New Richard Bach words on flying! He’s owned 41 planes, flew jets in the USAF, and as West Coast editor of Flying magazine saw loads more. I asked him what’s core to flying them all? “Flying all these aircraft is based on one single prayer that will never come true: Please let me become the sky. From 10 mph in …
Category: Article
Doing Something Uncomfortable
An aerobatic glider instructor I respect a lot counsels pilots wearing parachutes to do one tandem parachute ride. To eliminate a lot of unknowns. To be safer pilots. To experience the fall, the rush, the wind, the brain overload — so that if you ever need to bail out you will not freeze; rather you will orientate and have the headspace to pull …
Aviation Human Factors — 1932 Paper
Clicking around research rabbit holes, reading papers cited by other papers, looking for something else entirely, I came across something in one of the world’s premier medical journals, The Lancet: Preventive Medicine In Its Relation To Aviation, by E. Goodwin Rawlinson (full PDF). From nineteen thirty-two. Yes, 1932. Lots of great quotes: “It must always be an axiom that the …
Hint and Hope
From a major US airline flight crew operating manual: Do not HINT & HOPE. Works well for crew communications in the cockpit, as well as for ATC, mechanics — and maybe marriages?
A Superior Pilot Uses . . .
A superior pilot uses superior SOP to avoid situations which require the use of superior CRM. I think this is true. If I’m disciplined, if I follow standard procedures, it certainly doesn’t solve everything — but it means I have less need to involve the whole team and get creative. Saves that for the really hard stuff, the really …
In the News Today, Living and Dying
Two big news stories today. One sad one happy. Both involve unique planes and expert pilots that I’ve flown with a few times. The sad one first: Man Killed in Plane Crash at Covington Airport was Avid Pilot I flew with Lance Hooley several times in the A320, about 14 years ago, when I was a first officer at the airline …
Fingerspitzengefühl
Fingerspitzengefühl is a German word. (As if you hadn’t already guessed!) It literally means “finger tips feeling”. As such it applies directly to holding the stick or yoke. The student pilot ‘death grip’ is really not helpful. You can’t make smooth gentle control inputs if you’re holding on too tight. And you can’t feel the aircraft talking to you. One …
Morning Checklist
My boys are 6 and 4. School mornings can be … challenging. So this weekend I nailed a checklist in each of their rooms: It worked great! They were actually excited to check off items as they were completed. Of course, how long will this diligence last? How long before the checklist is ignored? It takes us all a while to …
Active Monitoring
How do we monitor autopilots better? How do we stop just sitting and sorta watching the magic show? A major US airline training slide says ‘Active Monitoring’ works by: Visualizing the outcome. Acting to achieve the desired result. & Comparing expectations to reality. Look FOR something, not just AT something. I think they’re on to something. Monitoring …
Wake? Wait!
The standard advice to avoid a wake turbulence encounter is to wait a bit, to give some room when taking off or landing right behind a large aircraft. And that is good, practical, physics-based advice. But what about when you hit wake turbulence and have to recover? What’s being rediscovered is when actually encountering serious wake turbulence, the best thing …