There may be no more universally maligned piloting task than the preflight inspection. The walk-around appears so pedestrian, and so repetitive. We do it over and over and over again, rarely finding anything amiss. And so it’s no wonder that many pilots become complacent and breeze through it. I’ve suffered through this myself. In fact, I made an even bigger mistake. I once abbreviated a preflight inspection to keep from getting my pants dirty, and nearly paid a very high price for my vanity.
Young gun. I was a young flight instructor at the time. I’d been hired by a Part 61 flight school and was a week into the job. I’d flown with a couple students, but I was scheduled to fly with Brad, our chief instructor, that morning. He was a 25-year-old Embry-Riddle graduate who was born and raised locally. I, on the other hand, was the outsider from some far-off place.
We were scheduled to fly a Piper Warrior. This should have been a piece of cake, since I’d flown this same airplane on an introductory flight on the previous afternoon. The owner of the school had flown right seat on that short hop. On this particular day I was going to be taking the instructor role, flying right seat, but working with the chief instructor to learn how to teach concepts and lessons the way the school wanted them taught.
I was assigned to preflight the airplane before we flew it. It’s a common practice in the industry for the junior pilot to do the preflight. In fact, even as instructors we adapt to that tradition. After we teach our students to perform the preflight inspection and supervise them doing it a few times, we tend to leave them to perform the task on their own.
A better practice would be to monitor our students from afar. We need them to develop the skills and confidence to do the job without supervision, but we also need to know that they’re doing a complete and thorough inspection, without developing bad habits we don’t know about because we’ve stopped paying close attention.
Dirty pants. I gave the Warrior a cursory once-over. I walked all the way around the airplane and checked for the basics. The fuel was to the tabs, and I was satisfied to find no loose fasteners, bulging sheet metal, or dented flight controls. So I pretty much left it at that.
I didn’t want to get down on the ground to check the wheels and brakes. My concern was that I would get my pants dirty. Keep in mind, I was new to the company, so I figured I not only had to be on my best behavior, but I had to look my best, too. My pants were new, and I was getting ready for the first flight of the morning. With at least 10 hours of my workday still ahead of me, I knew I’d look sloppy all day long if I got my pants dirty by crawling around under the wings to do a preflight. That wasn’t the impression I was hoping to make on the boss.
It seemed to my inexperienced and unfocused mind that staying tidy would be the best course of action, under the circumstances—a mindset that I was about to find out was entirely incorrect.
Anger management. While I was waiting for Brad to get ready to go, he came stomping back into the office, glared at me, and demanded, “Did you preflight that airplane?” I stammered something unintelligible. The chief disappeared into the owner’s office, then came out with the owner in tow, headed for the airplane.
Whatever was wrong, it wasn’t minor, and I was suddenly feeling very vulnerable about my job security. In retrospect, I should have been concerned about something else—I should have focused on doing a good preflight inspection and less focused on avoiding laundry problems.
My cursory inspection was based on the belief that I’d been the last one to fly the airplane. What I didn’t know was that someone had rented and flown the airplane overnight. After their flight they’d parked the Warrior in the same tie-down spot where I’d left it the day before.
Accident chain. Because I had made an assumption about the airplane’s condition, based on the belief that I’d been the last one to fly it, I’d boxed myself into a series of errors that nearly led to a serious problem. That’s how most accidents happen, of course. A series of small, seemingly unimportant mistakes ultimately lead an unrecoverable situation. I never thought I would experience a potential accident scenario so early in my career, and without even starting the engine. But there you have it. Accident scenarios don’t just happen at high speed with the engine producing power. They can be set into motion anywhere, any time. And when the pilot’s brain isn’t fully engaged, the chances of an accident scenario beginning to develop increases exponentially.
The renter had apparently landed short when he brought the airplane home the night before. In fact, he landed short enough to put down right on top of a saw-horse that was positioned on the portion of Runway 22 that was being extended. The extension, which was still under construction, was closed. But the runway was open—and so was the underside of the Piper’s right wing. From just aft of the leading edge, straight back to the trailing edge, the wing looked as if someone had cut the aluminum skin with a can opener. A three-inch-wide gash had been opened up, leaving the wing significantly damaged and weakened—possibly weakened enough that the wing might have failed in flight. But the damage was only visible to those who didn’t mind getting their knees dirty and peeking down under the wing.
The chewing out I got for doing an incomplete preflight inspection was the best medicine I possibly could have received. I kept my job, and got a new perspective on the importance of doing even the littlest facet of my job as if it were the most important—and I never breezed through a preflight inspection again.
Sometimes we learn from our own mistakes, and sometimes we learn from the mistakes of others. On this occasion, I learned from a serious mistake I’d very nearly compounded by taking off in an unairworthy airplane. Had Brad trusted me and just climbed into the airplane to do our flight, as he was scheduled to do, I might not be here today to tell this story.
I owe Brad a sincere thanks for what he did for me that day. Maybe we all do.
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