Single Pilot Techniques, Part II

A previous post, “Single Pilot Techniques, Part I,” attempted to set the stage for this second part by comparing the differences between adding cockpit crewmembers and subtracting them. The conclusion was that it is a relatively simple matter to add crewmembers, adding a copilot to a single pilot operation or a flight engineer to a two pilot operation, but it is much more difficult to reduce crewmembers. I won’t attempt to summarize the full argument here, but the most important point is that the lessons learned in reducing from three man crews back to two man crews (and, of course, that means women as well), can be applied to the single pilot cockpit as well.

The main problem in reducing crewmembers is not, as you might think, increased workload, but reduced redundancy: as aircraft systems were simplified, the two man crew was able to take on systems management, just as the three man cockpit of an earlier era was able to take on what was formerly the navigator’s functions as long range navigation systems were simplified and improved. What was lost was the extra set of eyes and ears. Procedures and policies had to be created to compensate for this diminished back up capability. Those same policies and procedures, plus an additional safeguard that I will suggest toward the end of this post, can be used to compensate for the complete lack of another set of eyes and ears in the single pilot cockpit.

By way of introduction to those policies and procedures, let me relate a little story as background. Two years ago one of my very best friends, Claudio Guerra, chef/restaurateur and aircraft owner/pilot, and I were planning on flying his Cessna 310 from 7B2, Northampton Airport (Massachusetts) to Oshkosh, and then on to Half Moon Bay on the west coast where his wife and daughter were visiting friends, also not far from our apartment in San Francisco. As part of our preparations we went out flying together to help me get familiar with his airplane. If Claudio was nervous flying with a retired airline pilot and former flight instructor he didn’t show it, but he did get a little apologetic doing the before takeoff checklist: he went through a little drill, one he had memorized and that moved from one part of the cockpit to another, taking care of all the essential pre takeoff items, without a checklist. Then he took the checklist out and said, “I have all the checklists memorized, so I don’t really need this, but whenever I’m flying with passengers I take it out and go through it again just so they don’t worry.”

Actually, while I think he should do it that way every time, passengers or not, what he was doing was exactly what a careful single pilot should do. He had developed a cockpit flow for each phase of flight, and backed it up with a checklist. (There is a reason checklists are called “check lists”: they check that things have been done: they are not “to do” lists, although there are times when we use them that way; the Before Start checklist, for example, is often in reality a “to do” list, and that’s okay because nothing else is going on at that point.) Flow patterns with back up check lists are two of the key elements developed by the airlines for two man cockpits to compensate for the lack of a third crewmember.

Let me give you an example of how flow patterns and checklists work, one taken from the ATA Boeing 757 manual. Checklists normally follow the flight profile: before engine start, engine start, taxi, before takeoff, and so on. At each of those points there is a flow pattern established for each crewmember with a check made to insure that everything is set for that phase. This example is the check at top of descent, or just as you are getting ready to start down. The flows are divided between the pilot flying and the pilot not flying (or pilot monitoring, as it was later called: management and training types love to play with words, as if getting exactly the right word will make everything alright. We argued for years, for instance, whether the parking brake would be “set” or “parked.”) For the pilot flying the flow is:

Ensure shoulder harness is ON.

Push the EICAS [Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System] Recall switch to display existing Alert Messages.

Arm the Autobrake Selector as required.

At 18,000 feet the Captain will place the Wing Landing Lights ON and at the Captain’s discretion any other lights ON.

Passing FL 180 call “DESCENT CHECK.”

For the pilot not flying the flow is:

Place seat belt selector to ON or flash if already ON

Check the performance of the pressurization system and verify that destination airport elevation is set.

Return the lower EICAS to secondary engine display.

Ensure shoulder harness is ON.

Read the DESCENT checklist.

So at this point the cabin is being prepared for approach and landing, the pilots are legal (shoulder harnesses required for approach and landing), the pressurization has been set to start a gradual cabin descent to destination altitude, the overall aircraft systems status has been verified okay (or dealt with previously), the autobrakes system has been set up and the lights are on leaving positive control airspace. And all of this was done from memory, using a basic flow pattern which is top to bottom in this case—seat belt sign and pressurization controls are on the overhead panel, the EICAS is in the center middle panel, the autobrakes lower left panel, then, at FL 180, back up for the landing lights—with the checklist called for after the flows are complete.

So what does the actual DESCENT checklist look like?

Guess what the first item is? Challenge: SEAT BELT SIGN Response: ON

The next item? Challenge: PRESSURIZATION Response: SET

Followed by: Challenge: RECALL Response: CHECKED

Challenge: SPEED AND ALTITUDE BUGS Response: SET & CROSSCHECKED

Challenge: ALTIMETERS TRANSITION LEVEL Response: [local altimeter setting] CROSSCHECKED

Challenge: APPROACH BRIEF Response: COMPLETED.

