AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2025 - 18

PROFICIENT PILOT
What do you
expect?
You know what they say about 'assuming'
BY BARRY SCHIFF / AOPA Foundation Legacy Society chairman
I N MOST R ESPECTS, Roger was a highly capable flight engineer,
but he had one habit that made me nervous. He operated
the switches, levers, and other controls on his panel with such a
flurry that I couldn't keep track of what he was doing. His hands
moved in a blur, like those of someone playing a piano arrangement
of Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee.
Don't misunderstand. Roger was otherwise truly proficient
at operating the L-1011's complex systems. The problem was that
he often did not take time to verify that the movement of a switch
or control actually produced the expected result. He got away
with this most of the time because the Lockheed's systems were
so reliable. Once in a while, though, Roger's hand speed backfired
such as when he inadvertently deployed the passenger oxygen
masks while preflighting the cockpit before departure. (Our flight
was delayed two hours while the masks were repacked.)
Many general aviation pilots fly with the expectation that
everything will operate normally. Consider, for example, those
who think they have lowered the landing gear only to discover
during the noisy and abbreviated landing that they had not.
Experience increases proficiency but also can breed
complacency. When a pilot moves a switch hundreds of times
and gets the desired result every time, he develops the expectation
that the action will continue to produce the same result. This is
when the sadistic finger of fate is most likely to point in his or
her direction.
When using any system, a pilot should verify it is operating
normally before diverting attention elsewhere. When lowering
the landing gear, for example, keep your fingers on the switch until
verifying that the gear is down and locked.
Other systems require similar attention because things do not
always work the way they should. When turning on an auxiliary
fuel pump, for example, look for a momentary fluctuation in fuel
pressure. This verifies that moving the switch actually turned on
the pump. You similarly should check for an ammeter (or load
meter) fluctuation when turning on the pitot heat, and so forth.
The closest I ever came to losing an airplane and making a
messy hole in the ground was when I became a victim of expectancy.
I was executing an ILS approach to Gander, Newfoundland,
in a Cessna 310 that I was ferrying to England in 1963. The weather
was abysmal, 100-and-one with blowing snow. But because the
wind was straight down the runway, and I had plenty of fuel, I
18
AOPA PILOT / March 2025
opted to execute a look-see approach before diverting to my
alternate, St. John's. Conditions were as advertised, however, and
nothing was visible at decision height.
Within seconds of establishing a missed approach, the Gander
controller issued an unexpected clearance to Goose Bay. This, I
was told matter of-factly, was because the weather at St. John's had
fallen to " zero-zero. " I suddenly found myself rearranging charts,
changing frequencies, spinning course selectors, and attending
to a flurry of communications. I failed to recognize until it was
almost too late that the twin Cessna had begun a left spiraling
descent. My initial reaction was that the left engine had failed, but
the problem actually was the left throttle creeping slowly aft. I had
expected that the throttles would stay where I had put them, but
this assumption was almost my last.
In 1982, an Air Florida captain made the fatal mistake of
assuming that his power gauges were indicating correctly. If he had
considered the possibility that the anemic takeoff and initial climb
performance of the Boeing 737 was caused by erroneous power
indications (the result of structural ice blocking instrument probes
in the engine inlets), he could simply have shoved the " throttles "
farther forward to obtain the additional and available power. But
he did not, and 78 lives were lost when Flight 90 crashed into the
14th Street Bridge and slammed into the icy Potomac River within
seconds after lifting off from Washington National Airport (DCA).
This accident and many others serve as grim reminders that
pilots must never take anything for granted. The only thing we can
reliably expect is the unexpected.
An acquaintance certainly never expected the aileron cables of
his Twin Beech to have been inadvertently reinstalled in reverse
while his aircraft was undergoing major maintenance. He was
shocked to discover this shortly after liftoff, and only extraordinary
airmanship enabled him to nurse the aircraft around the pattern
and back to the runway-by substituting the right aileron when
left was needed and vice-versa, an extreme challenge.
Although not necessarily dangerous, the unexpected
behavior of other systems can be
traumatic. An example of this is
what humorist and friend Rod
Machado calls a runaway Hobbs
meter. Yikes!
www.BarrySchiff.com
BARRY SCHIFF has
been flying for 72 years,
is a retired airline captain,
and has logged 28,000
hours in 364 different
types of aircraft.
http://www.BarrySchiff.com
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2025

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