Pilots know that we all make some common mistakes in the cockpit. Many mistakes could be prevented by using a checklist, as we’ve all heard a bazillion times. A pilot might object, “I have no time to be looking at a checklist if I lose an engine on takeoff. Especially if it is the onliest engine.”
Yes, sometimes a pilot is time-constrained and has to perform “memory items” without looking at a checklist. But what are these “memory items” but checklist items committed to memory? We pilots usually memorize these by using flashcards and getting tested on the items over and over, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night chanting, “THROTTLE TO IDLE. IF FIRE LIGHT DOES NOT EXTINGUISH….” (This can be disturbing to others sleeping nearby, but they’re not the ones taking a checkride next Tuesday, are they? The defense rests.)
Birth Of The Checklist
Today, we take checklists for granted. In fact, they have proliferated far beyond the cockpit, to basically any activity requiring a series of steps to be performed in a specified order. But this wasn’t always the case. It took a fatal crash of the Boeing B-17 prototype to bring us the religion of checklists.
The prototype crashed on takeoff because the elevator gust lock had not been disengaged. Facing the end of Boeing’s attempt to sell the U.S. Army Air Corps on the concept, pilots and engineers huddled together trying to come up with a way to reliably fly one of the most complicated airplanes of its time by ensuring it could always be properly configured. The result was a set of four checklists, one each for takeoff, flight, before landing and after landing. The concept proliferated and soon checklists were developed for other crew positions and aircraft.
The medical profession started using checklists because they worked. For example, thanks to checklists, nowadays doctors hardly ever transplant a heart into the wrong patient. By the time of the Apollo project in the 1960s, checklists had become what Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins—the guy in a crew of three who first flew solo laps around the Moon for a day or so while the other two were walking on it—once called checklists “the fourth crew member.”
A “complicated” airplane isn’t “too much for a single pilot to handle,” as some people might claim, but it can be too much for a single pilot to handle without using a checklist. “Oh, I have it all memorized, I don’t need a checklist, I get everything,” a pilot may say. Sure; right up until they don’t. What might a pilot forget, gloss over, leave out?
A Checklist Is A Checklist?
Without a checklist, you have your “ons and offs,” your “ups and downs,” your “lefts and rights,” for example. When securing the airplane, for example, we want to check that the control lock is engaged, the coffee is off, the antiskid off, the parking brake is on, the chocks are in, the fuel is off, the flaps are up, etc. That’s a lot of stuff to remember when all you want to do is go home.
The trouble is we pilots “get away” without using a checklist quite often—especially when solo—because there’s no one there to make us use one. When a single mistake might kill a person, one would think we’d want to use checklists.
This is where a strange pilot mentality into play: Some pilots’ greatest concern isn’t crashing, but they do fear the FAA, and they do fear failing a checkride. So on a checkride, why, that checklist is right out there in the open, in front of God (the FAA) and everybody, as if it’s of course used on every flight.
A checklist is only as good as the person using it, of course, but a “good” checklist has the necessary items on it, and no more. Frequently, pilots will assemble their own checklists, especially for a personal aircraft. It may reorganize some items, perhaps to make an efficient flow, or it may include aftermarket equipment added that the manufacturer knew nothing about. A custom checklist can omit items no longer installed. It may also go far beyond what came with the aircraft.
For example, let’s say you’re flying along on an IFR flight plan, you’re not forgetting anything and you spot your landing field. You decide to cancel IFR because, hey, it’s fun to maneuver a little, right? But is that really the right airport you’re looking at, the one you want to land at? What if it’s one lined up with the one you want, looks like the one you want, you think it’s the one you want—but it ain’t?
A number of well-trained, smart pilots have landed at the wrong field. Airline pilots. Air Force pilots. A big ol’ Dreamlifter (max takeoff weight of like 800,000 pounds plus) landed at a 6000-foot-long airstrip nine miles short of the intended 11,000 footer. A Southwest Airlines crew landed at the wrong field, too: The Southwest pilots told NTSB investigators that they had the correct airport programmed into the plane’s computer but made a visual landing (aha!) at what they believed was the correct airport.
