Jetwhine

Aviation buzz and bold opinion

aviation safety

Aviation Safety Semantics

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As a word merchant and an aviator, words are important. They are the foundation of communication, and in many instances they can be the difference between life and death. “Hold Short” is but one example. Equally important is our semantic understanding of the aviation lexicon, what each of the words mean.

Take “accident,” for example. Millions of words have been written and spoken about this word, its outcomes, its trends, and its persistent place in aviation. But have you ever given thought to what this word means? Here is what the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary has to say:

Accident—noun

1a: an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance

b: lack of intention or necessity : CHANCE

2a: an unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or ignorance

As this relates to aviation, accidents are unfortunate and, for the most part, unplanned. Suicidal best describes pilots who take off intending to return to earth unsafely. Pilots who consider aviation’s unfortunate outcomes unforeseen may best be described by the second aspect of the definition: careless and ignorant.

Pilots have been choosing from the same menu of fatal outcomes for more than a century now, so how can anyone categorize them as “unforeseen?” No one is ever immune from the possibility of any of them on any flight. Regardless of our intentions we each are ultimately responsible for the consequences of our decisions.

Every student pilot learns, to some degree or another, about Five Hazardous Attitudes, their symptoms, and the consequential umbrella that covers them all:

Anti-authority: Those who do not like anyone telling them what to do.

Impulsivity: Those who feel the need to do something, anything, immediately.

Invulnerability: Those who believe that accidents happen to others.

Macho: Those who are trying to prove that they are better than anyone else. “Watch this!

Resignation: Those who do not see themselves making a difference.

Knowing about these attitudes is good, but it is just a halfway effort without balancing them with some beneficial attitudes pilots should relentlessly strive to embody. You can compile your list, but here’s one to get you started:

Circumspect—adjective

: careful to consider all circumstances and possible consequences : PRUDENT

Employing all that this word embodies to every aspect of aviation before acting can only improve safety. But just as we each are responsible for the consequences of decisions whether they be good or bad, we humans are not infallible, so unwanted outcomes will continue to occur with unwanted regularity. But we should stop referring to them as “accidents.” The military has a better word and definition for it:

Mishap—noun

: any unplanned, unintended event or series of events that results in death, injury, illness, or property damage.

But whatever word you use to describe it, remember to be circumspect. — Scott Spangler, Editor

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Defining Aviation Learning Experiences

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To maintain my social skills, on Fridays I hike the Wiouwash Trail for 2.46 miles from the trailhead just east of Winneconne to the Bare Bones Brewery, which is trailside where the former interurban railbed enters Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on its northwest side. The Bone opens at noon, and I’m a member of its mug club. Exercise leading to (and from) good beer is guaranteed, and rare is the Friday that does not include a handful of people to talk with.

Conversations typically start with beer, and the craft breweries we’ve visited. This conversation is usually punctuated with our respective vocations and avocations. Talking with a couple somewhere in their 50s, the woman seemed especially interested after learning I was a pilot. She’d not met many, she said, and she peppered me with a curious collection of questions, such as who were the best pilots I’d ever flown with (a story for another day).

Flowering from the old saw that “There old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilot,” Most of them seemed to focus on things that define a pilot’s personality. Delving into this spectrum, which ranges from timid to foolhardy, I described myself as a pragmatic pilot who considered the relevant risks and played them out as possibilities influenced by the flight’s conditions. For more than 50 years now, mantra has been, “If in doubt, don’t.”

The couple asked if this guiding principle grew out of some inflight epiphany. In truth, this aviation moment that defined my flying life occurred in Alameda, California, during February 1973, three years before I started my flight training farther down the coast, in Long Beach, in 1976. Just before intermission during the film, Fiddler on the Roof, at the Alameda Theater, A Navy A-7 Corsair II dove almost straight into an apartment building a little more than a half-mile down Central Ave.

A photographer stationed at NAS Alameda, I spent a couple of weeks documenting this undesirable aviation outcome as the mishap investigators dug into the hole sifting the mess searching for evidence, for some clue to the mishap’s cause. They found the A-7’s engine about 20 feet under the basement garage floor. As far as I know, they never did find any of the pilot’s remains, but the 10 civilians who resided in the apartment building introduced me to the unmistakable, unforgettable aroma of seared human flesh.

