There’s a saying, almost as ingrained as the “old, bold pilots” nonsense: The most useless things in aviation are runway behind you, altitude above you, and fuel you left behind. Now, if those sayings really held water, there’d be no airlines performing intersection takeoffs (they happen daily), airplanes would routinely cruise at service ceiling (we actually try to avoid that), and every jet would lumber to the runway with its tanks carrying every drop available. And as for the line about old, bold pilots, let’s remember that Chuck Yeager and Bob Hoover lived many, many years.
“In our business, it seems that most times when you hear an emphasis on ‘again,’ especially when you can hear their eyeroll over the radio, it means the first time only happened in someone’s…
