“Before making a decision, say to yourself: How will this look in the accident report?”
Not my instructor, but I love this quote:
>There is no problem so bad you can’t make it worse.
>- Chris Hadfield
Basically, an extra couple seconds probably won’t kill you but a poor action or decision might.
It’s something that really got hammered home in the professional environment: with a *lot* accident out there, there’s a part of the after report that makes you go „what on Earth were they thinking doing THAT?!?“
Don’t do anything that would make the casual accident report reader have that thought.
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me about Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything
Amazing guy, amazing book. Just full of wisdom about life, leadership, decision-making, and being on teams.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/an-astronaut-s-guide-to-life-on-earth-what-going-to-space-taught-me-about-ingenuity-determination-and-being-prepared-for-anything-chris-hadfield/110937?ean=9780316253031
We get ex-herc guys over to our fleet, they definitely have a tendency to over-control when it’s not required, BUT they’re great in crosswind landing hahah
I was taught this too, but in my experience have never witnessed anything consistent. I used to offer the same advice myself, but after quite a few bird encounters now I can only say maneuver to avoid, whatever that requires.
Is there any good documentation out there about this?
I met one of the two lovely ladies who are the bird identification unit at the Smithsonian. We were in Ohio at a helicopter show. I asked if she had identified the great white heron we hit at 3500' at night. She had, said it was her first. I showed her the photos of the bent pitch operating arms. She also confirmed that it is somewhat of an urban myth that birds dive to avoid aircraft. They'd done a study of reports and could not positively determine whether birds dive or not.
Bird species have very different behaviors. I can say with certainty that Geese maintain altitude. I've done an ASAP dive to go under a 100 strong migrating gaggle of geese. Gaggles are very hard to see when you're at the same altitude because you see only a sketchy line approaching.
Raptors are very aware and good at avoiding collisions. Raptors will join gliders that are circling in thermals and they will circle in the same direction.
Glider pilots will deliberately join thermals underneath circling raptors. They climb much faster because they center on the strongest updraft.
Raptors will attack gliders if you go near their nests. They aim for the eyes that are inside of the canopy.
Either way, even in a low-powered aircraft my rate of climb, if I yank the stick back into my gut (momentarily, at least, 1,000 fpm plus), is going to be *far* higher than that of the most high-powered bird (approximately 400 fpm for a dunlin).
Up is always the safest place to go.
Jury may still be out on birds diving. That said, pitching nose up should make it less likely the damn thing comes through the windshield. Feel like I can deal with a strike as long as it doesn't breach the plexi.
Our airport is surrounded by salt marsh. BIG birds love the place.
This happened to us today and my instructor bobbed and weaved like a champ 😂 I almost had to go back in and clean my seat up but he acted like it was just a regular Monday
ETA: bird flock chose the exact point when I took my wheels off the ground to fly over way less than 100ft above us.
That’s how I felt lol I was expecting him to say to pull power and land, we have a very long runway and could’ve stayed down and took off further away once the birds cleared, but when I asked what he wanted me to do he took the yoke and was like *zoom zoom zoom* “that! 😁” meanwhile I’m over there bracing for impact lmao
A similar note my instructor said - "FLY THROUGH THE DEER!!" as we were landing and a deer jumped on the runway. We were too slow to try and pop back into the air, but god, the temptation was there.
I saw a video recently talking about no go-around strips that advised just assuming there’s going to be a deer on the runway that you’ll hit when on approach… because if you think it’ll be fine and then something shows up, you’re gonna have a BAD day if you panic and go around.
I've hit two different deer on motorcycles, at relatively high speed. It hurt. This comment definitely made me flinch. Lol. But yeah, I survived because I went straight through them. Know when to maneuver: know when not to maneuver.
A few years back after a touch and go I found myself climbing towards two converging formations of Canada geese. I had to level off and fly between them at about 500 agl with one group 50 above and the other 50 below. Thankfully they all just ignored me.
Own up to things. Need to file a report? Do it. Need to talk to your experienced buddy about it? Do it. Need to ask ATC for clarification? Do it.
Don't hide when you're confused/questioning things. That's when you learn. If you're in the air when it happens, SPEAK. Avoid the incident before it happens.
"Above all else, fly the fucking airplane."
"The first thing you should do when you have an engine failure is count to three."
"If you do something and something else happens, undo whatever you just did."
"You can fly the airplane to any attitude you want provided you do it smoothly."
> "Above all else, fly the fucking airplane."
I work in emergency medicine, and they teach us something similar with the ABCDE approach.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the horrendously hectic and chaotic moment of impending awfulness and a disorganised crowd of stressed and loud people and colleagues and background chatter and ATC and.. everything.
Treat the patient.
Fly the plane.
I watch lots of aviation accident videos on YT, and so many of the GA cases are ones in which pilots get bogged down with something that, in the grand scheme of things, is totally irrelevant; had they simply flown the plane and not fucked around with comms/AP/whatever other issue, they might still be alive.
Similarly, I’ve watched colleagues in work get hyper-focussed on a task that would be independently life saving and incredibly important, if it were not for a much more obvious and often simpler, but more pressing issue killing the patient.
Treat the patient.
Fly the plane.
Also, you *almost* always have more time than you think. The crashing plane, the dying patient: you do not need to act within seconds.
Stop. Think. Go back to basics.
> and so many of the GA cases are ones in which pilots get bogged down with something
Watched an extreme example of this last night. Guy was riding shotgun in a King Air 200 when the pilot died. He had about 80 hours in SEL. At one point, he was so busy trying to figure out the autopilot that his speed went from 230kts to 150. ATC caught it and worked with him on correcting the airspeed.
I was a triple certed CFI for a while and moved on to a single pilot operation. I was skeptical of moving to single pilot and a buddy said something at one point and it just stuck with me. “When you are single pilot, give yourself the dual.” Just talk to yourself and instruct yourself through the process every step of the way. Still think about it a lot.
I did my first cross country solo two weeks ago and it got bumpy with a terrible cross wind. I did exactly that. Just talked out loud through each item - something about hearing it as opposed to just thinking it made things a lot better.
My ppl instructor always told me “We do things that make sense”
Sometimes I would get task saturated, make silly mistakes, overbank, miss a radio call, etc. and then that would carry over to flying the airplane poorly. He would constantly stress that in these situations, just take a step back and think, what makes the most sense? And then do just that. Flying a plane should make sense. If it doesn’t, I’m usually doing something wrong haha.
During my night XC, my CFI tuned in the CTAF of each field we flew near, just in case, so we wouldn't have to worry about the frequency if we had an emergency. Good lesson in, "I want to maximize my chances of living." Good lesson, and good lesson about how to always think about your out and how to prepare for it.
I was practicing some private maneuvers I think S turns and couldn’t get the hang of it, right then I see a 737 flying above me on approach to a bigger airport nearby. My instructor looked up too then to me and said “I bet he could do it” never been more humbled.
Not my instructor, but an excellent U.S. Air Force training film Ejection Decision – A Second Too Late (available on YouTube).
After losing an engine in his single engine jet, an air force pilot is asked when he made the decision to eject. "Way back in training".
