Risk And Consequences

One of the first and most obvious choices we make when using a personal airplane is routing. We want to get from Point A to Point B, usually by the shortest, most direct route. So far, so good. What if that route increases the consequences of the risk in question, namely that our sole powerplant will fail at the worst possible time? Maybe change the route?

Joseph E. (Jeb) Burnside

Tuesday, March 07, 2017 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

In personal aviation, flight conditions such as night, IMC, or rugged terrain primarily increase the *consequences* of an inflight problem (e.g., engine failure), rather than significantly changing the *likelihood* of the problem occurring.
Effective risk management focuses on minimizing these potential consequences through strategic adjustments, including optimizing flight routes to avoid hazardous areas, "time-shifting" flights to more favorable weather or daylight conditions, and utilizing appropriately equipped aircraft.
Pilots flying single-engine aircraft in challenging environments must be fully aware of the heightened consequences of potential failures and proactively employ flexibility in planning, route selection, and aircraft suitability to enhance safety.

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Consider a route I’ve flown several times before: from the Washington, D.C., area to Asheville, N.C. Back before GPS, you eventually got on V222 at Lynchburg, Va., and motored off to the southwest. The highest minimum en route altitude (MEA) is/was 6000 feet, and flying it in good visual conditions (VMC) highlights why: This is some of the highest, most rugged terrain east of the Mississippi River.

Flying that route is a nothingburger in good-day VMC, even in a basic single. The engine is no more likely to quit over mountains than anyplace else, and engine failures always are problematic when flying a single. But what if we changed the flight’s conditions to, say, bumpy night IMC in that same basic single? Suddenly, that nothingburger got spicy.