Career Pilot

To err is human but here are some tricks to avoid them

During my annual ground school, the instructor asked the class, “If our airline was 99.9 percent safe, how often would we have an accident?” Not knowing when to keep my mouth shut, I said one every two months. The real answer was sobering—if we had a 99.9-percent accident rate we would have an accident every four days, based on our number of departures per day. No one would fly on an airline that’s only 99.9 percent safe.

The instructor said the medical industry would kill (no pun intended) to have that kind of safety record. In fact, medical institutions are consulting with airlines to learn how to reduce errors during surgery. If you’re under the knife and hear the doctor reciting a checklist, consider yourself lucky—the chances of your surgery going wrong will be greatly reduced.

Nearly all of us pilots are religious about using checklists. Channel your inner George Carlin and analyze the word checklist and take it literally. It’s a list to check if things got done. If it were a list of things to do, it would be called a do-list. With this in mind, professional flight crews use flows, a logical series of tasks that should be completed prior to going through a checklist. Everything on the checklist should have been completed during the flow. The checklist simply verifies that everything was done.

Because of distractions or fatigue, pilots can be a little numb from the neck up and despite those two chances to complete a task, we still may forget something. A true professional pilot realizes that even the best of the best can get distracted, and many of us have come up with some simple, yet clever ways to complete tasks. Some of these are as simple as a rubber band placed around the wrist or a wristwatch removed and being held in one hand. Other reminders can be more elaborate, such as a bright piece of paper torn to surround a critical switch. Regardless of the technique, the goal is the same—to remind ourselves that something needs to be done.

It doesn’t have to be a reminder of a task that needs completion. Many pro pilots use exterior-light switch positions as reminders that ATC has cleared them for an approach or a landing, for example. An alternative is using your seatbelts as a reminder. When I’m cleared for the approach, I fasten the crotch strap of my five-point harness. When cleared to land, I fasten my shoulder harness. When my co-pilot asks on short final, “Are we cleared to land?” I’ll know we are if my shoulder harness is on.

Crossfeeding to balance fuel in jets is common and if forgotten can result in a massive imbalance of fuel. One well-known reminder is to stand a checklist upright in between the power levers—can’t miss it. Since jets fly most every leg in positive control airspace above 18,000 feet or FL180, it’s imperative to remember to set the altimeters to 29.92 inches on the way up and the local altimeter on the descent. We use this transition altitude to turn off unnecessary exterior lights such as the landing lights. If the lights are still on climbing through FL280, you better check your altimeters.

When I fly my family’s Beechcraft Baron, I dangle a rubber band from the throttles to remind me to close the unfiltered ram-air induction prior to descending into the dirty air.

If I’m descending, I’ll be grabbing the throttles and there’s that rubber band reminding me to put the air filters in the path of the induction air again. In glass-equipped airplanes, I dim a screen (on the ground only) to remind me that something is not right and needs to be completed prior to takeoff.

Another simple one is setting a timer. Pilots don’t like to see sweeping needles (especially rpm or manifold pressure in the downward direction), so if you have an analog timer, that sweep second hand can be a continual reminder of abnormal condition or something that needs to be done.

Consider your flight routine and how you can incorporate some of the above techniques to remind yourself to do critical tasks or just to be sure that you’ve been cleared to land. It’s sure to reduce errors that result in anything from embarrassment to certificate action—or worse—an accident.