Scary/Embarassing Mistakes

[cptn2016]

I have not flown nearly enough to make any serious mistakes but I know enough to know that they are guaranteed, and there will be days that I scare myself by doing something stupid (or being ignorant of doing something stupid), completely unintentionally. (Rest assured I am taking a raincheck on contributing to this thread and will post in the hopes of helping others avoid it...)

Obviously by talking and reading and immersing yourself you will be able to learn from the mistakes others have made.
I thought it would make an interesting thread...who wants to own up to some mistakes they made during their training that they look back on and say 'Holy crap, I can't believe I did that!'?
Are you able to laugh about it now, years later, or does it still make you shudder? Could you have done anything different in your training, perhaps, to have been able to avoid it? Or was it just one of those inevitable lessons you can't learn any other way?

Obviously I wouldn't want anyone to implicate themselves or anything, so feel free to use aliases or 'A friend of a friend...etc.'

So far, like I've mentioned, in my very limited experience I've been lucky enough not to do anything dangerous...I did get a stern talking to by my instructor regarding the importance of checklists when we were parking and I just pulled the mix to shut down, rather than following the shutdown checklist, but that's all for now.

So....who wants to be first?

[Hedley]

FYI Enforcement reads this website, and has laid charges based upon what was posted here.

Be careful.

[tkdowell]

FYI Enforcement reads this website, and has laid charges based upon what was posted here.

This I did not know. Unbelievable.

[Hedley]

A friend of mine posted an honest, if terrifying, "I learned from that" story to his website, and Enforcement sent him a letter.

Please be careful what you post to the internet, people. How many times do people have to lose their jobs as a result of their stupid facebook postings before that lesson is learned?

[cptn2016]

FYI Enforcement reads this website, and has laid charges based upon what was posted here.

This I did not know. Unbelievable.

Nor did I. How is it that they can take something posted on a message board (we all know everything on the internet is true... ) and dole out punishment based on an anecdote with no evidence?

In any case, I really hope nobody gets screwed as a result of this topic...as others have said, please err on the side of caution. Unless you were being an idiot and a jackass intentionally, then by all means, please get yourselves removed from the air, I wouldn't want to share the airspace with you.

The idea is simply for us lowly starry-eyed trainees to learn from the honest mistakes of others in the hopes that we will not make the same ones, perhaps with less fortunate results.

[Hedley]

How is it that they can take something posted on a message board (we all know everything on the internet is true... ) and dole out punishment based on an anecdote with no evidence?

That's exactly the way it is. I argued this point at the Tribunal, and lost - the Tribunal accepted unverified internet drivel with the same weight as sworn testimony.

Yes, it's bad law, but I simply don't have time to fix it.

There is plenty of bad law around. Ever heard of Double Jeopardy? The idea is that the government only gets one kick at the can - they can't keep repeatedly punishing you over and over and over again, for the same offence. Seems reasonable, doesn't it?

Well, it's not, according to Transport. In Federal Court of Appeals, Transport argued - and won - that Double Jeopardy does NOT apply to Administrative law. So until it's overturned in Supreme Court - good luck getting on that docket - or reversed via legislation - ha ha ha - that's the law of the land, probably for many decades to come. Transport can and will punish you over and over and over again for the same offense, for as many times over as many years and decades as they wish.

That's the law in Canada, boys and girls. Sorry about that. You probably don't want to hear about my unwilling contribution to Constructive Trust precedent law in Canada, either.

[cptn2016]

Transport can and will punish you over and over and over again for the same offense, for as many times over as many years and decades as they wish.

That's the law in Canada, boys and girls. Sorry about that. You probably don't want to hear about my unwilling contribution to Constructive Trust precedent law in Canada, either.

So let me get this straight...
Let's say for example, one day in the future as a private pilot I accidentally fly over a restricted area or something and some jets are scrambled to escort me. I get punished (suspension, fine, whatever) and years later I go on to get my CPL and am flying for money (assuming this previous indiscretion wouldn't hamper my finding employment, which it almost certainly would). Then one day out of the blue TC sends me another letter and says "You flew through so and so airspace illegally 8 years ago, you paid the fine, served your suspension, but now we feel like fining and suspending you again. And you'll probably be fired by whoever you work for,"...

Seriously? Man, I better NEVER make a mistake...

Is there no statute of limitations? Is there not one lawyer in this land that looks at this and says 'That's ridiculous and maybe even unconstitutional, I could really make a name for myself fighting this and getting it overturned...'

[Hedley]

I think you're comprehending the legal landscape.

Yes, there's plenty of bad law. Best hope for a benevolent dictator.

