In 1974, I traveled to the scene of the fatal crash of my father’s business partner. My dad and I drove to a wet, dreary field near Merkel, Texas, where the Beech Bonanza had spun out of control, instantly killing the pilot. I was twenty-two years old. Seeing a few tiny body fragments still scattered in the debris made an indelible impression on me.
I have been keenly interested in aviation accidents ever since.
Over the last 50 years, the airline industry’s safety record has been truly remarkable. Imagine thousands of flights daily all over the world in all sorts of weather. And yet a fatal crash is a rarity. How do they do this?
They made flying boring.
By boring, I mean routine. The airline industry created a vast support system, from weather analysts to simulator training facilities and dispatch centers that provide instant information to assist the crew’s decision-making process.
Boring is safe. Extremely safe.
But pilots like you and me don’t fly because it’s boring. We fly because it’s exciting. There is an inherent thrill of adventure every time we launch into the unknown. But we are nowhere near as safe.
So, how can we adopt some of the hugely successful procedures the airline crews use and still retain the “thrill” we seek?
Charlie Precourt, Chairman of the Citation Jet Pilot’s safety committee, has a suggestion. Working with the Presage Group of Canada, he organized a team of CJP members to study the increasing number of runway overruns in owner-flown jets. Why is it that too often we refuse to go around in unstable situations and slide off the runway, causing millions of dollars in damage every year?
It turns out that the folks from Presage, led by CEO Dr. Martin Smith, have worked with airlines around the world to change behavior in the cockpit on this very issue. This is a pretty big deal because pilots don’t like to change how we do things. Presage developed new, easy callouts for use during the approach phase to increase awareness of unstable situations like excessive airspeed and bank angle. They developed simple standards to determine when a go-around is necessary. Most importantly, they persuaded curmudgeons like me to adopt simple verbalizations of the situations.
Their research was validated using 20 volunteer CJP pilots flying over 200 approaches in simulators donated by FlightSafety International in Wichita. Now, instead of just being complacent about flying too fast on the approach, I have specific verbal callouts at 1,000 feet, 500 feet, minimums and over the threshold. And if I am not correcting for drift caused by crosswinds or floating down the runway due to excessive airspeed, I have specific callouts to initiate a go around.
The CJP Safety Foundation then produced a briefing card I keep in the cockpit to remind me how it all flows together. And over the next year or so, CJP will roll out a new training initiative called Safe To Land (citationjetpilots.com/safetoland).
The darn stuff works. And while the program is designed specifically for single pilot Citations, many of the procedures are applicable to all general aviation aircraft.
It really is possible to up my game while still enjoying the freedom of flying.
Fly safe.
