Monday, March 7, 2011

"Preflight? You don't need no steenking preflight!"

As I preflighted a rental J3 Cub last fall, an older gent, kind of scruffy looking, was keeping me company, though we'd never met.
A pilot and airport regular, he quickly revealed his belief about preflighting in general.
Even the well-intentioned can compromise a good preflight
“Aw,” he said, rubbing his grizzled chin, “just go.  It’s a Cub, it's fine, just get in it and takeoff."
I looked at him, wondering if he was kidding.  He wasn’t.
“Well, thanks...I think...,” I replied, mildly annoyed, “but I think I'll just finish up here if you don't mind."
“Naw," he said, waving at the air, "just jump in and go, it’s alright.”
I ignored him and his distracting insistence, wondering what his game was.
We didn’t know each other. He had no reason, or right for that matter, to try and persuade me to skip a vital part of good airmanship practice.
Perhaps, I thought, he's an angel sent to cement my determination to do things right.  See, I get excited about flying.  I tend to want to rush through the essential but boring stuff, like a proper preflight, and get to the fun stuff, like grabbing some air.
So I have to consciously discipline myself to slow down and do things right -- hitting all the points on a checklist is another example -- otherwise I might scatterbrain myself into an emergency.
And who thinks trading off that five or ten minutes on the ground is worth the minutes of sheer panic or hours of fixing whatever went wrong that can come of it?
 Case in point: I learned to take preflight seriously in my hang gliding days in the early '70s.  More than once, I personally witnessed pilots assemble their gliders on a high mountain ridge, check everything over, climb into their harness, walk to the launch... then charge off the hill, only to discover in sheer terror they’d forgotten the most essential part of pre-launch hang gliding: to hook the harness into the glider!
Hanging helpless by their hands from the bottom of the control bar, the glider, catastrophically weighted well forward of CG, would plummet toward the ground at a negative 30 degree or more angle.
I know, it sounds stupid: who would forget to hook in, after all?
You'd be amazed.
Many veteran pilots and newbies alike get so comfortable, so casual, they simply hurry to the launch, eager to get airborne, and forget to clip in.  In fact, it's one of the biggest causes of injury and death in that sport.  And to this day, I read now and then of a forgotten hook-in.
Pilots may do everything right with the glider and his harness, but think they're beyond needing to ask for a “hang check” -- an important part of preflight where someone at launch holds the nose level so the pilot can lay out prone and make sure the harness and 'chute lines aren't tangled.
Of course, the prime benefit of a hang check is that you verify you're hooked in.
I personally screamed at a pilot not long ago, seconds before he launched, that he wasn't hooked in.
I might have saved his life.
Shook up by how close he'd come to disaster, he moved the glider away from launch and sat down to think long and hard about why he'd spaced out such an essential step.
Skipping preflight for a Cub, or a SkyCatcher, or a Boeing 787, carries the same risk of catastrophe.  Why even go there?
Back to my Cub preflight: I asked my "airport angel" why he would ever suggest someone skip a preflight?
“Aw, it's a Cub, it’s been flying for 60 years, nothing’s going to happen to it.”
Giving him a look, thinking that a senior citizen like the Cub deserves even closer scrutiny, I gave him a look, politely disagreed and finished up, then went for a nice flight.
After I landed, having thought about his casual indiscretion, I looked for him but he’d left. 
I did tell the guys who run the FBO that they had a guy wandering around the field spouting dangerous advice.  What, I pondered, if he’d given the same spiel to some young, impressionable, easily-intimidated student pilot?
Looking out for each other when we fly is an important piloting virtue.  It doesn't serve us, nor the flying community, to act like Top Gun loners who neither volunteer, nor accept, needed advice.
The next time I see that dude, I’m going to both thank him for reinforcing my good habits, and ask him this: “What the hell do you think you’re doing suggesting that pilots skip preflights?”
Because that kind of dumb thinking, plain and simple, is what gets pilots killed.

6 comments:

ザイツェヴ said...

A young impressionable student pilot is going to have a CFI.

James Lawrence said...

In my experience, CFI's are not always glued to their students...especially during preflights.

Anonymous said...

