Examining the 'NO GO' Decision and its Relevance to the Tragic Loss Life

Kenny Keller explains the HOGS no go button, a physical button that helicopter pilots press to reinforce conservative decisions about flying. An EMS pilot started using a Staples easy button as a stress reliever, and now HOGS gives the button to members after checkrides to combat pressure-driven risk in weather and maintenance calls.
Chapters
When you feel the pressure to fly, but know the right decision is to stay on the ground, hit the hogs no go and live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com Yep, because that's why people get killed for making bad decisions and taking off and flying into bad weather when they shouldn't. Helicopter online Ground school member as you see on the wall behind us here, these are all of our members that have passed checkrides. So they use our training to get through, let's say private pilot. Once they pass their checkride they send us in a picture. As you can see with their checkride helicopter. Usually either they're with their instructor or maybe they're with the examiner. But when they send us a picture by the aircraft and we like them right after the checkride because that's when they're excited, right? They just got that certificate in their hand and a lot of these people have that in the pictures. You'll see when they send us a picture to tell us they passed. And they usually just write a sentence or two. We don't ask for a, you know, 10 paragraph story, we just say, hey, how did hogs help you? And they'll usually say something like hey, couldn't have done it without hogs. You know, I could have never studied this big pile of overwhelming information on my own. Once they send that in there, then you, Heather ships them the no go button. So how many no go's are you shipping today?
Today I am shipping six no go's. Where did the idea of the Hawk's no go button even come from?
I like telling the story about the no go button. When I was flying ems, I was working with this, this guy's name was Mike Matera, Vietnam era pilot. And I learned a lot of stuff from this Vietnam era pilot. It was cool working opposite him because I would learn lots of little things that shift change. And as an EMS pilot, a lot of time the pressure is to make the call. You get the phone call, you know there's a patient somewhere that needs transported from point A to point B. And there's the pressures either by your of your own pressure to go because you haven't flown in a while, or maybe you're feeling a little pressure from the hospital or the crew which shouldn't take place, but in the real world it does. Wherever that external pressure is. It's hard to make that decision sometimes and especially, you know, the company I worked for five years, you could sleep at night, you could be in the middle of sleeping. 2:00am the phone rings, you have to take the call, check the weather, check the location, figure weights. How far do I gotta go? Pull the helicopter out and be in the air in 10 minutes. So you have to make a decision really, really quickly most of the time. And there's pressure behind making that decision. So Mike had an easy button, a staples easy button up on the shelf. And I can't remember if I witnessed him do it or he just told me, however it came about, he was using the staples easy button to break the. Another word I'm looking for. There's a lot of pressure to make that decision. So it was a way to relieve the stress. After example, you tell dispatch, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to decline this flight due to weather. He'd hang up the phone and he'd reach up, Bam, he would hit the easy button. And of course it says, that was easy. So to me, I thought it was great. It was cool, because it was a way to help you relieve the pressure of saying no, whether you want to go or somebody else wants you to go, or you're feeling the pressure of whatever the flight is. And ems, they try to pretend or try to not have those pressures, but pressures come regardless. Real world pressures are just something that happens. So it's the pressure of going, man, you know, you hate telling people no, regardless. And you can take this in your own. As a private pilot making a decision. You flew somewhere for lunch with your buddy, and then you're getting ready to go back home, and your son's playing ball that night. And then there's a storm. You want to get home because you want to go to your son's ball game. You don't want to disappoint your boy because you can't make it home. So you start going, well, maybe, can I fly around this storm? Can I wait it out? What can I do? And so you have these pressures sometimes you might create on your own reason because you want to get home for a family event. It's the pressure to fly. And this is a way that an individual can use it in your own decision making. And that's why it says no go. Because when you make that decision, I'm not going. You hit the button. Live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com Nice.
So, in essence, it's a visual cue, a visual reminder.
Perfect.
Can I have one for my flight school?
