Risk Factors
Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2013 7:42 am
If you have > 500TT, stop reading now.
Was flying with a fresh PPL recently, and he
was working on developing his stick and rudder
skills, which I highly approve of.
However, his decision-making needed a bit
of work, which is also unsurprising. When I
was a 100hr PPL, I was really dangerous
because I didn't know, what I didn't know.
Remember, a PPL is a licence to learn.
. hints at this with his byline: "No one
ever died because I refused a flight". Like a
teenaged girl, as a pilot you have to learn
when to say, "No" to a flight.
But that decision - whether or not to commence
the flight - can be a really tough one for a low-time
pilot to make. He has no experience to draw on.
Talking to the fresh PPL, recently, I explicitly identified
some quantifiable risk factors for any flight, which all
need to be evaluated before takeoff:
1) Pilot
2) Aircraft
3) Terrain
4) Wx
5) Day/Night
Most people don't break the go/no-go decision down
quite like that - they rather make an intuitive decision
by looking out the window at their departure point. And
that's ok as long as they are highly experienced with
good intuition, and they don't get fooled by a "sucker hole"
at their departure airport.
Let's take a look at the risk factors:
1) Pilot: How much experience? How much on type?
How recent? Tired? Hungry? Stress?
2) Aircraft: how reliable? Do instruments and radios
and xponder/encoder work? Are the gas gauges accurate?
Does it burn much oil? Run rough? Cockpit lighting?
Fancy equipment which will help us? (eg turbo, O2,
fuel totalizer, pressurization, etc).
3) Terrain: I like flat, low country with no towers. Are
there any dark hills which we might hit at night? Is density
altitude or uncontrollable downdrafts a consideration?
Over water? Airspace problems? (eg class F, prohibited,
restricted, MOA, TFR, etc). Are we familiar with the route?
Or, is this our first time flying this route?
4) Weather. If the air is dry, and there are no lows or
fronts around, life is good. But if there is moisture in
the air, there will be morning fog, which when the sun
hits, will burn off and give us 2 hrs flying time before the
Cb's develop. Also, winds. They can make takeoff
and landing difficult, and give us a bumpy ride enroute,
and with headwinds, can eat into our fuel reserve. A
big plus for me is flying from bad wx into good wx,
which is low stress. Flying from good wx into bad
wx is a good way to kill yourself. These guys painted
themselves into a corner and left themselves with
no "outs" if anything went wrong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfWhIOT3gMM
5) Day/Night. Night VFR is much sportier than Day
VFR, if you don't do it right. You need to watch the
dewpoint spread like a hawk, and you need to know
what a safe altitude is for EVERY portion of your flight,
and you need to know when to get on the attitude
indicator to avoid doing a JFK, jr.
Looking at a proposed flight, I tell low-time pilots
to carefully examine each of the risk factors above.
A very low-risk flight will have none of the above
risk factors. Your biggest problem will be staying
awake.
A very high-risk (suicidal, really) flight will have ALL
of the above risk factors, and if you start to verbally
enumerate them, you will have written the first page
of the TSB accident report, which always with their
20/20 hindsight make it blindingly obvious what a
bad decision the pilot made, to take off.
But you can't always have zero risk factors. But
I might suggest that a low-time pilot try to keep
it down to ONE risk factor - himself. Make sure
the other risk factors are not present, when he
is PIC.
As you get more and more experienced, you
can accept more and more risk factors, and
more serious risk factors.
A good example of applying the above risk
factors was this guy, who flew non-stop across
the Pacific Ocean in a homebuilt from Guam to
Florida. Note his equipment failures enroute, in
a single over water:
http://www.pprune.org/private-flying/50 ... -stop.html
The objective is to help low-time pilots know
when they are messing with something dangerous,
and it's time to back off. Park the airplane. Tie
it down. Get a hotel, and let the wx pass through,
and fly home in the sunshine.
Was flying with a fresh PPL recently, and he
was working on developing his stick and rudder
skills, which I highly approve of.
However, his decision-making needed a bit
of work, which is also unsurprising. When I
was a 100hr PPL, I was really dangerous
because I didn't know, what I didn't know.
Remember, a PPL is a licence to learn.
. hints at this with his byline: "No one
ever died because I refused a flight". Like a
teenaged girl, as a pilot you have to learn
when to say, "No" to a flight.
But that decision - whether or not to commence
the flight - can be a really tough one for a low-time
pilot to make. He has no experience to draw on.
Talking to the fresh PPL, recently, I explicitly identified
some quantifiable risk factors for any flight, which all
need to be evaluated before takeoff:
1) Pilot
2) Aircraft
3) Terrain
4) Wx
5) Day/Night
Most people don't break the go/no-go decision down
quite like that - they rather make an intuitive decision
by looking out the window at their departure point. And
that's ok as long as they are highly experienced with
good intuition, and they don't get fooled by a "sucker hole"
at their departure airport.
Let's take a look at the risk factors:
1) Pilot: How much experience? How much on type?
How recent? Tired? Hungry? Stress?
2) Aircraft: how reliable? Do instruments and radios
and xponder/encoder work? Are the gas gauges accurate?
Does it burn much oil? Run rough? Cockpit lighting?
Fancy equipment which will help us? (eg turbo, O2,
fuel totalizer, pressurization, etc).
3) Terrain: I like flat, low country with no towers. Are
there any dark hills which we might hit at night? Is density
altitude or uncontrollable downdrafts a consideration?
Over water? Airspace problems? (eg class F, prohibited,
restricted, MOA, TFR, etc). Are we familiar with the route?
Or, is this our first time flying this route?
4) Weather. If the air is dry, and there are no lows or
fronts around, life is good. But if there is moisture in
the air, there will be morning fog, which when the sun
hits, will burn off and give us 2 hrs flying time before the
Cb's develop. Also, winds. They can make takeoff
and landing difficult, and give us a bumpy ride enroute,
and with headwinds, can eat into our fuel reserve. A
big plus for me is flying from bad wx into good wx,
which is low stress. Flying from good wx into bad
wx is a good way to kill yourself. These guys painted
themselves into a corner and left themselves with
no "outs" if anything went wrong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfWhIOT3gMM
5) Day/Night. Night VFR is much sportier than Day
VFR, if you don't do it right. You need to watch the
dewpoint spread like a hawk, and you need to know
what a safe altitude is for EVERY portion of your flight,
and you need to know when to get on the attitude
indicator to avoid doing a JFK, jr.
Looking at a proposed flight, I tell low-time pilots
to carefully examine each of the risk factors above.
A very low-risk flight will have none of the above
risk factors. Your biggest problem will be staying
awake.
A very high-risk (suicidal, really) flight will have ALL
of the above risk factors, and if you start to verbally
enumerate them, you will have written the first page
of the TSB accident report, which always with their
20/20 hindsight make it blindingly obvious what a
bad decision the pilot made, to take off.
But you can't always have zero risk factors. But
I might suggest that a low-time pilot try to keep
it down to ONE risk factor - himself. Make sure
the other risk factors are not present, when he
is PIC.
As you get more and more experienced, you
can accept more and more risk factors, and
more serious risk factors.
A good example of applying the above risk
factors was this guy, who flew non-stop across
the Pacific Ocean in a homebuilt from Guam to
Florida. Note his equipment failures enroute, in
a single over water:
http://www.pprune.org/private-flying/50 ... -stop.html
The objective is to help low-time pilots know
when they are messing with something dangerous,
and it's time to back off. Park the airplane. Tie
it down. Get a hotel, and let the wx pass through,
and fly home in the sunshine.