I know of a case where Transport went after a pilot, many years after the alleged infraction occurred. Because it was more than a year, there was no fine levied, but his commercial pilot's licence was suspended for 4.5 years, which Transport argued had no financial impact on him.

[trey kule]

OK.

In 40 plus years of flying thousands upon thousands of hours all over the world, I have never made a single mistake......that I was not able to blame someone else for.....learn the lesson well grasshopper.

Now Rant warning...

Why is it, that some pilots only think the way to learn is by looking at death cheating stupidity? Here is a thought. I learned most of what I know, not by the stories of other pilots, but watching true professionals work and trying to emulate them. There were no forgot to's because they were rushing to the airport as they were late. No missed walkaround items because they were non chalant. No "Where is that approach plate questions". No runway excursions because the underestimated surface conditions or the tailwind. No load shift stories because they made certain of their load security. No hit anything because they never did buzz jobs. And instructors who took time to let student pilots learn the basics rather than the "hey watch this" scenario.
Now who do you want to learn from? them? Or the pilot who did something stupid and embarrassing? Choose your mentors wisely.

[Beefitarian]

What if we move to one of those Islands off shore in Belize?

Edit: This was supposed to be a response to Hedley. I want to develope a residential airpark.

[cptn2016]

OK.

In 40 plus years of flying thousands upon thousands of hours all over the world, I have never made a single mistake......that I was not able to blame someone else for.....learn the lesson well grasshopper.

Now Rant warning...

Why is it, that some pilots only think the way to learn is by looking at death cheating stupidity? Here is a thought. I learned most of what I know, not by the stories of other pilots, but watching true professionals work and trying to emulate them. There were no forgot to's because they were rushing to the airport as they were late. No missed walkaround items because they were non chalant. No "Where is that approach plate questions". No runway excursions because the underestimated surface conditions or the tailwind. No load shift stories because they made certain of their load security. No hit anything because they never did buzz jobs. And instructors who took time to let student pilots learn the basics rather than the "hey watch this" scenario.
Now who do you want to learn from? them? Or the pilot who did something stupid and embarrassing? Choose your mentors wisely.

Agreed with your entire rant. I hope to be that true professional one day. But I did not mean to imply in any way that this is the only way to learn. I agree the best way is to watch the best of the best, but my point is you can learn from any pilot, good or bad. Either what you should do, or what you should NEVER do.

However, aviation is rife with examples of absolutely competent, professional, talented and thorough individuals who have made mistakes and have learned from them - after all we are humans, not machines, and we can't plan for every eventuality, no matter how hard we try. The real, unpredictable world does conspire against us once in a while, and if we're lucky to make it through, it teaches us something that no book, no course, no precaution ever possibly could. Often we never even realize it was a mistake until after the fact.
These are really the kinds of examples I was looking for. Real world, only-experience-can-teach-you-that kind of stuff.

I am not interested in "My fuel gauges said 1/2 so I didn't bother manually checking the fuel and my engine quit on final"...that's idiotic. I can read the NTSB reports all day long if I want those kinds of stories.

Perhaps I mistitled my topic...but let's make a clear distinction between stupidity and an honest mistake, that years later with acquired experience, LOOKS stupid.

[Beefitarian]

I think there's value in reading about mistakes. Sometimes I think about relevant situations and how to avoid them after reading about how someone over loaded a plane or something that seems like an obvious thing afterward.

[trey kule]

Beefrick.

Let me ask you this. Do you really need to read or hear about someone overloading an airplane and almost having an accident to understand the importance of not overloading an airplane? Do you need to read about someone flying VFR into IF conditions to know not to do that. To read about someone pranging a plane from a buzz job to know it is stupid and dangerous? I could go on, but I think you probably get the idea.

I am not sure what an honest mistake is. There is not much to be learned from unavoidable incidents. If it is about just not thinking, or letting fear and common sense hold you back, you simply should not need any war stories. There are few, very few incidents I have come across that were truely good learning incidents (the helicopter crash off the coast a year or so ago was one of them). But I have heard , over and over in my career people using an honest mistake as an excuse. Allow me to give you a rather benign example.

It was Friday afterooon. The flight had been delayed and was getting into its final destination an hour late. It was happy hour. Crews were at the wwatering hole. Now the SOP's called for both crew members to remain in their seats until the shutdown was complete. Use of a checklist was part of the SOP's. the last item was turning off the master.
The plane pulled into the gate. First officer jumps up, opens the door as the engines are winding down, walks to the bottom of the stairs and says goodbye to the pax.
The crew gets their things out of the cockpit and rushes off to the bar.
Next morning it is found the master was left on and the battery is dead. Another long delay.

