From confidence to complacency
Familiarity is an acquired condition for pilots. To a new student pilot meeting with an instructor for the first flight lesson, absolutely everything is unfamiliar, from the arcane language the instructor speaks to the inscrutable instruments in the panel of the training aircraft. Taking on the seemingly complex and difficult task of learning to fly an airplane is an exciting prospect, but as the early training unfolds, it typically generates feelings of anxiety, hesitation, confusion, and even fear. Familiarity is not even in the ballpark.
The intense concentration and careful attention that new student pilots apply to their flying more than offsets concerns about safety of flight because of a lack of basic knowledge and skill. In that regard, unfamiliarity works for a new pilot--it keeps him or her totally engaged, and safe.
Primary flight training and, later, training for the instrument rating, often is characterized by periods of encouraging progress interrupted by occasional frustrating plateaus when nothing goes right and learning seems to stop. For student pilots, familiarity and confidence come gradually, often painfully, by making and recognizing mistakes, through diligent practice, and with insightful guidance from the instructor.
Studies have found that confidence soars if a pilot stays active after earning the private pilot certificate. In fact, with a few hundred hours logged there can come a tipping point when that growing confidence is in danger of metastasizing into overconfidence.
There's a subtle but important distinction between overconfidence and complacency. Complacency is when a pilot departs on a short cross-country flight without bothering to check the weather because it is a short trip, he's flown the route many times, and the weather sure looks good at the departure airport. Overconfidence is the same pilot encountering deteriorating weather on the trip, and consciously deciding to press on VFR regardless. Complacency has to do with the subconscious, while overconfidence manifests itself in conscious decisions.
The distinction is important. Overconfidence is easy to recognize and thus control. Complacency, on the other hand, is insidious, and it can afflict even the most conscientious and experienced among us.
One day we had to fly to an airport some 30 minutes north to pick up passengers coming in on a midafternoon flight. On the flight up, the hot, humid air was creating thermals that rose into the atmosphere. It was a bumpy flight involving some deviations around building clouds, but that was nothing unusual for an early summer afternoon in South Florida. When we returned with our passengers a couple of hours later, we filed for basically the same route in reverse. It's what we always do.
In fact, our timing was perfect--perfectly awful. Those building clouds we flew around on the first leg were exploding into thunderstorms just as we returned. We had to do more aggressive maneuvering to avoid multiple cells than I've experienced in a long time. We've flown that route many times and have never had to deal with anything more than widely scattered cells and the usual Florida washboard ride. This time, however, we had not given proper respect to the developing conditions by planning a more circuitous but much easier flight to the west and then south over the water, where the sky was clear. In my mind we were guilty of complacency, of relying on what was convenient rather than truly thinking through the situation.
A common example of complacency is failure to use checklists. We don't consciously decide to stop using checklists; it's a bad habit we slip into. Checklists take time and effort to use and, besides, the important items we do from memory without having to resort to a printed or electronic checklist--or so we rationalize. Committing checklist items to memory is fine, but do you really want to bet that every "unimportant" item you ignore will never be a factor?
If you've found yourself forgetting to turn off the fuel pump after takeoff or neglecting to advance the mixture to rich before landing, you've become complacent about using checklists. Failing to turn off an electric fuel pump or advance the mixture are not serious offenses, but not using checklists could be. How often do we read about a gear-up landing because the pilot was distracted and forgot to lower the gear? Quickly referencing a short-final checklist will prevent such an incident from occurring.
Preflight inspections are another common victim of complacency. After performing dozens and dozens of preflight inspections that turn up nothing in the way of problems, a pilot may allow his diligence to erode to the point that the preflight involves nothing more than checking the oil level and giving the airplane a cursory, once-over glance. It's not a deliberate decision to abandon a formal, thorough preflight; it just happens.
Two recent events taught me the importance of always doing a good preflight. In the first, during a preflight I got down on the hangar floor to look at the belly of our airplane and discovered a trail of sticky red fluid from the nose to the tail. It turned out to be leaking hydraulic fluid. Left undiscovered, it eventually could have led to a depleted hydraulic reservoir and subsequent landing gear and flap failure.
In the second, I noticed a missing cotter pin and nut on a bolt connecting left and right stabilator trim tabs. That unsecured bolt could have slipped out in flight, allowing at least one trim tab to trail in the slipstream. That could lead to flutter, an extremely dangerous condition.
Use those checklists, and take the time to do a thorough preflight. Wipe out complacency.
Mark Twombly is a writer and editor who has been flying since 1968. He is a commercial pilot with instrument and multiengine ratings and co-owner of a Piper Aztec.
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