Losing The Flick

The Flick,” the big picture, is how situational awareness often is described. As short descriptions go, it’s a good one. The big picture can mean different things to different people, of course, but it generally breaks down into knowing where you are, where you’re going, what it’s going to take to get there and whether the resources to complete the flight are available. The resources can be any number of things. In particular, they usually boil down to keeping tabs on fuel, weather and terrain. Lose the flick on either one of these three, and you could find yourself in these pages.

Key Takeaways:

• Situational awareness, or "the flick," is critical for pilots, encompassing knowledge of location, destination, available resources (fuel, weather, terrain), and altitude above terrain.
• A fatal Cirrus SR20 accident was primarily caused by non-instrument-rated pilots losing situational awareness during a dark night flight over remote, high-standing terrain.
• Contributing factors included pilot fatigue from a long duty day and the failure to maintain sufficient altitude and check charts for terrain clearance, resulting in a Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) accident.

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