Thought for the day...

Today's topic is SITUATIONAL AWARENESS!

If today you were preflighting your helicopter in the dark, and an orangutan was sitting silently on top of the mast...

HOW LONG WOULD IT BE BEFORE YOU NOTICED???

Don't forget to do a walk-around.  They don't cost much.  

Peace, Errwolf

Thought for the day

You can train a monkey to fly an ILS, but you can't train a monkey to pull a phase.  

One day on approach to Singapore

News item: Texting Pilot Forgets to Lower Gear

Note to haters and lawyers: this is a joke, not the actual transcript.  Thank you.  Joke continues.  

CVR transcript of Jetstar 320

PF = Pilot Flying, or in this case Pilot Forgetting

PM = Pilot Monitoring, or in this case Pilot: Moron

ATC = duh, ATC

ATC: Jetstar 320, cross MORON intersection at 2000 feet, contact tower MORON inbound.

PM: Mmmmmm.

PF: You need to push the PTT button.

PM: (click) Uhhhhhhh, roger, MORON inbound uhhhhhh (freq change)

PM: Signapore tower, Jetstar 320 MORON inbound for the visual RWY12R.

(stone cold silence)

PM: Ooops, tuned the NAV radio. No wonder I couldn’t get the whole freq in. Stand by.

(fiddle fiddle fiddle)

PM: Signapore tower, likeiwuzsayin, Jetstar 320 MORON inbound for the visual RWY12R.

ATC: Jetstar 320, runway 30L is in use.

PM: Yeah that’s what I meant. 30R.

ATC: 30L.

PM: Sure.

ATC: Jetstar 320, do you have the airport in sight?

PM: The Singapore Airport?

ATC: Yes.

PM: Why yes I do.

ATC: Good. Make straight in for RWY 30L, check wheels down, follow a Spruce Goose on a 2 mile final.

PM: Searching.

PF: Before landing check.

PM: Speaking of landing, what you want to eat here, they have that pizza place right by the gate.

PF: Should I get my own flaps or what?

PM: No, I was going to get the supreme, I hadn’t got the flaps before.

PF: BIRDS!

PM: Huh?

WHAPWHAPWHAPSCHMACKTHUMPTHUD (yaw) (compressor stall)

PF: We should write that up.

PM: Screw that, one more leg and I’m going home. Maintenance can figure it out.

ATC: Jetstar 320, previously issued traffic is clearing at taxiway C, cleared to land RWY 30L, where are you parking?

PM: We’ll be parking at the terminal.

ATC: ??????

BAM BAM BAM BAM

PM: Whose banging on the cockpit door now?

PF: Oh, we have a non-rev Jet Blue captain deadheading in first class.

(sounds of screams, religious ranting, flight attendants kung fu fighting)

PF: Did you ever get that before landing checklist?

PM: What? I got a text.

PF: Dang, we’re hot on this approach. Flaps 90.

PM: Maybe it’ll make up for that time we lost after we left the gear down on climb out for fifty miles.

PF: Yeah, we’ll never do that again.

(gear warning horn silenced by PM)

PF: Are we cleared to land?

PM: Lemme ask, I turned the volume down.

PF: You turned tower down? Arm speed brakes, we got a tailwind or something.

ATC: (slow fade up to normal volume) JETSTAR 320, do you require assistance?

PM (texting) We got it, we’re a little busy here.

ATC: Roger, rolling crash.

PM: 10-4.

PM: Oh. Hey, Singapore tower, did you text me a minute ago?

ATC: YES I SAID CHECK GEAR DOWN YOUR GEAR IS UP AGGGGGGH.

PM: Oh. Well I guess we’ll go around, as the article stated, at 720 feet we are too low to extend the landing gear. Got the high skid package on this one.

ATC: Jetstar 320 GO AROUND GO AROUND GO AROUND.

PF: Going around.

PM: Tower, do you know that it costs our airline $2000 every time we go around?

ATC: Roger, give me $5000 worth - direct MORON and hold.

