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Negative Training
Notes From the Cockpit

Negative Training: How Practice Can Quietly Make You a Worse Pilot

In the aviation industry, we sometimes have this attitude that everything can be solved with training. Partly because it’s the building block of everything we do. 🔸 Someone forgot to do something on the line? More training. 🔸 Certain checks Read more…

By Janine Lythe, 5 monthsFebruary 15, 2026 ago
Morecambe Bay Crash
Why Spotlights

What can we Learn From the Morecambe Bay Dauphin Crash?

There are accidents that are caused by very loud and obvious things: Mechanical failures, fire warnings, things that are obviously wrong 👀 Then there are accidents caused by sneaky threats that weren’t managed well enough. The Morecambe Bay crash is Read more…

By Jop Dingemans, 5 monthsFebruary 1, 2026 ago
Notes From the Cockpit

From Clueless to Capable: Finding Your Way Through the 4 Stages of Competence

There’s a phase of flying where everything feels… fine. Even when it probably isn’t! ⚡️ The checks flow, the weather behaves, and nothing really surprises you. You go home thinking, yeah, that was alright. No stress. No drama. No reason Read more…

By Jop Dingemans, 6 monthsJanuary 18, 2026 ago
Why Spotlights

What Can we Learn From This Fatal S-76 Accident in California?

This accident still makes a lot of pilots uncomfortable. Not because it’s complicated, or hard to understand, but because it’s a scenario we’ve seen play out time and time again in the rotary industry… 💥 This wasn’t a technical issue. Read more…

By Janine Lythe, 6 monthsJanuary 4, 2026 ago
Pilot Development
Notes From the Cockpit

I Thought More Experience Would Give Me Better Answers. It Gave Me Better Questions Instead

For a long time, I (naively) assumed that becoming a better pilot worked something like this: 🔸 Learn from my mistakes🔸 Absorb the wisdom from experienced pilots🔸 Make decisions, log the hours, do it for years ➡️ And then eventually, Read more…

By Jop Dingemans, 7 monthsDecember 14, 2025 ago
MD-11F Preliminary Report
Why Spotlights

MD-11F Engine Separation: What the Preliminary Investigation Report Reveals

In this day and age of aviation, sudden structural failures are less common than they used to be, especially for fixed wing aircraft. So when structural failures do happen, like this engine separation that UPS flight 2976 experienced on 4 Read more…

By Janine Lythe, 8 monthsNovember 30, 2025 ago
Mental resilience
Notes From the Cockpit

Building Mental Resilience: The Skill You Don’t Notice Until You Lose It

The first time I truly understood what it meant to have mental resilience wasn’t in a classroom, it was during my helicopter instrument rating. A good friend and I were going through the course together. We were down to our Read more…

By Jop Dingemans, 8 monthsNovember 16, 2025 ago
EASA Safety Review
Why Spotlights

Helicopter Accidents in 2024: What the EASA Data Reveals

Why do helicopters crash? 💥 Every year, EASA releases a great document that helps to answer this question, and shows what’s catching pilots out, what’s killing crew, breaking aircraft, and coming back to screw up flight safety across Europe 🇪🇺 Read more…

By Jop Dingemans, 8 monthsNovember 2, 2025 ago
Point of No Return
Notes From the Cockpit

Point of No Return (PNR) vs Point of Equal Time (PET): When to Use Which?

If something goes wrong now… do I turn back, or keep going? 👀 That’s where Point of No Return (PNR) and Point of Equal Time (PET) come in. Two bits of “ATPL theory” that suddenly become very real when the Read more…

By Jop Dingemans, 9 monthsOctober 19, 2025 ago
Why Spotlights

EC135 Tailboom Separation: What Happened Near Pompano Beach Airpark?

Helicopter flying can be extremely unforgiving. Things can unravel in seconds, sometimes in ways no simulator or checklist can fully prepare us for 👀 On August 28, 2023, an EC135 air medical helicopter operated by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office Read more…

By Jop Dingemans, 9 monthsOctober 5, 2025 ago

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