Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Unstable Approach, Too Fast, Low Terrain, Sink Rate — Are You Too Stubborn to Go Around?
Don’t be a show-off. Never be too proud to turn back. There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots. -- pioneering airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee in 1949
Life is full of challenges, and we all make mistakes.
Sometimes you’re driving down the road and you think, Well, I can change lanes here, I can change lanes there and cut some time off my drive.
Then all of a sudden you find yourself in a situation where you should probably slow down.
But instead, you accelerate. You try to make the red light.
You change lanes and cut in front of somebody.
You make the left turn that maybe you shouldn’t be making.
And then the inevitable happens: you have an accident.
We’ve all done it.
I used to do it a lot more when I was younger. I seldom do it now, although lately I sometimes find that tendency coming back because, what the hell, you know?
And that’s part of the problem. I call it the curse of being lucky.
You do something stupid and nothing happens. So you do it again.
And nothing happens.
Eventually you start believing that nothing happens because you’re good at it.
Maybe you’re not. Maybe you’ve just been lucky.
I’ve jumped overboard in the middle of the ocean to follow an anchor line down and unloosen an anchor. I’ve actually done that.
And when you do something like that and come back up safely, you don’t necessarily think about the thousand things that could have gone wrong.
The current could have changed. The boat could have moved. You hit your head.
The anchor could have shifted. You could have gotten tangled.
Something completely unexpected could have happened.
But nothing happened.
So your brain files the experience away as: See? I knew what I was doing.
Maybe you did. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe you were lucky.
That’s the curse.
We all tend to over-believe how capable we are of getting ourselves out of situations.
And sometimes we may actually be very capable.
But we don’t know where the unexpected problem is going to come from.
That brings me back to the pilots trying to land that cargo plane in Miami.
The more information that comes out, the more remarkable the chain of events becomes.
They were warned they were too fast.
Then there were additional warnings about excessive speed.
Then: Sink rate. Sink rate. Too low terrain. Too low terrain. Too low terrain. Unstable approach.
These aren’t suggestions from the airplane.
The airplane isn’t saying, Hey guys, just something you might want to think about when you have a minute.
It is screaming at you. Something is wrong. The approach isn’t right.
At some point, the answer is very simple: Go around. Add power. Climb. Come back. Try again.
That’s one of the most important lessons in aviation because a go-around is not a failure.
It is the opposite.
It is recognizing that the current plan isn’t working and refusing to turn a bad approach into an accident.
What fascinates me about this accident is how many opportunities apparently existed to stop the chain.
Too fast. Correct it. Still too fast. Go around. Unstable approach. Go around. Sink rate. Go around. Too low terrain. Go around. Not properly configured. Go around.
Missed the proper touchdown area.
Go around. Yet they continued.
According to the information released so far, the aircraft was still being configured extremely late in the approach. Flaps were reportedly being changed after minimums. They touched down far down the runway and in a bad attitude. Then they attempted a go-around after touchdown.
Then they abandoned the go-around.
Now suddenly you’re trying to stop an enormous airplane that is still traveling around 120 knots with very little runway left.
There were reportedly opportunities to use reverse thrust, but reverse thrust wasn’t deployed.
At that point everything that could have been handled calmly minutes earlier is happening in seconds.
That is how accidents happen. Not usually because of one enormous mistake.
It is one decision. Then another. Then another.
And every time you continue, the next decision gets harder.
You become committed to the previous decision.
You’ve already come this far. You’ve already descended this far.
You’re almost there.
You’ve already invested this much money.
You’ve already spent five years in the relationship.
You’ve already borrowed the money.
You’ve already opened the business.
You’ve already made the promise.
You’ve already told everybody this was going to work.
So instead of going around… you keep flying the approach.
That is where this becomes much bigger than aviation.
Think about your business.
You’re having trouble meeting payroll. That’s a warning.
You’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. That’s another warning.
You’re paying this week’s bills with next week’s money.
Sink rate. You’re delaying vendors because you don’t have the cash.
