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PHOTOS COURTESY OF STAN DUNN
GROUND SAFETY
by Stan Dunn
Safety, in an operational sense, is a building block process. Good preflight practices set the stage for ground handling, which sets the stage for takeoff,
climb, cruise, descent, approach, taxiing, parking and tying down. The failure of an individual element can result in not only a costly incident but a dangerous one as well. Good preparation leads to good execution. Process is as important as skill. Experience and education round out the safety circle. What you do on the ground is as important as what you do in the air.
Developing a process that ensures the completion of preflight duties prior to movement is critical. Combining taxiing with other tasks should be avoided when
able and mitigated when not. A good percentage of ground mishaps occur within the context of a task- saturated pilot. Always maintain awareness of your mental load. Are you green, yellow or red? When you are in the green, you are several steps ahead of the aircraft. You know how many intersections before the next turn, where exactly you are in relation to the runway, performance calculations for takeoff have been computed, the flight plan has been programmed, and you are ready to go. If you get a reroute during taxi (or a runway change that affects takeoff performance),
you will slip into the yellow. Your vision will shift from a thousand yards to a hundred. In the red, you are dangling from the tail. Green means go. Yellow means slow. And red means stop. Simple, but hard.
January 2023 / TWIN & TURBINE • 9