Checklists

[2R]

For those who are seriously interested in the history of checklists ,you might find ;The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande an interesting read.It has been getting good reviews from the medical professions who are starting to use checklists on a regular basis to help overcome some human factors that we are all prone to.

[mcrit]

Even a weekend flyer should be able to memorize "Primer, Master, Mags, Carb Heat, Mixture, Fuel Valve". Same thing goes for the intial actions in an emergency (nothing wrong with pulling out the checklist once you've got the situation under control and running some clean up items)

Re the part highlighted in blue: I have yet to see an FTU checklist that is either short or organized to flow around the cockpit.
Re the part highlighted in Red: There is no reason to check the Primer,Master,or Mags...... and it is not a downwind check it is a prelanding check.

As for comment #1, you haven't been working at the right FTUs. As for the comment #2, things that aren't supposed to move sometimes do (that applies outside aviation as well). I have twice caught a primer that had come unlocked in flight. As for comment #3 downwind check vs prelanding check.....call it what you want....who fucking cares.....just make sure it gets done.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Even a weekend flyer should be able to memorize "Primer, Master, Mags, Carb Heat, Mixture, Fuel Valve". Same thing goes for the intial actions in an emergency (nothing wrong with pulling out the checklist once you've got the situation under control and running some clean up items)

Re the part highlighted in blue: I have yet to see an FTU checklist that is either short or organized to flow around the cockpit.
Re the part highlighted in Red: There is no reason to check the Primer,Master,or Mags...... and it is not a downwind check it is a prelanding check.

As for comment #1, you haven't been working at the right FTUs. As for the comment #2, things that aren't supposed to move sometimes do (that applies outside aviation as well). I have twice caught a primer that had come unlocked in flight. As for comment #3 downwind check vs prelanding check.....call it what you want....who fucking cares.....just make sure it gets done.

10 yrs as a PPL and then 23 + yrs flying commecially. I have never had the Master or Mags switch change position in flight and I have never had a primer come loose because I always turned it half a turn and gave it a tug after I was finished the priming process. In any case if some extremely unlikely process caused the primer to turn against the lock tension and then have it spring open, fuel would then immediately start to be drawn through causing an over rich mixture and a rough running engine. I would suggest you should have discovered the open primer as part of the rough engine troubleshooting process, not during a "downwind check". I think these three checks are an example of somebodies "good idea" that somehow seems to have gotten into mainstream thinking. It has now become adopted by most FTU's because "thats how everybody does it " and so nobody thinks to take a step back and ask "why are doing this again?"

This is like the IFR instructors telling their students to make sure they time the ILS so that they can convert the approach to localizer only if the GS fails rather than going around. Sounds good at first blush but is totally stupid if you think about for a bit.

[Cat Driver]

In fifty six years and over thirty thousand hours of flying I have never had the Master or Mags switch change position in flight and I have never had a primer come loose because I always either made sure the primer was turned off by checking for a drop in fuel pressure during the priming process or if it was a manual pump type primer I made sure it was locked when I returned it to the in position.

I have however become aware of other airplanes that were a possible collision threat because I was looking outside and not inside reading a senseless check list in a location where air traffic is usually the most dense for a given flight....in close vicinity to an airport.

[Lurch]

I have to agree with the two "old farts" on this one

Now BPF, I have re-done two FTUs checklist in the past, I unfortunately wasn't able to delete the repetitive/useless dribble but they both followed a flow.

Lurch

[mcrit]

I have never had the Master or Mags switch change position in flight and I have never had a primer come loose because I always turned it half a turn and gave it a tug after I was finished the priming process. In any case if some extremely unlikely process caused the primer to turn against the lock tension and then have it spring open, fuel would then immediately start to be drawn through causing an over rich mixture and a rough running engine. I would suggest you should have discovered the open primer as part of the rough engine troubleshooting process, not during a "downwind check".

