Driver's License = Medical Certificate?

One nice thing about AOPA's new, PR-oriented management is that it's oh so easy to discern their agenda. DVD-of-the-month club, life insurance, medical certification assistance, legal assistance, credit cards, and numerous other "member benefits" are being hawked to each and every AOPA member on a regular basis. AOPA seems thirsty for money. Quoting John Ciardi: "May you stay solvent by whatever means are available to you."

Issues that AOPA reports repeatedly in their newsletters and magazines have obviously been designated as their top priorities. These priorities would seem to include bringing back BARR (Block Aircraft Registration Requests) so no one will know how business jets are being used, just saying "no" to user fees, just saying "yes" to NextGen and ADS-B, and now advocating the elimination of the 3rd class medical certificate.

The proposal at hand seems to be "If you hold a driver's license, that's good enough to be PIC and you don't need a 3rd class medical." One would assume the requirements for 1st and 2nd class medical certificates would not change and would still be required for commercial and airline transport pilots. It seems that with an appropriate pilot's certificate and driver's license as a medical, this proposal would allow someone to fly not just the light-sport/flying-lawn-furniture sorts of aircraft, but presumably aircraft with a maximum gross takeoff weight as high as 12,499 pounds. This sounds ridiculous just typing the words.

The criteria for a third class medical certificate are remarkably liberal, giving rise to the old joke: "If you can see lightning and hear thunder, you can get a medical certificate." Now if you have a medical condition that could unexpectedly render you unconscious or otherwise impair you, that's another story. Pilots with diabetes, heart conditions, high blood pressure, cognitive impairments all come under scrutiny. As well they should, but the FAA medical certification division has still done a pretty good job of allowing for pilots with special circumstances to obtain a medical certificate. For example ...

Another complaint is that getting a medical certificate is a hassle. Think about that: If you're under 40 years of age, your 3rd class medical certificate is good for five years (60 calendar months). If you're over 40, it's still good for 2 years (24 calendar months). A trip to the AME every two or five years is hardship? Give me a break! Now if you have a special medical condition, you will have to jump through hoops, provide test results, and you often have to wait for approval. That's a hassle with which I am all too familiar.

Long time readers of this blog know that in 2008 my 2nd class medical certificate was revoked for a year after I experienced a disqualifying medical episode. The FAA's revocation was explicit and, it seemed to me, a bit rude. After all, I had voluntarily reported my situation, I had done the right thing, I was following the rules. The thing is, many pilots don't like to follow the regs and that likely explains the FAA's serious tone.

Several pilots emailed me or commented on by blog suggesting I was foolish for telling the FAA. Some suggested I should have just kept it to myself rather than blog about the experience. Another told me I should have just monitored my own condition, made my own decisions about my fitness for flight, that I should have been the judge, stuff in that vein. My ability to earn an income was significantly hampered until the FAA granted a special issuance 2nd class medical certificate. Based on this experience, some might think that I'd be strongly in favor of what AOPA is advocating. In point of fact, I'm not.

Medical certification is an important part of aviation safety even if many pilots choose to keep their medical problems to themselves rather than risk being grounded. Some might say the FAA 3rd class medical exam is perfunctory and ineffective, but the applicant must fill out a medical history questionnaire. Falsifying or misrepresenting that medical history is serious business. The safeguards against drivers with medical problems is potentially even more problematic. In California, Health and Safety Code Section 103900 requires the treating physician to report a driver's health problems. If a driver chooses not to be treated or doesn't reveal a problem to their physician, it would seem that no one would be the wiser. And drivers are not required to undergo regular physical exams.

In light of AOPA's support of the NextGen initiative to increase aviation safety and utility, it's odd they would, at the same time, be arguing to implement what could very well become a sort of "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy. AOPA's proposal would have us flying in a world where pilots who have potentially serious medical problems could act as PIC without a medical history or regular check-ups and status reports. The importance of addressing and dealing with medical issues would be further minimized and the status quo of sweeping things under the rug would be maintained. If AOPA's constant clamoring for a driver's license medical certificate isn't about safety, perhaps it's about more potential AOPA members. More members, more money.

This brings me to the late Doug Johnson, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret.), whom I met while teaching at the Alameda Aero Club. Doug founded the flying club and he continued to be its driving force after the Alameda NAS was closed and the club moved to Oakland. Doug was plainspoken and when ladies weren't present, Doug could curse a blue streak. And all of this was put forth in an Arkansas drawl that'd make you think you were standing in front of a ribald version of Foghorn Leghorn. Doug had been a B17 captain during WWII and survived his share of bombing missions. He had plenty of opinions on most any topic you could come up with. In short, Doug was larger that life.