The first three items confirm that the flow pattern was accomplished successfully; the last three cannot be done from memory, as part of a flow, since they will be different each time: speed and bugs depend on landing weight, altitude bugs on the approach expected, the local altimeter setting is given as part of the descent clearance to an altitude below the transition level (FL 180 in the US), and, of course, the approach briefing depends on the approach; the checklist makes sure these keys items have all been done.

So what does this have to do with single pilot operations? Most single pilot aircraft don’t have seat belt signs, certainly don’t have flight attendants, seldom have pressurization systems or system status monitors or autobrakes and are seldom operated in positive control airspace. But they still need to be prepared for approach and landing; this is the beginning of another phase of flight, from cruise to descent, so this is still a good place for some checks. Fuel management is the first that comes to mind: do fuel pumps need to be on for the descent, is fuel on the fullest tank or on the mains if required for anything other than level flight? What about pitot heat or carb heat? Will the descent descend into visible moisture at or near the freezing level? Will windshield defrost be needed? Is the current altimeter setting set, have you checked the destination weather and/or ATIS, is there an arrival procedure if IFR or nonstandard pattern if VFR, and so on. Each aircraft will have different areas of concern, but all will need to be prepared for approach and landing, and top of descent is a good place to start.

Here is a possible flow for the Piper Twin Comanche C, a relatively representative general aviation single pilot aircraft, beginning at the top left and working left to right, top to bottom:

Altimeter set
Power for descent set
Engine instruments checked
Fuel quantity checked
Vacuum checked
Ammeter checked
Autopilot set as required
Windshield heat as required
Landing lights as required
Pitot heat as required
Cowl flaps closed
Fuel Mains selected

This may sound like a lot to do and to remember, but it’s not with an organized flow. This flow starts with the altimeter, right in front of the pilot (and certainly doesn’t preclude checking all the primary flight instruments including resetting the heading gyro to the magnetic compass, if not slaved, but that check can and should be done on a regular basis anyway). It then moves across the panel to the throttles for descent, a quick check of engine temps and levels right under the MP and RPM gauges, down to the fuel quantity gauge, then down a level and back to the left to start over again, checking vacuum and ammeter gauges, the autopilot in the center (on or off? trimmed? altitude preselect set?), over to the far right again to check windshield heat, then down again, to the lower level of the panel, left to right, checking lights, pitot heat, and cowl flaps. Finally, down to the floor, where the fuel selectors are on the Comanche, to select or verify fuel on the mains, which are required for takeoff, climb, descent and landing.

You would then want to back up your descent flow with a written checklist. This would probably not need to repeat every item on the flow, but would want to hit the important points and add any items that should be done here that do not fit into a flow, items like checking weather and airport information. One possibility might be:

Altimeter SET
Autopilot AS REQ
Windshield heat AS REQ
Pitot heat AS REQ
Cowl flaps CLOSED
Fuel ON MAINS
Weather CHECKED
Airport/approach CHECKED

Flows and corresponding checklists should be established for each of the key phases of flight:

Before start
Before taxi
Before takeoff
Climb
Cruise
Descent
Before landing
After landing
Shut down

These flows and checks are key to safe two man cockpit operations, and will also work well with single pilot operations. But I said at the beginning that there was something else I would talk about toward the end to supplement these flows and checks for the single pilot operator. First I want to review what we normally take completely for granted, but what is worth thinking about for a moment anyway, and that is, why do we have checklists? The obvious reason is to make sure we have done everything we’re supposed to do to prepare the aircraft for safe flight. That’s true, of course, but there is a simpler and more fundamental reason: we do it to keep from killing ourselves.

Way back when I first starting flying professionally and was transitioning from recips to jets, one of my captains said something that made a big impression on me at the time. He said, “There are four things that, if not set properly, will kill you on takeoff in a jet: speed brakes, trim, flaps and slats, and the parking brake.” He went on to elaborate: "If the speed brakes are out on takeoff, it won’t fly; If the trim is miss set, it either won’t rotate when you want it to, or will when you don’t; If the flaps and slats aren’t set for takeoff, it won’t fly, and if the parking brake is set it may move but it won’t accelerate normally. They can all kill you. So every time, just before I push up the power, I do a quick scan: speed brakes stowed, trim set, flaps and slats for takeoff, parking brake released. Haven’t killed myself yet.”

