Why ‘black swan events’ are what pilots fear most

April 16, 2026 — 5:00am

It would be quite rare to find a pilot who didn’t initially get into the profession due to a genuine love of flight. That love then evolves into licences and qualifications and, eventually, rewards them with an airline job.

It’s a job that always presents challenges. Bad weather, passenger problems, busy schedules and issues with aircraft serviceability maybe aren’t quite as exciting as the freedom of flight, but managing these is where many pilots derive their job satisfaction.

But there is a great saying that pilots are “paid for what they know, not what they do”. And there are events that require a pilot to test the limits of the skills they possess: events that they may have been trained for, but that require every competency a pilot possesses to achieve a safe outcome.

These are the outcomes that end up on the telly and hopefully include praise for the pilots for remaining cool and calm in the swirl of potential chaos. They capture the imagination of the public, but they capture the attention of other pilots too. These are the black swan events.

An engine failure right on lift-off is one of them. As an aircraft hurtles down the runway, the captain grips the thrust levers tightly, ready to wrench them closed if an indication of an engine problem appears. But at V1 – the speed where there isn’t enough runway left to safely stop the aircraft – the captain removes their hand from the thrust levers and the aircraft is committed to flight. If in that moment an engine fails, the aircraft needs to be taken into the air on one engine only.

All modern jet aircraft are certified to do this, however, it takes real skill to apply enough rudder to control the aircraft and smoothly rotate into the sky. Performance is significantly degraded compared to a two-engined take-off and special tracking may be needed to ensure terrain clearance as the aircraft limps to a safe altitude.

This manoeuvre is one of the most critical failures an aircraft may experience and is known as a “V1 cut”. It is regularly practiced by pilots during simulator training, but no one wants to test it out in real life.

Fire on an aircraft can make a pilot’s blood run cold. Engine or cargo fires will often be signified by a red light and warning bell. There is capability to deploy gas suppressant to try and fight these types of fires but there is no way of physically checking whether the fire is out if the fire is in the cargo hold. Again, pilots are trained to return to the runway as soon as possible if the fire is experienced on or shortly after take-off.

A common scenario created for new captains under training involves experiencing a cargo fire indication and after completing the checklist, the fire indication remains and the aircraft is well out of range of an available airport over water. Does the captain ditch the aircraft into the ocean or hope the indication is false? It is a grim and courageous choice.

Fires in the cockpit or cabin are a whole other concern. Swissair Flight 111 in 1998 was an awful example of a situation where fire spread to the flight deck and the pilots were unable to maintain control, resulting in the loss of the aircraft. Smoke in the flight deck or passenger compartment is enough to have the pilots don oxygen masks. The challenge of then running checklists while also diverting as quickly as possible to the nearest available airport is significant.

Of course, the best-known black swan incident is the 2009 “Miracle on the Hudson”. Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was left with no choice but to ditch an A320 after it ingested a flock of geese into both engines causing a double engine failure.

Birdstrikes are a common threat, and it is sobering when approaching a runway to see a flock of pelicans gliding a few hundred feet above. The rise in popularity of drones is just as dangerous, as ignorant drone operators sneak ever closer to try to capture an amazing photo of a jet aircraft.

A sudden loss of thrust on all engines at low altitude is a shuddering thought. An extremely challenging landing on a paddock or a road can be an option, if a glide towards a runway won’t work. Pilots have a procedure if a water landing is needed but it definitely isn’t pretty, which means they are also the ones best qualified to know just how remarkable Captain Sullenberger’s landing really was.

The black swan events are the ones which even pilots with thousands of hours of experience would find difficult to execute. It’s why that initial love of flight leads to extensive and rigorous training, always preparing for the dreaded black swan events, while working to ensure the ‘M’ word applied to each and every flight after a safe landing is not miracle, but magical.