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Its said we learn to make good decisions by experience, and that experience results from making bad decisions. The flaw in this plan is that in flying, bad decisions can have awful consequences. How can we learn to make good flying decisions without exposing ourselves and our passengers to undue risk? What are we as an industry doing wrong, that pilots regularly make such poor decisions about safety of flight? After all, as much as 80 percent of all aircraft mishaps result from a chain of poor decisions on the part of the pilot, with actual mechanical issues being secondary if they indeed are a factor at all. I think whats going on is the whole culture of how we “learn to fly.”

When engineers developed the ILS so many years ago, they simultaneously created one of the most reliable and accurate navaids ever. The basic ILS is in use throughout the world and, with appropriate air- and ground-borne hardware, site prep, training and certification, we can use it to fly down to and land without seeing much at all out the windshield. But those engineers couldnt do everything. They couldnt, for example, eliminate the ever-narrowing of the desired course and descent path as we get closer to the runway. They also couldnt eliminate the need to descend in the first place. In the bargain, were “saddled with” a well-understood and predictable means to transition from straight-and-level flight in the terminal area to sitting upright at the airport bar, with a few moments of needle-chasing thrown in for good measure. Like so many things in life and aviation, there are ways to cheat-err, simplify-the ILS. Many pilots-especially those with a newer instrument rating-may not have grasped them yet.

Air traffic controllers have an unenviable job, at least as far as pilots are concerned. Even though theyre well-paid and do their work inside, theres too much stress, the consequences of being wrong can be too high and they have the FAA for a boss. Trying to fit a 200-knot airplane in behind one doing only 100 knots is just one of the challenges many controllers face daily; for the most part, pilots can be oblivious to whats happening on the other end of the frequency. But pilots sometimes need to be more assertive, especially when ATC asks them to do something with which theyre not comfortable. Part of the problem pilots face when deciding whether to comply with ATC instructions and requests is the controllers presumed ability to write up a violation. Too, the very concept of a “controller” can be intimidating. Finally, most pilots understand the system and their role in it; in turn, theyll often try extremely hard to help out a controller, on the theory theyll get helped out next time.

For a long time now, loss-of-control accidents in general aviation have been driven by relatively few but recurring causes pointing to fundamental problems in pilot training. These problems seem national in scope. The NTSBs findings in two recent crashes illustrate the point. One was the fatal stall/spin of an American Champion Decathlon in Oroville, Calif., in October 2005; the other the much-reported crash of a Cirrus SR20 into a Manhattan apartment building in October 2006. In both accidents-the Decathlon involving a high-time ATP, the Cirrus an 88-hour major league baseball player new to aviation-there were common threads. Both reveal systemic errors and omissions in our standard flight training. Methodology, in my estimation. These two accidents vividly show that our training is deficient in teaching stall/spin awareness, cockpit resource management and risk analysis. Why cant we figure this out?

I recently read an online comment from a wizened aviator to the effect that weather, by itself, has rarely if ever been responsible for an aviation accident. On the other hand, failure of the airplanes crew to correctly fly the airplane in that weather will mean a bad day for everyone aboard just about every time. Since the airplane is an inanimate object capable only of responding within its limitations to what its crew commands, the comment is exactly on-target. One of our challenges as pilots is to bring the required judgment, skill and experience along in the airplane. Of course, the average general aviation airplane is a marvel of reliability and capability. Even when considering an older design, the advances in technology since its introduction make trivial the task of equipping it with the latest in automated systems, allowing its crew to benefit from detailed information and situational awareness only dreamed of a generation ago.

According to the AOPA Air Safety Foundations 2007 Nall Report, you have a 57.4 percent chance of dying if you lose control while maneuvering an airplane, up from 50.5 percent in the reports 2005 edition. Maneuvering describes a host of flight operations including aggressive turns from base to final, confined-area course reversals and retreats to the runway following an engine failure. In other words, turns. Why cant Johnny turn safely? One reason might be losing understanding of and appreciation for the dynamics of a turn, regardless of bank angle, airspeed or pitch. Lets take a look

Fortunately for those of us who fly, runway incursions that cause accidents are relatively rare. But thats not to say incursions themselves are rare: Runway blunders have become an everyday thing, so much so that NASAs Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) has thousands of incident reports best described as coulda-beens. We recently reviewed an intriguing report on this subject delivered to the [IMGCAP(1)]International Symposium on Aviation Psychology in Dayton, Ohio, last April by Dr. Ed Wischmeyer, an aviation researcher and contributor to our sister publication, KITPLANES. Wischmeyer mined some 2000-plus ASRS reports collected between January 2003 and January 2006. His search criteria sought out reports on ground conflict and ground incursion incidents. This search yielded 1049 relevant reports, 723 of which were from turbine operators and 326 from smaller piston aircraft on personal or instructional flights.

By all the usual parameters, people are turning to the new light sport aircraft (LSA) category and its accompanying sport pilot certificate in large numbers. Both apparently are having a favorable, if perhaps modest, impact on private flying in the U.S. The new aircraft category has translated into options and a new airman certification scheme so far posting some formidable numbers: About 60 new S-LSA types-special light sport aircraft, a factory-built, ready-to-fly machine-have been approved by the FAA under industry-developed consensus standards as of November 2007. Nearly 1100 new S-LSAs were registered through the same period. And, according to the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), as of July 2007 when association Vice President Earl Lawrence delivered a three-year report on the movement, 2100 new sport pilot certificates had been issued, along with 232 sport pilot instructor certificates and 240 examiners. Not too shabby, considering the FAA didnt publish the final sport pilot rule until August 2004; it was April 2005 before the first S-LSA won approval from the FAA.

Its an interesting phenomenon: As student pilots, we master VFR traffic patterns in just a few hours. After earning the private, we work on our instrument rating. Initially, nothing is quite so nerve wracking as a difficult approach. Then, our careers progress and we land that big job. IFR becomes old hat-we can shoot that approach without a second thought. In fact, we get so used to “vectors to final” that we get the shakes flying a VFR traffic pattern at a small airport on a nice day-something we mastered thousands of hours ago. What causes this odd reversal and what can we do about it?

In a perfect world, wed always take off into clear skies. If were going to get any utility out of IFR airplanes, however, there will be times when we take off with reduced visibility and/or low clouds-an instrument departure. Transitioning from visual to instrument flight quickly after liftoff, while accelerating and still close to the ground, takes precision to be performed safely. How do pilots “on a mission” to take off into low ceilings or visibility plan and execute a safe departure? Dave Dewhirst runs Wichita, Kansas-based SABRIS, managing high-performance piston, light twin and light turbine aircraft around the country, with a network of mechanics and flight instructors helping assure safe operation by pilots in the managed fleet. The first key to safe IFR departures, says Dewhirst, is to “take a deep breath” before taxiing onto the runway, ensuring theres time to make certain all checklist items are complete. This includes briefing the departure, briefing passengers, along with all those little things like navigation and transponder settings, security of doors and windows, checking for seat belts closed in the door to flap against the fuselage in flight, and the like.