Doug was always hanging around the airport, but I never saw him go flying. I asked him why and he explained that one day, driving to the airport, he'd woken up, shaken but uninjured, with his car in a ditch. After a slew of medical tests with no conclusive results, Doug made his choice. "Boywah" he'd said, "That day forward, I couldn't go flyin' without 'nother pilot on board. What if it happened again, with ma wife onboard? What if an innocent person on the ground got killed 'cause of me?" The doctors said it was okay for Doug to drive, and drive he did, but I suspect if Doug were alive today and he heard about AOPA's proposal, he'd be all over them like white on rice.

If you've lost your medical certificate, if you're unable to fly under sport pilot rules, I understand that being grounded sucks. I hated it the first time it happened to me and I know that at some point (hopefully in the distant future) I may very well be grounded again. All pilots need to remember that each one of us may have to give up being PIC. It may not be popular to say, but a time will come when our love of flying must be overshadowed by the safety of those around us and the loved ones who fly with us.

Pocket Protector Optional

A calculus professor once told me the only tools a real mathematician needs are a pen, a piece of paper the size of a postage stamp, and his or her brain. That may be the case if one is sitting at a desk, quietly contemplating the theoretical. Controlling an aircraft that is hurtling through the air at two miles per minute or more while simultaneously listening and talking on the radio? That endeavor has the unfortunate side effect of dropping everyone's IQ by several points, which is why pilots have adopted a few tools to help them deal with the flying world's challenging mix of theoretical and practical. One such tool is the E6B calculator.

For older, traditionalist pilots, the E6B is synonymous with "slide rule" and the mere mention of electronic E6B calculators and smartphone apps will get them on their soapbox in a heartbeat, praising the slide rule and preaching against the dangers of new-fangled electronic contraptions. Young upstart pilots, having likely never used a slide rule, may find this attachment a bit odd. Frankly I do too. But even as electronic E6Bs are becoming widespread, there is still a place for the old fashioned E6B slide rule.

Tried and True

The advantages of the E6B slide rule are many: It requires no batteries, it does a variety of calculations, and it is relatively lightweight. The "front" side of the E6B can accomplish a dizzying array of calculations and conversions: Ground speed, distance, time, fuel consumption, endurance, knots to nautical mile - provided the user has been properly initiated. The back side of the E6B, sometimes called the "wind side," is used to calculate wind correction angles and determine winds aloft.

The disadvantage of any slide rule is that in order to use it, the user must provide most of the problem-solving context. In a high-workload environment, user-supplied context is less than ideal. If you don't understand how to arrange the slide rule scales to solve your problem, you won't get very far. Even after you have a grasp on the slide rule basics, you must still use common sense to ensure that your answer is not off by an order of magnitude.

Some might argue that having to provide this sort of context and judgement is the very thing that ensures an understanding level of knowledge about the calculations be performed. That rings hollow to me because in flight what is most desirable is speed and accuracy. It's possible to go through the motions of slide rule calculations, mimicking what you've seen, arrive at an answer (correct or incorrect), and still not understand how you got there. Yet for kinesthetic and tactile learners, the E6B is an ideal tool, probably more so than an electronic calculator. Instructors who are unsure of their student's learning strengths can always have them take one of the many learning style inventory tests available on-line.

In spite of its apparent simplicity, the slide rule E6B is by no means foolproof. Tiny screws hold the main section together. With age, these screws can come loose and if that happens in flight, you'll have an interesting project on your hands. The wind side has a transparent plastic disk that is meant to be marked with a pencil, but that plastic can become cloudy, brittle, and riddled with marks. APR Industries has developed an innovative E6B design that uses a rotating windspeed cursor arm on the wind side so that you don't have to make any pencil marks. Who says you can't teach old dogs new tricks?

If you are up for a challenge, grab the E6B of your choice and try tackling one of the Safety and Flight Evaluation Conference (SAFECON) Practice Exams. 

Flashy and New

There seems to be a endless supply of E6B apps out there for smart phones like the iPhone and the Android. At last count there were over 30 E6B apps at the iTunes store, some included as a feature inside an app. Perhaps creating E6B apps is a rite of passage, like writing your first "Hello world" program.