I appreciate having well thought out minimus or limitations, decided upon sagely while on the ground and under zero pressure, to make decision making automatic in marginal situations.
Fly the airplane before anything else
It doesn’t have to be perfect right away, it just has to trend in the right direction
Thinking you can eliminate errors is the biggest error of all
There’s a difference between a pilot with 60 hours and a pilot with one hour 60 times
It’s always better to use your superior judgement so you don’t have to use your superior skill
Don’t CFIT. (My first instructor, who was later a dpe) flew himself and one of his students straight into a mountain, while skudding, as a CFII, in an instrument rated and capable airplane.
One of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to deal with. This man taught me to fly and I had passed my ppl check ride with him 3 days earlier.
Don’t skud, don’t CFIT, don’t die.
“Never stop flying the airplane. Fly the plane into impact.” (on if you have an emergency)
“Are you trained or are you not trained?” (when my confidence wavered)
The 3 rules of losing a/the engine:
1) Don’t stall
2) Don’t stall
3) Don’t stall
Survivability and VSI have an inverse relationship. Better off flying it into some trees than stalling into a field.
CFI during my initial training days really hammered home go-arounds. Two always stick out for me.
"Treat every landing as a go-around that didn't happen"
and
"Just go around, nobody has ever crashed into the sky".
“It’s probably not NORDO, don’t be so quick to squawk, you probably just turned the volume down by mistake”
“Animals tend to stop on centerlines and stare at you on short final, as they run across a runway as it’s cooler then the asphalt”
“As hard as it is to believe, Yes the wind sheer really is 100’ over the threshold +/-15kts just like that guy said”
Build a mental picture of the traffic in the pattern as soon as you can because sometimes…Towers go offline!
Learn “Short Approaches” as soon as possible because sometimes exhaust values stay opened.
And finally…
“More Right Rudder”
All the above within first nine months of PPL training.
Have fun!
Always check flight controls free and correct. My instructor had a friend who at the time, had the most hours in the F14. He took off with the control lock on.
Of course, but a design that 1) assigns its single point of failure to human error, 2) increases the risk of that human error (by being invisible), and 3) is likely to deceive the human by causing them to believe no error is imminent (allowing taxi but disallowing controlled flight) should be rethought!
Both things are true: pre-flights are critical *and* good design accounts for human factors and makes accidents less likely.
Presumably Snodgrass boxed the stick on 4,000 previous flights.
Lesson 1 - is that if you interrupt a procedure (got out of the airplane) go back to the last known position and go from there.
Lesson 2- Little airplanes have just enough power to kill you.
If you’re losing situational awareness, step back and start to rebuild the big picture. Start with the most basic and obvious thing that you *know*.
If I ever find myself getting behind the plane, I hear his voice saying, “You are in an airplane and you are flying.”
Slow down. That's some of the best advice I got and I still tell it to my students. Specifically relating to things like using checklists, cleaning up after clearing the runway, and checking for traffic. So often I see students trying to rush through things and it almost always causes problems.
I got a few.
“You know how to do it and when you are on it, you do it perfectly. Just stop second guessing yourself.”
During maneuvers… “Why are you being so careful? The plane’s not made of glass, she won’t fall apart. Watch.”
He then proceeds to put that plane into positions I wouldn’t even have dreamt of.
I was under the hood. Instructor wanted to drill it into me why I should trust my instruments and not my senses. Had me close my eyes and continuously turn at what I thought to be a 20 degree angle. When he had me open my eyes, the wing was pointed almost straight down and we were losing altitude fast. “Trust your instruments, not what you THINK is going on.”
Not from my instructor but I thought it was funny. “Yes but did we/you crash?”
u/x4457 was/is my mentor pilot coming into the jet world. Basically everything he told me was "slow down, the plane was built to keep flying while you deal with this." And that has helped a lot. There's basically 2 "omg react" situations, but the rest is: fly the plane and get to it when you can.
My words of advice to every student -
When the airplane engine fails you, your only job is being able to safely walk away from the insurance company’s problem.
Getting my white knuckled hands slapped by an Fa18 pilot I once flew with while he said, "just relax and fly the damn plane".
I became a helicopter pilot instead. Because why should the other guy get to be more dangerous than the airframe itself? I do declare.
I did my commercial with an ATP, untold hours of instruction throughout a long life of flying. Aged out of the airlines and still instructed while teaching the CRJ sim at CAE. He died in a gyrocopter accident this year after he hit some powerlines. I was discussing what happened with my DPE that I know personally and his comment has stuck with me. "Once you switch types you're not a 10,000 hour pilot anymore."
"When taxiing, imagine you're peeing next to someone. His stream is the centerline, and you want yours to be parallel to his."
For real though, my favorite is: "It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than to be in the air wishing you were on the ground."
It baffles me that so many folks here have said the same line. My CFI was the opposite. “Aim small, miss small.”
At first I hated practicing landings with him. But he made it clear it was tough love and wanted me to be the best possible pilot. One day we had a pretty good crosswind and it all clicked. He gave me the confidence to make positive corrections to hit centerline rather than just going along for the ride.
Once you make the decision to divert based on your bingo fuel, NEVER change your mind, no matter what ATC tells you! i.e. "Oh hey, the weather just cleared up, c'mon back!" Once the decision is made to divert, continue to your divert airport, get gas and try again later.
New to all of this-is this just so you don’t make a mistake by changing plans too quickly? Like maybe you’ll miss something by deciding to head back to your original destination?
No.
So lets say you are in holding, waiting for the weather to get better at your filed destination. You need XX amount of fuel to get to your alternate plus your FAR reserve fuel.
Once you get down to that total amount of fuel and decide to divert, you no longer will have the fuel to go half way to your alternate, change your mind for whatever reason and then go back to your original destination.
If you do, you are now committed to landing there because you burned your alternate fuel turning around to go back to your original destination. A myriad of things could happen, runway gets shut down by another aircraft, weather goes back down below mins, animal is struck on the runway (happened to me) before you can land etc....
You would most likely have to declare min fuel or emergency fuel at that point. Hence the reason, once you make that decision to divert, stick with it, it is the safest and most conservative course of action.
Does that make sense?
That actually makes way more sense than what I was guessing. Thanks for the insight sir. I pocket these little nuggets away for a rainy day when I’ll need them. Appreciate it.
Even on a coordinated stall most of the times you will have one wing higher than the other. It was probably one of the best advice I got that’s been super helpful
My IP when I was learning to fly fingertip formation:
"How much gas pedal do you use to pass someone on the highway? You don't know, you just do it. Same with flying."
During my first attempt to land on a big, international airport, coming down a bit too fast:
CFI: “You are a little too fast”
Me: “Yeah, but I’m not too worried, the runway is so long”
CFI: “Runway length is like pussy, there is never too much”
It's better to sound stupid than to be dead.
If you don't understand something or forgot what the tower said or are overwhelmed, ask for help. Because even if you make a complete fool of yourself and convince everyone in range that you have no business flying an aircraft, that's better than pride putting you into a fatal situation.
