Routine – what does it mean to you? Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as a “habitual or mechanical performance of an established procedure.”
I think most pilots have a regular routine. It is kind of instilled in pilots during their training that things we do should be a “routine.” You know, make things become automatic. Which is good…but don’t get complacent.
Like many, I have a regular “routine” I follow in flying, driving, cooking or even making coffee. This might be a weird view, but in a way, my routines include my “copilot.” My copilot is my spouse. We usually drive together, fly together and cook together.
Just recently we decided to move our office. Sidenote: moving an office after 20 plus years in one location (and me being kind of a “hoarder”) is a lot of work. It’s also somewhat really stressful. Moving equipment, files, setting up phones, internet and still working throughout the process is complicated.
But some of the things that made it work were the regular morning routines we had and continue to have. Typically I’ll be making the coffee and breakfast while my copilot is feeding animals, watering plants, etc. My drink of choice is coffee, expresso or an Americano. “Black, bitter and hot,” the way it should be! But I also make a nice Café Latte for my copilot. I warm the milk and then add the expresso.
The other day I was going through my normal routine. I was making the latte: working on the expresso, pouring the milk… but then my son (who works for us) stopped in on his way to the new office. We discussed a few things and I asked if he wanted coffee or breakfast. I poured the expresso in the milk and we moved to the table. My copilot took one drink of the Latte and said, “It’s cold!”
And That is How You Forget to Put the Wheels Down!
That simple extra interaction interrupted my normal routine, and the distraction led to skipping a vital step. Luckily in this case, it was just forgetting to heat the milk for a latte.
As student pilots we were trained to use a checklist to make these types of situations less likely. It was to make sure that all the things we needed to do as a pilot become routine, automatic.
I have discussed gear up landings before, along with checklists. It’s always good to bring up the topic because the problem continues to happen. I have customers that have been flying their retractable gear aircraft for years, and just once, they forget. The phrase that always comes to mind for retractable gear aircraft is “not if, but when,” so you must stay vigilant.
For example, let’s take a look at the last seven days of the FAA’s Preliminary Accident and Incident Reports. I looked through a total of 56 reported accidents. Out of those 56, there were 14 gear accidents. That’s 25 percent, a quarter of the reported accidents are retractable gear aircraft with gear issues. I do need to clarify that not all of those were “I forgot” gear issues. A couple were bad landings and a couple were mechanical. But the point is, there are still an average of two gear accidents a day.
The question then is: How do you forget to put the wheels down if you use a checklist and have a routine process? This is something that should be ingrained in your landing process.
One Christmas I helped recover a gear up on a 210 at the local airport. The pilot did an IFR approach, cancelled IFR when he got into VFR, and did a circle to land because of winds. That change in the approach, changed his routine and he landed gear up. We walked over 900 feet of prop marks in the concrete. After the plane was lifted in the air, the mechanic flipped the gear lever down and the gear extended as designed. The pilot just forgot.
Another pilot landed his Cessna Cardinal RG gear up. The pilot hadn’t flown in months and after they got the plane up on the wheels, the mechanic asked him if he heard the gear horn. The pilot said he did but forgot what it was…it wasn’t in his routine anymore.
And those were Cessna aircraft, where basically you should be able to look out the side windows and see the wheels. If you are in a Piper, it might be bit harder to see the gear, but there are still mirrors, lights and horns. If you are lucky enough to have an operating magic pitot/magic hand-type system on your Piper, the gear should go down on its own.
All that said, the key is gear-ups still happen. That’s why you have insurance.
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