Takeoff for a reciprocating engined straight wing aircraft is different, so when your primary flight instructor emphasized the importance of correctly setting the trim and flaps for takeoff, it wasn’t because your Cessna 152 or Cherokee 140 wouldn’t fly if they weren’t set properly, it was because he or she was trying to instill good habits. But there are two key points here that are relevant to checklists and flows for all pilots. The first is that all of these critical items should have been taken care of well in advance of taxiing onto the runway and bringing the power up as part of the normal Taxi/Before Takeoff flows, and if they weren’t they should have been caught when the checklist was read. The second is that even if they weren’t done and weren’t caught, this last double check will catch the really big ones, the ones that left undone will kill you.

A final double check is what pilots flying by themselves can do to, in effect, back themselves up: after all the flows have been done, and after all the checklists have been completed, at each of the key phases of flight they can make a quick scan to make sure the really big things, the things that left undone will kill you, have been done. And it needs to become a habit that is done every time to be effective.

I’m not going to attempt to cover what those items should be for a bunch of different types of aircraft, but I can give you an example that I am hopeful will be a model for you to develop final checks for whatever type of aircraft you do fly. Again the example will be based on the Piper Twin Comanche, for no better reason than that I happen to have a manual handy.

First, what are the critical phases of flight? Obviously takeoff and landing are, but are there others? There certainly are other times enroute when the opportunity to do something catastrophic presents itself: descending too soon or too low on an instrument approach or trying to land at the wrong airport VFR, for instance, but those aren’t aircraft problems—problems with the configuration or functionality of the aircraft—those are pilot problems. And while forgetting to raise the gear after takeoff or leaving the power set to climb power at cruise or reducing the power to descent but forgetting to reset or disengage autopilot would be serious errors, they probably aren’t going to kill you. Not right away anyway—you have time to correct and recover. So I think it is safe to limit the really critical phases of flight to takeoff and landing.

We’ve already gone over what can kill you in a jet on takeoff, but what about the Twin Comanche? Speed brakes aren’t a factor and the Twin Comanche is normally flown flaps up for takeoff (except for a short field takeoff which I don’t recommend for any twin and certainly not for the Twin Comanche where best angle of climb and minimum control airspeed are the same), so flaps are not usually a killer here either. So what is? Fuel for one. The Twin Comanche can only use fuel from the mains for takeoff, and, of course, there has to be fuel in those tanks. What does happen if the gear handle is in the UP position on takeoff? Of course it shouldn’t be, but if it is, as soon as some weight comes off the struts but before it can fly, the gear will try to retract, with what could be disastrous consequences. (Okay, it probably won’t kill you, but it’s a major accident for sure.) Finally, is the directional gyro in agreement both with the magnetic compass and with the runway? Why is this critical? What if it is set wrong and you fly the wrong heading after takeoff. Worse, what if you’re on the wrong runway, one that is too short, or is closed, or one that has power lines at the end, or that intersects another runway being used for landing? It only has to happen once.

That’s probably it for critical items for a VFR takeoff –you’re not trying to redo the entire Before Takeoff Checklist, just a last minute double check of the items that can kill you. For an IFR takeoff I would add a last minute check of the vacuum pressure and the ammeter: vacuum pumps are notoriously unreliable, which is why the Twin Comanche has two, and a quick last minute check that neither of the red buttons on the vacuum gauge is visible would confirm that they are both working, and with the ammeter gauge right beside it a quick check of alternator output insures you’re not going to be on battery power just as you fly into the clouds. Both vacuum and electrical power are essential to safe instrument flight.

So for a VFR takeoff the last minute check would be directional gyro heading, runway and compass agree (all at the top of the panel), drop down to check the gear handle down, across to the far right to check fuel quantity and then down to the floor to check that the fuel selectors are on the mains. For an IFR takeoff (and I would do it this way every time if instrument rated, just to be consistent) after checking the DG I would drop straight down and check the vacuum gauge, the ammeter and then go on to gear handle, fuel quantity and main tanks. That should keep you from killing yourself on takeoff.

Now, landing. I find it sometimes useful to carry an argument to its logical extreme to check its validity: if it seems to make sense a little bit, then it should still make sense if extended to its most extreme case. For example, Daily Saving Time: Good Idea or Bad? (My daughters dread the changeovers each year because they know they’re going to have to listen to me go off again on how stupid I think it all is. So there’s my answer already.) If Daily Saving Time is a good idea because it gives us an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day, then wouldn’t two extra hours be even better? Why not carry the argument to its logical extreme and add 12 hours? Then we could have day light all night long.

