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my COVID mask, nod and say thank you. And when the FO flew the leg, I always say it was the copilot’s leg and landing, not the first officer but the copilot. I want for them to hear the pilot word. But on this day in MIA, I was disappointed in myself as a pilot not only because it was my error that created the need to go-around, but I lied to my passengers about the reason I did it. Here’s the truth.
Arrogance Syndrome Rehabilitation
There I was, in my painted 737 (as opposed to a shiny MD-80). It was a one-leg day, ORD to MIA, in daylight, decent weather, with a 24-hour lay- over in a COVID-ruled hotel with a COVID-ruled, but delicious, seafood restaurant next door. The trip signed in at 0415 for a 0515 departure so we were finished and in our hotel rooms by 1000. My FO and I hadn’t flown together yet on the 737 but had been paired together a handful of times in the Mad Dog. Except for the 0245 alarm clock, it’s an easy peasy trip – not hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. The two-hour f light was, however, punctuated with the
28 • TWIN & TURBINE / August 2020
MIA-typical runway selection/change ritual in the last few minutes. I had done this trip four or five times in the previous couple of months and since our gates are on the north side of the terminal, we had repeatedly been as- signed one of the north-side runways: 8R ILS or 8L RNAV GPS, all from the SSCOT-5 RNAV arrival.
Knowing this in the descent, I loaded and briefed the 8L RNAV GPS because it’s easier to switch to the ILS from the RNAV than to switch to the RNAV from the ILS. But this time we got the ILS to 9R – no big deal. The process of flying an approach includes loading the FMS, tuning and identifying the NAV radios, setting the radar and baro. altimeter mins, then briefing the approach to the other pilot. We have acronyms to help remember the process, including the FMS steps: “check-plus-two” covers the FMS and setting up the HUD. A semi- optional step is to use the fix-page to put a 2-mile ring around the FAF/glide path intercept point. This gives us a heads up to intercept the descent path and finish getting configured.
I forgot this step. The 2-mile ring step, not the get configured step, and it bit me in my lazy hinny. Not
because I skipped it, but because I tried to complete the step instead of a more important step, which was pushing the GS capture button. I instead created the 2-mile ring around INESS. We were level at 3,000 feet, in the weather at GRITT, and by the time I finished cre- ating the ring and armed the GS cap- ture mode, we were past the descent path and too far above the glide slope to salvage a stable approach. After we went around, I told my passengers that we were too close to the aircraft landing in front of us. I lied – what a pudknocker.
At Home in the Sky
A well-adjusted person is one
who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.
– Alexander Hamilton
I’m coming up on 30,000 hours in the sky: 2,000 military, 2,000 in the Guppy, 18,000 in the Mad Dog and the rest in GA. Comfortable and con- fident describes how accustomed I am to being in an airplane. Oftentimes my biggest threat of the day is not overconfidence but being compla- cent – lazy. Like when you think to