Happened twice on the same a/c. The thing wasn't out far enough to let fuel be drawn, but it wasn't locked. Sent it into the engineer after the first time, he said it was worn. Sent it back to him the second time but never found out what was wrong with it. In 22 years of flying I've never had the mags or master move on their own either, in 33 years of shooting I've never pulled a rifle out of my locker and found a round in the breech, but I still check both because it is a 0.5 second glance that guards against Mr Murphy.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I have never had the Master or Mags switch change position in flight and I have never had a primer come loose because I always turned it half a turn and gave it a tug after I was finished the priming process. In any case if some extremely unlikely process caused the primer to turn against the lock tension and then have it spring open, fuel would then immediately start to be drawn through causing an over rich mixture and a rough running engine. I would suggest you should have discovered the open primer as part of the rough engine troubleshooting process, not during a "downwind check".

Happened twice on the same a/c. The thing wasn't out far enough to let fuel be drawn, but it wasn't locked. Sent it into the engineer after the first time, he said it was worn. Sent it back to him the second time but never found out what was wrong with it. In 22 years of flying I've never had the mags or master move on their own either, in 33 years of shooting I've never pulled a rifle out of my locker and found a round in the breech, but I still check both because it is a 0.5 second glance that guards against Mr Murphy.

OK but there are many other things you could also check. Why not check all the ciruit breakers, after all one could be out. Or the altimeter setting, because you could have miss set it and be above or below the circuit hight. How about rechecking that you have the right radio freq set, you might have knocked the freq selector knob or the use/stby switch. Better recheck that your seat belt is still done up because you might have accidently unlocked it. Lets also recheck that the parking brake knob did not somehow worked itself out to the on position. How about making sure the beacon switch is still on, it also could have been bumped off. None of these are very likely but they could happen. So please explain to me that even though the master and Mag switch position are very unlikely to have changed position, they are worth checking but the other possible items in the cockpit are not. What was the rational to check these switch positions and not other possible ones ? I just do not understand the thought process that drove your checklist item selection, because to me it doesn't compute.

[Aviatard]

I've never had bad fuel or the wrong fuel in any aircraft I've flown. I'm not going to bother checking that anymore. Waste of time.

[200hr Wonder]

Happened twice on the same a/c. The thing wasn't out far enough to let fuel be drawn, but it wasn't locked. Sent it into the engineer after the first time, he said it was worn. Sent it back to him the second time but never found out what was wrong with it. In 22 years of flying I've never had the mags or master move on their own either, in 33 years of shooting I've never pulled a rifle out of my locker and found a round in the breech, but I still check both because it is a 0.5 second glance that guards against Mr Murphy.

I've never had bad fuel or the wrong fuel in any aircraft I've flown. I'm not going to bother checking that anymore. Waste of time.
I've never had bad fuel or the wrong fuel in any aircraft I've flown. I'm not going to bother checking that anymore. Waste of time.

Checking your breech mcrit or checking your fuel Aviatard may only take a moment or two but are NOT being done during critical phases of flight when you have limited time and space for certain events to happen. This becomes even more an issue when you are in busy airspace with lots of VFR traffic. Cause sure the last guy called crossing midfield as you where you joining down wind and *should* be well ahead of you when you get there and then there is the faster guy who is going to try and sneak into the strait in. 0.5 and no positive visual ID can be huge when you potentiality have two wee little airplanes closing in on each other at 350 feet per second.

Also Aviatard checking your fuel is a good idea because YOU did not put it in. I never check my plane for the correct fuel when I fill it up because I put it and made sure I filled with the correct fuel. Never trust someone else, also why when you hop into an airplane you check all the switches are where you want them if someone else has access to it. IE a rental or maintenance. Kinda of like checking the gear handle is down before you hit the master. 99.999% of the time it is still down but the burly guy from maintenance was in in the cockpit and may have smacked it with his boot on the way out and never felt it. A switch magically rotating its self from one setting to another? Impossible!

[LousyFisherman]

I had to think about this since a lot of pilots I respect seem to think what I do for checks is unnecessary.
First, there is a difference between a to do list and a checklist. I have 2 to do lists, pre-flight/startup, and post-flight/shutdown. My check list is designed to MONITOR the airplane. A check list is not designed to tell you what to do. You should have your actions memorized for all situations, regular and emergency.