My favorite iPhone/iPad E6B app continues to be PFMA since it has a very simple, shallow menu structure. You provide the information you know and PFMA provides the missing information. No need to first locate the type of problem you're trying to solve in a complex and multi-layered menu structure. There are a few conversions that PFMA doesn't do and some obscure calculations that are missing, but it's easy to use in flight and a very good deal at $5.99.

For those of you wondering, that other calculator is an ancient HP-16C Computer Scientist that still works flawlessly. What can I say? I love RNP calculators and you never know when you might need to calculate the 2's compliment of a binary number.

Regardless which E6B app you choose, remember you won't be allowed to take your smartphone or other multi-purpose electronic device into an FAA knowledge test session.  Hmm ... Maybe there's life in that old E6B after all. Or purchase one of the dedicated E6B electronic calculators like the ones sold by Sporty's. I still have one of the Sporty's models, though the LCD display has long since given up the ghost.

Required Knowledge?

Like sailors before them, aeronautical navigators aboard airliners of yore used a sextant to plot their position. Thinking about this got me wanting to learn something about celestial navigation, even though it has been supplanted by satellite-based navigation. So in my spare time, I'll be working on building my own (very simple) sextant. When completed, I plan to try plotting my position in a few locations on the ground and compare the results to a handheld GPS or Google Maps on my iPhone. This project is for my own amusement and just because I find it interesting doesn't mean I'll soon be requiring my students to build their own sextants.

Ron wrote a cogent rejoinder to my post about digital versus paper charts, pointing out that most any pilot can blindly follow a magenta line into oblivion if they have lost (or perhaps never learned) basic flight planning and navigation skills. Many instructors might see that lack of skill and interpret it to mean that the pilot needs more training, but a deeper question seems to emerge: "What knowledge should the FAA (and, by extension, DPEs and CFIs) require pilots to demonstrate in the first place?" I believe the answer lies in thoughtfully combining the use of hand calculations, slide rule and electronic E6Bs, paper and digital charts, and paper navigation logs with computerized flight planning.

Tradition versus Progress

There's a undeniable pride student pilots feel once they have mastered basic calculations with an E6B. That's understandable because acquiring slide rule prowess is like learning a magic trick. Your friends are bound to be impressed, especially if the E6B you use is contained on the face of a flashy pilot watch. Pushing buttons on a calculator? Anyone can do that! For my part, I'll continue to teach my students how to use paper charts and a slide rule E6B, but I also won't discourage them from embracing new technology. I never tire of hearing students marvel "So pilots really used to fly this way?"

Is Cross-Country Flight Planning Passé?

The widespread availability of sophisticated GPS receivers, digitized aviation charts, and internet-based weather information is changing the way student pilots are learning cross-country flight planning. The introduction of new technology and techniques always raises questions: Should student pilots be taught to use paper charts, plotter, pencil, and a slide rule E6B or encouraged to switch entirely to electronic charts, calculators, GPS and computer-based weather briefings? Don’t throw out that plotter and slide rule just yet because the best approach to learning the complicated process of cross-country flight planning involves combining old school with waay cool. Here’s the first installment of a multi-part series on the revolution in VFR cross-country flight planning, written with student pilots and their instructors in mind.

Drawing the Line

One of the first steps in cross-country flight planning is to get a rough idea about the general direction and the distance involved. With a current paper chart, just plop your plotter down and draw a course line between your departure and destination airports with a pencil. Sounds easy enough until you need to plan a route that begins on one side of the chart and continues on the other side, which actually provides a good scenario for comparing paper and digital charts.

FAA VFR charts include instructions for extending a course line from one side of a chart to the other using a pencil and a spare sheet of paper, but it's a Catch 22: You determine the magnetic course by drawing a line between the two points, but you can’t draw the course line because the points are on opposite sides of the chart.

One solution is to purchase a World Aeronautical Chart (WAC), which covers a larger geographic area at a scale of 1 to 1,000,000 as opposed to the sectional chart scale of 1 to 500,000. Good luck finding a WAC anywhere but on-line. One could purchase two versions of the same sectional and piece them together, being careful to account for the 2 minutes of longitudinal overlap on each side. You could cut the Gordian Knot by using Victor airways or choosing a landmark that appears within the overlap on each side of the chart. Or you could use your current chart and an expired chart that you just happened to have saved, just don’t mix them up!

Or simply combine paper with plastic: Use a handheld GPS or any of a variety of web sites to determine the magnetic course between the two airports, then use your pencil and plotter to replicate that course. Which approach is best? That's really up to the pilot. The goal in teaching student pilots is not to preserve hallowed aviation traditions for their own sake. Whether a student is using paper or plastic or a combination of the two, the goal is for them to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it. Using a combinational approach with old and new products may actually end up teaching the student to a correlative level of knowledge.

