Checklists come in many flavors, but are often generic and many times the emergency at hand isn’t like the one in the book. Develop your judgment in the heat of battle.

by Pat Veillette

In a world dominated by checklists and standard operating procedures, it can be unsettling to find that sometimes deviating from the norm is the only way to make everything work out right.

A recent incident rammed this home on a startlingly personal level. The evening news was interrupted by a special report that an aircraft was currently circling the airport, waiting to make an emergency landing. I glued myself to the television. The jet happened to be the same make and model of jet that I fly at work, so I watched the video with even more interest. The news camera focused on the aircraft as it circled high…