An old friend was joshing the other day about how I fly my single-engine airplane like it is an airliner. Checklists, procedures, callouts, I do them all. My friend is an airline pilot and I took his remarks as a compliment. I have always thought that if we emulate professional aircrews (to the extent possible) in our light airplanes we’ll both fly them well and fly them more safely. No way we can get the risk down to the airline level no matter how professionally we try to fly, but we can at least make our safety record better. And we don’t have to sit in a terminal for five hours when thunder is heard in the distance.
I’m a list person, so I thought I would make a list of essential elements to the successful completion of a flight. In many cases, lessons are taken from the way that professional crews fly airplanes. This puts our operations beyond what is required under Part 91 of the FARs.
