Skipping checklist items due to stressful events

Peter wrote:

I’ve just watched a movie of a passenger jet (Airbus or 737) doing a go-around without any flap at all during the takeoff phase, and nearly not making it.

This was yesterday in Franfurt: A Royal Air Maroc B737-700 taking off with either the wrong flap setting or wrongly calculated V speeds (it’s on the front page of PPRuNe). Only good flying skills saved the day for them, this could have easily become a major disaster.

Peter wrote:

I wonder how common this is?

In single pilot operations much more common – in my experience – than in the multi-pilot environment. When two pilots are watching each other and are watched together by a cockpit voice recorder, checklists are usually read completely, even in a rushed situation. Still errors do happen from time to time.

Doesn’t look so spectacular to me. He rotated, didn’t lift off, tried again, probably noticed the flaps were set wrong (or that the speed had been too low), reduced pitch to acclerate more and lifted off at a higher speed.

Well, I inadvertantly took from a high-ish density altitude airport the other day without takeoff flaps. It doesn’t make a tremendous difference to takeoff roll on this particular type but you do have to rotate a bit more and are closer to stall speed at rotation. Clearly not all types are so forgiving, so I was a bit annoyed at myself.

(Based on the strong climb in that 737 video after it became airborne, my guess is on wrong Vspeeds being used)

boscomantico wrote:

Doesn’t look so spectacular to me. He rotated, didn’t lift off, tried again, probably noticed the flaps were set wrong (or that the speed had been too low), reduced pitch to acclerate more and lifted off at a higher speed.

In a passenger jet?? Nearly had a tail strike. Very lucky. Looks very bad to me. Yes, airmanship saved it but arguably a lack thereof caused it too.

Definitely NOT throwing the first stone here, I’ve done some royal f•uck ups during pre-flight, but here’s how I try to avoid them:

- if distracted during the walkaround (which I do w/o checklist but always in the same way), I start again from scratch. If flying with pax I always ask them to either wait for me inside or, if that’s not possible, to not disturb me.
- always use a checklist during the pre-flight checks once inside the airplane. I have found that – at least for me – this is where I tend to forget / skip items

Peter wrote:

This sort of thing has happened to me before. Once, years ago, I departed without doing any of the checklist, though admittedly it was only half an hour after landing to pick somebody up.

I tend to be more focussed on checklist discipline when I am running late, rushed or similar. I take the view that in those circumstances if I cannot methodically go through the checklist, I shouldn’t be flying. Tends to be more check do rather than do check.

Don’t know. Sure, shouldn’t happen (particularly if the runway is short), but it seems like nowadays a huge story is made out of things that still just happen, frequently, all around the globe and are then corrected and saved in the process.

Of course, if one assumes that all airline pilots are jerks who have no idea about “piloting” and aerodynamics, and that they will continue to pull, all the way until the 4 kilometre runway is behind them (AF style?), then yes this is a serious thing.

However, personally, I still haven’t lost my general faith in the piloting skills of airline pilots…

JasonC wrote:

I take the view that in those circumstances if I cannot methodically go through the checklist, I shouldn’t be flying.

Exactly. This is also, why in “real aeroplanes” apart from a few memory items every abnormal or emergency situation is handled by checklist only.

JasonC wrote:

In a passenger jet?? Nearly had a tail strike. Very lucky. Looks very bad to me.

It is very bad indeed. This is a “real” aeroplane, not some microlight. It is operated by numbers, not by “feel”. A Boeing 737 does not lift off when it is “ready to fly” (we recently had a long thread about that) but when certain precomputed numbers show up in an instrument. This pilot did a good job in saving the situation, but a less good pilot might either have continued to pull into a tailstrike and/or stall or tried to abort the takeoff at high speed, all of which would have ended in a catastrophe. There was also the real danger of raising the gear immediately after the first takeoff with a subsequent belly landing and crash. This was a very close shave.