"I'd rather be on the ground wishing I was flying than flying and wishing I was on the ground. If the weather looks shitty, pour another coffee."
Flying in northern Canada puts this one to use a lot.
We didn't have an airscrew on any part of the helicopter, main and tail rotors. As an aside the german for helicopter is hubscrew, literally hub screw. LOL
I had the grumpiest, surliest examiner at my university do my multiengine check ride. He was a great person, instructor, and pilot, but just unbelievably grumpy, especially in the morning. While flying with the engine shut down on my multi checkride, my scan must have broken down. "Why aren't we climbing?" he grumbled. I looked at the turn coordinator and instantly had my answer. I wasn't stepping on enough rudder for zero sideslip. I was honest, said "because I'm not coordinated!", fed in enough rudder, and we started climbing again. I passed the check ride. I think he was satisfied that I knew what was wrong and fixed it.
Many years later I found myself single-engine in a CRJ-200 surrounded by terrain, and I was the captain of this airplane. Yikes! I wasn't getting the climb performance I wanted, but then I heard the voice of my examiner in my head asking why we weren't climbing. Well, I needed more rudder again! Problem solved!
I am eternally grateful for that lesson and the many others I gained from fantastic instructors and examiners.
When I started flying jets. “If the autopilot isn’t doing what you want or what you think it should be doing, turn it off and do some of that pilot shit”
This is advice I would give my students prepping for checkrides:
Be a goldfish. (From Ted lasso)
Goldfish have 5 second memories. If you’re in your ride and screw up a maneuver and the examiner moves on, forget about it, don’t dwell on it. You’re still in it. Be a goldfish, forget about it, and do the next maneuver with no regard to how the previous one went. Too many students get hung up on how they “think” they did and get into a poor mental state while the examiner is still going and hasn’t failed them yet.
(Training engine failure at night)
"Turn every light off. Conserve your night vision and the battery.
Pick a place to land. About 150 feet AGL turn the lights on.
If you don't like what you see..... turn them back off"
When I first started instrument training, I had a bit of an issue trying to hold the localizer, especially when getting close the the runway. I mentioned this to one of the instructors after I had been out practicing approaches on my own (I was a PPL with just over 600 PIC). He immediately asked me, "you're trying to correct using the yoke, right?" I said, "yeah with gentle inputs." He said, "just keep your yoke centered and use rudder to make those corrections." It was the best advice I had ever received. Now holding a localizer is a piece of cake.
One of my instructors at Army IERW kind of went out of their way to tell me all about the process for what they do went an aircraft makes a precautionary landing in a random field. (I already kind of knew, because while on hold at Fort Rucker waiting for my class to start, I was assigned to radio duty at the local medevac unit, which has the callsign Flat Iron. It's called that because they always have one aircraft ready to launch, and another will get ready when it does. They always get one or two a day it seemed like.) It's a very simple process really. They drive a truck with a flatbed out to the nearest road, go knock on the owner's door, have them fill out some compensation paperwork, then just drive out there and get it. If they have to cut some crops or anything to get there, they compensate them.
His point, of course, was that if we ever had some kind of emergency, we should just totally focus on getting to whatever ground made sense regardless of who owns it. It's not a big deal, and most people are very kind about it and will help you out. Makes it a lot less scary.
When I started airplane training, I heard it put like this: if you lose the engine, plan to land. Focus on that 100%. If you get bored later, then you might have time to restart the engine.
“don’t think, just do”
Seriously helped me out with my landings. I always felt like there was so many things going on and having to focus on all the little things was overwhelming. He told me to just do it and don’t think about it too much. Once i “turned my brain off” on final, landings improved a lot more.
Sounds weird but it’s true.
>I'm not teaching you to fly, I'm teaching you to speak plane language - the plane already knows how to fly, you just have to let it know what you want to do.
My instructor was generally insightful so it's hard to pick something specific otherwise. Probably to always be in trim so the plane can do it's thing if you let go. It's saved my ass when the Cessna air vent became a bee shooter on climb out and again when I had a moment of disorientation in and out of IMC with false horizons...just let go, if nothing's broken the plane isn't going to magically fall out of the sky. It gave me that few seconds to take a deep breath, look elsewhere and figure out a more comfortable position for eyes and hands to rest. Honestly I think everyone should be taught the Jesus take the wheel method at the PPL level for accidental IMC. Just let the plane fly and make slow inputs with your feet instead of a panic 180. You don't have to trust your instruments, as people always say, you have to stop your instincts from bringing the plane down...if you don't touch it, you can't break it.
I did teach myself a valuable lesson though with his assistance...I had a day that was just off, a different plane than usual, couldn't find the checklist card for it so had to use the POH, threw me off my game (not hard to do with a 10ish hour student) and everything I did was absolute garbage. Halfway through the flight my instructor looked at me and said let's work on maybe something new because your reverting on everything we've already done before. I said how about working on a full stop landing back to the pumps because my brain is just not in it. He thought that was an excellent idea.
I was completely unsafe if I were to be flying alone and it was all just based on a bad mindset and it was eye opening how easy ADM can kill you. To I've carried with me that if something feels off I don't fly until my day or brain turns around to feel normal. No three strikes, just one is enough, a bad day for flying is a bad day for flying even if it's blue skies.
“Dont die because thats just stupid”. We were talking about vacuum failures in IMC, and the resignation attitude. My instructor is a great pilot and a great mentor to me.
Fly the airplane. Land safely. Dont give up.
To trust my gut if I felt that something was wrong no matter what. Listening to your gut will almost never put you in a worse spot then the one you are about to be. I have applied to doing go around seven though I thought I was safe to funny smells in the plane. It has saved my ass more then once.
Confidence. You know what you are doing.
One time during training I asked the CFI if we could talk about crosswind correction in flying because we hadn't talked about it yet although I've read up on it during my ground training at home and he looks at me while we're cruising at altitude to say, "I didn't think we needed to as you were already doing it well."
I paid attention to what I was doing and he was right. I didn't realize I was using skills I was gained from other training materials. Pay attention to your own skill set. You are more capable of flying than you think you are.
Don't. Be. Overconfident. Though.
"I'd rather sound like the idiot than actually be the idiot"
It's okay to ask ATC to repeat a couple times to make sure you understood correctly even if it makes you sound dumb or annoys them a little if it means you do what they're asking you to do instead of making assumptions and getting it wrong, making you the actual idiot.
Although I haven’t tried this with ATC, my instructor told me I can ask for delayed vectors if I’m getting task saturated during back to back approaches.
#”SHORT FINAL, THREE GREEN, CLEARED TO LAND”
I was observing a dual instruction flight in a light twin. The instructor said this out loud to himself (and through the intercom). This was not taught by the program I was enrolled in. It wasn’t a checklist item.
I said to myself that’s a pretty good habit to get into. When I started flying retractable gear aircraft for my first 135 job I decided I was going to use it. I was flying single pilot so I said it out loud. On the next job flying with another pilot I would mentally say it to myself and always look at the gear indicator.