In the case of determining critical items for landing, the logical extreme would be to ask what would happen if we did absolutely nothing? If nothing adverse happened, then there wouldn’t be any critical items. So what would happen if we adjusted the power and airspeed as necessary to land, but left everything else as it was at cruise, not even checking the engine gauges, only responding to whatever happens? For the Twin Comanche at cruise the gear would be retracted, the flaps up, the power would be 75% or less, the prop would be back—RPMs would be reduced—the fuel could be set to any tank, mains, aux, tip, with anything from almost full to almost no fuel in it, the boost pumps would be off and the cowl flaps would probably be partially if not fully closed. So let’s assume either a total idiot or the laziest pilot every known starts down from cruise and doesn’t do anything. What would happen?

Initially, probably nothing would happen. But at some point fuel management, or mismanagement, would probably rear its ugly head: fuel wouldn’t flow evenly from an aux tank or tip tank on the descent or approach, and power would fluctuate. Or it might simply run empty. So in response our star pilot would presumably do what he knows he should have done and turn the boost pumps on and select fuel from the main tanks which we hope still have fuel in them. Still alive. So everything is going fine again and now he is on approach or in the traffic pattern and everything is still fine: power is well below max for maneuvering and descending so the prop rpms being reduced isn’t a factor, and, surprisingly, the mixture still at the lean setting for cruise doesn’t seem to be causing any roughness because the power level is reduced well below max, and the cowl flaps being closed are also not causing too much of a problem for the same reason. So Captain Clueless continues on around, lines up on final, or breaks out on approach, trucks on down to the runway, crosses over the numbers, reduces power for landing and the landing gear warning horn goes off. Now he has a problem: the mixture is lean, the props are not set for go around power, he is closer to stall speed than he thinks because the flaps aren’t out and the only thing that is going to save him from a gear up landing is a go around and the aircraft is not configured to do that. He may be able to save it by pushing everything forward or he may not: a second’s hesitation or pushing only the throttles up and the next thing he’s going to hear is props striking the runway. Or the worst case scenario, one engine powers up right away and the other hesitates. The next sound is going to be louder than props hitting concrete.

So, surprisingly, when you look at this extreme case, there actually isn’t that much that is absolutely critical on approach and landing, but there are some, and that’s what we want to be sure we double check on short final. (You may be wondering why the lack of flaps didn’t already get him before the gear not being down did, and they might have if he weren’t careful with his speed control and angle of bank, but the simple fact is that landing flaps for general aviation aircraft don’t decrease the stalling speed all that much; their may function is glide path control. For the Twin Comanche, for instance, the difference between clean and dirty stall speed is only 6 knots, and at a recommended approach speed 30% above the dirty stall speed, that still leaves a good margin—not something to do intentionally, but it won’t kill you.) What will kill you, or as a minimum hurt you and your airplane, is running out of gas at a low altitude, trying to land with the gear up, and trying to do a go around with less than full power. So I would say that the critical items, the items requiring a last minute double check for the Twin Comanche would be: props and mixtures full forward, gear down green light, and fuel on mains. (Sounds a lot like the old GUMP checklist, doesn’t it?) And you could develop a quick scan for this double check by reaching over to make sure the props and mixture controls were full forward, a quick downward glance for the green light, and then reach down to feel for the fuel selectors on the mains. And I would make a point of running this double check at the same point each time, maybe right after lining up on final, or as soon as possible after breaking out on approach. If you do that every time, you’re never going to unexpectedly run out of gas on final or land gear up, and you’re always going to be able to extract yourself if, for any reason, landing is not possible.

These are techniques, borrowed from airline practice, for safe single pilot operations: develop cockpit flows for all key phases of flight, back up your flows with checklists, double check the critical items before every takeoff and landing. Anything else? These techniques will take you a long way, but there are a couple of other things you can do, and they both are meant to counter complacency, distraction, and boredom. One is to stay involved, and by that I mean do things: keep a log, check the weather, get the whiz wheel out and compute the true airspeed or the pressure altitude, experiment with different prop and power settings, reset the mixture, figure the winds aloft, ask ATC if they have winds for any other altitudes and get the performance manual out to see if it’s worth climbing or descending, anything to stay involved. Don’t just sit there.

The other thing, and I learned this from one of my check captains transitioning from copilot to captain on the Boeing 727, maybe the same one who inspired the heading and title for this blog, is to look around. Don’t just sit there staring at the primary instruments in front of you. Look around. All the time. Look up, look down, look to the left, way left to the side panel, right to the entry door and latch, even look back. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, “You’d be surprised what you can see if you just look.” You’ll catch a thing or two, a switch out of place, a breaker that has popped, a latch that isn’t catching completely, and you may even be inspired to get out the flight manual and review how something works that you see that you don’t normally use, like an alternate air selector. You are providing your own set of extra eyeballs, the ones that are missing because you don’t have a copilot or a flight engineer. It’s not easy flying without help. These techniques should make it easier.