Too fast. You’re telling customers something will be delivered when you know there’s a good chance it won’t be.
Unstable approach. You’re borrowing money just to cover ordinary operating expenses.
Too low terrain. You’re lying to employees, vendors, customers—or yourself—about what is really happening.
PULL UP.
At some point you have to ask yourself: Am I fixing the problem, or am I just trying to make the runway?
Maybe you need to cut expenses. Maybe you need to change your business model.
Maybe you need to sell something. Maybe you need to bring in a partner.
Maybe you need to shut down part of the company.
Maybe the answer is simply: Go around. Change the plan.
Same thing with investing. A stock drops 10%. You say it’ll come back. Twenty percent. You buy more. Thirty percent. Now you’re explaining why the market doesn’t understand the company. Forty percent. You’re reading every article that agrees with you and ignoring every article that doesn’t. Unstable approach. Sink rate. Too low terrain.
Sometimes the smartest investment decision isn’t finding another reason why you were right.
It’s admitting: I was wrong. Go around.
The same thing happens in personal relationships.
If you find yourself constantly lying, cheating, hiding things, avoiding conversations or inventing explanations for behavior you know is wrong, those are warnings.
Maybe the relationship can be fixed. Maybe you need counseling. Maybe you need to change. Maybe you need to leave.
But ignoring the warnings doesn’t make the airplane stable.
And the most dangerous part is that you may get away with it.
Once. Twice. Ten times.
You drive too fast and don’t crash.
You overextend the business and somehow make payroll.
You take too much investment risk and the market saves you.
You lie in a relationship and don’t get caught.
You jump off the boat in the middle of the ocean and manage to get back aboard.
Nothing bad happens. So instead of learning caution, you learn confidence.
That’s the curse of being lucky.
And then one day one little thing is different.
Different runway. Different weather. Different traffic. Different market. Different employee.
Different relationship. Different current in the ocean.
And suddenly the thing you’ve done ten times before doesn’t work.
That’s what is so frightening about accident chains.
If just one thing had happened differently in Miami, perhaps we wouldn’t be talking about this accident the same way.
Maybe it would have been a terrible landing followed by an investigation.
Maybe the aircraft would have stopped sooner.
Maybe they would have gone around earlier.
Maybe they would have landed somewhere else.
Maybe they wouldn’t have hit that van full of people.
But none of those things happened. The chain kept going. And eventually there was no runway left.
I don’t want to sit here comfortably afterward and pretend that I know exactly what was going through those pilots’ minds. I would hate to have been in their seats.
And the uncomfortable truth is that, figuratively speaking, I probably have been in their seats.
So have most of us. And guess what?
We got lucky.
That’s why I think there is something worth learning here instead of simply pointing fingers.
When you’re getting warning signals and you keep ignoring them, eventually the warning becomes the consequence.
A warning is a gift. Too fast. You still have time. Sink rate. You still have time. Unstable approach. You still have time. Too low terrain. You are running out of time.
The mistake isn’t necessarily getting yourself into the bad approach.
Everybody gets into bad approaches.
The mistake is becoming too stubborn to abandon it.
There’s an old aviation saying: There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. But there are no old, bold pilots.
There’s probably a lesson in there for the rest of us.
In investing. In business. In relationships. In flying an airplane. In driving a car.
And just about everything else we do.
Learn to recognize the warning signs, recognize when you’re rationalizing.
Learn to recognize when the plan isn’t working and most importantly, learn that changing your mind is not weakness.
Turning around is not failure. Selling the investment is not failure.
Changing the business plan is not failure. Ending a bad situation is not failure.
And in an airplane, going around certainly isn’t failure.
Sometimes the smartest thing you can possibly do is admit:
This approach isn’t working. Go around.
And one last thing.
When you’re driving and that light turns yellow, don’t think: I can make it.
Maybe you can. You’ve probably made it a hundred times before.
But someday the other guy is going to think the same thing.
And being right isn’t worth your life—or somebody else’s.
Don’t let the curse of being lucky convince you that you’re invincible.
