Aeronautical Decision Making is a way of thinking taught to all pilots. It’s a means of maintaining situational awareness throughout all phases of flight.
It teaches pilots to constantly assess the weather around them, the terrain below them, and the condition of their airplane and its engine(s).
It also teaches a pilot to suppress emotions and to be willing at any moment to postpone, abort, delay, or cancel a flight based on a clear-eyed assessment of the safety of flight. [Read more…]
I was a freshly minted fixed-wing private pilot with some five total hours of simulated IFR training logged visiting an airport friend at Van Nuys Airport (KVNY) in Southern California.
KVNY was CAVU, but to the west, the marine layer had started a slow creep from the beach in towards Santa Monica Municipal Airport (KSMO). I had to return the tiny, rented Grumman Tiger to KSMO right away. So I bid my friend goodbye after a cursory preflight and taxied to 16L.
Full fuel tanks and my weight combined to put that plane at gross weight, making my climb rate anemic. I vectored toward the Cahuenga Pass. If I couldn’t gain enough altitude in time to cross over the Santa Monica Mountains, I could at least slip through the pass over the 101 Freeway. I flew through the cut and was abeam the Hollywood Bowl when I saw it: The marine layer had gone from creeping to galloping. [Read more…]
One of my nephews is really keen on becoming a pilot. I had some time over the summer, so I committed to flying a Piper Twin Comanche up to his hometown, taking him flying over to the coast, and flying back with a lesson involved.
The flight from Wilmington, Delaware, to Cape May, N.J., proceeded without incident. I gave him some straight and level time, much to his delight. We landed and went inside for soft drinks. This was a typical, hot summer day in August, so after the run-up checklist, I leaned the engines for takeoff.
When I applied full power, both motors sputtered. I considered aborting, but with 4,000′ of runway ahead of me and an aircraft now about a mile behind and closing, I instead looked to my throttles. I firewalled them. The engines stopped sputtering and sprang to full power. Thirty-two seconds later, we were airborne and out of there. [Read more…]
When asked what he thought “sterile cockpit” meant, one pilot told me, “It’s where your maps are all folded and there aren’t any coffee stains on the arm rests or your clothing.”
Not quite what the FAA meant when the sterile cockpit rule (CFR 121.542/135.100) was written back in 1981. The intention was to regulate the actions of commercial pilots and flight crews during critical phases of flight. [Read more…]
A training instructor at one of my airlines shared this story: About 30 years ago, a Continental captain and first officer were on approach to Houston Intercontinental Airport (KIAH), at the end of an arduous pairing in which they failed to get along.
The two were arguing so loudly that the flight attendants could hear them through the cockpit door, and so loudly neither pilot heard the gear warning horn. They landed the DC-9 gear up. [Read more…]
IMSAFE and PAVE are two of the best tools the FAA has given to general aviation in decades.
IMSAFE stands for Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue and Emotion (or Eating).
PAVE refers to Pilot, Aircraft, EnVironment and External pressures.
Pilots often mention them together in incident reports submitted to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. They tend to cite those checklists either to rule out human factors or to highlight human factors contributing to their incidents. [Read more…]
Santa Ana winds tracking out of the northeast make for interesting takeoffs and landings at Santa Monica Airport (KSMO) in Southern California. Prevailing winds there are normally out of the southwest, so Runway 21 is almost always in use. Runway 3 is rarely used.
One winter day, the Santa Anas came howling down into the LA Basin from the north, somewhere in the 340° to 355° range. Not just straight-line winds either — big gusts that kept pilots on the ground grounded.
It was dangerous. All of us in the FBO knew it the moment we saw a Learjet go around, twice. My commercial instructor flying a Cessna 172 still needed to land, though, due to low fuel. [Read more…]
Presidential TFRs are complicated.
These flight restrictions are temporary and, often, the boundaries keep moving. Furthermore, they can occur without warning anytime a president decides to travel. They are kind of like pop-up summer thunderstorms. [Read more…]
I flew co-pilot on a 19-seat turboprop during my airline pilot rookie year. One hot summer day, we landed at Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport (KROA), deplaned our passengers, and loaded up 19 more. We didn’t take on any more fuel because we needed to be as light as possible for the windy, high, hot and humid departure.
This was a quick turn, so we SWAG’ed the numbers at the gate and did actual flight calculations on the taxi out. Almost to the runway, I realized we were 250 pounds overweight.
We had a choice: Return to the gate and offload a passenger (guaranteeing someone would miss the connecting flight out of Dulles) or sit in the run-up area for 15 minutes and burn the equivalent weight in fuel. Two lousy options. [Read more…]
I had a flight instructor once demonstrate how to take off, fly a pattern, and land a Cessna 172 using only power, rudder, and trim controls. Many years later another flight instructor demonstrated the same thing to me during a Boeing 717 simulator session.
Granted, both departures were long, flat climb-outs. The approaches were also unusually long and shallow, but the point was made in both instances.
It may be possible in the right circumstances, in an emergency, to overcome a frozen or sticking elevator and land an airplane by using only power, rudder, and elevator trim. [Read more…]
