Long time GA pilots - what has kept you safe?

LUCK!
There are 6 hits for “luck” on this page so far.

I agree; luck.
It’s more reliable than skill.
 
The last thing I do before pulling the plane out of the hangar is to ask “what reason is there why I can’t do this flight?”.
 
Nikhiln25 said:
what has kept you safe all these years to stay incident free?
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Knowing that I'm not God's gift to aviation.
Just because I've read and followed the checklists 1000 times prior is no excuse yo not following them again. Pilots with 10+ times my flight experience have taken off with the control lock engaged.
Realize that current≠proficient, and always do more than the bare minimums to stay on top of the airplane.
Also, one thig that keeps the big boys safe is flying with two pilots. If you can, avoid flying by yourself. Another pair of eyes can catch something you've missed.
 
Here are my keys for reducing the probability of a serious incident:

1. Properly maintain your aircraft. This will reduce the probability of a mechanical failure. One of the reasons I own my aircraft is the disheveled state of almost every rental I have ever flown.
2. Don't skimp on training and stay current and as proficient as possible. The relentless emergency training my instructors gave me saved my skin on two occasions. I've known a handful (but too many) sub-200 hour pilots mess up a simple emergency and turn it into a fatality.
3. Don't be stupid about fuel. My red line is one hour of reserve IFR or otherwise. If I hit bingo time prior to reaching my destination (or I am projected to do so) land and refuel.
4. Don't tempt weather. Land and fly another day. It is wayyyyy better to be on the ground, wishing you were flying, than flying, wishing you were on the ground. Icing and CB encounters are no-nos in a light single.
5. Get the IFR rating if possible and use it. Scud-running below in MVFR is very stressful, potentially unsafe, and can usually be completely obviated with an IFR climb on top. (But read #4.)

If you minimize mechanical failures, fuel exhaustion, avoidable weather encounters, and VFR-into-IMC excursions, you have to have reduced your accident probability several fold.

The sub-200 hour me flew lots of sketchy rentals, rode shotgun with some marginal pilots, and got into some messy weather spots before wising up and buying my own plane(s) and getting an instrument rating. And I do an IPC about every 6 months to get a third party opinion on whether or not I am still capable of flying IFR safely and competently.
 
RyanShort1 said:
And I think that's flawed. You can improve your skills every flight by holding tight standards and practicing stuff you didn't "need" to. Pilots get comfortable, and then they get lazy, and next thing you know they've forgotten how to do stuff they learned in flight training.
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You can do both. But plenty of highly skilled pilots have managed to kill themselves. Skill alone won't bail you out.
 
Watched an interview of a guy who retired from the AF after a pretty good career, took a job with an airplane company, and decided he wanted to start flying private again. He hadn't flown light planes in a while, and wasn't familiar with all the current rules, so he found a CFI and took flying lessons. Got his CFI and instrument rating. The guy was Bud Anderson.

My take on that fellow is that he was deliberate in everything he did related to flying.
 
For me, one thing that I think has helped keep me safe is that I've pretty much given up on using the plane as any form of actual transportation, or any sort of commitment to actually be somewhere at sometime specific, and definitely for anything work-related. This sounds like it means a lot of cancelled trips and that's true, sometimes, but it can actually be the opposite, too - watching the weather and jumping at spontaneous chances to do interesting things with the plane. We still use it a ton, but it's more like weather --> ideas, not ideas --> weather.
 
Nikhiln25 said:
For those that have been doing this for years and decades and have been at it for enough time to experience it all, what has kept you safe all these years to stay incident free?
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My mentor, while I was in flight training, is a Pilot and a Meteorologist. During my flight training, and on our annual trips to OSH, he taught me everything I know about weather. It's the one thing that can kill you if you don't understand/respect it.

People often ask me "what's the hardest part of flying?" My answer is always "weather." Predicting, navigating in and around it, etc.

#progcharts
 
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Brad Z said:
You can do both. But plenty of highly skilled pilots have managed to kill themselves. Skill alone won't bail you out.
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If you’re arguing with me, I don’t know why.