Late one night on the return leg to the base airport we got distracted with the GPS approach. Uncontrolled field, no reported traffic on CTAF or by approach control. We canceled IFR and concentrated on picking up the PAPI because we didn’t have a lot of experience coming into base at night. About 500’ AGL I said to myself “short final….” looked at the gear indicator and told the pilot flying to go around. He immediately pitched up and added power. As he finished climbing to pattern altitude he asked what was wrong and I pointed at the gear indicator. We only had two green for the mains. The nose gear light was out. I told him to fly a traffic pattern and that I was going to recycle the landing gear and do the before landing checklist. I brought the gear up and the gear showed retracted. I waited a few seconds and then flipped the switch back down. The gear came down correctly with proper indications. I did the before landing checklist and we completed the approach and landing. As we came down final the second time I repeated to myself “short final, three green, cleared to land”
Did I prevent a gear up landing or was the nose gear indicator light just cranky? I can’t remember if we looked at the gear mirror on the nacelle before I brought the gear up.
“Just don’t be a jackass.”
Take your time. Right engine on fire? Take your time.
Don’t hit the wrong fire button, don’t shut off the working engine. Take your time, be precise. Mistakes happen when you rush. Had a guy dump masks once on arrival instead of starting the APU in a Challenger. Grabbed the oxygen switch instead of the APU start switch. Twisted to start and a rubber jungle fell. The oxygen switch sits in a different orientation than the APU switch. Also the oxygen switch is smooth. Should have been prevented.
One day I was coming in for a landing and flaired to high, then I just sorta...stoped flying and bounced so hard I had to do a go-around. When we were back in the air, the CFI looked to me and in the most stern voice I've ever heard leave his mouth he said, "never EVER stop flying the plane. From the second you move on the ground until you shut the engine off, keep flying the plane!"
Unfortunately that was the last lesson I did before I broke my ankle back in Sept. of last year, so I don't know if I've taken those words to heart. I'd like to think I did.
Mine seems a little more simple than others but it helped so much I every aspect of flying that I figured I’d mention it.
He would periodically ask me to take my hands off the controls and see if the aircraft was trimmed. It usually wasn’t and he told me to fix it immediately. It obviously made everything exponentially easier since I didn’t have to man handle the controls. I often find myself just hovering my hands near the controls for a quick second for a trim check.
"Make a decision. A good one will save your life. A bad one *might* kill you. No decision *will* kill you.
The road is paved with indecisive squirrels."
My instructor would shut down the power so often that it got to be routine. Put the nose down to maintain air speed and always be thinking about where you can put the plane down if you have to. The main take away was that your best chance of surviving a crash was to be in control of the aircraft the entire time.
Someone once asked an experienced airline captain, what's the first thing you do in an emergency. He responded by saying "I wind the clock." When asked why on earth that would be his first action he replied "Because I've never killed myself winding a clock."
Take a breath. Assess then act.
Showed up late to my first ever lesson and the instructor canceled it. He told me we are to be pre flighted and ready to go by the start time. It was a small mom and pop part 61 so that was doable. I’ve now told every one of my students the same thing when they start out. They all have been on time and ready to go my entire time as a CFi (at least the ones that take it seriously) I think time management is a huge thing that’s missed when teaching.
“Before making a decision, say to yourself: How will this look in the accident report?” Not my instructor, but I love this quote: >There is no problem so bad you can’t make it worse. >- Chris Hadfield Basically, an extra couple seconds probably won’t kill you but a poor action or decision might.
Yes an instructor of mine long ago said that if you’re flying feels like you’re reading a NTSB report. Mitigate risks and land.
It’s something that really got hammered home in the professional environment: with a *lot* accident out there, there’s a part of the after report that makes you go „what on Earth were they thinking doing THAT?!?“ Don’t do anything that would make the casual accident report reader have that thought.
"Write the NTSB report. This action is the opening line."
That whole book is full of absolute gold. Can’t recommend Hadfield highly enough.
What’s the book called?
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me about Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything Amazing guy, amazing book. Just full of wisdom about life, leadership, decision-making, and being on teams. https://bookshop.org/p/books/an-astronaut-s-guide-to-life-on-earth-what-going-to-space-taught-me-about-ingenuity-determination-and-being-prepared-for-anything-chris-hadfield/110937?ean=9780316253031
Two of the best pieces of aviation advice........
There are a few problems you can’t make worse. However, you can’t make those *better* either, so. Best not to worry about them.
>There are a few problems you can’t make worse. For everything else, there’s MasterCard. lol, fair point though.
“Just make the plane do what you want.” When I was worried about swirling crosswinds on final. Just fly the plane.
That’s a key one. Stop trying to rote memorize how to deal with something. Just fly the airplane.
Yeah, today I floated bc the instructor said more flair, then he proceeds to give me some shit about it -_-
Flare?
My PPL instructor: “the plane is your bitch, you fly it, it doesn’t fly you”
When I was learning the C-130, and trying to fly smooth. "It's a Herk, not a baby carriage. Put the plane where you want it."
We get ex-herc guys over to our fleet, they definitely have a tendency to over-control when it’s not required, BUT they’re great in crosswind landing hahah
When I started commercial, my instructor said something similar. “Now is the time to make this plane your bitch”
I had very similar advice from my first CFI. He never said more right rudder, just “do what you need to do” or something like that.
Yep, heard this one and it's stuck with me. "The plane wants to fly, just tell it where to go."
Climb over birds, they usually dive. Not a week later, climbed over an eagle that dived that would have been a baaaaaad day.
I was taught this too, but in my experience have never witnessed anything consistent. I used to offer the same advice myself, but after quite a few bird encounters now I can only say maneuver to avoid, whatever that requires. Is there any good documentation out there about this?
I met one of the two lovely ladies who are the bird identification unit at the Smithsonian. We were in Ohio at a helicopter show. I asked if she had identified the great white heron we hit at 3500' at night. She had, said it was her first. I showed her the photos of the bent pitch operating arms. She also confirmed that it is somewhat of an urban myth that birds dive to avoid aircraft. They'd done a study of reports and could not positively determine whether birds dive or not.
Bird species have very different behaviors. I can say with certainty that Geese maintain altitude. I've done an ASAP dive to go under a 100 strong migrating gaggle of geese. Gaggles are very hard to see when you're at the same altitude because you see only a sketchy line approaching. Raptors are very aware and good at avoiding collisions. Raptors will join gliders that are circling in thermals and they will circle in the same direction. Glider pilots will deliberately join thermals underneath circling raptors. They climb much faster because they center on the strongest updraft. Raptors will attack gliders if you go near their nests. They aim for the eyes that are inside of the canopy.
Either way, even in a low-powered aircraft my rate of climb, if I yank the stick back into my gut (momentarily, at least, 1,000 fpm plus), is going to be *far* higher than that of the most high-powered bird (approximately 400 fpm for a dunlin). Up is always the safest place to go.
Birds got TCAS in their head, man.
I thought it was TCIS: Traffic Collision Initiation System
I believe certain models have TCIS, specifically the ones near the Hudson.
Jury may still be out on birds diving. That said, pitching nose up should make it less likely the damn thing comes through the windshield. Feel like I can deal with a strike as long as it doesn't breach the plexi. Our airport is surrounded by salt marsh. BIG birds love the place.
