Friday, March 3, 2017

Pilot Checklists | Not All People that Talk to Themselves are Crazy

Before the age of cellphones and bluetooth if you saw someone walking down the street talking to themselves you might have thought they had a screw loose.  Now in the technological age you see glowing blue devices in people's ears that look like they might be from an episode of Star Trek.

Now days you see all sorts of folks walking around town talking to themselves, people alone in their cars waving their arms around using body language to describe their conversation to an empty seat next to them and now it all seems perfectly normal.

As pilots we are trained to use checklists to ensure that particular items are completed for each phase of the flight.  I have found that saying the items on the checklist out loud help to ensure I am actually completing the items on the checklists.  I will typically try to perform the checklist by memory first and then back check those items with a thorough review by reading down the items on the checklist to see if I missed anything.  If you pay attention to the video you will see that I actually do miss an item in the run-up checklist but then I correct it when I read back through the printed checklist.

I received my checkout in the C182 and this week I flew solo which was both fun and exciting.  Even though I am all by myself in the airplane it really helps to speak the checklists out-loud.  It could be that I have a screw loose like the folks walking around town talking to themselves but at least by talking to myself in the cockpit I am more likely to accurately complete thorough flight checklists when it really matters most.

(Tad Flying the 182 Solo)



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