Aviator90 Episode 22

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[music] [0:00]

Chris Palmer: [0:31] Welcome to another episode of Aviator 90 from Angle of
Attack. I am Chris Palmer and I am here today in the aircraft I get
to fly. And today we are going to talk about situational awareness.
Now, situational awareness is basically: What is going on right
now? What is the aircraft doing? Where do I want to be? And all the
different things surrounding that.
[1:00] It’s quite a complicated issue because not only do we as
pilots and aviators need to be aware of where we are now, but we
need to be aware of what our end result is, what we want to
accomplish. Also, being able to handle the circumstances that take
us away from that desired end result and saying you know what, this
is the safe course of action; we need to do something else, and
that all comes with situational awareness.

Now, there’s different parts to it, there’s: [1:32] Where am I now?
What’s going on? Where do I want to be? How do I want to get there?
And, like I said before, what is the end result? Now you could talk
on and on about the different kind of aspects of that. You’ve
obviously got to know what’s going on with your aircraft, that’s
very important not only in pre-flight, with things like weight and
balance and aircraft operation, fuel, and your endurance. Weather
conditions is a pre-flight action, take off and landing data
performance is something we’ll actually talk about in a later
episode. But just knowing what your circumstances are before you
get there and also what your circumstances are now.

[2:37] One of the things that you need to watch out for is being
ahead of the aircraft at all times. Generally, aircraft are pretty
complex, even smaller single engine aircraft like this. Even
something like a 172, if you are unfamiliar with that aircraft it
becomes a complex aircraft. So, being familiar with your equipment
is important as well. But you’ve always got to be ahead of the
aircraft, you’ve got to know what’s coming up at the next weight
point? Or what’s coming up on this instrument approach? What do I
need to do?

[3:14] We’re not necessarily talking about instrument approaches
within Aviator 90, but one thing we will talk about later when we
do our pre-flight sections is what’s going on in the airport?
What’s the weather? What traffic pattern are they using? What
runway are they using? Who’s in the area? You’ve always got to know
what’s going on, where you want to be next, and how to get there –
that all comes from situational awareness.

[3:44] As a pilot there is no excuse for you not to multi-task. You
have to be a great multi-tasker. If you aren’t, like me, I’m not a
great multi-tasker, then you’ve got to slowly learn. You’ve got to
learn how to handle communications and handling engine performance
at the same time. You’ve got to learn how to do an instrument
approach, not necessarily right now but maybe — let’s get
something simpler. You’ve got to learn how to land and still make
those communications.

[4:17] Now, generally during the landing process you’re actually in
a sterile cockpit, which means that you are silent; you’re focusing
on the landing, all that sort of stuff. But the traffic around you,
there are just so many different things as a pilot you have to
watch out for all the time. There’s no excuse. You don’t have an
excuse to say, “I’m not going to take care of this part of it, I
don’t need to take care of this part of it.” You don’t have an
excuse. You’ve got to take care of everything.

Now, there is an instance where you can let things go. So, in an
emergency, your awareness needs to be on flying the aircraft first.
The golden rule, anything flying: [4:44] aviator, pilot, whatever
you are, whatever you do, whatever you fly, even if its a big jet,
the first thing you have to do always is fly the aircraft. Make
sure that it’s doing what you want it to do. If it’s not, you’ve
got a major problem.

[5:21] If you get somewhere else, this is where situational
awareness really comes into play, but if you get somewhere else and
you’re paying attention to the GPS and you’re focused on some
problem, and the aircraft is doing its own thing and you’re just
spiraling toward the ground, then you’re not flying the aircraft.
And that puts you in a much more dangerous situation than the
original problem.

[5:45] Now, there was a crash in the Florida Everglades. I believe
it was in the 90′s, I could be mistaken. But essentially this
aircraft, this airliner approached Miami and they had a landing
gear problem. So, the landing gear light was indicating that it was
not down correctly or at least the light wasn’t on. But the pilots
didn’t know, “Is that just a light problem? Is it the actual
landing gear? If there’s an issue we’re going to go around and
we’re going to go check it out.”

[6:19] So, these guys went to the, I’m assuming, the west of Miami
which would be over the Florida Everglades, a very swampy area in
Florida. And these guys, three of them, it was a captain, a first
officer, and an engineer; they were all investigating this landing
light issue. It so happened that someone kicked off the autopilot.
So, the autopilot was disconnected while these guys were holding
and trying to figure out this issue.

