These are given to high school seniors in the state of California. Percentiles cover all students throughout the state who elect to take the tests.
While aviation is not directly applicable to most jobs I can envision applying for, the ability to make tough decisions is highly relevant. Keeping a cool head in a bad situation is a skill, one that can be improved by repeated exposure to adverse situations. During an an emergency, one option will ideally stand out as being preferable to all others, but this is often not the case. Anyone who is given responsibility for looking after mission-critical systems may be required to choose between options that all have some possible negative outcome. It's important for responsible parties to be able to focus on finding solutions, rather than getting wrapped up in negative emotions. Most of the work I've done has required that I be willing to take risks, to make hard decisions, and to be where the buck stops. When there is no one to escalate a problem to, the person in charge of that problem absolutely must be on top of things.
If your car breaks down, you can pull over and check it out. In an airplane, it isn't that easy. Every pilot is likely to encounter situations that are dangerous, and even life-threatening. This is where aeronautical decision-making (ADM) comes in. The experiences I've written about below involved a great deal of fear. They also taught me how to separate fear from action, to put my emotions aside and to do whatever is necessary to save life and limb. Today, when there is an emergency, I don't get upset. I view fear as being a signal that's supposed to be there in order to motivate me to think carefully, and to do the right things. That lets me focus my attention on solving whatever problem I'm facing.
Electrical system issues.
It was the fourth of July, and I had taken a friend of mine up to view some firework displays. Even small airplanes fly thousands of feet above the maximum altitude of fireworks, and firework shows are not allowed near airports, so this is not particularly dangerous. What is potentially dangerous is an electrical system failure, and that began to happen while we were up there. I was used to hearing a little noise in my headset when the wingtip strobes flashed. That noise began to increase toward the end of the trip. I noticed that the instrument panel backlighting was starting to dim a little in time with the strobes. Something was obviously wrong. My heart leapt into my throat for a moment, and then I focused on my training. I notified air traffic control that I was headed back to the airport with possible electrical issues. I knew the best response (aside from landing) was to shed electrical load, so I turned off the strobes. That helped a little, but it was obvious that the electrical system was still going downhill.
To be sure, I could totally lose all electrical power, and the engine would still run. The electrical and ignition systems were driven by generating coils integrated directly into the engine, so as long as it kept turning, the spark plugs would keep firing. However, flying at night with no electricity is bad. Without strobes or beacons, other pilots can't see you at all. Without landing lights, the runway is harder to see. Without electricity, the transponder doesn't work; so ATC can't see you, and other pilots with TCAS systems won't be alerted to your presence either. Finally, there is no way to talk on the radio. You can't communicate with the control tower at a towered airport, and you can't communicate with other pilots in the area at an un-towered airport. The Garmin GPS system would still work for a long time, as it had an internal battery, so at least there was that.
What really scared me was not knowing why the electrical system was failing. Was there a loose wire somewhere? Was something about to burst into flames? (We have procedures specifically for "bursting into flames," but they involve shutting off the engine and entering a steep dive. I wasn't keen on doing that in the dark.) A few days after this incident, I discovered that there was a problem with the voltage regulator. The engine had a belt-driven alternator, and that was still spinning, but it couldn't deliver any current to the electrical system. The engine's built-in generator couldn't keep up with demand, and the battery had begun to lose its charge. However, absent that knowledge, I had to consider the possibility that something much worse was going on, and that the engine bay could catch fire at any moment.
It was a short flight to the airport. By the time I got there, I'd had to shut off the strobes, beacons, and transponder. I still had the radio on, and tuned into the CTAF. I announced that I'd be making left traffic for runway 24, that I had electrical issues, and that I needed to land right away. There was silence on the frequency, which wasn't unexpected as it was after 9PM. However, as I would soon learn, the airport was not totally unoccupied.
As I lined up for my final approach, I had the flaps down, the landing light on (weakly), and was beginning to descend. The VASI looked good. A few clicks on the push-to-talk sent pulses over the radio, causing the runway's illumination system to brighten. All I had to do at that point was finish my approach and land — and to evacuate the airplane as quickly as possible, in case anything was waiting to catch fire. It was then that I noticed two round, closely-spaced headlights on the runway, headed towards the arrival end. Someone was on the runway in a Jeep. They were using it as their own personal after-hours drag strip, and they evidently weren't monitoring the radio frequency.
I called out on the radio that I was going around due to a vehicle on the runway. If I wasn't scared before, I was then. Takeoffs and go-arounds are the most dangerous phases of any flight. If anything goes wrong, the margin of error is very small. If whatever was wrong with the electrical system had started a fire, or interrupted the ignition system somehow, I'd have to manage that while simultaneously figuring out where to put the airplane down. Most of what was near the airport was unlit, and dubious as a landing site. If that wasn't enough, I had a passenger, so it wasn't just my life that was in danger.
I proceeded to do a loop around the traffic pattern, calling out my turns as usual. On final, the Jeep was nowhere to be seen. We landed, taxied off the runway, and evacuated. Nothing caught fire. The faulty voltage regulator was replaced, and the airplane was returned to service with no further issues.
Sudden low fuel reading.
I was enroute to San Francisco, and had landed at Hollister Airport for a pit stop. I took a look at the fuel gauge while I was on the ground. It was about halfway full, and that was more than enough to make it to San Carlos Airport. I took off, and resumed course. As I flew over the hilly area south of the San Francisco basin, Air Traffic Control directed me to begin my descent, as they wanted to keep me out of SFO's busy airspace. As I descended, I noticed that the fuel gauge was suddenly bouncing off empty! This made no sense. Was there a fuel leak, or a bad sensor? Maybe something else? Hard to say. This made me feel understandably nervous.
I got on the radio and told ATC that I was suddenly getting a low fuel indication, but that I didn't need to declare an emergency at that time. (If I had, they would've moved heaven and earth to help me, but that isn't a step to be taken lightly. Stern FAA employees arrive in suits and ask pointed questions when emergencies are declared.) Thoughts of having to put the airplane down on a busy highway flashed through my mind. I took a look at the GPS, and saw that I was well within gliding distance of Palo Alto Airport. Even if the prop had stopped spinning, I could easily make it there. I told ATC that I wanted to land there, and they handed me off to KPAO's control tower.
Two interesting things happened. First, the engine never quit. Second, once I touched down at Palo Alto, the fuel gauge read nearly halfway full again. I had barely consumed any fuel since landing at Hollister. The only thing that corresponded with the low fuel reading was the nose of the airplane pointing downward at a slight angle.
After puzzling over this for awhile, I figured it out. The fuel tank was an integral part of the fiberglass belly of the airplane, and it was convex. The bottom of the tank wasn't flat on the inside — it was rounded! As a result, when the airplane's nose was pointed down for descent, the fuel would slosh forward in the tank, causing the fuel sensor to think there was far less fuel than there really was. This effect never happened when the tank was more than half full, and since most of my flights used less than half a tank of fuel, I'd never experienced that phenomenon before.
I tanked up the airplane, departed north for San Carlos, and landed there without any further problems.
Side note: If you ever get a chance to fly from LA to San Francisco by way of the hinterlands west of the Central Valley in a small airplane, don't turn it down. You'll remember it for the rest of your life. It is incredibly beautiful from the air, especially when you're only a few thousand feet up. You just don't get the same experience peering out the side of a jet liner at 20,000 feet.