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Profile: Bill Bullock
To say that being a good pilot is knowing when to say no may at first seem as fatuous as "Love means not ever having to say you're sorry." But it isn't. A good pilot knows when to say no to flying through a vicious line of thunderstorms, or to taking off when only one set of spark plugs is functioning correctly (each cylinder has two), or to inviting a friend to go up for a sightseeing flight just after downing a glass or two of wine, or to descending into a box canyon with no certain assurance of being able to fly out of it, or to charging off into the night in order to get home when the forecast weather at the home airport and all potential alternates is below what the pilot and the plane can handle. |
nce, when Bill Bullock's son David, then a teen, was wrestling with some minor crisis in his life, he went to his father and asked, "How do you know when to say no?" Bill, for whom aviation provided the context for addressing all issues, answered, "A good pilot always knows when to say no." David didn't tell me whether that answer helped him at the time, but he said that he often pondered it afterwards.
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