[6:51] Unfortunately these guys descended straight into the ground.
They weren’t paying attention to the aircraft altitude. They
weren’t paying to the fact that the autopilot wasn’t even working
anymore and they flew a perfectly good airplane into the ground.
Guess what the failure was on the landing gear? It was a little
tiny landing light and that killed, I believe, it was over 300
people. If not it was just a little less than that. Those guys
weren’t aware of their situation.

[7:24] Now, as a pilot in a lot of ways I can relate to those
pilots in that situation. That’s a scary thing because as pilots we
know those things can happen to us as well. It’s not just something
that I am immune to. That’s another psychological aspect of flying
is that a lot of us pilots get all confident. We think, “Oh,
nothing can hurt me. I’m smarter than that. I would have never done
that.” But you know what? In the right circumstances some very,
very hairy things can happen and it can get bad.

[8:03] If you know that and you’re just watching out for what’s
going on, you’re aware of the situation then you can take care of
things. Like, I was listening to a podcast on the Internet, his
name is John Dion. He’s a captain for an airline and he was saying
he was on approach a while ago. He said one of the things that just
came with experience was that you just know when something is not
right and you just get this feeling that something is not in place.

Anyway, they’re on short final and he finally realized that he
didn’t get landing clearance. Now you can’t land without clearance.
You get in big trouble, especially those big airports if you’re a
captain I mean big trouble, big, big trouble. So he checked on,
they got cleared to land and everything but it’s just one of those
things. Sometimes something doesn’t feel right and that’s when to,
not necessarily get fixated on things but just notice: [8:41]
What’s going on? What’s my situation? Did I forget to do something?

[9:14] Checklists are very important that way. Now I wouldn’t get
fixated on checklists. I believe checklists should be used as a
memory item and then the checklist is used to glance over and make
sure that you’ve done everything rather than [coughs] actually
check, “I’m going to set the mixture, set the mixture. All right,
it says now set the flaps, set the flaps.” whatever it says.

[9:39] That’s the long hand way to do it. It’s not very practical.
Anyway, like I said, checklists can assist you in making sure that
everything’s set up and you’ve done things correctly. But they’re
not gong to tell you to do the really simple things that you’re
supposed to know as a pilot anyway. So, you just need to be aware
of your situation. What you want to do, what you want to accomplish
and where you want to be.

[10:04] I think those things within aviation are so much more
important than 10 feet here, unless it’s an instrument approach –
that’s a different situation. But if you’re in the traffic pattern,
10 feet here, a little harder landing versus a softer landing,
those things are forgivable. These are the things that a lot of
pilots don’t look out for and they’re not taught initially is the
psychological aspect of flying.

[10:34] We’re humans and we’re meant to make mistakes but as pilots
we need to be aware that we can make mistakes and we can make very,
very stupid mistakes. There’s a domino effect that as an aviator,
as a pilot we say, “You know what? I’m stopping. I’m stopping now.
We’re not going into this situation any further. The weather is
degrading and we’ve gone way too far. We’ve pushed ourselves too
far and we’re bound to get into a worse situation if we continue.”

[11:08] So, breaking that domino effect, one thing after the other
just leading up to something potentially bigger is it’s very
important to break that process. But first, you’ve got to recognize
it and recognizing it comes with situational awareness. That is
very important and I think I’ll stop talking about this particular
issue, but just be aware. Just be aware of your situation, what
you’re doing, what you want to do, and be willing to stop, just
stop that domino effect.

[11:40] Focus and realize that you are not perfect because guess
what? You aren’t. As much as you think you are, you aren’t. It can
even get to a point where if you’re an extremely intelligent pilot,
you know almost everything there is to know, that can be degrading.
That can be a bad situation because you think you know everything
and you’re over confident and then guess what? Murphy’s Law comes
up and Murphy’s Law, I don’t know if it’s a real law — but it
says, “What can go wrong, will go wrong.”

[12:13] You just got to watch out. Just be aware of your situation
and I guess that’s all I can say about it. So, this episode we had
a lot of fun. Now next episode we’re going to be talking about
familiarity with different aspects of what’s going on and handling
the unplanable — those things that you cannot plan for, just
things that happen. We’ll talk about that next episode. So, until
next time throttle on! [audio ends]

Transcription by CastingWords