Agree with many things here. I:
- always, always check the fuel caps myself (most of my flying is in high-wing airplanes, so cannot see once in cockpit)
- always check the oil filler cap is secure
- always ensure the oil dip stick is seated properly
- GUMPS three times: approach, downwind, final
- one last 360 walk around before getting into the airplane
- always use the retract callouts, even if flying a FG. This was actually drilled into me by my primary instructor, who said you’re not gonna fly boring Cherokees forever_, better get used to the procedures now. How right he was!
The tow bar isn’t really a thing for me, other than pushing the airplane back into its tiedown if flying a club airplane. Most transient parking spots around here are drive in – drive out.
Antonio wrote:
You clearly live in a more complex world than most of us!
Landing with the wheels in the wrong position never ends well, and once the choice is there to get it wrong, the discipline has to improve. I watched an Air Canada Captain I was training on an amphibian select the wheels down, confirm that they were down, then say “gear down”, as we approached for a planned and briefed water landing. I instructed him more….
I’ve read hundreds of accident reports.
The only time I thought “this could have got me killed” was in 2004 when I flew with the Swiss “ICAO” chart. It was rubbish, mixing feet and metres for elevations. I ended up flying 3.2 times lower but fortunately I was VMC at the time. This has probably killed a few pilots, especially ones who were doing a bit of “unofficial IFR”.
But the above (misleading chart) was never mentioned in any accident report I’ve seen. Not this one, either, even though I contacted the BEA investigator to mention it as a possibility and, after a couple of tries, got him to somewhat reluctantly ack my email.
However, I don’t think you will pick up a lesson like this from an accident report because accident reports are written to not blame anything “national”. National charts, national ATC, national airspace, national “etc”, will not be blamed.
That said, I’ve nearly screwed up a number of times:
The biggest “common killer” is getting too slow. Never try to slow down behind some slow traffic. Somebody will always be able to fly slower than you can! Then, when you are right on the low limit, you can’t turn without stalling. Sod the extra cost of the fuel or the rental and get out of the circuit, and come back a bit later.
This can also get you, and could have got me if I had not pulled the alternate air quick. There is a good reason why you are supposed to use alternate (heated) air when flying in IMC, particularly well below the -5C or so which is best for external icing.
I watched a bit of the video but it seems a bit too vague. And there are lots of reasons for airline safety, and only some of them are due to training and crew following prescribed procedures. The rest are due to superior capability hardware.
I know of one fatal and one near-miss in twins with trim runaway. My circuit breaker is permanently pulled.
From that video
then
Irritating 
Risk cannot both be the area (of Likelihood x Consequence) and at the same time a point on the surface spanned out by Likelihood and Consequence
No wonder people don’t understand risk
FlyingAppel wrote:
I think you have misinterpreted the OP with regards to looking at the airlines.
Your suggestion to improve the statistics is exactly what the OP ment.
Perhaps you are right, but I almost never see both “learning from the airlines” of how to handle the aircraft in the same sentence. Statistically this is the number one cause of accidents by far in GA. It’s the ancient old engineering mantra: Always find the 20% that causes 80% of the mishaps (or whatever else you are trying to fix). With private GA it is one single thing (pilot error) that causes 70% of the accidents. Add to this lack of basic understanding of the systems (maintenance, fuel etc) and it’s 80-90% of all the accidents.
When “learning from the airlines” it is prob 99 something procedural, typically proper use of check lists or something in that direction. You are right that the accident reports includes it all of course. I still think this is different though. You can always pick up some clever tricks reading accident reports laying on the couch, but this will not target the single one point that really counts, which is to get out of the couch and into the pilot seat and get some quality training hours in handling that aircraft.
Dan wrote:
well, in the airlines selection starts at the assessment
That’s also true. The airlines can pick and chose as well as setting higher standards and requirements. But that wasn’t really what I was aiming for. What I was aiming for is this deliberate or perhaps unconscious but collective sidestepping of the single one thing that really counts – if safety is a concern according to the available statistics. Think of of it this way:
How many hours does each pilot on average spend on reading, investigating, talking, discussing, ordering, mounting gadgets such as ADS-B, TCAS and similar items made to prevent mid air collisions? How big a dent would preventing every single mid air collisions make in the accident records? Looking at the statistics, those two numbers are rather ridiculous.
