Getting Behind The Airplane
Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 12:52 pm
Cut that out. You have a dirty mind. God knows what you are thinking
when you drive past a bank ATM.
Over many decades, I have observed that very rarely do pilots wake up
in the morning, and exclaim, "I'm going to fuck an airplane up today!"
No. Although there are notable exceptions, most pilots work very very
hard to not fuck the airplane up.
But, they still do. Decade after decade after decade.
The good news is that there are no new causes of accidents in aviation,
so you can learn them if you care to. The bad news is that apparently
no one does. Sigh.
We can learn a lesson from Alex Barron of the UK, whom in 2012 set a
world record, by juggling eleven balls, I might tangentially note after two
years of practice. At the age of 18. So much to learn from that.
Anyways. Alex was able to juggle 11 balls, a superhuman feat which has
yet to be surpassed. You might have guessed by now that this is a metaphor
for what a pilot does in the cockpit. You're aren't as good as an 18 year old
with two years of practice, so you probably can't do 11 things at the same time.
If you don't know what a metaphor is, much of what I write will be gibberish
to you. Stop now and learn about metaphors.
Ok. The metaphor here, is that there are human limits to how many different
tasks a pilot can juggle in the cockpit successfully, before he starts dropping
balls. It's a metaphor, ok?
And, it's probably not eleven tasks that your average pilot can perform in the
cockpit successfully at the same time.
Pilots rarely come to grief on autopilot in cross-country cruise, when the workload
is low. Well, that's not actually true. There have been some notable exceptions
when the fertilizer hit the rotating cooling device and the entire cockpit crew
fell asleep in cruise and woke up a little too late. But even though that was
embarrassing, it was not fatal. It did not result in a change in appearance of
the aircraft.
Contrast this with departure and approach, when workload is very high, and
pilots frequently alter the appearance of the aircraft, and not in a good way.
You don't have the sideburns, so you're not Burt Rutan, ok? Your attempts as
a pilot to alter the appearance of an airplane will rarely be appreciated or
successful.
Some simple examples of pilots getting behind the airplane:
1) pitch oscillation in the flare. Every pilot has done this, learning to land.
You are a liar if you claim you have never experienced this.
2) yaw oscillation after touchdown in a taildragger. Again, if you are a
tailwheel pilot, you are a liar if you claim you have never experienced this.
3) departure stall
4) overshooting the turn to final, with a strong tailwind on base
5) CFIT after takeoff or during approach. Technology has helped enormously
here, but pilots are still trying hard and sometimes succeeding.
Departure and arrival are times of extreme workload, especially when a
pilot gets behind the airplane. A runway change from ATC at the last minute.
I don't even know why those are legal, they are so dangerous. Why doesn't ATC
just cancel your fucking IFR clearance and tell you change to their frequency
of 121.50?
Time and time again, we see single pilot accidents where they get overwhelmed
either on departure or arrival, and especially when they are in cloud and have
the additional task of hand-flying, they lose control of the aircraft and it augers
in, for really no good reason. Nothing kills more pilots around here, than a little
marine layer, in the morning before it's burned off. Task saturation. You may have
heard of a company called Tesla. This just about killed the company, a few years
back.
An experienced, skilled pilot is not just someone that wiggles the controls to
get a precise, smooth result. An experienced pilot - one that learns from experience -
sees trouble coming, and puts effort into staying ahead of the airplane. They know
what's going to happen next - or at least, they have a pretty good idea and thus can
make a pretty intelligent guess - so that when something does happen, they are
expecting it. Surprises are for Christmas morning, under a non-deciduous tree. Not
for aviation.
They've seen it before, and they've learned the lessons from that previous non-fatal
experience. You'd be amazed at how many pilots don't. They keep on making the
same mistake, over and over again. Try really hard to only make NEW mistakes.
Little ones, if you can.
Anyways. Try really hard to stay ahead of the airplane. Sure sounds easy enough.
when you drive past a bank ATM.
Over many decades, I have observed that very rarely do pilots wake up
in the morning, and exclaim, "I'm going to fuck an airplane up today!"
No. Although there are notable exceptions, most pilots work very very
hard to not fuck the airplane up.
But, they still do. Decade after decade after decade.
The good news is that there are no new causes of accidents in aviation,
so you can learn them if you care to. The bad news is that apparently
no one does. Sigh.
We can learn a lesson from Alex Barron of the UK, whom in 2012 set a
world record, by juggling eleven balls, I might tangentially note after two
years of practice. At the age of 18. So much to learn from that.
Anyways. Alex was able to juggle 11 balls, a superhuman feat which has
yet to be surpassed. You might have guessed by now that this is a metaphor
for what a pilot does in the cockpit. You're aren't as good as an 18 year old
with two years of practice, so you probably can't do 11 things at the same time.
If you don't know what a metaphor is, much of what I write will be gibberish
to you. Stop now and learn about metaphors.
Ok. The metaphor here, is that there are human limits to how many different
tasks a pilot can juggle in the cockpit successfully, before he starts dropping
balls. It's a metaphor, ok?
And, it's probably not eleven tasks that your average pilot can perform in the
cockpit successfully at the same time.
Pilots rarely come to grief on autopilot in cross-country cruise, when the workload
is low. Well, that's not actually true. There have been some notable exceptions
when the fertilizer hit the rotating cooling device and the entire cockpit crew
fell asleep in cruise and woke up a little too late. But even though that was
embarrassing, it was not fatal. It did not result in a change in appearance of
the aircraft.
Contrast this with departure and approach, when workload is very high, and
pilots frequently alter the appearance of the aircraft, and not in a good way.
You don't have the sideburns, so you're not Burt Rutan, ok? Your attempts as
a pilot to alter the appearance of an airplane will rarely be appreciated or
successful.
Some simple examples of pilots getting behind the airplane:
1) pitch oscillation in the flare. Every pilot has done this, learning to land.
You are a liar if you claim you have never experienced this.
2) yaw oscillation after touchdown in a taildragger. Again, if you are a
tailwheel pilot, you are a liar if you claim you have never experienced this.
3) departure stall
4) overshooting the turn to final, with a strong tailwind on base
5) CFIT after takeoff or during approach. Technology has helped enormously
here, but pilots are still trying hard and sometimes succeeding.
Departure and arrival are times of extreme workload, especially when a
pilot gets behind the airplane. A runway change from ATC at the last minute.
I don't even know why those are legal, they are so dangerous. Why doesn't ATC
just cancel your fucking IFR clearance and tell you change to their frequency
of 121.50?
Time and time again, we see single pilot accidents where they get overwhelmed
either on departure or arrival, and especially when they are in cloud and have
the additional task of hand-flying, they lose control of the aircraft and it augers
in, for really no good reason. Nothing kills more pilots around here, than a little
marine layer, in the morning before it's burned off. Task saturation. You may have
heard of a company called Tesla. This just about killed the company, a few years
back.
An experienced, skilled pilot is not just someone that wiggles the controls to
get a precise, smooth result. An experienced pilot - one that learns from experience -
sees trouble coming, and puts effort into staying ahead of the airplane. They know
what's going to happen next - or at least, they have a pretty good idea and thus can
make a pretty intelligent guess - so that when something does happen, they are
expecting it. Surprises are for Christmas morning, under a non-deciduous tree. Not
for aviation.
They've seen it before, and they've learned the lessons from that previous non-fatal
experience. You'd be amazed at how many pilots don't. They keep on making the
same mistake, over and over again. Try really hard to only make NEW mistakes.
Little ones, if you can.
Anyways. Try really hard to stay ahead of the airplane. Sure sounds easy enough.
