First lesson part one

            The first lesson sets the tone for the rest of the training.  We cover a lot of information and it often feels overwhelming.  There is nothing hard about flying; there are however two or three hundred really easy things that will kill you if you don’t get them right.  Understanding that concept establishes a need for solid habits that will serve us well.

            Safety first is a good saying but has some connotations that may not be realistic.  An antiseptic airplane in a plastic bubble that never flies is probably the safest, but that is not what planes are for.  Understanding the risks associated with flying and how to manage them is important.  I do not want to scare people away.  I do want them to understand what the risks are and how to manage them so they can fly more than once.  Just about any fool can fly an airplane…once. 

Roaring around in a thirty year old aluminum tube at 100 miles per hour about a half mile off the ground with an engine designed in the 1930s sounds dangerous but probably is not as scary as sharing the road with all the distracted drivers.

            Risk management is the term for weighing the options and taking calculated chances.  The first step in risk management is to identify the hazards.  Running out of gas would be one of the hazards associated with flying.  Step two is to mitigate the risk, if able.  There are lots of ways we could reduce this risk, we could take off with full tanks, we could figure out how much gas we use per hour and, for example, if we had four hours of fuel only fly for three hours.  The next step is to look at the residual risk and determine if the reward is worth it.  Some hazards don’t happen very often but the consequences are horrible.  We should mitigate those.  In flight collisions do not happen very often but they are usually fatal. 

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20051019X01689&key=2

            This brings up a discussion of visually and verbally clearing prior to turning.  I try hard to build the habit of looking for traffic prior to turning.  The phrase “clear left, turning left” or “clear right, turning right” lets me know that they are trying to look.  Later when we put the view limiting device (hood) on the pilot the conversation goes “clear left?”  Which is a question asking me if there are any obstacles, birds, or traffic in the direction we are planning to turn.  My response should be “clear left” before they initiate the turn and say “turning left.”

            Breaking up complex subjects into component parts makes it easier to analyze and digest.  I think of the four risk elements as the pilot, the aircraft, the operation and the environment.  This graphic from the airplane flying handbook illustrates it well.   

 

There are other appropriate methods to divide up risk management elements.  It is not that I don’t care which method a pilot uses, but that they use a method consistently.  One of the challenges of risk management is that a thousand acronyms, complex charts, questionnaires, and spread sheets make it less likely the operator will utilize the tools and simply see it as a paperwork drill.