if needed. Even setting That I have had to call the wife to get me at CAK. Only once in 5yrs both were bad that I had to venture to another field. Funny as it only had a VOR but ceilings were like 400' better and Only 14m away.
 
C150J said:
Just for quirky info, it's 300.
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Yeah - aren't there some transmissometer sets that only go to 600? (Either way I'll be relaxin'...)

Part 91 here. I probably won't start an instrument approach if the visibility is reported below the minimum required for landing. But I agree with the "personal minimums are just reducing ADM to a rubric" crowd...My comfort zone changes based on what equipment I'm strapped to, how it's running, how well rested I am, and so on. That's "ADM" not personal minimums...

The only real "hard and fast" rules I have deal with takeoffs, not landings...Company policy 'round these parts permits an LPV-fitted single-engine airplane to depart with the reported weather at LPV minimums. Sorry, 250 and 3/4 just isn't enough...try 800-1.

There are things that are legal, then things that are safe, then things that are both.
 
MikeD said:
How you doing partner? Been a long time!
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Hope to see ya next year.... It's been TOO long.

Last time I saw you in person, Missus A was pregnant. Said child is now 5!

I'm still keepin' the -90's in line for Doug...

"Oh here, I can clear that message..."
 
USMCmech said:
A few points, "personal mins" are bad if

you have "personal minimums" that are based on nothing more than what some guy at the airport told you.

You aren't trying to push your mins lower in a orderly progressive manner

You think just because a flight is past your "personal mins" that it is unsafe.


"Personal mins" are a very good thing if,

You use them to enforce some self discipline into your decision making.

You use them to build your confidence level by pushing yourself a little at a time.

You want to keep some extra safety margin in your private flying.


As with everything in flying and life, your attitude is everything.
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^ Here it is, the post that will solve all-you-alls over generalizing problems.

"It's good" "It's bad"....Give me a break. The outcome is affected by how it is applied. It's-how-you-use-it. The ladies know that.

Thanks Internet.
 
ppragman said:
I disagree with the idea that any of it should be arbitrary. What if its a five minute flight from an airport that's 10 miles away to another airport where you need a special? Nothing wrong with that if you feel comfortable doing that. What about if you're in your piston single and its 800-1 at your destination, but there are numerous airports in the vicinity that are CAVU? Why not go and give it a shot if its at mins, then if you can't make it in, head to a close alternate...........
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You're rather confusing. Didn't you just set a personal minimum here?

Minimums for some people are numbers (even if you think they are arbitrary) and for some it's a "feeling"
 
dustoff17 said:
Minimums for some people are numbers (even if you think they are arbitrary) and for some it's a "feeling"
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The non-tangible things people are trying to put labels on here all fall into the category of 'airmanship'. More specifically, the component of airmanship called 'judgment'.

Judgment is a complicated entity, because it generally takes experience to develop -- early on in an aviator's career, their judgment is generally formed my mimicking the decisions made by their teachers/instructors, and once they're out of the training nest, they many times learn from the decisions of their peer pilots. Eventually, as the pilot has their own experiences, they're able to modify that judgment based on their own capabilities and perceptions about situations.

In this discussion about "personal minimums", all we're really saying is that some people are exercising conservative judgment. People who, based on their personal knowledge of their own skills, their own experience (or lack of it), their equipment, their situational awareness, etc, decided that published minimum weather was too low for them to execute safely.

I fail to see, exactly, what is wrong with that.

More specifically, isn't that exactly what we have been taught as students from our first day in the cockpit? To learn and exercise good judgment? And for what...in the name of safety, right?

It's all fine to think less of a pilot because they're not comfortable with the same things you are. It's fine to be critical of a pilot because they've chosen some personal limitation that you feel is based on nothing but arbitrary criteria. It's all fine to not understand why a pilot doesn't use the full extent of the privileges authorized by his license. What's not all right, IMHO, is for us to criticize peer pilots for exercising conservative judgment.

