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Personal procedures you've introduced to your flying as a result of reading accident reports

Buckerfan wrote:

Last thing before I get in the plane is stand in front and look back – check towbar off, pitot covers off, tyres, etc. Is a good way to doublecheck the walkaround but from a different perspective.

I like that. Simple and easy to do, and can pick up a multitude of mistakes. I think I’ll adopt that as one of my own proceedures. Thank you!

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Ha missed that. The barbs in this case would be those low clouds where we can see that there is likely to be precipitation.

France

gallois wrote:

Ha missed that. The barbs in this case would be those low clouds where we can see that there is likely to be precipitation.

Thanks! I guessed what the “diapers” were, but the barbs escaped me.

By the way, try translating again using https://www.deepl.com/translator. I’ve used it to translate aviation-related documents and the result is astonishingly much better that Google Translate.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Everything fly with moveable landing gear gets a verbal statement on downwind: “Wheels are down for landing on land” / “Wheels are up for landing on water” / “Skis are up for landing on runway” / “Skis are down for landing on snow” / and, hopefully not, but “Wheels are up for ditching”. The key is to speak out loud to one’s self, while visually confirming the landing gear position, and reminding one’s self of the intended landing surface.

What I never do is wait for the gear warning horn – because; if you carry power into the flare, you may not get the throttle(s) far enough back to trigger it before you touch, and, if the horn has stopped working, you’re out of luck. No matter what I fly, and what warning systems that plane may have, it’s completely manual for me…..

Home runway, in central Ontario, Canada, Canada

Pilot_DAR wrote:

“Wheels are down for landing on land” / “Wheels are up for landing on water” / “Skis are up for landing on runway” / “Skis are down for landing on snow” / and, hopefully not, but “Wheels are up for ditching”

Whoa this can get complicated. Now I feel a bit eased that I “only” have a normal retractable landing gear

Germany
dublinpilot wrote:
The speaker talked at one point, about how accidents in the airlines tend to be ‘one time events’. That’s because (according to the speaker) all the airlines read all the accident reports. They identify the cause and introduce a procedure to catch the error, then build in redundancy to the procedure and then implement the procedure for all flights. The speaker was encouraging GA pilots to read accident reports, but not think “that could never happen to me” but rather think “what procedure can I implement from now on that would prevent me from making that mistake”.

What an interesting topic! Thank you @dublinpilot for bringing it up. I personally live both ends of the aviation world so have often witnessed the good and the bad of both.

The main difference I find between both worlds has been brought up: attitude. You rarely see in the airline world the attitude of “it will never happen to me” . Unfortunately, reading this thread (and quite a few others @EuroGA, although fewer than elsewhere in the GA scene) that is clearly a sin we tend to fall for more often in private GA.

It is all about:

dublinpilot wrote:

SOP designed to catch errors or prevent risk taking.

Sometimes it is personal, sometimes it is about regulations (authority, club or otherwise). Hence my next favourite topic:

Caba wrote:

don´t put your priority on abiding by the regulations when things get dicey

You need the right balance between both. I am trying to set up a talk soon on an EuroGA Tuesday precisely about this topic with a very interesting speaker.

Antonio
LESB, Spain

Pilot_DAR wrote:

a verbal statement on downwind: “Wheels are down for landing on land”

You clearly live in a more complex world than most of us!

Antonio
LESB, Spain

Antonio wrote:

You rarely see in the airline world the attitude of “it will never happen to me” . Unfortunately, reading this thread (and quite a few others @EuroGA, although fewer than elsewhere in the GA scene) that is clearly a sin we tend to fall for more often in private GA.

I agree that you should never have the attitude that it won’t happen to me. But in recreational GA we can accept a greater likelihood of bad things happen because of less exposure. Most recreational GA pilots fly less in their entire flying career than an airline pilot does in one year.

E.g. I don’t hesitate to do long overwater flights in a SEP because I don’t do it often. If I lived on an island and all non-local flights were overwater flights I would very likely take a different view.

Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 18 Oct 14:47
ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

You just posed an example of the risk analysis and management approach airlines are asked to do under their SMS for all relevant decision making:

Risk matrix: statistical likelyhood vs consequences then mitigating actions if orange or red results

Antonio
LESB, Spain

Antonio wrote:

Risk matrix: statistical likelyhood vs consequences then mitigating actions if orange or red results

I know. I’ve done a couple of risk analyses in my life…

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden
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