I said you need both and I’m prepared to defend a number of scenarios where skill could bail you out of bad judgment. Of course, obtaining skill is good judgment.

About 15 years ago, I had bad judgment twice in one weekend and both times it should’ve killed me but things my instructors had taught me kept me from completely losing control of the aircraft.
 
Albany Tom said:
Watched an interview of a guy who retired from the AF after a pretty good career, took a job with an airplane company, and decided he wanted to start flying private again. He hadn't flown light planes in a while, and wasn't familiar with all the current rules, so he found a CFI and took flying lessons. Got his CFI and instrument rating. The guy was Bud Anderson.

My take on that fellow is that he was deliberate in everything he did related to flying.
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Bud was friendly, approachable, and awesome to talk to. One evening at Wings Over Houston I ended up at the same table with him and he ended up chatting with me for 30 minutes about flight training and it was amazing and inspiring.
 
Flocker said:
My mentor, while I was in flight training, is a Pilot and a Meteorologist. During my flight training, and on our annual trips to OSH, he taught me everything I know about weather. It's the one thing that can kill you if you don't understand/respect it.

People often ask me "what's the hardest part of flying?" My answer is always "weather." Predicting, navigating in and around it, etc.

#progcharts
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Share some interesting insights?
 
My first instructors plane had a sign on the panel that read, "Don't do anything dumb."
 
Fly regularly. Continue to train. Yes, that instrument rating will make you a better pilot. So will the commercial. Multi adds different knowledge. Get CFI, CFII, MEI, and top it all off with ATP. Then TEACH. You really learn the material when you have to teach it.

At least that’s the way I did it, and it seems to have been a reasonable approach. 30+ years and 3,000 hours so far, and the worst I’ve experienced is extreme turbulence a few times. But, flying in the afternoons in the summer in AZ/NM/NV will do that.
 
Nikhiln25 said:
Share some interesting insights?
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An instrument rating is not a "weather rating". It's a "system rating". Imo, you should wade into weather very slowly and critique every flight looking for ways to improve your procedures. Plan all your flights as though you'll be NORDO and know where all the terrain and obstacles are all the time. One missed step-down fix, for instance, and it's curtains.
 
Domenick said:
Never push the weather. If you get grounded, consider it an adventure.
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The most important thing, to me, has been a willingness to be flexible. Flexible with the plan, and flexible with time. If you make a Plan A and you stick to it at all costs, you'll be a horrible pilot. I like to tell my (non-commercial) pax that "Flying is always an adventure - It's just not always the adventure you had planned." But I have had some of my greatest experiences in life when I had an unexpected diversion.

Another good one: Thinking in advance about what situations you might run into that might result in a difficult decision, then making the decisions before you get there and sticking to them. For example, I had a (commercial) flight with a heavy load of pax and stuff that was going to be right at the maximum IFR range *and* with a headwind that would be increasing the farther we went. Pax wanted to go nonstop of course. I knew that I would feel pressured to keep going nonstop barring a dire fuel emergency, so instead I planned out two checkpoints the night before that were basically 1/2 and 3/4 of the way to the destination, and picked a fuel level below which I would divert to two alternates (one for each checkpoint) that I knew had decent facilities and would give us a quick and easy fuel stop if we needed it. Then, briefed the pax. It completely took the pressure out of the situation. I had a similar circumstance returning home very late one night with friends. We were all tired and looking forward to getting home, but I had decided beforehand that if the reserve fuel indication was less than an hour that we'd be stopping to refuel, period, end of story. We ended up stopping about a half hour from home and buying a few gallons despite being tired, and I don't think we would have ever made that decision if we'd left it until we were already airborne.

Finally: Always be a student. You will never know everything there is to know about aviation, and it's fascinating and fun to learn more, and it's almost always applicable in some way to what you're flying... And even if not, it's fun to have some stories to tell over a beverage at a hangar party. I have *NEVER* regretted trying new things in aviation, or learning new things. Always push your personal envelope, but only one corner at a time, and with an appropriate instructor aboard if you feel it's warranted for the situation. I have benefitted from every rating I've gotten, every course I've taken, every plane I've flown, every pilot/instructor I've flown with, and every new situation I've been in and I look to continue doing all of the above and then some.
 