As to details:
i do it every 10-15 minutes because in 30 minutes the engine can become a fused lump of steel.

My knee is approximately 5 inches from the ignition and master. The primer is beside that. I have accidently turned off the master, not in flight but.... I don't look inside to check them, ring finger pulls primer, middle finger pulls master, thumb and forefinger check the the mags. Total time less then a second.

Fuel cutoff cannot be seen, maybe I partially hooked it with my sleeve when I had to pick up that map, maybe the 5 year old kicked it.... Again, I am looking outside. And I want to know if it is partially closed, trust me I do!

Gauges, 5 seconds later if you asked me I could not tell you where they were, I would tell you they were where I expected them to be, if they weren't I would be busy Lets say 1 second inside

Carb heat, 3 times I have had carb icing during cruise. So is my low (50-100) RPMS because I am using carb heat or I bumped the ignition, or improperly set mixture? And yes when it is 25 degrees OAT I will still check carb heat because I have no interest in using multiple checklists. Again I have no need to look inside.

In fact (and here is one that I suspect will start a debate), I am going to add cabin air and cabin heat to my check list, because then I have ONE checklist for all situations, including an in-flight fire Means I don't have to think about which checklist or what is on the proper checklist.

Flap check, I am looking outside, since the gauge is above my head to the right on the inside.

As for looking outside, my final check is right after my radio call to the aerodrome control zone. I do not do it in the downwind, base or final. As others have said, look outside.

On final, everything I need to check, flaps and fuel, I am using to fly the plane, no need to check it. Now if/when I start flying a retractable or amphib, I will probably add a landing gear check.

A complete combustion chamber check, fuel, air, spark along with an electrical system check, done in 2 seconds of head down time, (add another second for the cabin air checks) which is never done when I am in what is my definition of busy airspace, the circuit.

I think that is the safest balance, however, I am more than willing to consider any improvements others are willing to offer.

IMHO
YMMV
LF

[Cat Driver]

Lets pause here for a moment and examine one of those items so loved by the puppy mill mindset, the master switch.

Lets suppose for some unknown reason it accidentally got in the off position, what danger outside of missing radio messages would this create and how long would it really be before one realized there was no electrical power available, except in the magnetos?

[Big Pistons Forever]

Lousy Fisherman

First off I hope you did not take my post as person criticism as that was certainly not my intent............. unlike say my posts directed at Strega

The intent of my posts on the subject of checklists was to get people to think about what they were doing. I believe too many pilots (and instructors) were mindlessly following FTU's checklists with out giving any thought to what they were actually doing. I also felt that the default for checklist use was the do list. And so pilots were driving around in the airport environment with there head down reading unnecessary long and complicated lists of actions instead of flying the airplane and looking out the window. In fact I actully overheard a student (not mine !) say doing the checklist and talking on the radio would be so much easier if he didn't have to fly the airplane at the same time

This is one of those areas in aviation where we can debate for ever and ultimately there is an element of personal preference. I look at the checklist from the perspective of a flight instructor preparing people for careers as commercial pilots. So I want the way checklist are used in the training environment to have the same general philosophy and style as is the common industry standard ( just like I teach the airline SOP for aircraft light use). Operational effeciency is very important in commercial ops thus the very low probabilty/low consequence check items are generally not seen in commercial operations. I also want the student to use his/her brain not just mindlessly follow a "substitute for thinking" checklist.

I would say in general you IMO appear to be doing a good job minding the store when you are flying your C 150. You have realized the importance of prioritzing your actions and the absolute primacy of flying the aircraft and looking out the window.

However a couple of things to think about:


1) You are flying a very simple airplane so it is possible to check just about everything and still fly/lookout. The DC 6 I used to fly had over 100 switches, levers, and knobs and over 40 guages. It is obviously impossible to check everything so if you plan to move to higher performance aircraft you will find you will have to change your checklist philosophy (and BTW the prelanding checklist only had 4 items).