Digitized charts provide a big, mostly seamless chart and you'd think that would make plotting a course line on a digitized chart easier, but plotting a digital course line can be less flexible and more abstract than doing it by hand with pencil and paper. EFB apps like Skycharts Pro and ForeFlight Mobile as well as online planners like FltPlan or FlightAware will draw a course line representation, but your choice of waypoints may be limited to the VFR reporting points, intersections, navigation aids, and airports contained in the application’s navigation database. Some products allow you to define your own waypoints using lat/long, but that's not terribly convenient.

VFR Sectional and Course line using FltPlan.com

Doing the Coursework

With the course drawn on a paper chart, you use your plotter to measure the true course, locate the nearest isogonic line and apply the magnetic variation shown (subtract Easterly variations, add Westerly variations) to determine the magnetic course. If your destination or departure airport has a VOR on the field, get the magnetic course from the compass rose surrounding that VOR. Either way, with a bit of care and attention will provide the magnetic course on a paper chart within ±1˚, though simple arithmetic errors can result if you’re in a rush.

Old school pilots and instructors rightly claim that never drawing a course line on a paper chart can rob student pilots of an important learning experience about Magnetic declination. Yet with the right input data, computers tend to do a faster and more accurate job with arithmetic and geometry than humans: Waypoints entered, the digital course line drawn, determining the magnetic course is a foregone conclusion. A good approach for student pilots is to plan first on paper, then check your results using a digital source.

Go the Distance

Plotters offer a variety of scales and if you mistakenly measure using the wrong scale ... you won’t be the first pilot to do so. So look carefully, choose the correct scale for your chart and line up the correct marks.

Getting the distance on a digitized chart is a forgone conclusion, but errors are still possible. You can enter the wrong waypoint or misspell the waypoint. One tipoff is a digital course line that makes a sudden, severe turn off the edge of the map you're viewing.

If the digital product you are using provides recently assigned ATC routes, remember that these are instrument flight rules (IFR) clearances and these routes may involve altitude requirements that are beyond capability of the average GA aircraft. If you will be flying IFR, remember that there may not be any recently assigned ATC routes for the departure and destination airport that you have chosen.

Some EFB apps are better than others at drawing a course line that is visible, yet doesn't obscure important information.

FFM course line obscures airway radial

SCP course line is more ... subtle

Overcoming Obstacles

With a preliminary course line drawn, consider the appropriate altitudes one could fly. You'd think that pilots would know and apply the hemispheric rule, but it's surprising how many pilots (intentionally or unintentionally) fly WAFDOF (wrong altitude for direction of flight).  Whether you remember "Odd birds fly East" or simply refer to the diagram etched into many kneeboards, do other pilots a favor: Fly the correct altitude for your magnetic course.

Minimum elevation figures are shown on VFR charts and these provide the lowest altitude that will clear the highest charted obstacle within a specific quadrangle by 300 to 400 feet. Depending on how close your route is to that highest obstruction, flying at or just above that altitude may be the safe thing to do or it may be hopelessly foolhardy. I don't know of any app that will make the assessment of a safe altitude for you: You're going to have to use your little gray cells.

Whether you are using paper or digital charts, a nifty course line that goes to your destination won't necessarily keep you clear of special use airspace. One cool feature in SkyCharts Pro is the ability to get information on special use airspace by tapping. Locate the red circle next to an MOA, prohibited, or restricted area and tap twice to get the effective times, altitudes and the frequency of the controlling agency.

ForeFlight offers a similar feature, but it requires more taps to get the same information. ForeFlight does offer a quick way to create or change course lines by tapping and dragging.

Acquire, Combine, Conquer

Paper chart adherents often claim that paper is foolproof because paper charts don’t require batteries, they can be folded and handled, and are less intimidating to pilots who may be less computer savvy. True, but paper charts have some serious disadvantages: They can be torn, damaged, lost, or hopelessly riddled with marks from previous flight planning efforts. Last, but not least, all paper charts eventually expire and become obsolete.

Even before the FAA changed the structure for chart retailers, it was often difficult to get a paper chart unless you planned ahead. With a reduced number of chart retailers, your odds of acquiring a current paper chart at the last minute from a local retailer is tantamount to winning the lottery. A chart subscription is obviously the best bet, but that’s not much help if you’re away from home on a longer trip, need an oddball chart, or you lost your chart a week before it was set to expire.

