Lookout - why are so many pilots so careless?

I’ll be a heretic here for a moment. Personally speaking, I am looking out to primarily ‘enjoy the view’ and secondarily to ‘spot other traffic’. For my sins, I am a child of the Magenta Line and I have a lot of respect for those who fly solely with paper maps and PLOG – indeed, I recall the first time I flew from Hamm to Bamberg, no GPS, plotting everything on the map, the feeling of actually getting there without resorting to GPS or similar was one of an incredible achievement – but the reality is, I spent most of that flight not looking ahead and up, but ahead and down, to the sides and down, trying to ensure I wasn’t being blown off course, I wasn’t looking for traffic but ticking off towns I’d flown over, just in case a controller called and asked ‘G-ABCD, please state position’.

Maybe with experience I would have performed better, only glanced down occasionally to check on the map but even so, nowadays I follow the magenta line on my 430s, and even though I don’t have my head in much of the time, most of the time I’m simply enjoying the views….. does that make me unsafe?

Even though I’m not consciously looking for traffic, I feel I am safe because I have adopted other strategies to keep me out of harm’s way. And that’s the discussion here – there are people who believe that we HAVE to be looking out all the time because only by doing so, will we be safe. This is, not wishing to offend people, the biggest fallacy in aviation I have yet to hear. Looking out does NOT keep me safe. What keeps me safe are the following

• The big sky keeps me safe – because there is a lot of it and relatively few aircraft up there.
• Flying at altitudes higher than 3000 feet keeps me safe, because most GA tend to fly lower.
• Flying at an odd altitude keeps me safe because a lot of people are pretty anal about flying exactly 2000 feet – why not fly 2260 feet? Altimeter doesn’t look so neat and tidy but who cares?
• having electronic conspicuity keeps me safe because if transponding aircraft are there, I will be aware of them, as will they be aware of my presence.
• having a radar based traffic service keeps me safe because if non transponding traffic is there, I will be advised about a primary target.

Let’s sit in the average spam can – C172, P28A or similar. You have a field of view of maybe max 50% of the air around you. If see and avoid is to work, you need as near as damn it 90% visibility, all round. Let’s now put ourselves into conflict with another aircraft. At a closing speed of 240 knots, you’ll possibly spot him with 15 – 20 seconds before impact. The shock realisation might take a couple of seconds of that time from us. So if you are going to rely on ‘see and avoid’, you need to make sure that you are scanning the air ahead of you – slightly up, slightly down because the conflicting traffic may be climbing / descending – without looking away from that most critical area for more than 10 seconds at a time. Can you do that? Fly for hours with not losing sight of the frontal sector for more than 10 seconds at a time? NO WAY.

Having a good lookout is just like a comforting blanket. It’s like saying ‘nothing can happen to me, I have the perfect lookout’. But in reality, you might as well take your lucky Rabbit’s foot with you, it’ll do you as much good….

Noe wrote:

Out of curiosity, do people fail because of lack of lookout?

Yes, but it’s generally linked to other aspects of airmanship. One of the more bizarre I had was a candidate who saw conflicting traffic but failed to avoid when it was obviously that the other traffic was not altering course – “I had right of way” was his justification.

Steve6443 wrote:

there are people who believe that we HAVE to be looking out all the time because only by doing so, will we be safe

I don’t think anyone has even implied that. There are people here who know they have avoided collisions because they have been looking out. Look-out/TAS/FLARM/PAW/unusual altitudes/non-standard routes etc can all contribute toward the overall safety of the flight. Lets have a lot of layers of Swiss Cheese.

Turning your statement around, there are people here who have stated that see-and-avoid is ‘ineffective and useless’. That is also fallacy.

I think that a lot of the problems we have to day with the navigation and the subsequent failure of people to keep a proper look out is the complexity of airspaces. In some areas, even VFR flight without a pre-programmed route is very likely to result into an airspace infringement and all the consequences that has. Consequently, people plan their routes and stick to them following that magenta line for the fear of doing wrong if they don’t. I openly admit that in certain areas I am one of them, but with the difference that I have a GPSS AP which leaves me the time to watch out much more as before.

But it is very easy to get distracted and to end up inside rather than outside, e.g. with a tech problem, a rerouting which needs to be programmed into the GNS e.t.c. therefore, additional help to avoid collisions today is really a necessity. Be it that you have additional eyes to look out or you get a proper avoidance solution.

FLARM there has done good and bad at the same time. Good in the sense that it made collision avoidance affordable, but bad because it has introduced a non-official system which now a lot of people think is enough. Well, it is not. A Flarm equipped plane can not be seen by an airliner unless it has a transponder. Airliners will not appear on the FLARM device unless it is a Power Flarm and also radiating ADS-B. Neither are compatible to proper TCAS.

To do it properly, TCAS with all the proper modes would have to be implemented and made compulsory for ALL flying objects. That however would only be possible if TCAS became massively less expensive or if another generally used system such as ADSB based would appear. The key to success of TCAS is the resolution adivisories it gives based on an exchange of information of the participating airplanes. Neither Flarm nor ADSB solutions do that.