2) In general you should never be touching a switch or control in the cockpit without looking at it first. If you are so pressed for time that you do not want to to take the time to look down and verify were your finger is than the problem I would suggest is you are doing the action at the wrong time in the flight (or the action is unnecessary in the first place).

3) Aircraft are meant to take off, fly somewhere, and land. So the generally accepted sequence of checks are prestart/taxi/pretakeoff/aftertakeoff(not required on simple aircraft)/cruise/descent and approach/prelanding/afterlanding/shutdown. For single pilot ops I teach the checks where were the aircraft is stopped (or in cruise) are done as do list and the rest are flows backed up by a checklist as appropriate. One reason the DC 6 prelanding checklist is so short is that many items which show up on a FTU prelanding checklist are done in the "descent and approach" check. I have adopted this same philosophy for flight training and so just prior to starting your descent to the airport (or entering the control zone if it is just a flight to the practice area) when things are not too busy you can cleanup the nice to do items as a flow/check, leaving only the killer items for the prelanding check. If you are hard over on checking items like the primer than IMO you should do it as part of a simple approach check. (For those who say this is overkill for a buck fifty, yes you are right but the length of each of the checks are kept to a minimum and in any case TC forces the use of a full set of checklists so why not have the student learn a rythm of checks that he /she will use throughout their career.)

4) Back to the master. Sorry I cannot let this one go. You say you do your prelanding immediately after your radio call. Well since obviously your radio will not work with the master off, is not the fact that you successfully communicated on the radio a definitive check that the master is on ?

5) Pretty much every commercial aircraft (large and small) I have flown has had a check of the brakes as part of the prelanding checklist. I have had 2 instances where the brakes worked normally at the begining of the flight but were not working when I came into land. Both were discovered when I gave a quick squeeze of the pedals as part of the prelanding flow and realised there was no brake pressure.

[mcrit]

OK but there are many other things you could also check. Why not check......

Cost/benefit ratio. Going heads down to check CBs will cost to much time for the potential benefit. Same with the radio freq, if you are on the wrong freq at an uncontrolled aerodrome, big deal. I will point out again that "Primer, Master, Mags" is a memory/flow check, not to be read from a checklist, and to be broken up between scans outside. Scan outside/check attitude, glance down at primer place hand on it, back up for scan outside and give primer a wiggle while looking outside, glance down at master, back up outside.......

......because to me it doesn't compute.

Fair enough, I've been around long enough to learn that there are a lot of ways to skin a cat, and they all work pretty well. You're choosing to discount what I freely admit is a very very small risk. I choose to guard against it because it costs next to nothing and I may be just a little bit more paranoid than you.

This becomes even more an issue when you are in busy airspace with lots of VFR traffic. Cause sure the last guy called crossing midfield as you where you joining down wind and *should* be well ahead of you when you get there and then there is the faster guy who is going to try and sneak into the strait in. 0.5 and no positive visual ID can be huge when you potentiality have two wee little airplanes closing in on each other at 350 feet per second.

Humour me a little bit here. Say the following out loud, "One one thousand". Now take the time it took you to say that and divide it by half. If that amount of time puts you into a situation where a collision is now unavoidable, something was very wrong long before you glanced down to check anything. Sorry if that sounds patronizing, rest assured I'm not trying to be that way.

[LousyFisherman]

Lousy Fisherman
First off I hope you did not take my post as person criticism as that was certainly not my intent............. unlike say my posts directed at Strega

No not at all. In fact you helped me by forcing me to think why I was doing the things I did.
This is a good thing

2) In general you should never be touching a switch or control in the cockpit without looking at it first. If you are so pressed for time that you do not want to to take the time to look down and verify were your finger is than the problem I would suggest is you are doing the action at the wrong time in the flight (or the action is unnecessary in the first place).

I think I am going to disagree on this one.
Do you look at the fuel selector valve before you touch it?
Why do most instructors think it is a good thing to be able to sit in the cockpit and be able to touch the controls with your eyes closed?

