A Dear mid — Air…or Two

Flying Safety, August, 2001 by Eric Braganca

In the end, I believe we did most things well. We used sound crew communication to pass off the Cessna from copilot to right scanner and then later to make calls about the Boeing 737. We minimized the intercom chatter to focus on the higher priority of being vigilant for traffic. We kept our lights on. So how would I fix this so it won't happen in the future? I'll be more careful watching other aircraft at night having been reminded of the limitations of night vision--even with 1000 hours flying under NVGs. I'll double-check on traffic a bit more often. And mostly, I'll keep listening to the radios intently, since it was hearing the Cessna pilot's radio call that alerted me to his passing.

As for my checkride, I passed. He was satisfied and that's all I needed to know. This was one checkride where my success wasn't determined by the evaluator's opinion, but by simply surviving the night. I flew for five hours with NVGs under 200 feet AGL in formation with another helicopter, did aerial refueling with a C-130 under zero illumination, and shot guns in formation. Yet it was the departure from the airfield under radar control that caused me to age unnecessarily. Maybe it's time to head off to a cushy staff job and leave this sort of excitement more fearless pilots.