The flight of two A-7s had left NAS Lemore on a night out and back training flight, and the flight’s leader said suddenly, his wingman was no longer off his wing. The rumor among the people sifting through the site was the pilot was sucking on a cigarette in-between whiffs from his oxygen mask, not an approved procedure at 37,000 feet. Nothing in the mishap investigation confirmed this rumor, but what stuck in my 18-year-old mind is that a momentary lapse in judgement, no matter what it might be, can turn any airplane into a dirty collection of metal scraps, slivers, and shards spread across a hangar floor. Aside from the compacted lump of the A-7’s Pratt&Whitney TF30-P-6 turbofan, few of them were larger than an index card.

Photographic work on subsequent fatal mishaps, the final approach meeting of the four turboprop P-3 sub hunter and a Boeing 707 lookalike, the Convair 990, at NAS Moffet Field on the other side of San Francisco Bay, and a Marine Reserve CH-53 that shed a main rotor blade up north in the Napa, fixed this reality in memory.

Asking for an example of how this guided my flying life, I recalled my invitation to introduce the “new” Cessna 172 to Flight Training’s readers when Cessna resumed production of its single-engine airplanes. It was an event attended by usual GA media outlets, and for some reason, I was selected first to fly. Searching for differences between the legacy Skyhawk and the new one, I started by following the handbook’s preflight inspection checklist. I stopped when I found good sized nick in a prop blade, and said I would not fly the airplane until the problem was properly addressed.

Seeing two quizzical looks above their beers, I explained that the nick might lead to the loss of part of the prop blade, and that the unbalanced blade might torque the engine off the airframe, which would destroy not only the center of gravity but also the airplane’s aerodynamics, and what was left would fall out of the sky. I like flying a lot, I said, but not enough to die for, especially when it would have been my fault for taking off with a known problem. “Ultimately, we all are responsible for the consequences of our decisions. — Scott Spangler, Editor

Updated AC Reiterates Nontowered Airport Procedures & Responsibilities

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Back in the day, airports without air traffic controllers working to maintain order and predictable behavior from the pilots flying to and from it were often referred to as “uncontrolled” because they did not have an air traffic control tower, or the tower was outside its operating hours. Because “uncontrolled” implied chaotic, unpredictable aircraft operations at these aerodromes, the FAA and attuned educators started referring to them as “nontowered” airports. They supported this more precise moniker because the FAA proffered operational guidance to pilots that, if followed, would bring some predictable order to this chaos. In its never-ending effort to achieve this goal, the FAA issued on June 6, 2023, an updated Advisory Circular 90-66C, Non-Towered Airport Operations.

Most of its 28 pages reiterate the regulatory requirements, recommended operations, and communication procedures pilots should embrace when flying to and from nontowered airports. The changes to this guidance “reflect current procedures and best practices” when pilots are not directed by a tower controller. (Not that a controller ensures failsafe airport operations, given the recent spate of runway incursions and frantic calls to abort takeoffs and landings at various terminal hubs.)

What reading each of the AC’s 28 pages makes clear is that flying to and from a nontowered airport is significantly more involved and complex than radioing the tower (or approach control) at the appropriate time and place and then letting the controller lead you by the hand, so to speak, to a safe landing. Absent this guidance, pilots should read the 28 pages, follow its guidance, and remember to keep their respective heads on traffic-scanning swivels to see—and avoid!—those pilots who have not bothered with the necessary nontowered airport preparations. They should not become complacent and depend on other pilots to announce their positions and operational intentions. Not all nontowered airport denizens are equipped with radios.

To ratchet up the nontowered airport complexity, add ultralights, gliders, and parachute jumpers to the mix of traffic. When you get right down to it, flying to and from a nontowered airport is the ultimate test of a pilot’s aeronautical knowledge, aeronautical decision-making, and ceaseless see-and-avoid searches of the surrounding airspace. Put another way, towered and non-towered operations are akin to VFR and IFR flight. Perhaps, one day, if pilots don’t fully accept the responsibility involved, the FAA will establish a nontowered airport rating to operate at them. — Scott Spangler, Editor

Single-Pilot Point of Failure

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Given the capable reliability of aviation technology today, in the realm of a perfect world, single-pilots flying people-carrying commercial and military aircraft seems a logical hypothetical possibility.