4) Back to the master. Sorry I cannot let this one go. You say you do your prelanding immediately after your radio call. Well since obviously your radio will not work with the master off, is not the fact that you successfully communicated on the radio a definitive check that the master is on ?

Well I would argue that when I changed frequencies before my call would be a good indicator. No LED numbers, check master. Other than that how would I know that I have successfully communicated? At least 25% of the time I am talking to myself when entering the zone. However, I can see where you and Cat are coming from. There are so many other indicators the master is off that the check is unnecessary.

5) Pretty much every commercial aircraft (large and small) I have flown has had a check of the brakes as part of the prelanding checklist. I have had 2 instances where the brakes worked normally at the begining of the flight but were not working when I came into land. Both were discovered when I gave a quick squeeze of the pedals as part of the prelanding flow and realised there was no brake pressure.

And now you have me thinking again! Of course I could argue that it is extremely unlikely there would be brake failure if I did not witness hydraulic fluid during the walk around (despite your experiences), but I can see how the cost/benefit ratio would make a check of the brakes sensible. Are you sure you're not trying to get me to create one of these FTU monster checklists

Oh and do you look at the brakes or rudder before you touch them

Thank you, I like being made to think.
LF

[Doc]

Shakes head. Has aviation really become this dumbed down? Entire debates over the possibility of mags and masters mysteriously being turned off. Frikken gremlins! Two facts remain. If the engine is actually running, at least one mag is on. If ANYTHING electric is operating, eg fuel gauge, the master is ON. But, you just go ahead and "make sure".........

[Big Pistons Forever]

2) In general you should never be touching a switch or control in the cockpit without looking at it first. If you are so pressed for time that you do not want to to take the time to look down and verify were your finger is than the problem I would suggest is you are doing the action at the wrong time in the flight (or the action is unnecessary in the first place).

I think I am going to disagree on this one.
Do you look at the fuel selector valve before you touch it?
Why do most instructors think it is a good thing to be able to sit in the cockpit and be able to touch the controls with your eyes closed?

There have been lots of guys who were so sure their hands were on the flap handle that they did not bother to look.....and raised the gear instead....
There is never a need for fast hands in the cockpit and developing the discipline to force yourself to slow down and be methodical will stand you in very good stead when you start flying more complex aircraft. Re: the fuel selector. No problem going by feel on a single Cessna, but the twin Cessna selectors are side by side. I always look to make sure my hand is on the correct the selector, before moving it. Care to guess why I am now so hard over on this methodology.......

[MichaelP]

Well since obviously your radio will not work with the master off, is not the fact that you successfully communicated on the radio a definitive check that the master is on ?

Who says the radio won't work with the Master off???
In all the aeroplanes I have flown with a dynamo in the system it did!
Remember the bloke coming back and complaining he needed 1700 RPM to make the radio work... He had the Master Switch turned Off!

Now for the radio nonsense...
Aviate, Navigate, Communicate...

I hate seeing people hanging on to make their radio call while forgetting to Aviate: Do Your Checks and Fly the Aeroplane.
Navigate, be concerned about an accurate flight path and any other traffic.
Now give them a call if you can!

IOW Checks before Radio Call in most instances!

[mcrit]

MichaelP, thanks for the correction on the Chipmunk, I always had it in the back of my mind that it was British. However, I'm still not a fan, (and never will be), of British cooking.

[Big Pistons Forever]

5) Pretty much every commercial aircraft (large and small) I have flown has had a check of the brakes as part of the prelanding checklist. I have had 2 instances where the brakes worked normally at the begining of the flight but were not working when I came into land. Both were discovered when I gave a quick squeeze of the pedals as part of the prelanding flow and realised there was no brake pressure.

