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approach and landing? According to the FSF study, training, experience, and culture regarding the go-around are major contributing factors.
The go-around, an essential and standard maneuver when an approach or landing is unsafe, is often forgotten after the check ride. Speaking from my own experience, I busted my first type rating after a bungled VOR approach. I bugged an incorrect localizer fre- quency and struggled to troubleshoot the issue. At the same time, in the simulated soup and at MDA — instead of recognizing the go-around as my get-out-of-jail-card option — it took my DPE to remind me, “Perhaps you want to go around?”
The FSF’s findings echoed my men- tality – stable or unstable, pilots and crews wanted to land the plane. Crew’s noncompliance with go-around pro- cedures, get-there-itis, and industry culture accepting or tolerating non- compliance reinforced those habits and patterns. Sprinkle in minimal real-world go-around experience, fear of go-around risks, and challenging ATC instructions in a high workload environment, and all of this adds up to pilots making ALAs instead of go- arounds.
Charlie and the CJP Safety Commit- tee were concerned about the high rate of runway excursions — 50% of all acci- dents — among all Citation aircraft op- erators, including CJP members. They began to wonder what habits Citation pilots had developed that contributed to these runway excursions and how they could help pilots be better.
Recognizing that approaches and landings were the predominant causes of accidents or incidents, the CJP Safe- ty and Education Foundation hired the Presage Group in 2021 to survey CJP members and explore what may be contributing to this alarming statistic.
Following the survey, two parallel initiatives were born: Safe To Land (STL) and Flight Data Monitoring (FDM).
STL’s primary goal is not to dictate how pilots should operate their aircraft but to provide them with insights that encourage thoughtful and safe f lying.
Recognizing the psychological hurdles for pilots, STL added a new “yellow zone” to the traditional approach stan- dards of stable (green) and go-around (red). Pilots can acknowledge the un- stable approach issue, attempt to fix it, and then have a commitment point to execute a go-around.
Recognizing that some approaches go unstable below the 200-foot gate and even as late as in the touchdown zone, the STL procedures add to the traditional Stable Approach criteria by including Touchdown Zone Gates for landing factors like f loating or drifting and go-around decision points where continuing to attempt to touchdown could result in an overrun. These points are called touchdown point limits, and reference markers on the runway used as visual cues (inter- secting taxiways, runway remaining markers, etc.).
In a testament to CJP’s members and STL efforts, while Citation pilots still have ALAs and excursions, CJP members have had zero incidents or accidents since STL’s inception.
STL’s sister initiative, FDM, was created to apply Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) practices that charter operations and airlines were using and bring them to the GA level. By collecting voluntary f light data and aggregating it with data from similar airframes and operating con- ditions, CJP hoped to identify trends and provide educational insights to its members.
Excitement and early adoption of the FDM program were sluggish
compared to STL. Many pilots were apprehensive about the notion of ‘Big Brother’ having access to their f light data, fearing potential repercussions.
Recognizing the valid concerns sur- rounding data privacy, Precourt reas- sured, “We’ve taken the precaution of anonymizing data from the very inception of this initiative and have implemented stringent mechanisms to safeguard the anonymity of all con- tributors.”
“Neither I nor any other CJP person- nel can access your individual f light data. We’ve entrusted this responsi- bility to a designated entity that me- ticulously upholds the privacy of our system.”
This data’s entrusted guardian is CloudAhoy (now operating as Fore- Flight Flight Data Analysis). Their selection was predicated on their da- ta-centric approach to f light analysis and debriefing tools, ensuring that all shared data remains encrypted and securely relayed for comprehensive aggregation and trend analysis.
Another challenge for CJP’s FDM was gathering data across a fleet span- ning decades and numerous software and technology iterations. Convention- al airlines spend significant sums, well into six figures per aircraft, on captur- ing and analyzing f light data. Thank- fully, one of CJP’s sponsors, AirSync, was able to save significant sums by providing hardware for automatical- ly capturing and securely transmit- ting f light data through AirSync Web Services to the user’s account and the various third-party analysis
January 2024 / TWIN & TURBINE • 11