To prove the reality of this possibility, the US Air Force flew two single-pilot test flights in its new KC-46 Pegasus tanker, which is based on the Boeing 767. After extensively practicing single-pilot procedures in simulators, a single-pilot, accompanied by a safety pilot in case something unexpected went awry, flew a refueling mission that made no connection with thirsty airplanes. With the success of this test, the Air Force flew a second full refueling mission profile with a single-pilot and single boom operator, again with additional hands-off safety personnel on board.

The success of these test flights last October generated several conversations about taking single-pilot airline operations a step or two beyond hypothetical. Flying in a perfect world, halving the typical cockpit crew would help alleviate the pilot shortage and improve the airline’s bottom lines. Oddly enough, it was this manner of thinking that led to the Air Force single-pilot Pegasus flights.

Given the goal of armed combat, to kill the enemy before they kill you, the Air Force may find itself in a situation where it has more tankers than it has pilots to fly them. This seems unlikely. While the Air Force is dealing with its own pilot shortage, certainly they have enough aviators to fully crew the 59 KC-46s it has so far taken delivery of. Still, in the realm of hypothetical scenarios, it is possible, and in combat, fulfilling the mission takes precedent.

What the stories telling about the tests did not address is the not inconsequential variable of the single-pilot point of failure. Yes, the boom operator would be filling the copilot’s seat when not topping off thirsty airplanes, but flying the refueling boom and the airplane it is attached to is not the same thing. If the single-pilot fails, for whatever reason, no matter how many souls are on board, their destiny is pretty much guaranteed.

Just ask the crews of the four-engine Lancaster bombers the Royal Air Force launched during World War II. You can meet and learn from them in a fabulous 2022 documentary, Lancaster: Above and Beyond, now on Amazon Prime. Most aviation history geeks know that the Lancaster was—and is—a single-pilot aircraft. In talking about their wartime training, the surviving gunners, bomb aimers, signals (radio) operators, navigators, and flight engineers said that choosing their pilot was not an inconsequential decision. And they did indeed choose, because after training everyone gathered in a room and figured out who would fly with whom.

Being a single-pilot point of failure is an equally important consideration in airline operations. Imagine the outcome had the incapacitated captain of that Southwest flight in March been a single pilot. Assuming one is onboard, having a passenger pilot would have offered no assistance unless he or she unlocked the cockpit door before losing consciousness. Their destiny would be the same as the boomer on a single-pilot Pegasus or the crew of a Lancaster. When considering a single-pilot point of failure, the only situation where it is justified is when there is only room for one in the cockpit. — Scott Spangler, Editor

Learning From the Decisions of Others

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Aviation safety, when you get right down to it, is an endless round of risk assessment what ifs. There is much to learn when what ifs become real life right now. If you survive, that is. Another way to learn is from the decisions made by others. Call it aviation erudition, extensive knowledge acquired from books or other written materials, such as Callback, the monthly publication from NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System.

This fine and free publication is must reading for any safety conscious pilot, and the issues I most look forward to, because they keep my head in the risk assessment arena, are those like April 2023, whose headline poses this question: What Would You Have Done? Because no pilot can make (let alone survive) every manner of aeronautical mistake in every category and class of flying machine, Page 1 of this issue presents the essential facts from the spectrum of ASRS Safety reports, and then poses the headline question. Page 2 presents The Rest of the Story.

This issue presented three situations.

Dominoes in The Pattern set up a potential midair between a CFI doing pattern work with a student with an inbound flight aiming for the same runway and another plane departing on a crossing runway at a nontowered airfield.

Unmarked in Plain Sight recounts the situation where a UAS operator and commercial pilot who was training a new pilot for infrastructure inspections realized, after switching drones and taking off, that he’d forgotten to affix the FAA registration sticker to the airframe. The scenarios that introduce unfamiliar situations are risk assessment gold because they challenge you to logically distill the fundamental wort of your aviation knowledge.

The final scenario, The Wind in the Windows, presents a situation many general aviation pilots have faced, but when was the last time you heard a Boeing 767 captain writing about a cockpit window popping open at 110 knots on the takeoff roll. Not having a clue, I immediately scrolled the page for the rest of the story. Not wanting to spoil the lesson, you can read them all at the link above. Enjoy, and happy flying safely. — Scott Spangler, Editor