And now you have me thinking again! Of course I could argue that it is extremely unlikely there would be brake failure if I did not witness hydraulic fluid during the walk around (despite your experiences), but I can see how the cost/benefit ratio would make a check of the brakes sensible. Are you sure you're not trying to get me to create one of these FTU monster checklists

FYI there are several places the brake system can fail. Both of the brake failures did not occur at the wheel, the usual place students are taught to look for brake problems. One was due to a pin hole leak at the flange of the bottom of the hydraulic reservoir (located in the nose), which caused all the hydraulic fluid to slowly drain out ( Pa31 Navajo) and the other was a burst seal inside the centre handbrake/parking brake lever in a Pa 34 Seneca, which caused the system to suck in a bunch of air.
No fluid or a big slug of air in the brake system = no brakes. While we are on the subject of brakes ...a personal pet peeve. The standard practice is to test the brakes as the aircraft first starts to roll at the start of the taxi. I often observe students jamming on the brakes causing the nose of the aircraft to jerk down and the aircraft to abruptly stop. There is no need to do this , just gently apply the brakes and as you feel the first gentle retarding action ease up on the predals and continue with the taxi.

[iflyforpie]

WRT Master Switch. Yeah it's probably not the most important thing, but only takes a couple milliseconds to check. On the older Cessnas with the push-pull switch it can be easily bumped off. This combined with mechanical or erroneous fuel gauges, ammeters that tell you a different thing depending on which angle you look at it, mechanical displays on Cessna 300 or KX-170 radios, and lack of radio traffic can mask an electrical problem.

I lost a generator on a 182 and my first and only warning that was apparent was the 295 on the yoke telling me about low voltage.

[LousyFisherman]

There have been lots of guys who were so sure their hands were on the flap handle that they did not bother to look.....and raised the gear instead....

And to me this is a design failure more than anything. I do not understand why something as critical as the gear switch would be located somewhere there could be confusion. And especially not beside the flaps, something that is manipulated just before the need for gear becomes critical.

Mind you I have flown a C172 where the end of the throttle control was the same as the end of the mixture and carb heat controls. I hated that plane, had to look down every time I wanted to adjust the throttle to make sure I was adjusting the throttle.

Thanks for your insights
LF

[Bede]

Just counted: the CRJ checklist has 74 items, not including the first flight of the day (where everything is tested and checked) and the last flight. So, if your 172 checklist is longer than this, it's time to start getting rid of the stupid stuff.

[Dagwood]

A lot depends on how often you are flying.

Mcrit has a point. Students who fly 5 times a week may only need a postcard sized checklist. Pilot Joe who only flies 2x a year to maintain currency is not going to waste time memorizing checklists, hence is going to need the "C172 Checklist - Cross Country Volume" if he is going to fly somewhere, or the "C172 Checklist - Practice Area and Airwork Volume" if he is going to do that.

A CFI once said he's seen too many "pilots" forget the fuel selector in the left or right position, and run out of fuel. So double-check, and triple-check the fuel selector before departure so that these "pilots" have a chance to not mess up.

I say "pilot" because we all know you don't need to be smart to fly.

It is that attitude that IMO is ruining flight instruction. Most FTU`s I know of have a 30 day currency program for low time renter pilots. If they let a PPL renter take one of their aircraft after not flying for 6 months than they have a bigger problem than the potential for a misselected fuel tank. What is going to happen is the PPL is going to have a checkout flight and any problems with checklist use can be addressed at that time. I would hope that an FTU would not organize itself expecting all its students and renters to perform at the standards expected from a PPL who has not flown for 6 months. Surely we can aspire to higher standard.

I only used 6 months as an exaggerated example. However, for any average pilot who flies only once a month and doesn't bother to memorize the checklist, a long checklist provides a certain amount of security (for them and the FTU) that they'll do everything right. There is a certain amount of liability (I think) that is taken into account for FTU checklists. If a renter/student crashes because one tank ran dry, in a bad case scenario, a lawyer may come back to the FTU because it wasn't on the checklist. A checklist for a private owner who flies 2x a week should be much shorter than an FTU checklist for the same aircraft. With all due respect BPF, I think we need to agree to disagree on this one.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Dagwood

Yup I guess "agree to disagree" is where we are at.

BTW I cannot help but note that the foot note you have on every post ought to also apply to your students not just you.....