But, the reality is, for most of you there's no war. For the vast majority of pilots on the vast majority of flights, there is nobody that is going to die because a pilot chose to make the conservative answer. It's not like the Close Air Support pilot who, because he chooses to make the conservative call and not make that night strafe pass in the mountain valley and left friendly troops open to enemy fire, or the dustoff pilot who won't fly into the brownout and the casualty on the ground dies because he couldn't get treatment in time. There's no war here.

The risk, the life-and-death consequence in the vast majority of the flying pilot's do is pilot error. The pilot getting himself in over his head and beyond his own capabilities is the real risk.

What keeps us from getting into those situations is judgment.
 
I think this may go a little deeper than "personal minimums are stupid" and "don't be a wuss, fly the approach to minimums." We drop lines like, "Legal, but not safe," but then in the same breath decry the idea of personal minimums. Frankly, personal minimums, that are set BEFORE we start to do analysis on a given flight, are arbitrary for a reason; they're thought out and considered BEFORE we get into a situation where we have to make that go/no go decision.

Personal minimums, which obviously flex depending on the operation, aircraft and pilot, are no different than a QRH. You sit down (or in the case of a QRH, the training department/engineers sit down) and think through various situations. You pre plan actions based on what the best course of action is for a given situation, and you think this stuff out when you're not under pressure and can think through things rationally.

We don't toss the QRH aside and say, "Screw those engineers! I know better!" Pilots have tried, and pilots have killed themselves in the process.

Finally, and this may be the root of the issue; standardization saves lives. We know we won't be standard every day on every flight, but if you stick close enough to it, you'll most likely mitigate risk to a minimum acceptable level. Personal minimums, flows, profiles, QRH's and all the other tools we have at our disposal are useful for completing missions safely, and scrubbing them when they can't be completed safely.

Those things don't make you a wuss, they make you a good pilot.
 
I think a lot of it depends upon what you are flying at the time and your judgement about the weather situation for a given flight. I use my Grandpa as an example for most things because I spent the most time with him as well as looked up to him. He was a WW2 bomber pilot, then through a quirk ended up flying L-19's in the Korean War (the AF/Army split) then 31 years with TWA. He obviously had lots of instrument time and was proficient having passed competency checks for 31 years and multiple training events. With his personal flying, he was much more conservative. His "newest" airplane was built in 1943, and even though it was meticulously maintained and IFR certified he never flew it IFR on purpose - he would borrow a friends T-bone if he needed to go somewhere and it was IFR. His thinking was based more on "this engine is 50 years old" more than his qualifications. He also had various criteria for different planes/powerplants for what he would/would not do - like with the Monoprep powered with the Velie engine...don't get to much past gliding distance of the airport...don't fly over open water (including small ponds), etc. It was all based upon how well he knew the airplane, and was completely variable but his fallback when not flying with the airline was "this is my day off and it's supposed to be fun...if it won't be, screw it. If I'm not being paid wheelbarrows full of cash I'm not shooting approaches to minimums or dealing with ice/bad weather/etc". I guess the point is, his minimums were THE minimums, but he varied what he would do based on his knowledge of the equipment and faith in it. I see lots of people talk about personal minimums and usually the conversation seems based upon personal skill or experience but I don't usually see a lot about the quality of the equipment OR the importance of the flight - such as personal flight vs. work.

Edit: Martin alluded to this earlier. I'd bet my house that his decision making would be different in a 747 than a personally owned C-195 with an engine that has its genesis in the 1930's.
 
Hacker15e said:
But, the reality is, for most of you there's no war. For the vast majority of pilots on the vast majority of flights, there is nobody that is going to die because a pilot chose to make the conservative answer. It's not like the Close Air Support pilot who, because he chooses to make the conservative call and not make that night strafe pass in the mountain valley and left friendly troops open to enemy fire, .
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Shack.

I wouldn't do things, as I'd written about once before, like descend VFR with no radar coverage through a solid undercast with thunderstorms, heading down to a made-up MDA taken off of an elevation/terrain reference from an old 1:50,000 map with questionable accuracy, that takes me down a valley with mountains on both sides hoping I have my heading correct. All while feeling below for a way to get under the WX in order to provide ordnance for a unit in contact. Then popping out in a dark valley in heavy rain, only to find myself in a bowl and having to start a hook turn in order to keep from smacking a cliff wall ahead, then getting set up for work.

