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When Things Go Wrong

So far we have concerned ourselves with the preventative aspects of doing the right thing. Recognizing that things can go wrong even when pilots are trying to practise their best behaviours, we must give some advice and training on what to do when things do go wrong. We just talked about poor judgement chains, and risk management in general, now it’s time to get down to the specifics.

Each flight has a plan with the general objective of a ‘safe’ flight. During a safe flight we move on to the runway, takeoff, fly around, enter a standard circuit at a pre-planned destination, land, move off the runway, and secure the aircraft. All this is accomplished with aircraft operating within its normal parameters and with no harm to the pilot or the aircraft. At any point in this sequence something may go wrong and cause us to deviate from the safe flight. The general objective, when things go wrong, is to return to the ‘safe’ flight profile. Of course we must first recognize that we have deviated from our flight plan or that external conditions have changed. There is a certain hierarchy to the actions we take:

  1. Determine whether we have a problem with control of the aircraft. If this is true we must take care of this first.
  2. Assess whether or not we must land immediately. If so we must try to get into a suitable landing configuration.
  3. If we don’t have to land, we then ask whether we should enter a circuit.
  4. If we don’t have to enter a circuit, what direction should we be heading?
  5. Do we alter our pre-planned destination?
  6. Do we just return to our normal flight plan?