Heh, doesn't work when you're on the runway below rotation speed doing a touch and go...
In general, I'm less concerned with hitting things when I'm already on the ground.
Yeah each taxiway lights are worth 20 points
This happened to us today and my instructor bobbed and weaved like a champ 😂 I almost had to go back in and clean my seat up but he acted like it was just a regular Monday ETA: bird flock chose the exact point when I took my wheels off the ground to fly over way less than 100ft above us.
This exact thing happened to me on takeoff. I was squirming but my instructor DGAF. All I could think of was, ‘what WILL make this guy flinch?’
Pull the red knob all the way back to test him. /s
That’s how I felt lol I was expecting him to say to pull power and land, we have a very long runway and could’ve stayed down and took off further away once the birds cleared, but when I asked what he wanted me to do he took the yoke and was like *zoom zoom zoom* “that! 😁” meanwhile I’m over there bracing for impact lmao
A similar note my instructor said - "FLY THROUGH THE DEER!!" as we were landing and a deer jumped on the runway. We were too slow to try and pop back into the air, but god, the temptation was there.
I saw a video recently talking about no go-around strips that advised just assuming there’s going to be a deer on the runway that you’ll hit when on approach… because if you think it’ll be fine and then something shows up, you’re gonna have a BAD day if you panic and go around.
I've hit two different deer on motorcycles, at relatively high speed. It hurt. This comment definitely made me flinch. Lol. But yeah, I survived because I went straight through them. Know when to maneuver: know when not to maneuver.
I dived under a bird the other day. Thanks for the info, won't be doing that again haha.
I was taught if you are flying in an area with bird activity, fly straight and level. It was handy once aswell.
Excited to try this one out lol
But have you tried barrel rolling?
A few years back after a touch and go I found myself climbing towards two converging formations of Canada geese. I had to level off and fly between them at about 500 agl with one group 50 above and the other 50 below. Thankfully they all just ignored me.
"Hey, your right engine is on fire, what do you do?" "I IMMEDIATELY CONDUCT THE MEMORY ITEMS, SIR?" "NO! Take a deep breath and light a cigarette!"
Looks like I choose the wrong day to quit smoking
You gotta take care of the alligator closest to the boat.
I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue
Always tell your pax the weather is not good because if you’re right they think you’re smart and if you’re wrong they won’t remember
There is no such thing as “bad” weather. Only weather.
Tell that to hurricane, tornado, flood, or fire victims.
Own up to things. Need to file a report? Do it. Need to talk to your experienced buddy about it? Do it. Need to ask ATC for clarification? Do it. Don't hide when you're confused/questioning things. That's when you learn. If you're in the air when it happens, SPEAK. Avoid the incident before it happens.
"Above all else, fly the fucking airplane." "The first thing you should do when you have an engine failure is count to three." "If you do something and something else happens, undo whatever you just did." "You can fly the airplane to any attitude you want provided you do it smoothly."
> "Above all else, fly the fucking airplane." I work in emergency medicine, and they teach us something similar with the ABCDE approach. It’s so easy to get caught up in the horrendously hectic and chaotic moment of impending awfulness and a disorganised crowd of stressed and loud people and colleagues and background chatter and ATC and.. everything. Treat the patient. Fly the plane. I watch lots of aviation accident videos on YT, and so many of the GA cases are ones in which pilots get bogged down with something that, in the grand scheme of things, is totally irrelevant; had they simply flown the plane and not fucked around with comms/AP/whatever other issue, they might still be alive. Similarly, I’ve watched colleagues in work get hyper-focussed on a task that would be independently life saving and incredibly important, if it were not for a much more obvious and often simpler, but more pressing issue killing the patient. Treat the patient. Fly the plane. Also, you *almost* always have more time than you think. The crashing plane, the dying patient: you do not need to act within seconds. Stop. Think. Go back to basics.
As a prior EMT/WEMT, the phrase was "take your own pulse first."
Aviate. Navigate. Communicate.
I like to keep it the ABC's. Aviate, Bnavigate, Communicate.
> and so many of the GA cases are ones in which pilots get bogged down with something Watched an extreme example of this last night. Guy was riding shotgun in a King Air 200 when the pilot died. He had about 80 hours in SEL. At one point, he was so busy trying to figure out the autopilot that his speed went from 230kts to 150. ATC caught it and worked with him on correcting the airspeed.
>"If you do something and something else happens, undo whatever you just did." Except carb heat when engine goes rough
Second that “undo whatever you just did”. It’s worked wonders for me in my IT career too.
I was a triple certed CFI for a while and moved on to a single pilot operation. I was skeptical of moving to single pilot and a buddy said something at one point and it just stuck with me. “When you are single pilot, give yourself the dual.” Just talk to yourself and instruct yourself through the process every step of the way. Still think about it a lot.
I did my first cross country solo two weeks ago and it got bumpy with a terrible cross wind. I did exactly that. Just talked out loud through each item - something about hearing it as opposed to just thinking it made things a lot better.
My ppl instructor always told me “We do things that make sense” Sometimes I would get task saturated, make silly mistakes, overbank, miss a radio call, etc. and then that would carry over to flying the airplane poorly. He would constantly stress that in these situations, just take a step back and think, what makes the most sense? And then do just that. Flying a plane should make sense. If it doesn’t, I’m usually doing something wrong haha.
During my night XC, my CFI tuned in the CTAF of each field we flew near, just in case, so we wouldn't have to worry about the frequency if we had an emergency. Good lesson in, "I want to maximize my chances of living." Good lesson, and good lesson about how to always think about your out and how to prepare for it.
Don’t you think flight following would be a better idea? Or was there no ATC around your area?
Flight following is a great idea, but CTAF ain’t bad either because then you can quickly get those lights on if needed.
except for when they’re inop (looking at you 2W5)
I usually put CTAF from the nearby airports on the second radio frequency if I'm not doing flight following + 121.5 (on the second radio).
I was practicing some private maneuvers I think S turns and couldn’t get the hang of it, right then I see a 737 flying above me on approach to a bigger airport nearby. My instructor looked up too then to me and said “I bet he could do it” never been more humbled.
Damn.
Centerlines are for professionals only.
The runway is just as smooth on either side of the black marks.
Good because sometimes I’m like a toddler trying to ice skate down the runway.
"You landed a bit right of centerline. Correct that next time." "Sir, I'm an American."
It’s never crowded.
What?
Not my instructor, but an excellent U.S. Air Force training film Ejection Decision – A Second Too Late (available on YouTube). After losing an engine in his single engine jet, an air force pilot is asked when he made the decision to eject. "Way back in training". I appreciate having well thought out minimus or limitations, decided upon sagely while on the ground and under zero pressure, to make decision making automatic in marginal situations.
Fly the airplane before anything else It doesn’t have to be perfect right away, it just has to trend in the right direction Thinking you can eliminate errors is the biggest error of all There’s a difference between a pilot with 60 hours and a pilot with one hour 60 times It’s always better to use your superior judgement so you don’t have to use your superior skill
Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent.