For the record I would like to state that all these conversations are fictitious and I would never do anything like this.  

Another old pilot joke...

Three old, old pilots are walking together on the flightline.  


"Sure is windy today" says the first.


"Naw, its Thursday" says the second.  


"Me too, let's go get a beer" says the third.  

Safety Program or a Safe Program?

The point at which your safety program becomes irrelevant

There is a huge difference between having a safety program and operating safely.  The difference can mean life or death.  A few examples:

1. September 18th, 2008.  An Army National Guard helicopter crosses from Kuwait into southern Iraq for the first time since arriving in country for a nine month tour.  The organization at all levels has school trained safety officers, trained at the Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, which believes (and practices) that enough micromanagement can achieve a zero accident rate in the Army.  There are safety conferences, safety meetings, safety councils, safety surveys, safety briefings, risk assessments, and safety is preached and drilled constantly during a months-long train up for the deployment.

But that evening, it doesn't matter, as inexperienced pilots take off in marginal weather into the dark featureless desert. Within minutes after crossing into country, the third aircraft in the formation, Red River 44, crashes into the desert floor at 130 knots, killing the crew and passengers.

2. April 20th, 2010.  BP has a great safety program, if not a great safety record.  Contract employees are subject to intensive interviews before being allowed to work for BP.  Many of these third party providers fail to live up to BP's safety standards.  New arrivals at BP facilities are shaken down for contraband.  Passengers must be escorted by approved escort personnel to aircraft that are shut down, no hot refueling, no hot passenger loading.  Safety is practiced well past the point of operational intrusion.  There are safety audits and safety consultants and safety inspections and safety meetings and long safety conventions, and awards and accolades given to the safest of the safe operators.

But that evening, it doesn't matter, as the Deepwater Horizon crew, recipients of a recent safety award, bypass all manner of established protocols downhole and cause a blowout that kills 11, and an epic oil spill that the domestic offshore drilling industry will take years to recover from.

3. Ongoing.  A major provider of worldwide offshore helicopter services hosts an expanding safety department that issues frequent safety alerts on such imperative workplace dangers as:

a. People walking into trailer hitches in the parking lot at company headquarters.
b. People walking into filing cabinets at company headquarters.
c. People injuring themselves standing up from chairs at company headquarters.

4. Have you taken a state approved Defensive Driving Course lately?  Enough said.

It is a given that people will often brush safety concerns aside in favor of getting the job done, absent any controls.  It is also a given that safety programs are often born out of industrial accidents, that the rules are written in blood, and that THE PROGRAM IS PUT IN PLACE LARGELY TO COVER MANAGEMENT'S REAR END AFTER AN ACCIDENT.  Later, the overly restrictive new programs are at least partially ignored on the line, and the process repeats itself, sometimes at the cost of many lives.

So what exactly can be done?  How can a safety program be engineered so that it actually makes a difference and a meaningful connection between the program and the employees?  A few ideas from the field:

1. The safety department must be trusted and respected both up and down.  Safety must report directly to top management so as to minimize political interference, and personnel on the line must be able to bring their concerns to the safety department where they will be given a fair hearing, without fear of retribution.  The moment that the line perceives that the safety department is blowing off their concerns, or worse, is a hit man for management, the safety department will have forever lost the cooperation of the line.  Moreover, if the line is engaged in operating, maintaining, and fueling aircraft in harsh conditions worldwide and your safety department is primarily focused on office hazards... your safety program has become a JOKE.

2. The safety department needs to be out in the field.  Often the best thing that safety personnel can do is push back from the desk and get out in the field to beat the bushes for potential problems.  Not with a checklist and a charter to document the sins of the field, but to talk to people and to understand that they alone do not understand the whole picture.  They might be surprised to find out that they can learn more in one afternoon of walking around than they would on several out of state safety conferences where they hobnob with equally clueless safety program managers from across the industry.

