Expanding Your Preflights

I recently had the pleasure of talking to a mechanic who ran an extremely well-respected repair shop at a local airport. Folks will fly thousands of miles in their piston singles to receive this top-of-the-line care, and I get it. Once you find someone like a mechanic, barber or AME you can trust, you do whatever is in your power to stick with them. Our conversation turned to some questionable behavior he had witnessed, both from pilots who needed work done and mechanics who performed work that he needed to redo. Nothing worse than getting something fixed, only to have to take it somewhere else because it was never fixed at all. 

His stories varied in severity, from the classic rag or wrench in the cowling to flight controls being installed so movement occurred opposite the pilot’s intention. To top it off, he said the pilots often report they feel the most comfortable hopping into the plane after he gives it the all-clear, because it has been looked over with an extra set of expert eyes.

This mechanic is phenomenal, but nobody is perfect. He tells his customers to take a more careful look at the airplane after major maintenance, despite the customer receiving the airplane’s clean bill of health. This got me thinking about times where an expanded pre-flight might be useful, and different ways to detect anomalies that can occur when we let our airplanes out of our sight. 

A Caveat 

Before I get into the weeds here, a quick disclaimer. All pre-flight inspections should be completed to the manufacturer’s or employer’s specification and should never be shortened, even if situations do not arise warranting an expanded pre-flight. In a perfect world, every pre-flight would be conducted with diligence and without hurry. But our pre-flights are often completed without checklists, and pilots can go months or even years without discovering a safety issue during the pre-flight inspection. 

All of this to say that complacency can sneak its way into our pre-flights. The situations discussed here are not all-encompassing, and the lack of these threats does not mean any portion of the pre-flight should be skipped or shortened.

Maintenance And Repairs

One of the more impactful stories I heard around the proverbial airport watercooler occurred after a repair on an aircraft’s flight controls. During the takeoff roll, the pilot attempted to rotate, but to no avail. Fortunately, there was enough runway remaining to successfully abort the takeoff.

The exact problem escapes me, whether the flight controls were installed incorrectly, or some linkage was missing—but the upshot was that the aircraft did not have elevator control. A flight control check prior to takeoff or even prior to leaving the ramp would have trapped the threat well before rotation speed.

Any maintenance done on an airplane requires scrutiny. A big job, like an annual or overhaul, just needs a slower, more methodical total pre-flight. Look in the cowling and any other accessible areas with a flashlight. If anything looks out of place, bent, broken or disconnected, it is absolutely worth a second set of eyes. As previously mentioned, tools may be left behind accidentally. Just like pilots, mechanics can get distracted and pulled in different directions, which can lead to errors. Blame cellphones if you want. Consciously move slowly through this process. I cannot reiterate enough how often rushing contributes to errors, and this is emphatically not the place to save a few minutes. 

If a specific area of the aircraft was worked on, give it some extra time. Nothing looks better on an airplane than a new propeller or a fresh set of brakes, so admire them. Consider if there is a method to test the system prior to starting the engine. Take brakes, for example. You can press the brakes; ensure they give an even amount of resistance on each pedal and are not spongy. Following this, it is simple enough to check each brake assembly for leaks and other visible mechanical defects. 

Once you do fire it up, a full brake check right out of the chocks is another excellent risk mitigation strategy. Pay extra attention to how they feel during the taxi, especially during turns and coming to a complete stop. Trust your instincts. Often before a major failure, there is a “hair raised on the back of your neck” moment where something feels off. If there is no mention on how to check or test a system in the AFM/POH, consider asking your mechanic how they troubleshoot it or what they do prior to returning the aircraft to service. Any excuse to learn a little more about the airplanes we fly, right?

Weather

In an ideal world, we would all be able to keep our airplanes in one of those beautiful, heated hangars, preferably with a friendly A&P next door to help out with minor fixes and enough room for a couch and fridge to spend some lovely weekends at the airport. So much of life can prevent this, and we often leave airplanes exposed to the elements. Most of the time, this is okay. Our planes are designed to work in the elements, after all. That being said, severe weather can put a literal dent in our planes. 

I was working in the safety department for an operator throughout several hurricanes, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and winter weather. Usually, a bad enough hurricane will warrant moving an aircraft if it cannot be hangared, so other than some minor damage that occurred when a hangar partially collapsed during a hurricane, the worst and most frequent weather damage we encountered was hail. Hail is tricky because severe thunderstorms can evolve so quickly, and often forecasts cannot accurately predict them. In addition to hail, severe thunderstorms can bring wind capable of damaging aircraft. 

Winter weather frequently increases the length of the pre-flight, simply because contaminants like ice and snow need to be removed. Even if on the surface it looks like the snow/ice/frost has melted, extra scrutiny mitigates the threat of finding inconspicuous ice hidden in or under the airframe. 

While it might seem obvious to check for issues caused by weather, you would be amazed at some of the issues that I have seen. Several flight crews flew an aircraft with visible hail damage. It was days before somebody noticed the skin on the upper wing did not look right. Another flight crew started an aircraft and they tried to turn left out of their parking spot, only to find the rudder pedals completely jammed. Turns out there was a microburst at the airport and the winds were strong enough to jam the rudder so far to the right that the flight cables had stretched. The pilot who completed the walkaround noticed the rudder was deflected, but not that it was crunched well past the rudder limiter. 

A common thread in these situations is pilots losing the forest for the trees. Our pre-flights are often conducted looking at specific items, working step by step, checking the boxes one at a time. Taking a literal step back and looking at the airplane as a whole can be illuminating.

Long Sits 

Most machinery isn’t happy sitting around, and airplanes are no different. Rubber seals and gaskets become brittle, fluids leak or dry up, brake pads can seize and all that is before we even think about rust. Anything and everything should be treated with even more scrutiny than normal. I mention test flights but if there is a world where I have the option to take a few laps in the pattern before taking a long-dormant aircraft on a cross country, I take it every time. 

Complacency Struggles

A critical part of maintaining a career flying airplanes is winning the fight against the very human element of complacency. In talking and flying with hundreds, if not thousands, of pilots over my flying journey so far, something that I have learned is pilots are an amalgamation of all the experiences they had while flying. Lessons learned the hard way, through errors or unsafe situations, stick the hardest. All aviators have had earned lumps while learning the ropes, and certain lessons stand out. For example, a pilot with an altitude bust while IFR may be hyper-vigilant with their altitude awareness but fairly cavalier with passenger briefings, because that threat has yet to materialize in an unsafe situation. 

All this is to say two things. The first, which I have said before but bears repeating, is that all pre-flights should be conducted with the utmost vigilance, regardless of what factors exist. The second is that one of the surest remedies for staving off complacency is getting bitten yourself or learning from others’ mistakes. The situations outlined in this article are not hypothetical, but real examples of unexpected damage to aircraft that were overlooked by pilots during the pre-flight. If I can impart just one lesson, it’s that each and every pre-flight is vital. Some situations, like the threats listed here, may arise and they should send alarm bells off. Take some extra time with the airplane before the takeoff roll, where options start to run lean quickly.

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