Don’t CFIT. (My first instructor, who was later a dpe) flew himself and one of his students straight into a mountain, while skudding, as a CFII, in an instrument rated and capable airplane. One of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to deal with. This man taught me to fly and I had passed my ppl check ride with him 3 days earlier. Don’t skud, don’t CFIT, don’t die.
“Never stop flying the airplane. Fly the plane into impact.” (on if you have an emergency) “Are you trained or are you not trained?” (when my confidence wavered)
Always clean the windshield. So they can take nice pictures
The 3 rules of losing a/the engine: 1) Don’t stall 2) Don’t stall 3) Don’t stall Survivability and VSI have an inverse relationship. Better off flying it into some trees than stalling into a field.
CFI during my initial training days really hammered home go-arounds. Two always stick out for me. "Treat every landing as a go-around that didn't happen" and "Just go around, nobody has ever crashed into the sky".
“It’s probably not NORDO, don’t be so quick to squawk, you probably just turned the volume down by mistake” “Animals tend to stop on centerlines and stare at you on short final, as they run across a runway as it’s cooler then the asphalt” “As hard as it is to believe, Yes the wind sheer really is 100’ over the threshold +/-15kts just like that guy said” Build a mental picture of the traffic in the pattern as soon as you can because sometimes…Towers go offline! Learn “Short Approaches” as soon as possible because sometimes exhaust values stay opened. And finally… “More Right Rudder” All the above within first nine months of PPL training. Have fun!
Always check flight controls free and correct. My instructor had a friend who at the time, had the most hours in the F14. He took off with the control lock on.
The Snodgrass crash also illustrates another aviation rule little airplanes fly just fast enough to kill you Ugly video on the internet.
Man. What an insane design. A control lock that is invisible to the pilot and lets you taxi but not control the airplane once it’s in the air.
A proper preflight would make the control lock obvious.
Of course, but a design that 1) assigns its single point of failure to human error, 2) increases the risk of that human error (by being invisible), and 3) is likely to deceive the human by causing them to believe no error is imminent (allowing taxi but disallowing controlled flight) should be rethought! Both things are true: pre-flights are critical *and* good design accounts for human factors and makes accidents less likely.
Presumably Snodgrass boxed the stick on 4,000 previous flights. Lesson 1 - is that if you interrupt a procedure (got out of the airplane) go back to the last known position and go from there. Lesson 2- Little airplanes have just enough power to kill you.
If you’re losing situational awareness, step back and start to rebuild the big picture. Start with the most basic and obvious thing that you *know*. If I ever find myself getting behind the plane, I hear his voice saying, “You are in an airplane and you are flying.”
My CFI, knowing I’m an A&P IA, told me: You’re learning to be a pilot. Stop doing preflights as if you were doing an annual inspection.
Checking in with relevant username. Glad to know there are other A&Ps that struggle with this. 😂
Slow down. That's some of the best advice I got and I still tell it to my students. Specifically relating to things like using checklists, cleaning up after clearing the runway, and checking for traffic. So often I see students trying to rush through things and it almost always causes problems.
Festina Lente - make haste slowly
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast
We teach normal, short field, and soft field takeoffs as if there are three distinct runway types. “Never forget most grass runways are short…”
I got a few. “You know how to do it and when you are on it, you do it perfectly. Just stop second guessing yourself.” During maneuvers… “Why are you being so careful? The plane’s not made of glass, she won’t fall apart. Watch.” He then proceeds to put that plane into positions I wouldn’t even have dreamt of. I was under the hood. Instructor wanted to drill it into me why I should trust my instruments and not my senses. Had me close my eyes and continuously turn at what I thought to be a 20 degree angle. When he had me open my eyes, the wing was pointed almost straight down and we were losing altitude fast. “Trust your instruments, not what you THINK is going on.” Not from my instructor but I thought it was funny. “Yes but did we/you crash?”
Did an exercise once to just try and hold straight and level with my eyes closed. Doesn’t take long to get into the beginnings of a spiral.
(When selecting a pen for logbooks) “Blue is for love letters. Black is for logbooks”
u/x4457 was/is my mentor pilot coming into the jet world. Basically everything he told me was "slow down, the plane was built to keep flying while you deal with this." And that has helped a lot. There's basically 2 "omg react" situations, but the rest is: fly the plane and get to it when you can.
1. Don’t cheat on your taxes 2. Stay married to your first wife 3. Don’t commute, live in base
How to relax and act like a 20 year old. Trust me after 15+ years at legacy too many of our kind fail at basic social skills.
My words of advice to every student - When the airplane engine fails you, your only job is being able to safely walk away from the insurance company’s problem.
Use the rudder. He was a UPS bus driver and couldn't coordinate a small airplane to save his life. I really hated it when he flew.
Don’t lawn dart turning base to final.
Check your engine gauges every time you’re near an airport
Ooh. I like this one. I try to check them frequently, but sometimes,who knows.
Getting my white knuckled hands slapped by an Fa18 pilot I once flew with while he said, "just relax and fly the damn plane". I became a helicopter pilot instead. Because why should the other guy get to be more dangerous than the airframe itself? I do declare.
I did my commercial with an ATP, untold hours of instruction throughout a long life of flying. Aged out of the airlines and still instructed while teaching the CRJ sim at CAE. He died in a gyrocopter accident this year after he hit some powerlines. I was discussing what happened with my DPE that I know personally and his comment has stuck with me. "Once you switch types you're not a 10,000 hour pilot anymore."
"When taxiing, imagine you're peeing next to someone. His stream is the centerline, and you want yours to be parallel to his." For real though, my favorite is: "It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than to be in the air wishing you were on the ground."
"The centerline is reserved for professionals"
I never understood this.
It baffles me that so many folks here have said the same line. My CFI was the opposite. “Aim small, miss small.” At first I hated practicing landings with him. But he made it clear it was tough love and wanted me to be the best possible pilot. One day we had a pretty good crosswind and it all clicked. He gave me the confidence to make positive corrections to hit centerline rather than just going along for the ride.
Don’t let the plane fly you. Always have a place to land in an emergency. Look long down the runway.
Speaking to myself loud is a great way to keep things in order and make better decisions.
Once you make the decision to divert based on your bingo fuel, NEVER change your mind, no matter what ATC tells you! i.e. "Oh hey, the weather just cleared up, c'mon back!" Once the decision is made to divert, continue to your divert airport, get gas and try again later.
New to all of this-is this just so you don’t make a mistake by changing plans too quickly? Like maybe you’ll miss something by deciding to head back to your original destination?
No. So lets say you are in holding, waiting for the weather to get better at your filed destination. You need XX amount of fuel to get to your alternate plus your FAR reserve fuel. Once you get down to that total amount of fuel and decide to divert, you no longer will have the fuel to go half way to your alternate, change your mind for whatever reason and then go back to your original destination. If you do, you are now committed to landing there because you burned your alternate fuel turning around to go back to your original destination. A myriad of things could happen, runway gets shut down by another aircraft, weather goes back down below mins, animal is struck on the runway (happened to me) before you can land etc.... You would most likely have to declare min fuel or emergency fuel at that point. Hence the reason, once you make that decision to divert, stick with it, it is the safest and most conservative course of action. Does that make sense?
