General Aviation News

Human Factors: Fuel mismanagement

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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…]

Sterile cockpit procedures

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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…]

Sterile cockpit?

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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…]

Check yourself before you wreck yourself

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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…]

Crosswind landings: Worth the price to practice

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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…]

Eche la Culpa

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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…]

Trust but verify redux

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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…]

Human Factors: Elevators

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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…]

Nobody’s flying the plane

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During one of my airline simulator training sessions, the instructor put us about 10 miles from an initial approach fix, then she asked us to turn around so she could show us something. So focused were we on her, the first officer and I forgot to pay attention to the thrust levers. While she was talking, she began to slowly walk them back to idle thrust.

Airspeed rapidly fell off, but the autopilot kept us on heading and altitude, so our angle of attack rapidly increased. Within seconds, we approached a stall. I quickly turned back to the instrument panel and recovered, but by then our instructor’s point had been made. We had allowed ourselves to get so distracted that nobody was flying the plane.

We never want to admit we failed a task. We never want to admit we were not paying attention. We never want to admit nobody was flying the airplane. But these things happen. [Read more…]

Human Factors: Ambiguity

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GPS and air data computers make en route navigation the most precise it’s been in aviation history. In some ways, too precise.

Transoceanic airliners began to suffer hours of sustained turbulence caused by dozens and dozens of wide-body aircraft flying on the same track, through each other’s wake vortices. Eventually, international airlines flying those routes figured out a solution. They developed SLOP — Strategic Lateral Offset Protocol — in other words, introducing an element of ambiguity in their navigational tracks to relieve airframes, and passengers, of the pain caused by excessive precision.

That may be the only instance I know where ambiguity is a good thing in aviation. If the reports to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System I recently dissected are any indication, pilots agree that ambiguity is a bad thing. The ambiguity they are referring to is in how the FAA regulations, instrument procedures, and NOTAMS are worded. [Read more…]

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