Unsafe? You bet. Stupid? Hell yes. Illegal? Probably.

Necessary? You'd better believe it.

Never something I'd do in any other situation. There are extremely few civilian missions that require exceptional risk of any kind. Even when I flew 135 cargo back in the day, where my job was to get boxes to the destination as thats what I was paid for, I'd push the minimums and stretch the legalities in any way or shape possible without being unsafe or illegal. There did come points where I just can't get there from here, and true judgement and airmanship is being able to recognize that and stop pushing in the manner you currently are.......and shift to Plan B.
 
SteveC said:
See, the problem as I see it is that the anti-personal-minimum crowd is against ARBITRARY numbers, while the pro-personal minimum bunch (well, at least me) is for the REASONED personal minimums.
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This is exactly what I wanted to say the entire time. Thanks SteveC.

Arbitrary to me means "didn't think the process through," now if Joe Blow in his Baron wants to limit himself, that's fine, but if he limits himself arbitrarily, it worries me about what else he decided upon arbitrarily. What I'm trying to say with all of this (albeit inarticulately) is that there are the legal limits, then there is ADM. Setting a minimum arbitrarily (which is what I thought everyone else meant by personal minimums) isn't airmanship, it isn't thinking things through. My point is the FAA gives us the framework within to operate legally with the caveat "don't do anything reckless or dangerous," which really means, "don't do anything stupid." Setting a personal minimum out of some flow chart, or because of an article in Flying/AOPA/AvWeb/Insert Source Here/etc. or because somebody else told you what you shouldn't fly in isn't thinking, its being a meat computer. There are times when it is "above the legal minimums" but I still won't fly. This isn't because I have a flow chart somewhere with a table drawn out with minimal ceilings, and additions to be made to DA. Its because at this time, with these conditions, I've analyzed all available information pertaining to the flight, and the current conditions preclude an acceptable level of risk.

This isn't to say that I'm some sort of "Billy Badass" that blasts off whenever its legal to do so, hell, just a few weeks back I was part 91, and waited to launch for several hours so that the fog would lift (by the way it was above mins most of the day) so that I wouldn't waste any fuel or time on the airplane in the unlikely event that I'd have to go missed. Rather, in my incredibly limited experience it seems to me that having some preconceived notions about what you're absolutely going to do or not do prior to even planning a flight is wishful thinking, and at times dangerous. But, again, that's just my opinion.

Perhaps I'm arguing semantics, but "personal minimums" to me mean the selection of absolutes that apply to all flights. That's always what I was taught they mean when I was hearing about them. That said, I haven't flown strictly for fun more than 5hrs in the last 3000hrs so perhaps my thought process in this regard is askew due to working commercially. You tell me. I'm interested to hear and perhaps I'll change my opinion. There have been some very interesting discussions so far already, and if what Polar, and SteveC are saying is the standard for how people think about "personal mins" then I'm actually in agreement with them. That said, when the average sunglasses-hut toting, epaulet wearing 300hr instructor says "personal minimums" to me, in my experience, its meant less about judgment, and more about arbitrary limits.

That said, I found this pdf: http://www.thecfi.com/personalminschecklist.pdf to be essentially analogous to how I think about flight planning, so it seems that indeed my mileage may vary.
 
ppragman said:
Perhaps I'm arguing semantics, but "personal minimums" to me mean the selection of absolutes that apply to all flights. That's always what I was taught they mean when I was hearing about them.
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Me too.

ppragman said:
There have been some very interesting discussions so far already, and if what Polar, and SteveC are saying is the standard for how people think about "personal mins" then I'm actually in agreement with them. That said, when the average sunglasses-hut toting, epaulet wearing 300hr instructor says "personal minimums" to me, in my experience, its meant less about judgment, and more about arbitrary limits.
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That's been my experience as well.

It's too bad your example of the 300 hour CFI is more the norm for the training industry, rather than guys like SteveC teaching people.
 
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