Developing Safety Procedures in your Cockpit (Article)

Hmm. When I first flew, it was on gliders in 1982. Few things can happen to an engine in a glider but we did indeed have safety procedures for other things. Procedures for cable brake during launch, procedures for climbing out, opening the chute. Today we have standard procedures (check lists) regardless of plane (at least we do in Norway), and everything have to be memorized, or you will not get a license, or renewal.

With motorized planes, the situation is different. When I got my PPL in 1992, we did indeed practice engine fire etc, and I did have them memorized. But since then I have flown lots of different planes. I cannot say I have anything memorized except the “generic” part, best glide, engine restart, mayday, find a field and so on – for instance. Maybe I’m getting sloppy with the actual check list, but I regularly fly 3 different planes, sometimes a fourth and fifth. 4 different engines, different layout on the panel, different check lists. The “generic” parts are at least 95% true though, even though the actual check lists may differ much more. The last 5% difference I also try to remember. IMO, getting at least 95% right every time is better than 100% one time and 45 the other, so I stick to generic, same as with gliders, and take out the physical check list only to check if I have forgotten something, if time allows. But, then I fly simple planes, low complexity. A TP with lots of complexity for instance, would require me to memorize every detail of that plane, I would think? never tried

This article is, alas, another one of these very generally talking contributions. The guy seemed not to have the right instructor which doesn’t mean that an instruction of the sole elements he is reporting could not exist. Yet, it is not what kind of training I received. I practised every item he lists (emergency checklist discussions, fire in the cockpit procedures, emergency divert, or low fuel discussions or reviews) in my early PPL training. And he does not really make a clear distinction between safety procedures given by a PPL training or POH checklists and safety management as, for instance, AOPA (amongst others) developed in their IFR single pilot videos or articles. There should be also some commitment to CRM transposable to GA since we often fly as 2 pilots.