Can I have one for my flight school? Hmm, that's actually a good question. What we've done in the past is we've only sent them to members for passing the check ride, with the exception of maybe twice when we were alive, we gave one away. However, since that's a question I wasn't prepared for, I would love to see some of these at a flight school, but I'd like some kind of guarantee that that's where it's going. So that is a great question that I need to ponder. I think maybe we should think about that.
Who could they get ahold of if they.
Heatherelicopterground.com yeah, I think that's a grand idea. Preferably would be. We know we have flight schools and customers that send us members because they'll say, hey, where did you hear about us? And they might say Lone Star helicopters or straight up aviation in Florida. We know and we hear when our members are referred by their flight school. We know that because they'll usually tell us because when you sign up for hogs, it's a requirement. Where did you hear about us? So many times they'll put in there my flight school or straight up or Lone Star, whoever. If you want to qualify your flight school to get a hogs no go button, I say you contact heatherelicopterground.com because I would love to see these. Well, that brings up that question. Brings up a good point. We recently had a member who not only sent in a picture, we had a member, I think passed an additional checkride and he already had a no go button. And he said, I have the first no go button I got at our flight school and we have a blast with it sitting around, live to fly another day hitting the button. So that kind of inspired us. It's like, you know what if they're having fun at a flight school sitting around, clicking the button? That's pretty huge because of the idea behind the no go button. So if people are hitting the button and they're talking about it, that's a good thing. Perfect.
Can I get one now before passing my checkride?
Well, good question. We discussed this morning a limited time offer of selling them and we threw out a number like $49.95. And we did say us only. I kind of said, let's think about it. And then we kind of thought, well, why not? Because in all transparency, we buy these 50 at a time. We buy a whole shipment of them. With buying them, getting them shipped here, and then shipping them to a member, we spend about half of a monthly membership. So recently our examiner, who we just did the rotor tips with down at Expo, he said, man, if I was you, I'd Start selling those because that way you could help offset the ones you're giving away for free. So I think if you're watching this video and you want one for a limited time only, we will ship you one within the US for $49.95. So I think I should build a link and put below this video where you can purchase your own Hogs and hook while the offer lasts. Supplies are going to last because we're giving them away and now that we've started it, we can't stop. But I think the special offer to buy one should be limited time only and we'll decide later.
Can I send you a video of me utilizing the Hogs no go button?
Absolutely. We only have a few videos. We have a few, but we would like more. For example, some one of our members sent in a picture or a video. He had his computer open looking at a storm and they had the no go button sitting there and he sent the video and said, well, look at the weather today. This was pretty easy. Live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com and he hit the button. We'd love to have videos of these because we have some pictures and we'd love more pictures of members that have a no go button. We'd love that because we should probably start a no go button wall for everybody that sends in a picture for their no go. I think we should. Did I answer your question? Yes.
Thank you very much.
Is that it?
Well, who can they send the video if they utilize the Hawk snow globe button, who do they, who can they send that video to?
Preferably heatherelicopterground.com Great. But me too. Kenny@helopterground.com But Heather. Yeah. Or Kenny. Yep. Because that's why people get killed for making bad decisions and taking off and flying into bad weather when they shouldn't. And you can even go beyond weather. In the beginning we called it the weather no go button. And then we kind of thought, you know, we should just call it the Hogs no go button. Because it doesn't necessarily be whether it could be you went on that flight with your buddy, you get ready to go back home and you have some kind of a maintenance issue that pops up and maybe you're scratching your head going, well, maybe we could make it. Or you start playing that game of, you know, in your gut you should probably just stay put and get a mechanic to come out and you try to finagle. Well, it's I could market, you know, inoperative and I could do this or do that a lot of times it's gonna be better just to take the safe route, stay on the ground and hit the no go. Or just say.
It's so funny. The reason I didn't ask you about where it came about is in my head.
I was sure you would get there on my own. Yep. Okay, let's look at our clip.










