After dropping five charter passengers in Havana, Cuba, on February 20, 2003, one of the engines on Dennis Murphy's Cessna 402B developed a catastrophic engine fire over the Straights of Florida, forcing him to make an emergency water landing. In the first part of AIN's The Human Factor, Murphy recounts how the emergency developed and then delves into the issue of the extreme fear that he faced and how best to prepare for when the unexpected occurs.

How could an instrument-rating student and a flight instructor run out of fuel on a training flight? High-time flight instructor Brian Lloyd recalls his instrument training and an incident that taught him some of his most important aviation lessons. In this episode, AIN's The Human Factor delves into how assumptions and a lack of communication become links in the chain of events that could cause an accident. Whether you are a high-time professional pilot or student pilot, this episode is a reminder of how the wrong decisions can turn into potentially fatal errors.

In the second episode of AIN's The Human Factor, we pick up with Tim Valentine just after flying his SR22 into the back of a thunderstorm. This is part 2 of Tim's story. If you have not yet listened to part 1, please do so before continuing. Dealing with radio and flight instrument failures and violent turbulence, we follow along as Tim relives the decisions he made that got him safely back on the ground.

In the inaugural episode of AIN's The Human Factor, we explore the factors that led up-to Tim Valentine flying his Cirrus SR22 into a thunderstorm. On May 16th, 2013 Tim Valentine departed from Addison, Texas en route to Independence, Kansas confident that most storms in the area had passed to the east after delaying his departure by over an hour. But when Tim took off under overcast conditions at 1,000 feet, his IFR flight plan vectored him directly into the back end of the thunderstorms he was trying to avoid. This episode will explore the decisions leading up to this incident.