Early recognition of my own mortality and shear blind luck. For example, I recently related the story of my dual inflight emergency as a (ahem ) “safety pilot” on a newly acquired 3rd owner EAB. I took some heat for pointing out it was an EAB, but I still think that was a factor in the incident.
 
I flew the first 500 hrs or more mostly by myself when I first got my plane. I flew it most everyday if the weather was good but didn't feel that comfortable taking a passenger. My wife waited for about a month to fly with me for the first time after I got my PPL. She's no dummy.
It was so rewarding learning how to fly it on my own. Remember my first grass landing, first short field landing on a 1600' grass strip.
Right after I earned my instrument rating I met my friend who taught me so much more, like how to talk on the radio.

Then it was a good feeling as time went by and my Wife mentioned my landings were getting better each time she went with me which was not that often.
 
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(1) I used to guffaw when the FAA attempted to reform teaching (CARE, PAVE). But what they are doing is attempting to teach "aviator brain". To some it cannot be taught. God bless them.
(2) Some guys I will just NOT fly with (ref: the McSpadden accident).

CFI
 
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Flocker said:
Too much to discuss here. There is a book on it. "Weather Flying" by Robert Buck.
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I have that book. The version I have is a slight update, authored by the guy and his son. The depth, in terms of observations and stories, is high. To me, kind of a stream of consciousness thing of a guy that knows weather forwards and backwards and flew through most of it in the 50's-60's, but it is well organized. Info about current weather products and such is dated, but how airplanes go through weather and how weather works is, of course, still very relevant. (And maybe there's yet another version that is more updated. Mine is dated 2013.)

Believe that Buck was one of the guys that intentionally flew fighter aircraft into storms after WW2 to learn more about weather. Pretty interesting stuff:

 
I'm not incident-free so no Yoda advice out of me.

I think flight training (once described as "the killing zone" of 0-300 hours) is mostly big number theory. Across enough flight hours, a certain number of pilots will be placed in a situation they don't have the goods to get out of, and a certain number of those will be culled as a result. It takes hundreds of hours and navigating thousands of unique situations to integrate all of the human errors (pilot and mx both), partial understanding, antique machinery, and physics of the plane and the atmosphere -- to then start driving down the risk factor.
 
schmookeeg said:
I'm not incident-free so no Yoda advice out of me.
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There are many people who are only incident-free out of sheer luck... But very few who have been able to do their own debrief and can share what they learned from an incident. Yoda away! What have you changed so that you won't have another incident?
 
All the suggestions given above are great. A few ideas from 55 years of flying and experience as fighter wing chief of safety. It's often not the big emergencies or distractions that get you in trouble; most well trained and conscientous pilots will handle those well. The seemingly less serious equipment failures will distract you and cause you to fail to do a checklist or deviate from your normal routines. If you're ever unfortunate enough to find yourself inside a thunderstorm or moderate to extreme turbulence forget about trying to maintain exact altitude or speed: set power for maneuvering speed and concentrate on keeping wings level (eg. you find yourself climbing or descending 1500 -2000 ft per minute with a confirmed level pitch attitude and terrain is not an immediate issue) just tell ATC you are declaring an emergency and you'll let him know when you can return your assigned altitude. Never be afraid to declare an emergency or min or emergency fuel if the need arises. (Real example: going into ORF many years ago with a line of 20-30K thunderstorms ahead and following a United flight that had spent 2-3 minutes asking for deviation right of course to a break in the line, and approach responding "unable." Finally an American pilot broke in and said "controller's regs for IFR separation will not allow him; just declare an emergency and he'll vector you through the break (which the controller did.) He also had a choice to ask for a 180 or diversion, but maybe his fuel state was also an issue.If you find yourself at extreme high angle of attack and bank due to winshear or wake turbulence roll out with rudder (not aileron) and push straight forward with the elevator. If you are flying a single engine approach and cannot hold glidepath with full power because you've allowed speed to get below below Vyse in a piston acft or well behind the power required curve in a jet , don't delay bringing the gear up and putting the nose down to accelerate and get to your appropriate L/D max speed. A friend of mine did not do this and paid with his and his WSO's life.
 
