NTSB record

[zkelley2]

People (pilots) have an incredible ability to say "I'd never do that..." and then go do it anyway... It's because we all think we are better pilots than we really are. Back when I was an Army instructor pilot (OH-58 helicopters), I had my AeroScout Platoon members (10 pilots) sit in a circle facing each other, then passed out pencil and paper, asking them to rank-order all the pilots in the platoon, from best (#1) to worst (#10). I promised I would not collect their list, and I wasn't going to have them read it or anything, so I asked them to be truthful and do the best job they possibly could. When they were done, I asked everyone to close their eyes, then asked them to raise their hand if they had listed themselves in the top three... As I expected, all ten guys had their hands in the air... I asked them to keep their hands in the air, and open their eyes. Of course, every pilot in the room was shocked (SHOCKED, I tell ya!) to see that the person they ranked #10 had their hand in the air – a fact I pointed out to them. Then I said to the group "But what if YOUR name appears in nine of the lists as the #10 pilot, and YOU'RE the one whose hand everyone is shocked to see in the air?" We then went on to have a discussion about how we might fly differently, or train differently, or prepare differently if we really were not quite as good as we think we are... It was in interesting exercise, to say the least!

There's a gigantic gap in the culture of GA pilot's and professional, and while all accidents are a chain of events, one of the biggest indicators(and link in the chain) of an airline or charter company that is at risk for an accident is their safety culture. GA has a really bad safety culture in my experience, and I think the accident rate reflects that. When I get into the cockpit, in virtually every brief, I include something along the lines of "okay, we're going to make some mistakes today, but what's important is literally anyone on the flight deck catching and trapping that error before it becomes an issue. So if you see me doing something wrong or non-standard, it's because I'm wrong. Please correct me." Ego's must be checked before you even show up to fly for the day.(to the extent that there is no room for ego in flying ever.) You will make mistakes, as will others and the only way for all of us to collectively learn is to readily admit those mistakes, freely broadcast them to anyone who wants to read/listen and go over what you could have done better.
The couple of bent metal events I've witnessed or have happened locally with local pilots have always been hush hush and don't be hard on them. Which is exactly the opposite of what needs to happen. If we have anyone screw up at work, you go back to the training house and are made proficient again, while people including yourself writes a big report on how why and what happened and what we're doing going forward for this to not happen again. Otherwise, and we have mountains of data to back this, someone else does the same exact thing a couple months later. Or maybe the next day. Chances are if you're making a mistake, 10 other people are making the same one.


GA has the NASA ASRS program, but it doesn't really provide feedback like an ASAP program does. We have over 300 reports a quarter and we're a small company. We actually figure that number is low and should be higher, things are not quite getting reported as much as we'd like. If 10,000+ hour professionals are making that many small mistakes, I can only assume the 300 hour private pilot is doing at least as much, and we could all benefit from hearing about them.

[svyolo]

Many years ago, a couple of Monday mornings a month, we used to have a MAG (Marine Air Group) all pilots meeting. At the end of it, anybody that had an accident, incident, or just an emergency got to be the star of their own Q&A session about the event. Learning from the mistakes of others, so you don't have to learn it by doing the same thing, is a great thing. It is also quite humbling to stand in front of a couple of hundred of your peers and answer questions. We had lots of events. I was the star a few times.

Flying in the 121 world, with extremely well trained 2 man cockpit crews is extremely safe. No individual has ever flown a perfect flight, but with the right training and SOP adherance, the mistakes are caught before they make it to their logical conclusion.

Flying by yourself, you don't have those checks and balances. I did it before in a plane that went a lot faster than a BH. Your mistakes become catastrophic quickly. Luckily we usually flew with at least one other airplane, if not 3 or more. They were your support getting you out of most problems.

Single pilot flying is just inherently dangerous. Great stick and rudder, and instrument skills don't keep us from making mistakes. You are still going to make mistakes.

I will now end my flying back single seat in a plane I built myself. I will do it as carefully as I can, but I will make mistakes.