THE CONFIDENCE-BASED FACE-PLANT™
For when your ego climbs in first—and your face follows shortly after.
STEP 1: THE SWAGGER APPROACH You’re feeling good. Tail low, chest out, logbook full of legally-questionable time. You approach the aircraft like it owes you money. You eye the step like a mountain goat on Red Bull. No hesitation. No doubt. You launch your boot toward it like gravity’s on vacation. You are speed. You are grace. You are the protagonist of your own mental highlight reel—complete with slow-motion music and chest-thumping bravado.
You are—oh no.
STEP 2: STEP DETACHMENT SYNDROME
The metal step is not loyal.
It is not your friend.
It was installed in 1987 with two rivets, half a beer, and a prayer.
It shifts. It groans. It regrets being born.
Your boot makes contact.
The step moves like a divorce in progress.
Suddenly, your Cub is AIAA/OSHA non-compliant and your centre of gravity is filing for bankruptcy.
What happens next?
A low-altitude base jump.
Uncontrolled. Ungraceful.
Into concrete. And shame.
STEP 3: FACIAL GROUND LOOP
You descend like a satellite losing signal.
Chin-first.
Headset trailing like wedding ribbons.
One arm slaps the flap.
The other flails past a brake line.
Your shin finds the bushwheel like a blind date with karma.
The wing laughs.
Kalli does not.
He drops his sandwich—but makes no move to help.
Time slows down just enough to let you remember every smug thing you’ve ever said on a CTAF frequency.
Including the phrase, “I don’t need no damn ladder.”
STEP 4: POST-IMPACT DIAGNOSIS
You’re on the ground now.
Face buried in the hangar floor like a forensic exhibit.
You taste dust.
You taste ego.
There may be blood. There is definitely judgement.
And somewhere in the hangar—your wife sighs the sigh of a woman who once believed in your potential.
Kalli lights a cigarette.
Doesn’t even look up.
Then mutters:
“Should’ve used the f-ing ladder, Maverick.”
And just like that, your confidence becomes a safety briefing.
For others.
The Confidence-Based Faceplant™ — Because Swagger Isn’t an Approved Climb Rate
This isn’t a cockpit entry. It’s a high-speed courtship with concrete.
One minute you’re radiating alpha energy—
the next you’re face-first in the hangar floor, wrapped in your headset cord, while Kalli lights a cigarette and rates your fall technique somewhere between “politician handshake” and “expired meat.”
This is what happens when your confidence has more lift than your legs.
The step doesn’t care about your ego.
Gravity certainly doesn’t.
And your wife? She’s already Googling how to change her last name.
—Marcel Romdane
Stick, Rudder & Regret
For Pilots Who Read the POH Once—Then Used It to Level the Table.
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