Best full info was from Chemgeek #46 so I won't rehash - Just something to add;
Be willing and able to cancel a flight for ANY reason even if it seems trivial. Yes, people will look at you funny, possibly call you a coward, I used to reply that I'm proud to be a coward, they seem to live longer... As your experience and skills increase, you'll end up cancelling fewer flights BUT, after 10,000+ hours, I still cancel (or, more often, land before destination and find a cheap motel..) to the disbelief of others. Ignore them, your comfort zone is just that, YOUR! Even though I use a lowly Cherokee as transportation, I always both have a back up plan to stop me 'pushing' my luck and have spare time available too.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
There are many people who are only incident-free out of sheer luck... But very few who have been able to do their own debrief and can share what they learned from an incident. Yoda away! What have you changed so that you won't have another incident?
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Not much. Since I have a propensity to fly hot/high/heavy AND have friends who treat "show up at the airport at 7am" as equivalent to noon, I now prefer the most horsepower and useful load I can scrabble into an airframe. :)
 
flyingcheesehead said:
There are many people who are only incident-free out of sheer luck... But very few who have been able to do their own debrief and can share what they learned from an incident. Yoda away! What have you changed so that you won't have another incident?
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1.) Almost became a statistic over Walnut Grove AR on my way home from one of the Gastons flyins. Started instrument training that week.

2.) Expect any cloud in the winter to contain icing, even outside of airmets/sigmets.

2a.) And if that cloud has SLD icing, get the hell out NOW, ask questions later.
 
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Let me sum it up…Takeoff is optional, landing is mandatory.
 
Do "stuff"
Check Airspeed

Do "stuff"
Check Airspeed

Do "stuff"
Check Airspeed

Do "stuff"
Check Airspeed

Do "stuff"
Check Airspeed
 
Nikhiln25 said:
For those that have been doing this for years and decades and have been at it for enough time to experience it all, what has kept you safe all these years to stay incident free? Knowing everything you know today, what would you wish a 200 hour version of you knew?
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I would say to my 200-hr version to really invest in learning the mechanical systems - what's behind the firewall, components of the engine, fuel systems, etc.. The standard training focuses mostly on how to fly the airplane, and much less on the mechanical, electrical and engine systems.
 
As mentioned in another thread, always have extra fuel on board. I have never landed my plane with less than an hour in the tank. Fuel gives you options, even for a lowly VFR pilot like me.

Never stretch your limits to get back to where your car is parked.
 
I treat the preflight as the most important part of the flight, and it takes as long as it takes. As the saying goes, it's the last chance to find the thing that will kill you.

I verbalize almost everything. I pretty much keep up a running dialogue with myself throughout critical phases of flight because somehow hearing it reinforces my mental flow.

Push to live. There have been a number of times (e.g., down-draft on final, approaching trees on a short-field takeoff) when I have experienced an almost overwhelming urge to pull back on the stick or yoke. Whenever that urge hits, I immediately discipline myself to keep the airspeed I need for final approach or Vx and trust that setting the engine appropriately will give me what I need.

No fast hands in the cockpit.

Trust but verify.
 
1. Fly often - 5-10 hours per month
2. Don't defer any maintenance
3. Learn about weather and use that knowledge to make good decisions.
4. Be flexible with your schedule when you use your plane for traveling.
5. At a minimum get a IR and even better Commercial Cert. I've been flying for 40 years without multi or tail wheel, but I want to get those too but I can't say that they are a "must have".
6. Important - this is not a cheap thing to do. If you can't afford to fly and own an airplane then don't do it. Find something else to do.
 
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