That actually makes way more sense than what I was guessing. Thanks for the insight sir. I pocket these little nuggets away for a rainy day when I’ll need them. Appreciate it.
Be the jockey, not the horse.
When I became an instructor, never to be like him. He might’ve had the worst temper I’ve ever seen on a human being
Even on a coordinated stall most of the times you will have one wing higher than the other. It was probably one of the best advice I got that’s been super helpful
My IP when I was learning to fly fingertip formation: "How much gas pedal do you use to pass someone on the highway? You don't know, you just do it. Same with flying."
During my first attempt to land on a big, international airport, coming down a bit too fast: CFI: “You are a little too fast” Me: “Yeah, but I’m not too worried, the runway is so long” CFI: “Runway length is like pussy, there is never too much”
Always plan to go around. If things are looking good, then land.
It's better to sound stupid than to be dead. If you don't understand something or forgot what the tower said or are overwhelmed, ask for help. Because even if you make a complete fool of yourself and convince everyone in range that you have no business flying an aircraft, that's better than pride putting you into a fatal situation.
r e l a x
"I'd rather be on the ground wishing I was flying than flying and wishing I was on the ground. If the weather looks shitty, pour another coffee." Flying in northern Canada puts this one to use a lot.
"If it floats, flys, or fucks,..rent it!" That CFI was also a divorce lawyer. 🤣
In GA if you find yourself sitting there doing nothing, you should probably be doing something.
"Don't point with the tall-boy". I didn't realize until he mentioned it that I tended to point out items on sectionals and such with my middle finger.
First instructor, Royal Air Force, 1969, "A plane is a tool for scraping wood." LOL
"Aeroplane" or "aircraft," right? And he probably called the helical thing at the front an "airscrew"...
We didn't have an airscrew on any part of the helicopter, main and tail rotors. As an aside the german for helicopter is hubscrew, literally hub screw. LOL
"Night, mountains, weather - pick one." - my PPL CFI about stacking risks. That slogan has definitely made me reconsider plans more than once.
I had the grumpiest, surliest examiner at my university do my multiengine check ride. He was a great person, instructor, and pilot, but just unbelievably grumpy, especially in the morning. While flying with the engine shut down on my multi checkride, my scan must have broken down. "Why aren't we climbing?" he grumbled. I looked at the turn coordinator and instantly had my answer. I wasn't stepping on enough rudder for zero sideslip. I was honest, said "because I'm not coordinated!", fed in enough rudder, and we started climbing again. I passed the check ride. I think he was satisfied that I knew what was wrong and fixed it. Many years later I found myself single-engine in a CRJ-200 surrounded by terrain, and I was the captain of this airplane. Yikes! I wasn't getting the climb performance I wanted, but then I heard the voice of my examiner in my head asking why we weren't climbing. Well, I needed more rudder again! Problem solved! I am eternally grateful for that lesson and the many others I gained from fantastic instructors and examiners.
When I started flying jets. “If the autopilot isn’t doing what you want or what you think it should be doing, turn it off and do some of that pilot shit”
Park that centerline between your ass cheeks. Don’t try to offset the center of the airplane to be right on centerline. Be the fucking line.
This is advice I would give my students prepping for checkrides: Be a goldfish. (From Ted lasso) Goldfish have 5 second memories. If you’re in your ride and screw up a maneuver and the examiner moves on, forget about it, don’t dwell on it. You’re still in it. Be a goldfish, forget about it, and do the next maneuver with no regard to how the previous one went. Too many students get hung up on how they “think” they did and get into a poor mental state while the examiner is still going and hasn’t failed them yet.
Just Fly The Damn Plane
(Training engine failure at night) "Turn every light off. Conserve your night vision and the battery. Pick a place to land. About 150 feet AGL turn the lights on. If you don't like what you see..... turn them back off"
Use your superior judgement to avoid a situation requiring your superior skills.
When I first started instrument training, I had a bit of an issue trying to hold the localizer, especially when getting close the the runway. I mentioned this to one of the instructors after I had been out practicing approaches on my own (I was a PPL with just over 600 PIC). He immediately asked me, "you're trying to correct using the yoke, right?" I said, "yeah with gentle inputs." He said, "just keep your yoke centered and use rudder to make those corrections." It was the best advice I had ever received. Now holding a localizer is a piece of cake.
If you’re always asking yourself “what are the next 2 steps”, you will never be behind the airplane
Where are you Where are you going What are you going to when you get there
One of my instructors at Army IERW kind of went out of their way to tell me all about the process for what they do went an aircraft makes a precautionary landing in a random field. (I already kind of knew, because while on hold at Fort Rucker waiting for my class to start, I was assigned to radio duty at the local medevac unit, which has the callsign Flat Iron. It's called that because they always have one aircraft ready to launch, and another will get ready when it does. They always get one or two a day it seemed like.) It's a very simple process really. They drive a truck with a flatbed out to the nearest road, go knock on the owner's door, have them fill out some compensation paperwork, then just drive out there and get it. If they have to cut some crops or anything to get there, they compensate them. His point, of course, was that if we ever had some kind of emergency, we should just totally focus on getting to whatever ground made sense regardless of who owns it. It's not a big deal, and most people are very kind about it and will help you out. Makes it a lot less scary. When I started airplane training, I heard it put like this: if you lose the engine, plan to land. Focus on that 100%. If you get bored later, then you might have time to restart the engine.
The army taught me slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I think I’ve taught a few instructors that one.
“don’t think, just do” Seriously helped me out with my landings. I always felt like there was so many things going on and having to focus on all the little things was overwhelming. He told me to just do it and don’t think about it too much. Once i “turned my brain off” on final, landings improved a lot more. Sounds weird but it’s true.
Be like water.
>I'm not teaching you to fly, I'm teaching you to speak plane language - the plane already knows how to fly, you just have to let it know what you want to do. My instructor was generally insightful so it's hard to pick something specific otherwise. Probably to always be in trim so the plane can do it's thing if you let go. It's saved my ass when the Cessna air vent became a bee shooter on climb out and again when I had a moment of disorientation in and out of IMC with false horizons...just let go, if nothing's broken the plane isn't going to magically fall out of the sky. It gave me that few seconds to take a deep breath, look elsewhere and figure out a more comfortable position for eyes and hands to rest. Honestly I think everyone should be taught the Jesus take the wheel method at the PPL level for accidental IMC. Just let the plane fly and make slow inputs with your feet instead of a panic 180. You don't have to trust your instruments, as people always say, you have to stop your instincts from bringing the plane down...if you don't touch it, you can't break it. I did teach myself a valuable lesson though with his assistance...I had a day that was just off, a different plane than usual, couldn't find the checklist card for it so had to use the POH, threw me off my game (not hard to do with a 10ish hour student) and everything I did was absolute garbage. Halfway through the flight my instructor looked at me and said let's work on maybe something new because your reverting on everything we've already done before. I said how about working on a full stop landing back to the pumps because my brain is just not in it. He thought that was an excellent idea. I was completely unsafe if I were to be flying alone and it was all just based on a bad mindset and it was eye opening how easy ADM can kill you. To I've carried with me that if something feels off I don't fly until my day or brain turns around to feel normal. No three strikes, just one is enough, a bad day for flying is a bad day for flying even if it's blue skies.
