By Ken Ibold

There are a lot of pilots who don’t fly as often as they’d like to, for reasons ranging from cash shortages to lack of time to unreliable airplanes. There are also a lot of pilots for whom that lack of flying translates into a lack of proficiency, even if they meet the legal requirements for flight.

Many are the temptations that lead pilots to make flights for which they may be in the clear legally but behind the eight-ball practically. Some of them have to do with ego, sure, but other times the pilot is a poor judge of how much those hard-won skills have deteriorated. …