Now, lets ust review things. The crew did not follow SOP's. The Captain did not use the checklist....and there thoughts were it was a learning experience...(true story). When it was brought to their attention that maybe, just maybe, there was concern that they had not followed sops and checlists in the past and that next time it might be a more serious item missed or forgotten they became quite defensive. Somethings you ae not expected to learn from mistakes. Your own or others. Some things you ae just expected to know and do.


Having said that, some are entertaining, and for that reason are fun to hear about in the hangar stories. But dont cloud the issue by making it seem like a learning endeavor

[photofly]

I learned most of what I know, not by the stories of other pilots, but watching true professionals work and trying to emulate them...
Now who do you want to learn from? them? Or the pilot who did something stupid and embarrassing?

It's possible that the very professional guys who never miss a checklist and always have their approach plates to hand are exactly the same people, who, a little earlier in their flying career made a foolish error, recovered from it, and turned the experience into something positive.

I don't have an objection to reading about pilots who didn't dip the tanks and ran out of fuel; it's all mental ammunition against the temptation, one day, not to dip the tanks myself - or some other avoidable error.

Case in point: read John Deakin's column on avweb.com about how he nearly (relatively speaking) became the first and only person to land a 747 with the wheels up.

[Beefitarian]

Let me ask you this. Do you really need to read or hear about someone overloading an airplane and almost having an accident to understand the importance of not overloading an airplane?

Of course not. Sometimes stories have entertainment value, I like that. Sometimes those stories have no decernable merit.

Boring moran does something stupid crashes gets dead ends up in "take a minute for safety".

Having said that. Who doesn't enjoy the story of the guy that won the contest he was in with his flying club pals by getting the "closest picture of a cow from an aiplane in flight." just before hitting another cow.

I probably don't need to hear that to remind me not to fly close enough to a cow to hit it. Calling that "an honest mistake"? Sure. It was part of many stories I listened to at Moe Balle presentations to keep us paying enough attention to the ones that might not be as entertaining some of which might make us less complacent. To me that can be the learning portion.

The reason a person is "embarassed" in most cases is because they made a mistake they thought was beneath their skill set. Not because they wanted to get to the bar.

[trey kule]

Well, you make a point. If thats what it takes for you to learn I guess it is whatever works for you.

maybe I am just getting old and cranky, but I still would rather fly with a pilot that could make a decision based on knowledge rather than having to hear about someone else's experience.

Now tell me. What did you learn from the 747 article? Not to land with the gear up?

Do you mean to tell me that you have to read a story to understand the importance of putting the gear down before you land? I thought they actually taught that in flight schools. On second thought, maybe they dont. I know TC used to never stress it in their flight training.

[Beefitarian]

I enjoy learning from competent pilots but I can't access that. I'm in the basement with my wife while the kids are up stairs playing with all the loot the older one just scored for her birthday. If you want to take me flying and I can watch a pro at work let me know.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I once thought I made a mistake in an aircraft....but I was wrong

Seriously though there is a ton of great writing on flight safety in general on the web. AOPA for example has an excellent GA oriented safety and training section which is accessible by non members, as does the flight safety foundation. Avweb has a series of column that are loaded with flying stories which give important lessons to be learned.

Further searching will open a multitude of other interesting sites. If you are serious about "learning from the mistakes of others", than rather than asking Avcanada, I would start reading what is already out there.

At the risk of being preachy, your attitude will ultimately determine how safe you a pilot you are going to be. Pilots that have the self discipline to sweat the details on every flight, who take pride in knowing their aircraft systems and constantly strive to fly precisely, hardly ever generate any "there I was stories".......

[photofly]

I believe a good first step on the road to an avoidable, stupid, and embarrassing error is to separate pilots into two categories: those who are immune ever to making such a mistake, and those who aren't. The second step towards making an error is to start believing oneself to be in the first category.

If you read of someone who made an error like running out of fuel I think you can take two lines of thought: the first one is that he or she must have been a fool, and that since you yourself are not a fool, that could never happen to you. Those are the steps above.

The other way to look at a mistake of that kind is to assume that the pilot was not a fool, yet still made a foolish error. Therefore a foolish error can still be made by an intelligent sensible person. And that, for an intelligent sensible person to avoid making foolish errors, vigilance and effort is required, smarts alone isn't enough.

[Posthumane]

Learning from professional pilots is definitely the way to go, but I have yet to meet anyone who hasn't made a mistake. I know I've made lots. When I do make one, and realize that I have, I try to look back on it and analyze what led me to making that mistake against my better judgment. I can sometimes use this information to make a procedure change that will prevent me from making a similar mistake in the future. I'm not talking about things like "I'm late so I'm not going to bother dipping the tanks and using a checklist" but rather things like "how did I somehow miss that item that is clearly on the checklist that I managed to gloss over without noticing?"