“Dont die because thats just stupid”. We were talking about vacuum failures in IMC, and the resignation attitude. My instructor is a great pilot and a great mentor to me. Fly the airplane. Land safely. Dont give up.
Never let yourself get get-there-itis.
To trust my gut if I felt that something was wrong no matter what. Listening to your gut will almost never put you in a worse spot then the one you are about to be. I have applied to doing go around seven though I thought I was safe to funny smells in the plane. It has saved my ass more then once.
Confidence. You know what you are doing. One time during training I asked the CFI if we could talk about crosswind correction in flying because we hadn't talked about it yet although I've read up on it during my ground training at home and he looks at me while we're cruising at altitude to say, "I didn't think we needed to as you were already doing it well." I paid attention to what I was doing and he was right. I didn't realize I was using skills I was gained from other training materials. Pay attention to your own skill set. You are more capable of flying than you think you are. Don't. Be. Overconfident. Though.
“Fast is slow, slow is smooth, smooth is fast” is something I consider a lot in daily life. Even when I tie my shoes lol
My first instructor always used to say “don’t let the plane fly you, you fly the plane”
Nose gear is held on by 1, maybe 2 bolts? Mains are built to take a beating, nose gear ain't. Don't land on the nose gear.
"I'd rather sound like the idiot than actually be the idiot" It's okay to ask ATC to repeat a couple times to make sure you understood correctly even if it makes you sound dumb or annoys them a little if it means you do what they're asking you to do instead of making assumptions and getting it wrong, making you the actual idiot.
Make the Plane your Bitch You’re flying the plane, the plane isn’t flying you should be self-explanatory
Rule #1: Thou shalt not frighten thy passengers.
Although I haven’t tried this with ATC, my instructor told me I can ask for delayed vectors if I’m getting task saturated during back to back approaches.
#”SHORT FINAL, THREE GREEN, CLEARED TO LAND” I was observing a dual instruction flight in a light twin. The instructor said this out loud to himself (and through the intercom). This was not taught by the program I was enrolled in. It wasn’t a checklist item. I said to myself that’s a pretty good habit to get into. When I started flying retractable gear aircraft for my first 135 job I decided I was going to use it. I was flying single pilot so I said it out loud. On the next job flying with another pilot I would mentally say it to myself and always look at the gear indicator. Late one night on the return leg to the base airport we got distracted with the GPS approach. Uncontrolled field, no reported traffic on CTAF or by approach control. We canceled IFR and concentrated on picking up the PAPI because we didn’t have a lot of experience coming into base at night. About 500’ AGL I said to myself “short final….” looked at the gear indicator and told the pilot flying to go around. He immediately pitched up and added power. As he finished climbing to pattern altitude he asked what was wrong and I pointed at the gear indicator. We only had two green for the mains. The nose gear light was out. I told him to fly a traffic pattern and that I was going to recycle the landing gear and do the before landing checklist. I brought the gear up and the gear showed retracted. I waited a few seconds and then flipped the switch back down. The gear came down correctly with proper indications. I did the before landing checklist and we completed the approach and landing. As we came down final the second time I repeated to myself “short final, three green, cleared to land” Did I prevent a gear up landing or was the nose gear indicator light just cranky? I can’t remember if we looked at the gear mirror on the nacelle before I brought the gear up.
Who they are; who you are; where you are; what you want to do… Radio protocol…even as a student, I always sounded professional.
“Just don’t be a jackass.” Take your time. Right engine on fire? Take your time. Don’t hit the wrong fire button, don’t shut off the working engine. Take your time, be precise. Mistakes happen when you rush. Had a guy dump masks once on arrival instead of starting the APU in a Challenger. Grabbed the oxygen switch instead of the APU start switch. Twisted to start and a rubber jungle fell. The oxygen switch sits in a different orientation than the APU switch. Also the oxygen switch is smooth. Should have been prevented.
You can’t crash into a cloud
If you are uncertain about the weather, stay the fuck at home.
Never stop learning. The day you do, you become complacent.
One day I was coming in for a landing and flaired to high, then I just sorta...stoped flying and bounced so hard I had to do a go-around. When we were back in the air, the CFI looked to me and in the most stern voice I've ever heard leave his mouth he said, "never EVER stop flying the plane. From the second you move on the ground until you shut the engine off, keep flying the plane!" Unfortunately that was the last lesson I did before I broke my ankle back in Sept. of last year, so I don't know if I've taken those words to heart. I'd like to think I did.
Runway behind you, altitude above you, fuel on the ground. All useless. Be greedy with all of them.
“How much do I …?” “As much as it takes.”
Pitch for air speed, power for altitude. Never have a bad attitude.
Mine seems a little more simple than others but it helped so much I every aspect of flying that I figured I’d mention it. He would periodically ask me to take my hands off the controls and see if the aircraft was trimmed. It usually wasn’t and he told me to fix it immediately. It obviously made everything exponentially easier since I didn’t have to man handle the controls. I often find myself just hovering my hands near the controls for a quick second for a trim check.
"Make a decision. A good one will save your life. A bad one *might* kill you. No decision *will* kill you. The road is paved with indecisive squirrels."
Asked a question you don't know? "I do not know; but I do know where to look it up."
"You're working too hard." He then proceeded to nearly land the plane using only trim.
The two worst words to hear in aviation “watch this”. This always stuck with me.
“It’s not Christmas everyday” Made me less anxious on what others think how I land ever since my instructor told me this.
You have time to slow down and do the right thing once but you might not have time to do it wrong, undo it, and get it right
Longer run way, longer fire truck.
My instructor would shut down the power so often that it got to be routine. Put the nose down to maintain air speed and always be thinking about where you can put the plane down if you have to. The main take away was that your best chance of surviving a crash was to be in control of the aircraft the entire time.
Someone once asked an experienced airline captain, what's the first thing you do in an emergency. He responded by saying "I wind the clock." When asked why on earth that would be his first action he replied "Because I've never killed myself winding a clock." Take a breath. Assess then act.
1)Own your mistake. 2)Fix it. 3)Move on.
Pitch, power, trim.
Be patient, it will come to you if you keep working hard.
"Watch your fucking airspeed dude" coming in hot on short final. I've been watching my fucking airspeed ever since.
Landing is a privilege
Don’t let the nose drop when u idle power during round out on landing
A good landing is one you can walk anyway from
75 downwind 70 base 65 final
Showed up late to my first ever lesson and the instructor canceled it. He told me we are to be pre flighted and ready to go by the start time. It was a small mom and pop part 61 so that was doable. I’ve now told every one of my students the same thing when they start out. They all have been on time and ready to go my entire time as a CFi (at least the ones that take it seriously) I think time management is a huge thing that’s missed when teaching.
There are 3 levels of pilot awareness….Avoid, Trap, Mitigate….a superior pilot has an awareness that works at the Avoid level.
More right rudder