Just to press the "devil's advocate" case here, is there any evidence that preflights actually work often enough to be worth the amount of time spent on them?
I've read about problems that "could have been" found on a "thorough" preflight, but realistic preflights are not amateur annual inspections (the preflight tips given in a recent FAA publication including checking AD compliance for rental aircraft, which as we all know is very practical and something everyone always does).
I'm sure that some problems are, indeed, found - but are we collectively spending tens, hundreds - or millions - of hours inspecting airplanes for each real problem found?
In a lifetime of flying, what are the chances that a routine preflight will actually prevent an emergency?
And, if preflights are helpful in identifying problems, what are the problems they help identify? (In other words, where should we focus our time?)
Does anyone know?
(Not that any of this means I plan to stop preflighting...)
- Thomas

James Lawrence said...

Thomas, (you "devil's advocate" you), that's a thought worthy of pursuing.
I can remember a couple times I've found glitches that would have definitely presented problems during flight -- a loose fuel line (lost it's clamp) and a missing prop bolt, no lie! Still haven't figured that one out.
But I'd like to invite readers to contribute their own experiences and let's see whether your "advocacy" holds up.
Personally, in your hypothetical lifetime of flying, if I miss the one time that boring, routine preflight might have prevented, say, an aerial fire or tail flutter from a loose bolt or an aileron locking up...well, my lifetime of flying could end right there.
For me, that's the philosophy and practicality behind preflights: preventing that thing you might have caught on the ground from ruining your whole day from the air.
See, deep at heart, I'm a big chicken. Somebody said to me recently, "It's a machine. It's not 'if' it will fail, only 'when'".
My chicken heart wants to keep the
"when" part on the ground where I can deal with it.
Everybody, please weigh in on this subject. Thomas poses a good question: How necessary, really, is the common preflight?

Anonymous said...

James,
Looks like it might just be you and me.
Here's my beef: whenever I read "how to preflight" articles (especially by the FAA) they read more like a full-on annual inspection. This is simply impractical.
Also, the fact that many aircraft require removal of the cowl to inspect the engine (or anything more than the oil level) suggests that the designers did not intend for a quick-annual-inspection before each flight, and whatever the safety-nerds suggest, most people aren't going to unscrew the cowl every time.
On the other hand, there are some things that can be checked easily and quickly, so why wouldn't you? (control surface hinges, control linkages, puddled brake fluid...)
Then again, there are some things that lead to SUCH a bad experience that maybe you DO want to look at them every time; and that's particularly true when it's a rental aircraft. Fires are a particularly bad outcome, for example, but until recently I didn't know that PA-28s have a fire hazard under the back seat, nor did I know that on some aircraft the fuel lines may be held in place - or not - by nothing more than a hose clamp (seriously?!?).
A "reasonable" preflight is probably somewhere between "do a full tear-down - you never know" and "just kick the tires, it'll be fine". Mine has historically included a visual inspection of the exterior, control linkages and control surface hinges, and the wheels/brakes to the extent they're visible (all because they're easy to do so why wouldn't you?), plus prop condition, oil level and fuel inspection (all potential sources of catastrophic failures). It's unlikely I'll ever add "check for complete AD compliance," but maybe "check for loose fuel hose clamps" should get added in (a potential source of extremely catastrophic failure) even though it might mean unscrewing the cowl on every flight.
What else might I be missing where the probability x risk is high enough to justify the time/effort to inspect it?
- Thomas

James Lawrence said...

Thanks for your comments Thomas, much appreciated. Sounds like you are saying in general that a practical vs. by-the-letter preflight is better than none at all, and that's my exact philosophy. My goal with this blog post was to champion the idea that there are too many distractions and
"Gotta-rush!" excuses these days for avoiding the formation of good, safe flying practices, and I sure don't want anybody making it even harder for us to perform basic safe-flying practices. I'm scatter-brained enough already.
And you're a better man than I: I try not to read FAA preflight articles, just makes my head spin.
I do believe proper preflights will occasionally catch things...and also that there are potentially catastrophic things we'll never catch...that's what annuals are meant to address.
In the latest EAA Sport Pilot, a reprised WWII study and a more recent, similar study of GA squawks and mechanical failures proved that the more frequently mandatory (vs. as-required) maintenance is scheduled...the greater the likelihood and actual incidence of mechanical failure.
Now that was reassuring -- NOT!
Syncs up nicely with the "if it ain't broke..." street philosophy.
PA-28 rear seat fires? Yikes, there's a nightmare.
I think I'll just stick with intuition...and the proverbial wing and a prayer. And good preflights.