Artful Flying begins in the mind of the pilot, long before he or she sits down in the cockpit. It is more philosophy than procedure, more art than craft, more attitude than aptitude. It is more about human understanding than the challenges or faults of our systems or machinery.
There is outer work in flying, involving the hands, feet and body; we practice that crosswind landing until it feels good to our hands and behind; we shoot that ILS approach until it is second nature, until the procedure is burned indelibly into our short term memory. But there is inner work in flying, too, involving the head, our thinking muscles?the original software. This inner work is what we do the least?and need the most. For years, we?ve heard that about 70% of our flying accidents are due to human failures. This tells us that with few exceptions, our machines and avionics are pretty reliable; the systems that support us mostly serve our needs. What we need to concentrate on, then...is us. This is admittedly more difficult, which explains why we?re less likely to try?and less likely to make rapid or readily measurable progress when we do.
Artful Flying is largely a process of new awareness, yet it?s a process that is very old. Native American and Asian civilizations discovered this awareness thousands of years ago. But only recently have we discovered the importance and application of these simple, ancient ways in our lives."
