The Pilot Mindset

Your aircraft gets a check before every flight. When did you last check the pilot?

Modern light aircraft are remarkably reliable. The mind flying them is where many accidents begin: in decisions, pressures and habits that were often preventable long before engine start. Yet the mental side of flying is learned for a written exam, then largely left to chance. Until now.

Every pilot is taught to fly the aeroplane. Very few are taught how the mind behind the pilot actually operates.

The Pilot Mindset fills that gap. It takes the research from aviation psychology, human factors and sports science that actually changes what a pilot does, strips out the jargon and the hype, and turns it into tools you can use: a startle-recovery drill, a chair-flying routine that actually works, personal minima written down, if/then cards for the decisions that go wrong in the air, and the five-minute debrief that turns every flight into a calibrated experience.

Inside you'll find a complete system to:

• Prepare mentally for flights, lessons and flight tests, and perform under the pressure of an examiner's eye
• Work with fear and stress instead of pretending they don't exist and build calibrated confidence instead of perfectionism
• Study theory so that it sticks, and learn to armchair fly properly, some of the highest-value flying you'll do without leaving the house
• Stay ahead of the aircraft when workload is high, and make the right decisions when they count
• Recognise the hazardous attitudes in flying: the five in the syllabus, and a sixth it leaves out
• Beat the complacency trap and be ready for any emergency on every flight

Along the way you follow Sam, a student pilot whose doubts, setbacks and small victories will feel familiar to anyone who has sat in the left seat, from a ragged afternoon in the circuit to the turn-back she was genuinely proud of.

Whether you are a flight student, a newly qualified pilot, or an aviator with a thousand unremarkable hours, the most important component in your aircraft is the one reading this cover.

This book is its operating manual.

Details

• Author: Jim Marsden
• Publisher: Inspired Aviation Media
• 248 pages, full colour, 152 × 229 mm
• Paperback: ISBN 978-1-911871-02-6
• Hardback with dust jacket: ISBN 978-1-911871-06-4

About the author

Jim Marsden coaches students through the UK NPPL, PPL, CPL, and ATPL theory exams, and is as much at home with a whiteboard marker in his hand as with a control stick. His love of aviation began in 1981, aged nine, on the flight deck of a KLM DC-9, and he began learning to fly in 2008; he has since flown everything from microlights to a de Havilland Tiger Moth.

His interest in the mental side of flying came the hard way: first as a student who nearly gave up in the circuit, then in his early fifties, learning how to learn again for the CAA commercial pilot exams. This is the book he wishes someone had handed him on day one.