I have made more mistakes than I can count over the last 12 years since starting my helicopter pilot career.
At the time, it would’ve been great if someone had sat me down and said:
Jop, don’t be an idiot: avoid X, don’t do Y, and make sure you take A & B into account.
It definitely would’ve saved some headaches, time, and looking like a tool!
I often get messages asking for tips / what to do if you want to enter the helicopter industry.
My answers usually include at least some sort of encouragement to not make the mistakes I made along the way.
So here we go, my 7 biggest mistakes I wish I could have avoided from the very beginning!
Ready to learn from real aviation decisions, mistakes and challenges? Get our latest Notes from the Cockpit sent straight to your inbox, twice a month ⤵️
1️⃣ Saying Yes to Everything
When you spend a mortgage worth of money on flight training, move countries, and sacrifice a “normal” life in your home country, you kind of feel like everything you do HAS to be in service of your goal.
This resulted in a situation where I was obsessively choosing to only spend my time on things that furthered my career.
Or in simpler terms: I said yes to absolutely everything that had anything to do with helicopters.
The thing is, you can only do so much in a day, week, or month. I didn’t accept this.
Studying? Yes. Flying? Yes. Networking events? Yes. Helping others with their exams? Yes. Work experience at the airport? Yes.
Yes to all!
Sounds great, but it really wasn’t particularly healthy.
Friends, family, and even colleagues often said to me “Jop, maybe take a brake?”, but it never really landed.
In hindsight, I’d say yes to less things, and slow down in general. Time isn’t running out, and life is bigger than “career, career, career”.
Take a break, take care of yourself, and your wellbeing.
If your career gives you energy, great! It gave me energy as well. But I sacrificed many things that I didn’t necessarily need to.
2️⃣ Thinking it’s all About Competence
Competence gets you in the room. Relationships determine how effective you are once you’re there.
Yes, competence is important and the foundation of any career really. But…
It’s not everything. Aviation is a people business.
You can be highly competent, accurate, with great flying skills, but the human element of aviation is just as important.
Looking back, I wish I had spent more time developing the human side of aviation.
Not because I struggled with interpersonal skills, but because I underestimated how important they were.
The pilots I respected the most weren’t always the most technically gifted.
They were the people who made others feel heard.
Captains who remained calm under pressure.
Instructors who understood that teaching is as much about emotional intelligence as it is about knowledge.
And colleagues who could disagree professionally without creating conflict.
Those are the people you want in your organisation, whether they scored 90% or 92% on a test.
3️⃣ Mistaking Other People’s Confidence for Competence
When you’re the newbie in the room, you take everyone’s word and experience for reality.
That’s a slippery slope.
Now this is (of course) different for everyone, but for someone who constantly tries to learn as much as possible, I went a bit too far with trusting what other people said to be true.
Inside or outside the cockpit, a healthy dose of “trust – but verify” can help keep you out of trouble, as we discussed here ⬇️
If I want to be confident, I need to know my stuff. Not having that requirement is both a blessing and a curse.
What do you think?
4️⃣ Ignoring the Journey
This kind of links to point 1️⃣: I was always focussed on the “next thing”.
I’d score well on an exam, a skills test, or any other milestone. Instead of celebrating and reflecting on the achievement, the immediate thought was always: “right, was requires my attention now?”
If you never stop to admire the steps you’re taking, it’ll all be lost on you 10 years from now.
Looking back, I should’ve taken more moments to just sit in what I was building at the time, instead of always being on the lookout for the next challenge.
5️⃣ Treating Mistakes as Personal Failures
You’re GOING to screw up. There’s no way to avoid this.
And yes, it sounds pretty cliche:
“Failure is success if you get back up again”
But… it holds true in this career.
You’ll fly a terrible ILS, take longer than others to learn a stable hover, and get debrief points you’re not proud of.
But that’s the career we’ve chosen, and boy does it require mental resilience at times. We’ve discussed that here ⬇️
Try to laugh at yourself at times, aim for perfection, but accept you’ll never achieve it.
If you did, give us a call 😁
6️⃣ More Knowledge Solves Everything, Right? No…
I thought that if I just studied more and more, most of my problems would be solved.
Yea I know – sounds pretty naive.
The thing is, knowledge does help a lot, but only to a certain extent.
Being a successful pilot is about so much more than just being on top of figures, SOP’s and regulation.
You can’t out-study decision-making, experience, handling skills, and getting back up when things go south.
It’s just one of the pillars that the rest often leans on.
7️⃣ Believing I Had to Figure Everything Out Myself
It’s ok to ask for help, or to ask another question.
I was hell-bent on getting there myself, when in hindsight, people around me were more than happy to help.
I was very fortunate to do most of my training with a very good friend of mine.
Late nights weren’t optional, and figuring out stuff together made things 10x easier than trying to do it myself.
If you’re in a position where you’re starting your own pilot journey, don’t hesitate to ask others for advice or help.
If there is anything Janine & I can help with, feel free to email us (details on the about page) 👍🏼
💭 Conclusion
If there’s one key thing I’ve learnt, it’s that becoming a good pilot isn’t just about learning to fly an aircraft.
It’s about learning how to think, how to work with people, how to deal with setbacks, make effective decisions, and how to keep improving without letting the job consume who you are.
I still make mistakes today. Hopefully fewer than I did 12 years ago, but I certainly haven’t eliminated them.
The goal is to become the kind of pilot who learns a little from every flight, every debrief, and every person you meet along the way.
If you’re already further along in your career, I’d love to know:
Which mistake do you wish someone had warned you about when you started?
Ready to learn from real aviation decisions, mistakes and challenges? Get our latest Notes from the Cockpit sent straight to your inbox, twice a month ⤵️
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