Two USAF pilots in a T-38 from my old base canceled IFR at about 12,000 feet (`cause it’s fun!), dove down and landed at—yup—the wrong field, which of course was in line with the one they really wanted. They had to truck out the ’38 on a flatbed because the runway was too short. More recently, a USAF C-17 crew landed at the wrong field. The Air Force said the C-17 crew was “tired.”
Fatigued Much?
“Tired” is when I need a “good checklist” the most. When I get tired, my brain goes to mush—and I’m talking mushier than the usual mush; not the usual light rime mush but the severe mixed mush. So I suppose a “good checklist” would have something in it to prevent wrong-field or wrong-runway landing, maybe a reference to confirming our position?
Or how about we have a list of items we can check to verify we’re landing at the correct airport? Maybe glance at the moving map to discover you’re maneuvering for the downwind at the wrong airport, when the real destination is still 12 more miles along the magenta line? Some kind of checklist is helpful here even if it’s a roll-your-own affair.
Examples Of Extras
Continuing with our theme of canceling IFR 15-20 miles out, what about, for example, KIKV, Ankeny Regional, down in Iowa corn country? Is there any danger in canceling IFR 15-20 miles to the north? Oh, yes. Might a pilot fly right into the huge towers (where the “T” in CFIT stands for “tower”) which are 2000 feet agl just north-northeast of the airport? Check the sectional excerpt on the opposite page.
Well, of course, not on purpose. And likely not if a pilot ran a “good checklist” that had a reminder to, say, “MAINTAIN MEF OR HIGHER WHEN CANCELING IFR,” or something along those lines. Instead of canceling IFR, dropping down to, say, 2500 feet and having to look out the windscreen for the Towers O’ Death. Maybe you also could switch your EFB from the low-altitude en route chart to the sectional?
True story: My buddy “Jim” (not his real name, which is “John”) was flying a turboprop airliner full of passengers. He got vectored in too close in behind a large jet on final. Turns out that large jet aircraft generate wake turbulence. Who knew? Back then there probably wasn’t a checklist item at that airline which read something like “WAKE TURBULENCE—ENSURE SAFE SEPARATION FROM PRECEDING ACFT.” I bet there is now.
He flew right into the “wake turbies” on final and it flipped him 180 degrees—inverted. Instead of rolling back up the way he came from he went all the way around. Yup, a no-kidding aileron roll with an airliner full of passengers. It shook him up, of course, but he landed safely.
He saw all the passengers from his flight talking happily and excitedly in the terminal—no one complained. They were all from a foreign country and thought it was part of the trip, like Disney World or something.
A Good Checklist
If it’s a “good checklist,” the item is there for a reason. A “good checklist” can save pilots (namely me) from something sorta harmless, like leaving the chocks in. Save me the “ground egress of shame” when I start up the engine, add power and—huh!—I can’t move `cause someone left the chocks in. Someone.
So, enough with quotation marks already: What is a “good checklist?”
I recently flew with a very experienced, patient instructor. I complained about the checklist for the airplane we were flying, a piston twin, saying I didn’t like the wording of an item in the ENGINE STARTING checklist, which read, “Mags—On”.
I missed that step, and the engine wouldn’t start; go figure. I whined, “I think it should read ‘Magnetos—On.’ ‘Mags’ is too short a word so I missed it, blew right past it.” Gaining traction, I carped, “This isn’t a good checklist.”
He said, “If you don’t like it, you can change it.” Huh? Never occurred to me. I got out my pen and did exactly that.
He said—and I think this makes really good sense: “A ‘good checklist’ is one that you will use.”
Mnemonics
Checklists don’t have to be written down, laminated between plastic sheets and bound together. They can simply be things we remember. There are three basic mnemonics I still recall from my primary training:
CIGAR (Pre-takeoff):
- C—Controls (free and correct)
- I—Instruments (set)
- G—Gas (correct tank, pump on)
- A—Approach (check for traffic)
- R—Radios/Runup
GUMPS (Pre-landing)
- G—Gas (correct tank, pump on)
- U—Undercarriage
- M—Manifold pressure
- P—Prop
- S—Seat belts
ARROW (Aircraft papers)
- A—Airworthiness certificate
- R—Registration
- R—Radio station license (international)
- O—Operating limitations
- W—Weight and balance data
— J.B.