Now, keeping in mind Hedley's warning I won't talk about MY mistakes, but I'll mention something that... a friend of of a friend once did during his training. We can call him person P. He had completed his run-up for a local flight from an uncontrolled airport with a FSS. He taxied to the entrance of runway 21/03, having called flight services and received the aerodrome advisory stating that preferred runway is 21. When stopped short of the runway he was informed that there was an aircraft inbound, planning a straight in final on 21 and estimating 3 minutes. Person P thought that since it's a very long runway and the taxiway he was on would probably be the preferred exit for the inbound aircraft, he chose to do a takeoff from the intersection he was at. He would still have over 3000 ft of runway, and would be long clear by the time the other aircraft arrived. He informed FSS, pulled out onto the runway and lined up, and then got a call stating "CF-XXX you are lining up 03, active is 21." DOH! He turned back off the runway, waited for the other aircraft to land, then backtracked 21 and took off. It's one of those situations which may be easily dismissed as a minor thing, but it was something that bothered him for a long time, mulling over in his mind why he would have this brain fart and turn the wrong way to line up on the runway. Technically he didn't do anything different than what his instructor taught him - he was told intersection takeoffs were okay as long as you can confirm you have adequate runway remaining. But it could have ended much worse.

[trey kule]

Posthumane.

My first post on this thread...learn the lesson well. Make no mistakes you cannot blame on someone else. I think they might even teach that in the Canadian CRM sourses.

Now:

If you want to take me flying and I can watch a pro at work let me know.

Make up your mind here. Do you want to watch a pro at work or go flying with me?

[Cougar]

All good points, here.

Trey is right -- in sum, if you continually strive to be as good as the best pilots you know, you will at least be on the right road. After all, none of us will be around long enough to make ALL the mistakes. And who wants to?

There is a wealth of information already out there, as BPF says. If actual mistakes are what you want, check out the U.S.'s NASA ASRS publications. Your eyes will be OPENED. [One of my favorite items was the report of an airline captain who had recently upgraded to a 3-engine jet, from a 2-engine. He and the rest of his flight crew were outside the terminal, waiting for their hotel shuttle after the last leg of the day, when he noticed how loud the sound of a running engine was, just inside the security fence. He walked over to hear his own aircraft as the source of the noise. Yes -- they had packed up and left for the night, and left the #3 RUNNING.]

This ASRS reporting system allows reporting of actual mistakes, of all kinds, from all segments of aviation. You can sign up for their publications online; for years I got them via post, but I think they've gone 100% online now.

Good luck to you. Good learning.


The link to the current CALLBACK issue:
http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/publications/c ... b_373.html

The link to their achived editions:
http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/publications/callback.html

[RenegadeAV8R]

A Weight & Balance story:


A friend of mine own a Cessna 150.

He used to fly, with his girlfriend, to a private grass landing strip near their cottage.

One day, before a long weekend, they went to the grocery store to buy the food that they would bring to the cottage.

While doing the shopping, my friend though that his girlfriend was buying a lot of stuff... maybe too much.

When they loaded the food in the back of his 150, he realized that he was loading his 150 more than usual... and told himself that he would probably not be the first one to take off with an overloaded Cessna 150...

During the take off run, he noticed that the acceleration was slower than usual.

Once in the air, the rate of climb was not very impressive... And once level, even with the trim fully aircraft Nose Down; he had to push on the yoke to maintain the cruise attitude - He then realized that he was not only overweight, but the C of G was too far aft. He flew 100 nm in this condition.

He landed uneventfully on an alternate paved runway, and he vowed to never again take off in an overloaded & out of balance aircraft.

[Hedley]

If you seriously want to avoid having an accident in an airplane, I might humbly suggest closing the loop and studying previous aircraft accidents. It's not as if the airplane was invented just last year. You have to work really hard to come up with a new accident in an airplane that has never happened before. I'm not sure it's even possible.

Anyways, one of the airplane magazines - I forget which one - recently reviewed light aircraft accidents over a 2 week period, and it was depressing what they found.

An incredible number of accidents - serious, reported accidents involving structural damage or occupant injury and/or death - resulted from simply maneuvering the aircraft during approach and landing, and right after takeoff. Nothing exotic, no terrible weather, just some truly horribly deficient stick & rudder flying near the ground.

Also, an amazing number of accidents, in my opinion, were not only the usual out-of-gas, but other mechanical causes, which reinforces my long-held opinion that you shouldn't fly junk.

Not much new under the sun.

[Beefitarian]

Snarky remark.

Make up your mind here. Do you want to watch a pro at work or go flying with me?

Yes.

From what I've read I'm pretty confident I would get a ride with a good pilot that would share some excellent habits.