About Marc Launey

Pilot.
Psychologist.
Storyteller.

I fly airplanes for a living and spend the rest of my time thinking about why human beings perform the way they do — and what aviation has learned that most people never hear about.

Flight Log / Bio
✈️
Professional Airline Pilot
Active commercial aviation — irregular schedule, high-stakes decisions daily
🧠
Pilot Psychology Creator
Translating aviation's performance science into frameworks anyone can use
🎙️
Podcast Host
The Pilot Psychology Podcast — conversations aviation has been afraid to have
📖
Author (In Progress)
Book assembled from podcast transcripts — the flywheel in motion
How I got here

I became a pilot because I was drawn to the precision of it — the way aviation demands that you show up fully, every time, no matter how you feel. There's no "off day" at 35,000 feet. That constraint forced me to build systems.

What I didn't expect was how much aviation already knows about human performance — situational awareness, cognitive load, decision-making under pressure, fatigue management — frameworks developed over decades of learning from accidents and near-misses. The aviation industry has spent billions figuring out how humans fail and how to prevent it.

Most of that knowledge never leaves the industry. It stays in crew resource management manuals and accident reports that nobody outside aviation reads. That felt like a waste.

Pilot Psychology is my attempt to change that. To take what aviation has learned — about awareness, decision-making, peak performance, and mental health — and translate it into something useful for anyone who performs under pressure. Which is most people, most of the time.

I'm not a therapist. I'm a pilot who reads the research, lives the constraints, and thinks about this stuff constantly. The podcast is where I work it out in public.

What I think is
actually true
01

Systems beat
willpower

Motivation is weather. It changes. A system that works on your worst day is worth more than one that only works when you're inspired. Aviation learned this the hard way.

02

Awareness is
everything

You can't make good decisions with bad situational awareness. The gap between where you think you are and where you actually are — that gap is where most failures live.

03

The checklist
protects you

Not because you're incompetent. Because your working memory is finite and stress degrades it. Checklists aren't an insult to expertise — they're what experts actually use.

04

Decisions need
a process

The time to think about how you'll decide is before you're under pressure. Pilots don't invent decision frameworks at 500 feet. Neither should you.

05

Timing is
performance

Peak performance isn't about pushing harder. It's about knowing when you're sharp and protecting those windows. Fatigue isn't a badge of honor.

06

Mental health
is safety-critical

Aviation has known this for decades and still handles it badly. The rest of the world handles it even worse. This is a conversation worth having in public.

The full
mission
01 ·

The Pilot Psychology Podcast

Mixed format — solo episodes and guest conversations. Topics span mental health in aviation, peak performance, human factors, and the psychological realities of life in the flight deck. YouTube + audio. This is the source of truth everything else feeds from.

🟡 Launching
02 ·

thepropilot.com

The brand home. Podcast hub, blog, essays, and eventually coaching. Built on Astro + Cloudflare Workers — fast, clean, designed to scale with the content flywheel.

🟢 Live
03 ·

The Book

Not written from scratch — assembled from podcast transcripts. One of the best things about the flywheel: the book practically writes itself when the recording is done. Six frameworks, one narrative.

🔵 Up Next
04 ·

Course / Digital Product

Teaching the Pilot Psychology framework in a structured online format. The goal: make the core concepts accessible to anyone who performs under pressure, not just pilots.

🔵 Planned
05 ·

Coaching & Consulting

One-on-one work applying the framework directly. For high-performers who want the depth the course can't provide. Built on the same six-concept foundation.

🔵 Planned

Ready to listen?

The podcast is where all of this comes to life. New episodes on Pilot Psychology, human performance, and the conversations aviation has been afraid to have.