What I want to get next year is a box which can show me the traffic not only on its own screen but on the PFD and ND. That means changing my Powerflarm Portable for a Core and have them rigged. But I think the result will be better.

All this does not change the fact that look out is still very important. A lot of flying objects are not equipped with either electronic avoidance equipment and still lots of gliders refuse both FLARMand transponders. That has to stop.

Dave_Phillips wrote:

Steve6443 wrote:
there are people who believe that we HAVE to be looking out all the time because only by doing so, will we be safe
I don’t think anyone has even implied that. There are people here who know they have avoided collisions because they have been looking out. Look-out/TAS/FLARM/PAW/unusual altitudes/non-standard routes etc can all contribute toward the overall safety of the flight. Lets have a lot of layers of Swiss Cheese.

Turning your statement around, there are people here who have stated that see-and-avoid is ‘ineffective and useless’. That is also fallacy.

The comment I have copied below was pretty much stating that if you don’t look outside, you will eventually have a mid air, that looking outside will prevent it.

As an attempt of an explanation, you will usually only have one midair in your life. Experience will constantly reinforce the impression that you can fly without looking outside and survive – until you don’t.

Over the past 5 years, I have had two extremely close near misses, the latest one was on a short final when I was coming in to land; a motor glider flew straight through my final, climbing past my nose. I only knew he was there because my MRX was literally screaming at me and at the last second I spotted him, even though I should have been concentrating on landing – on short final is no position to be scanning wildly between your 7 and 5 o clock positions, trying to spot any potentially conflicting traffic.

The first incident happened whilst I was remaining outside controlled airspace over Clevedon (remain OCAS; Basic Service due to controller workload), when a DA40 decided to descend over the top of me (I was flying a P28A at the time) and the only warning I got was, again, due to my MRX alerting me to the closing threat, descending to my altitude.

In both of those cases, Neither of these near misses could have been avoided by a better lookout because they came from behind and either above or below.

such a sunscreen blocking half of the pilots field of view just to keep the sun out

I always used the Jepp IFR charts for that

But only in CAS, under IFR, usually FL100+ and almost never seeing another plane, visually or on TCAS, for hours and hours…

Cobalt wrote:

Would your opinion change, or more likely, what would your relatives think if they knew that the pilots of the other aircraft were not looking out on the basis that it is ineffective, and a mid air ensued?

Lookout is a bit like insurance, and people who say they don’t need it point out that the risk of the house burning down is low, and point to those instances where the insurance doesn’t pay out (mid-airs despite good look-out), either ignoring or talking down the number of instances where it does pay (mid-airs prevented by look-out)

I wouldn’t mind if the only lives they are putting at slightly increased risk were their own, or if there was same high cost associated with it that makes it hard to justify spending on it.

I would like other pilots to look BECAUSE it is not very effective. If it were fully effective, I could rely on my one eyeballs, assisted by TIS/TAS, radar service, the wife and sundry. And given that it costs precisely NOTHING, why not?

Timothy gives some reasons why there may be situations when there are higher priorities, which of course applies. But the examples we frequently see (such a sunscreen blocking half of the pilots field of view just to keep the sun out, presumably to prevent flare on some screens or in the camera) are shocking airmanship

Unfortunately my opinion concerning lookout will never be changed – it is and will remain for me as something I can do to protect myself but I understand it’s utility is limited:- firstly because the human eye is meant to detect movement and converging targets will remain stationary in the field of view, secondly, because the sun can blind you in a certain sector, hiding a target; thirdly because the blind spots created by the wings, fuselage etc will block on average at least 40 – 50% of my total possible field of view and finally bugs on the windscreen can easily hide a converging target.

Indeed, I will gain significantly more in terms of safety margins against a mid air collision by adopting the strategies I have previously listed. On the contrary: Even if every single pilot in the world had the best lookout there could ever be, it would still be insufficient to ensure no mid air collisions will ever happen. This is because there are times when you HAVE to be heads in – like changing the fuel tank, switching frequency, loading an approach, changing a squawk. These things unfortunately take time and sods law says that at the precise time you are looking inwards, so will be the pilot of the conflicting aircraft. If you don’t factor in these occasions, you should be.

But even if I am looking out all the time, how will a lookout help me when I’m descending in my low wing aircraft whilst Pilot Y is climbing in his high wing, when our courses are converging at an acute angle? Will the pilot of the high wing aircraft spot me, will I ever see him, using our super lookout? No. But by trying to drill into us, that we MUST be looking out, to not do so is ‘poor airmanship’, you are missing the fact that there are other strategies which can and should be adopted which are much more likely to improve your chances of avoiding a mid air. From my own point of view, I consider flying without EC – both transmitting and receiving – is significantly worse airmanship than not looking out because EC works.

EC just gives you a (good) clue where to look.

No single system is perfect – that’s why we tend to use multiple systems.