2008 Woodie Awards
Complacency: dangerous when flying
Ken Fukayama
Issue date: 3/10/08 Section: News
You've carefully thought out all the angles. You've done it a thousand times. It comes naturally to you. You know what you're doing, it's what you've been trained to do your whole life. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right?
We have all seen this slide show during safety briefings at the start of your new ground school sessions. It is a funny depiction of something we should never allow to happen.
A feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger or getting too comfortable with the situation: a definition of complacency. It happens to people everyday, but as pilots it is crucial we understand this attitude because of the potential high risk in aviation. We can become complacent on daily routine flights with normal things during preflight, normal operations, and checklists.
As a student pilot starts preflighting with their instructor, the student pays attention to every detail of the plane, learning it, and understanding what to look for. As a semester or two goes by and the student is up for their final flights, their preflight is probably much quicker and if they have never experienced a defect or problem to this point with the aircraft it is possible for them to assume nothing is out of place and proceed to fly because they were late receiving the aircraft. The same thing can happen to the instructor who has already flown twice that day; they do a quick walk around and hop in, not noticing the low brake pad on the left main.
On the same day with a different pilot during takeoff, this pilot reaches down and grabs a pen to log his time off for his cross country. At that exact moment, with his head down, the right tire blows, he tries to gain control first with the rudder pedals and then with the throttle. The reaction time is too late; he is already headed towards the dirt before he could reach for the throttle. This pilot ended up in the grass because every time he had taken off before it had been without any abnormalities.
We have all seen this slide show during safety briefings at the start of your new ground school sessions. It is a funny depiction of something we should never allow to happen.
A feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger or getting too comfortable with the situation: a definition of complacency. It happens to people everyday, but as pilots it is crucial we understand this attitude because of the potential high risk in aviation. We can become complacent on daily routine flights with normal things during preflight, normal operations, and checklists.
As a student pilot starts preflighting with their instructor, the student pays attention to every detail of the plane, learning it, and understanding what to look for. As a semester or two goes by and the student is up for their final flights, their preflight is probably much quicker and if they have never experienced a defect or problem to this point with the aircraft it is possible for them to assume nothing is out of place and proceed to fly because they were late receiving the aircraft. The same thing can happen to the instructor who has already flown twice that day; they do a quick walk around and hop in, not noticing the low brake pad on the left main.
On the same day with a different pilot during takeoff, this pilot reaches down and grabs a pen to log his time off for his cross country. At that exact moment, with his head down, the right tire blows, he tries to gain control first with the rudder pedals and then with the throttle. The reaction time is too late; he is already headed towards the dirt before he could reach for the throttle. This pilot ended up in the grass because every time he had taken off before it had been without any abnormalities.
Be the first to comment on this story