Dark on the Details

Call it the familiarity trap. When planning a new route or destination, you carefully examine the charts, procedures, airport diagrams, and approach minimums. But you tend to skip a lot of these steps on well-worn routes and at your home drome. Its near-certain that youll eventually discover how this complacency can be a big gotcha.

Editorial Staff

Saturday, November 11, 2017 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Pilots commonly fall into a "familiarity trap," neglecting crucial pre-flight checks and detailed approach notes for well-known routes and airports.
This complacency can lead to dangerous oversights, such as attempting a night instrument approach without a required operational Visual Glideslope Indicator (VGSI), which is critical for obstacle clearance.
The article highlights an incident where pilots, over-relying on familiarity, missed a VGSI requirement for a night landing, underscoring the importance of always thoroughly reviewing all approach details, NOTAMs, and airport information for every flight.

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Call it the familiarity trap. When planning a new route or destination, you carefully examine the charts, procedures, airport diagrams, and approach minimums. But you tend to skip a lot of these steps on well-worn routes and at your home ‘drome. It’s near-certain that you’ll eventually discover how this complacency can be a big gotcha.

From your home base at Fulton County Airport in Wauseon, OH (KUSE), you in your SR20 and a buddy in his Cherokee Six plan to fly to Warren County in Lebanon (I68), where he’s dropping off his bird for an annual.