Even the "best of the best" are guilty with fatal consequences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LY4dngI17c

That plane was surely hangared. Wonder why the control lock was ever even used?

This is tragic but food for thought. I was thinking about this yesterday driving one of our rafting groups to our put in ( for those that don’t know, I own a whitewater company). We had a adaptive (autistic) group on the trip , so I let the guide doing the safety briefing know (we have a half hour ride to the put in and do our briefing on the way) that we needed to keep the talk straightforward and the “volume” down. We have very specific things we cover, much like a preflight, and every guide that does the briefing has their own “flow”, much like we do in our preflight. She completely fucked it up, as it was out of her normal routine, even by the slightest margin. It got me thinking how even the most minor distraction, can lead to missed stuff. I have no idea if this was the case here, but my hunch is that most, if not all of us have made this exact mistake on a preflight. I don’t know what the answer is, but it definitely got me thinking. Stick to the routine if possible, and understand that we are pretty good at messing stuff up.

Pete

asa wrote:That plane was surely hangared. Wonder why the control lock was ever even used?

The checklist

Our aircraft always are secured with the locks


Per the checklist, there are those who have at a time rushed the flows/checklist, and those who lie.

Best bet is a good flow backed up with a matched checklist

But man, even though it was a new to him plane, that fact it happened to a very very experienced pilot should be humbling to us all.

https://humansystems.arc.nasa.gov/fligh ... Design.pdf


The distraction thing too, very true, a while back we had a new hire, he was doing a walk around, it was nice weather and we were all outside, our “management” included, PIC was 3/4 done, by the front of the L wing, phone went off, he answered it, talked for a a minute, went back to the preflight, management went out and said do the walk around all over again and next time let it go to voice mail.

What pburns describes is a good point. I was best in the Army where David Trujillo's white cloud canceled out my black cloud. One say while one do is the best way to check list. I liked both the Army and Piper because they wrote important stuff on the panel. I was at my worst crop dusting and patrolling pipeline on a daily basis as a single pilot. What I did to compensate was that I never used gust locks either outside or the Cessna control lock, never turned fuel Off or anywhere but Both or in the CallAir with no both I only used the left tank. The right tank, like in the Colt, was reserved for emergency use only. Kiss really helps with checklist and the less complex the aircraft the better.

Yes, I rushed. Multiple takeoff and landing per hour, not day, in Ag. Every two hours pit stop for relief, fuel, and and coffee on pipelines. The really organized guys, like Rob, can remove booms, add spreader, fuel, load, and clean the windscreen in less than a minute with a pit crew. When I flew Medevac in the Army, the other pilot and crew cranked and run up while I got the mission and map coordinates. When I was in the left seat, he took off. I pointed toward the objective and then put my helmet on and strapped in on the way. Flight time to the patient at the big military exercises at Ft. Irwin were usually about five minutes.

When I fly with BCP and clinic pilots and instructors now I am just a very talkative passenger. I sit quietly until he is ready to go, however.