Since our airline was well known for filling checkrides with well-hidden, diabolical traps, I was trying to squeeze some advice out of him.
And so I asked him what he thought was the biggest problem that guys encounter during their checks.
His answer surprised me.
He said that guys don’t know how to figure out what the real problem is.
“What do you mean?” I asked. How hard is it to figure out what the problem is? It’s staring you right in the face, isn’t it?
“Alright, “he said. “Imagine you’ve just had an engine fire on takeoff.”
“OK,” I said.
He cocked his head to the side and continued, “You go through the ECAM, shut down the engine, put the fire out, run all the checklists.”
“OK, sounds good.”
“So what’s the problem?” he asked.
“Um, you just had an engine fire.”
“Yes, so what?”
“I mean, that’s it, you just had an engine fire. That’s the problem.”
“Is the fire still burning?” he asked.
“No, you said it was out.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“You just had an engine fire and shut it down,” I blurted out, knowing that somehow, this was still the wrong answer.
But I still didn’t see just what he was getting at.
“Is the fire still burning?” he asked again.
“No. You already said it was out.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Uhhh, um,” I said staggering, a bit confused and exasperated by this whole line of questioning.
“See, this is what I was talking about and what most guys don’t realise. Before you can solve a problem, you’ve got to figure out just what the problem is. There’s no point in solving the wrong problem, is there?”
“No, there isn’t,” I said.
“So what you need to do is to figure out, just how to figure out, what the problem is. That’s always got to be your first step.”
And like every great teacher, he left it for me to figure out.
At the time I didn’t realise how lucky I was, because what he said unlocked something in my brain and set me on a new course, allowing me to discover something that forever changed the way I fly.