3. Standards must be enforced.  Much as I hate to admit it, the proliferation of exceedance monitoring and tracking equipment in the industry has had a dramatic effect on standardization.  What that means is that if you have a little box in the aircraft that is tracking everything you are doing, and management can see what you are doing any any given time... guess what?  People will behave better.  They won't like the intrusiveness, but they will behave better, because they really won't have a choice.  What management ultimately does with this data is a whole nuther topic, and one that will set the tone for the acceptance of the program, grudging or otherwise.

Ideally, if the line and safety work well together, the majority of threats will be identified and managed.  There will always be unsafe people, unsafe acts, and stupid policies, and they will all have to be dealt with.  But no one at any level should ever confuse a safety PROGRAM with a SAFE program.

Pilot Joke

One day a long, long time ago, there was a pilot who WASN'T full of it.

But that was only one pilot, and just for one day.

And that was a long, long time ago.

Another pilot joke...

What's the difference between a pizza and a copilot?


The pizza can feed a family of four.  

The One Moose Airplane

A cautionary tale in aircraft overloading and customer pressure. 


Not a true story, but it happens every day...


Once there was an Alaskan Bush Pilot who flew hunters in his floatplane on contract to remote locations.  He was hired by two hunters who he flew to a remote lake and agreed to return in three days to pick them up.  The pilot warned the hunters in no uncertain terms that he only had a ONE MOOSE AIRCRAFT, and no matter how many moose they bagged on their hunting trip, they could only load ONE MOOSE aboard the aircraft for the return trip.  


As scheduled, three days later, the bush pilot returned to the lake and was chagrined to find that the hunters had bagged TWO moose, and were adamant about wanting to take both of them on the airplane.  


The pilot explained that it was a one moose aircraft, and one moose was all it could carry.  


The hunters countered that both moose were field dressed, and kind of scrawny, and therefore added up to maybe 1.25 moose at best.  


The pilot didn't buy it, and launched into a long boring diatribe about aircraft weight and balance, Federal Aviation Regulations, risking his license and livelihood, etc. etc.  


The hunters mentioned that one of them knew a pilot once who had a completely different interpretation of federal law as it applied to moose carriage, and that the game wardens really didn't care anyway, so what was the big deal?  


Growing increasingly irritated as this stalemate was delaying his already packed charter schedule, the pilot stated that if they wanted to go out, they were going with one moose, and no more than one moose, end of discussion.  


The hunters began to openly speculate on the condition of the aircraft, the payment arrangement for the flight, the reasons that the pilot was still single, and moreover, stated that the previous year, on the same lake, with the same type aircraft, another pilot had flown out with two moose on their previous trip, and what exactly was his problem anyway?  


Gritting his teeth, the pilot agreed to carry the two moose, as the sun was beginning to go down and it was pointless to argue any longer.  As the moose were loaded, the floatplane nearly swamped its floats from the weight of the two moose.  


Configuring the floatplane for a maximum performance takeoff, the pilot water taxied to the far end of the lake and performed the best takeoff he could muster with all the power the airplane had.  Performance was weaker than expected and at the far end of the lake, he was forced to bank around trees as he squeezed every ounce of performance out of the floatplane that he could.  Engine straining and wings bending, it appeared that they might make it, but the two moose were too much.  The airplane settled into the trees, chopping off first the tops of trees, then small branches, then larger branches, then finally somersaulting into the undergrowth in an ugly wreck.  


It was a horrific scene.  Moose meat hung from low branches, the smell of jet fuel mixed with the smell of fresh cut pine and fresh cut aluminum.  Mercifully, the pilot and hunters were knocked unconscious but not killed.  


Half an hour later, one hunter, waking up from his stupor, yelled out to the other hunter "where are we?"


The second hunter, looking around to gain his bearings, said "I think we're about a hundred yards from where we ended up last year".  

Pilot Joke

A young boy approaches an airline pilot at the terminal and says "Mister, when I grow up, I want to be an airline pilot too".  


Taking the young boy aside, the airline pilot says to him "Son, you can't do both of those, eventually you will have to choose one or the other".