Teaching Threat and Error Management
Include threat and error management from the beginning of flight training. For an activity peppered with so many potential hazards, aviation has achieved a remarkable safety level since its perilous early days, most especially when thinking about public transport (or ‘Commercial Air Transport’) operation in recent decades. Much of the progress in the safety arena has come not just from technological advances per se, but from an...
Busy Flight, Distractions, Minus Landing Checks
After flying to another airfield, where the pilot flying had just revalidated an instrument rating, the pilot and examiner returned towards the base airfield for the pilot to complete a multi-engine proficiency check. The check concluded at the base where a number of circuits were to be flown. Downwind on the final circuit, the aircraft was configured for a simulated asymmetric approach and landing, with intermediate flaps selected...
Achtung Mobile Phone: Loose Objects
I was several hours into a tail-wheel conversion course with my instructor at my flying club. During taxi to the runway hold point we heard a ‘thump’ in the aircraft. My mobile phone had fallen out of my back pocket and onto the floor space at the instructor’s feet (the seating configuration of this aircraft type means the occupants sit in front/behind each other rather than side by side). The instructor picked up...
