As a Check Airman for a passenger carrying aviation company, I review accidents, incidents, and mistakes that never develop into the first two items. What we hope to glean from studying these events, is a better insight into the training or policies that will reinforce good habits should a pilot end up in one of these situations.
As several have said here, this guy probably should have done the opposite of what he did. And that information may help the rest of us as we contemplate what we would do in a similar situation. It is easy to pick a person's performance apart, but you won't know what you will do until the time arises. Those pilots who scoff at others for not doing the right thing are called armchair pilots. Sometimes their evaluations are spot on and other times they are just blowing hot air to try and impress the world. Having been in an accident myself, I refrain from throwing stones. For my event, even though I performed as I trained, the outcome was still less than desirable. This ultimately resulted in many armchair pilots across the state making erroneous assumptions about what I screwed up.
With that said, training, training, and then training some more will help to ingrain the desired automatic responses in a high pressure situation. However, in the civilian world, who has the time to be that vigilant with their firearms/SD training? Jobs, family, and other high priority items get in the way. There are a few here who have made it their side job and passion. Kudos to them, but that is not a realistic expectation for most of us.
Could we all do a little dry fire or practice some close quarters skills backed up with an occasional course instead of sitting down at the TV with a bag of Cheetos? Probably, but that is about the best that most of us will be able to achieve.
Fly