The interesting part is not how much the accident statistics would improve if all the time and money was used to focus/training in handling the aircraft, but rather why private pilots on average choses to focus time and money on things that hardly counts at all, rather than things that truly counts. Maybe this is what actually is the main difference between CAT and private GA?
Take the term stabilized approach. Is stabilized approach important for private GA? of course it is. But, where a stabilized approach is well defines for CAT operations (at least that what it seems to be), no such definition exist for GA. IMO there simply does not exist one single stabilized approach for GA. An approach is (highly) dependent on aircraft, runway, terrain, season, wind conditions, but also on the pilot and the exact circumstance. It is a different concept altogether for private GA than for CAT. However, having and using, one or a limited number of overall concepts, like the UK overhead join for instance (we have a similar thing in Norway now), can IMO be said to be a stabilized approach for VFR GA. The same concept is used in gliding. A procedure with defined positions/times that leads to a a set of timed sub-procedures/checks all the way from approaching the field from afar and until touch-down.
When reading/talking/viewing about stabilized approach, it’s always about how airlines have a stable final. And this is important because of bla bla bla. Completely irrelevant for VFR GA. What’s important for GA is to get an overview of the field and fine-tune the plan of the final while doing it (when to turn base, find cues in the terrain, what to expect of winds, where to touch down, the speed, the decent rate etc). The final itself may be flying following a winding river for that matter. Often VFR GA is all about flying to new fields, and often rather odd ones.
All this is ancient knowledge, but somehow seems ignored as unimportant. Instead an airline final is brought in as an example to follow. Why? where does it come from? IMO it cannot be from airline pilots themselves, at least not those who also fly light GA (my personal experience but still).
Are you not at risk of gold plating what is meant by a stable approach. To me it just means being on plan ie lined up with the centre line, not too high, not too low, aircraft configured and at the intended speed, either at 1000ft IFR or 500ft VFR, otherwise you might consider the go around or missed approach.
IMO one of the reasons the idea was brought in was to make pilots more aware that there is no shame in the go around rather than trying to salvage a good landing from a bad approach.
Accident statistics show that many landing accidents were the result of an unstable approach.
Hands up anyone who can honestly say they have never ballooned, bounced, or hit the ground a bit harder than they would have wished.
I am still wondering what “stable approach” means in the context of VFR flying but let me try:
- Can one fly power off approach and call it “stable approach”? or it’s impossible?
- Can one fly curved final and call it “stable approach”? or it’s impossible?
- Can one promptly bank 45deg on final or fly tigher? or it’s unstable?
I do think it’s healthy to have well defined criteria for speed & outside picture with some height cutoff to get wing level & speed in good shape before performing a go-around to me that is enough? or does it have to be full flaps and wing level, 40% power at 1.3*VS/Vref at 1000ft agl while 4nm away?
PS: I am not talking about PPL training ;)
LeSving wrote:
Risk cannot both be the area (of Likelihood x Consequence) and at the same time a point on the surface spanned out by Likelihood and Consequence
Sure it can. The point represents the area of the rectangle with one corner in the point and another corner in the origin of the coordinate system.
No wonder people don’t understand risk
Well… People I’ve discussed risk analysis with have no problem understanding this.
LeSving wrote:
Always find the 20% that causes 80% of the mishaps
You will PROB90 get things right by using this mantra.
One of the best things we could buy from the airlines is the culture that we should always analyze risk (and yes the risk matrix method does vouch for the 20/80 rule as shown in the overwater flying example above by @Airborne_Again ) , and apply corrective or mitigating actions.
This does not mean we should mimic procedures, but still there is a lot in the airline culture that we could import into GA, putting to bed attitudes like “I will never make that mistake”
