Stupid Pilot Tricks

rdurden

Thursday, December 16, 2021 at 09:34 AM ET

Verified

Cirrus SR22

Key Takeaways:

Many pilot incidents highlight a disregard for fundamental safety procedures, such as neglecting pre-flight checks, ignoring adverse weather conditions, or making basic procedural errors like failing to extend landing gear or remove control locks.
A significant number of "Stupid Pilot Tricks" involve a severe lack of situational awareness, leading to misjudged landings, collisions with terrain or obstacles, and poor judgment during critical flight phases.
Pilots sometimes exhibit astonishingly poor decision-making under pressure, including attempts to delegate vital flight controls to unqualified passengers or a general disregard for aviation regulations and common sense.

See a mistake? Contact us.

Pandemonium reigned, but it wasn’t our fault. We’d snuck into the super-secret gathering of the Official Office of Plane Safety, which is made up of many of the most highly regarded people in the U.S. who’ve devoted their lives to aviation safety. It was the night when the group would let its collective hair down in a massive exercise in schadenfreude as OOPS would announce the winners of the Stupid Pilot Tricks awards for 2018. Yes, we wore Groucho glasses—but so did everyone else. Members of OOPS go to great lengths to remain anonymous.

Well, maybe some of it was our fault. Everything had been so formal. Magnums of champagne were on every table and tuxedoed bartenders prepared boilermakers and would act as timers for those who wished to see how fast they could down them. There was a raised dais for the selection committee and a fancy podium for the speaker. Above it all was a gold-lettered banner with the motto of OOPS: “If I do this, will I look stupid in the NTSB report?”