What a room full of aerial firefighting pilots reminded me about switching off, looking back, and recognizing when it’s time to check in.
You finish the long trip. The checkride is behind you. The busy stretch at work finally lets up.
You should feel relieved. Maybe you do. But you may also find yourself replaying a decision, feeling unusually short with people, or moving straight into the next thing without stopping to think about what just happened.
I spent part of this week in Boise at a conference for aerial firefighting operators, and two things stayed with me. They came from a corner of aviation many people rarely encounter, but neither is limited to that world.
One was about coming home after a demanding stretch. The other was about what we set aside to keep going, and whether we ever make time to come back to it.
A corner of aviation you may not know much about
Aerial firefighting is a different world from airline operations or the typical flight school experience. Contractors play a significant role, and the work can involve long seasonal stretches, changing conditions, fatigue, weather, and pressure to get the job done.
The demands aren’t unique to aerial firefighting. What makes this work stand out is how intensely they can overlap, sometimes over the course of an entire fire season.
There is also a significant gap in what we know. In my research, I did not find any published studies specifically examining the mental health of aerial firefighting pilots.
What I took away from Boise wasn’t a research finding. It was a set of observations that left me thinking about two questions: What happens when a demanding stretch ends, and what happens to the things we set aside while we’re getting through it?
Coming home doesn’t always mean switching off
When you’ve been operating at a demanding pace, you build a rhythm around it. You stay focused on the next flight, the next decision, the next thing that needs to happen.
Then the season ends, the rotation changes, or you get home from a long trip.
The people around you are in their usual routines. Dinner still needs to happen. Messages need answering. Someone wants to tell you about their day.
But you may not feel quite as ready to move on as the calendar suggests you should.
Pilots outside aerial firefighting know a smaller version of this. Think about the weeks leading up to a checkride, an intensive training block, or a lengthy multi-day trip. You’ve been concentrating on getting through it. When it’s over, you may need more than a good night’s sleep to feel settled again.
It’s worth giving yourself a little room to make that transition rather than expecting to switch gears immediately.
What we set aside to keep going
The other thing I noticed was how well this group compartmentalizes.
In demanding work, that ability can be useful. You can’t stop in the middle of every difficult day to process every frustration, devastation, or uncertainty. Sometimes you have to acknowledge what’s happening, keep your attention on the task, and come back to it later.
The question is whether later ever gets scheduled.
In a room full of driven, high-performing people, I could understand how that happens. I include myself in that group. We’re good at identifying the next task and getting it done. The things without a deadline can be much easier to postpone.
Pilots in training and flight instructors can recognize this, too.
Maybe an approach unsettled you. Maybe a conversation with an instructor left you frustrated. Maybe you made a decision you weren’t entirely comfortable with and spent the next few flights trying to prove to yourself that you’d learned from it.
You put it aside because the next flight is coming.
Putting something aside temporarily isn’t necessarily a problem. Never returning to it means you may miss an opportunity to learn from the experience, recognize a pattern, or simply acknowledge that it affected you.
Here’s one small thing to try: Within a week of finishing a demanding stretch, block out 15 minutes to look back.
Write down three things you set aside to keep going. You don’t need to solve all three. Start by naming them and deciding whether any deserves a conversation, a change in routine, or more time to think.
The point is to make the follow-up as intentional as the work itself.
When nobody else is there to notice
Many aerial firefighting pilots operate single-pilot. That means there may not be another pilot beside them who can notice a change in their pace, decision-making, or usual routines.
That isn’t a problem unique to single-pilot operations. Even when other people are around, we can become good at concealing how much effort it takes to keep going.
And self-assessment has its limits. We may notice that we’re tired without recognizing how much our performance has changed. Or we may be so focused on completing the task that we don’t step back to look at the bigger picture.
That’s why a useful check-in needs more than the question, How do I feel today?
It helps to look at things you can actually identify:
- Sleep
- Time off
- Recent errors or near-misses
- Changes in routine
- Feedback from people who know you
These aren’t a diagnostic test or a formula for deciding whether you’re fit to fly. They’re prompts that can help you notice a change and decide what needs attention.
The point is to make the follow-up as intentional as the work itself.
Think about your last three days of flying, training, or demanding work. Write down your answers to these five questions.
- Sleep: How many hours did you sleep last night and on each of the two nights before that?
- Recovery: How many days has it been since your last full day off?
- Recent performance: Can you identify any errors, near-misses, or decisions you’ve had to revisit over the past three days?
- Routines: Have you skipped or shortened any of your usual routines, such as preflight preparation, flight planning, or regular meals?
- Outside perspective: Has anyone at home or at work commented that you seem different lately, perhaps more irritable, distracted, or withdrawn?
Now compare your answers with last week.
Don’t worry about producing a score. Look for changes and patterns. If several answers point in the wrong direction, treat that as a reason to pause and take a closer look, not as a pass/fail result.
Choose one specific person you trust and tell them what you’ve noticed. If the concern involves your readiness to fly, use your operation’s fatigue and fitness-for-duty procedures, and resolve the concern before flying.
You don’t have to wait until something goes wrong to have that conversation.
The part worth taking home
We need to know more about the mental health of aerial firefighting pilots. Until we do, we should be careful not to confuse observations with evidence or assume we understand what this work asks of the people who do it.
But we don’t need to wait for a study to ask useful questions about recovery, communication, and what happens after a demanding stretch.
Sometimes the next useful step is rest. Sometimes it’s a conversation. Sometimes it’s taking time to revisit an experience you put aside because the next flight was waiting.
And sometimes it’s recognizing that you’ve moved straight from one demanding stretch into another without giving yourself a chance to reset.
Whatever kind of flying you do, consider what you need after the next big push, not just what you need to get through it.
What helps you switch off after a demanding stretch of flying? It’s a question worth asking before the next one begins.
If you’d like to talk through a professional challenge or prepare for a difficult conversation, you can book a free, confidential discovery call with Aviation Conversations. Coaching is not mental health therapy and does not replace clinical care or operational procedures.
Book a Free Discovery Call →If you are in crisis in the United States, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Explore partnerships and training support.
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