Aviation Safety

My first and only accident is a good example of how psychological factors affect piloting decisions. I was 17, inexperienced and anxious to try out a new set of wings. I had little money, so my primary radio was a used unit of doubtful reliability. In fact, it had malfunctioned on the ground several times, and I was unsure how it would do in the air.

Everything worked well until I got into a steep turn. In most planes, a radio malfunction will not lead directly to a crash. But in a radio-controlled model aircraft, you can guess the result.

Despite what you might think, the cause of this crash was not faulty equipment – it was pilot error. I made a bad decision to fly with deficient e…

While you are scanning your flight instruments closely, over in some other corner of the panel are some other instruments that are worth more than a glance, IFR or VFR: the engine performance instruments.

If you dont include them in your scan, you cant really tell if your aircraft engine is in good health. Theyll help you decide when to draw the line and say that the engine is not safe enough to continue on the flight. It may be running now, but your instruments may help you determine how long it will continue to run as advertised.

There are symptoms of failing engine health that an aware pilot should recognize. In some cases they may pinpoint a problem before it becomes trouble. I…

A private pilot with about 250 hours flew his personal airplane from an airport in the Southeast to a coastal resort in southern Alabama with his boss in the right seat. The two were going to a business conference, as evidenced by the two sets of golf bags in the back of the high performance single.

The meetings were productive and the networking effective. As for the golf, well, it was probably as frustrating as golf usually is. Once the round was concluded, the pair hopped into a taxi for a quick jaunt to the airport and the three-hour leg home.

When the pilot had originally planned the trip, the schedule called for a 1 p.m. round of golf, and he figured on a departure around 5:30. I…

A few friends recently had an e-mail discussion on checklist use. It started when one said he had been working on an audiocassette checklist as an adjunct to a speedy but complete check from preflight cockpit to shutdown. The tapes were planned to have background music and a pause tone so pilots would not get ahead of themselves during taxi or takeoff.

Its hard to believe that anyone needs to have another voice in the cockpit (not to mention background music) at critical times in the flight. Its hard enough to keep your attention shifting from one important task to another without an additional distraction.

In more than 30 years as a pilot, Ive never ceased to be amazed at the…

In the tumultuous atmosphere of an aircraft carrier, some of the worlds best pilots routinely embark on some of the most dangerous flying there is. Military aviation, especially carrier operations, demands disciplined pilots, well-maintained machines and a hard-headed look at the risk involved in every flight.

Even though most civilian pilots will never experience the critical flying demands that a fighter pilot takes in stride, the stakes are just as high. A wrecked airplane is still a wrecked airplane, and a dead pilot is still a dead pilot.

Over the years the military has learned a lot of things about flying, airplanes and risk assessment by losing a lot of blood, people and airp…

A fairly new private pilot recently mentioned that hes read about stalls occurring while turning from base to final but doesnt remember hearing much discussion about it during his private pilot training.

The pilot had done all the approach-to-stall, stall recognition and stall recovery training required to perform the tasks required by his certificate. However, he had no idea why he was doing them – other than to pass the checkride – nor how he might apply this training in the real world.

The central concept never presented to him is that the main reason for stall training, including the spin discussions (which replace the mandatory spin training of the old hairy-chested days), is…

If youre like most pilots, you carry a touch of power into the flare, then pull it off as the airplane settles to the ground. Powered approaches are routinely safer than power-off approaches. Pilot judgment is less stressed, and a little power can make up for a lot of mistakes in the pattern.

Think about how long its been since youve done a power-off landing. In a way, its a shame. The skills they help develop are useful in other ways, such as an engine-out landing. Volumes have been written on forced landings, crash landings, flameouts, engine-out landings, off-airport landings and a host of other colorfully termed dead-engine landing scenarios. Every pilot should have his or her ow…

Last year, my wife and I were flying our newly acquired Piper Cherokee 235 cross-country from Virginia to Oregon, where we planned to help my parents celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary.

After dodging late-summer thunderstorms over Indiana and enjoying big, thick steaks in Grand Island, Neb., we departed for our next refueling stop in Rock Springs, Wyo. We climbed to 10,000 feet and cruised IFR above a low cloud deck. On the airway between North Platte and Scottsbluff, I noticed the oil pressure was beginning to fluctuate slightly.

The big Lycoming O-540 was roaring along and hadnt missed a beat, and the oil temperature was steady and in the green. A few miles later, the fluctu…

I was flying my PA-24-250 Comanche to Lee Airport in Annapolis, Md. It was a beautiful VFR day and, as always, I was taking advantage of ATC flight following. Everything went smoothly until Andrews Approach Control terminated radar services and instructed me to squawk VFR.

Approaching from the south, I noted again the orientation of the single runway, 12-30. There is no automated weather at Lee, so I tuned in to CTAF for traffic advisories and to hear which runway was in use. At this point, things got confusing.

The first response to my call for traffic advisories was a female voice stating she was about to take off using runway 30, and that the wind had been fluky lately. Shortly…

As pilots, I am sure we have all thought about death and the possibility of being involved in a plane crash. If you are like me, you can hear a small plane fly overhead before you see it and look to the sky whenever practical. We read literature on the subject, study and perform refreshers, and try to plan for the possibility that one day we will be forced to endure the five minutes of panic for which we have prepared.

A few months ago, I had the unfortunate opportunity to witness a pilot during these five minutes. It seemed like eternity to me and I cannot imagine how it felt to him. You would think that this pilot was somewhat lucky since he was able to get to an airport when he encoun…