The chart retailers who remain have to deal with unsold, expired paper charts. Charts have to be printed and physically shipped which adds to the cost and carbon-loading. Old school pilots are familiar with the various paper chart subscription services available through Aeronav or a variety of on-line retailers, but they may not be up-to-speed on the various options for digital charts.

Digitized charts, whether viewed on-line or on an iPad, tablet, laptop or desktop computer can be acquired at a lower cost (some are available on-line for free), they are easy to update, and they can cover large geographic areas without folding, flipping, or ripping. There’s no physical shipping required and no paper to recycle. The disadvantages of electronic charts basically boil down to all the possible failures to which electronic devices are heir to, including screen readability in bright light, software/hardware failures, and drained batteries. There are also some problems with how digitized charts are stitched together, but that really just reflects the limitations with how the FAA generates the charts. Hopefully that process will continue to be modernized and soon we'll see seamless VFR and IFR charts become a reality.

FAA VFR charts can be downloaded to your computer as raster files for free, and a simple, free, and platform-independent solution for viewing them is Google Earth. Follow the instructions in this WikiHowTo  and overlay sectionals and terminal area charts in Google Earth. While this approach has limitations, it does offer pilots the ability to view charts for large geographic areas at little or no cost. You can even do some rudimentary flight planning activities, like determining the course and distance between airports.

Several products are available for the iPad that allow you to access VFR charts, including ForeFlight and Skycharts. The cost of these products varies from $20 per year to $80 per year or more. Like all cockpit resource management issues, one size does not fit all. Both of these apps allow you to create flight plans that will draw course lines on the digital charts and give you magnetic courses, but old school paper chart planning provides more flexibility and, dare I say it, precision.

If you are a Mac user, MacGPS Pro provides another option for importing FAA raster charts. MacGPS Pro lets you define user waypoints, integrate with an external GPS receiver, and measure distances and courses. Similar solutions probably exist for the Windows world, but not being a Windows user, well ...

Paper and Plastic

After a student pilot has been through the flight planning process a half dozen times using paper charts, it's not clear that any more learning is likely to take place by restricting them to old school planning. While I do believe that a students' primary experience should involve pencil, plotter, and paper chart, that doesn't mean they should be discouraged from branching out to the high-tech solutions once they understand flight planning basics. Looking at the strengths and weaknesses of paper and digitized charts it’s easy to conclude that the best approach is to understand and use both. Having a paper back-up strategy in flight is the prudent advice offered by the FAA’s AC on Electronic Flight Bags.

Some pilots may still resist using digitized charts for the understandable reason that they simply prefer holding a chart in their hands. Nothing wrong with that, but charting and flight planning is changing. Time waits for no one, not even old school pilots, so don't be afraid to explore and experiment.

In future installments, I'll discuss how technology is changing calculators, navigation log preparation, and in-flight diversions.

Flying Right Seat

A freight pilot friend once astutely observed, "From the right seat, it may as well be a completely different airplane." His comment sprang from a discussion we had about the wisdom of non-instructor pilots offering to fly with student pilots, allowing the student to sit in the left seat and practice. The pilot would act as PIC, the cost of the flight would be shared, and there would be no need to pay for a flight instructor. When examining the relative wisdom of such an arrangement, pilots need to consider that when they move to the right seat they've entered bizzaro world. Without some training and experience in right seat flying, specifically landings, you've significantly increased the risk of something bad (read expensive) happening. If you've ever thought about getting instruction in right seat flying, here are some of the challenges in store for you and a few suggestions on how to cope with them.

Understand the Limits

Though most GA aircraft have dual flight controls, they are certificated for, and primarily set-up for the pilot-in-command occupying the left seat. With the lion's share of the flight instruments positioned for the left seat, the pilot in the right seat can feel left out. The altimeter, airspeed indicator, and turn coordinator can be mighty hard to see. Even if you can see the instruments, there's the problem of parallax: You aren't looking straight at the instrument so you have to learn to judge what a needle is indicating or when the ball in the slip indicator is centered. And you can forget the attitude indicator in many aircraft. Instructors in the right seat usually learn to visualize bank angles and use outside references for estimating pitch.

The ignition key or magneto switches and virtually all other switches may be beyond your normal reach when you're sitting right seat and a clear view of these switches is often not available. The left yoke may be in the way or the left seat pilot's hands or arms may block your view. The throttle quadrant often blocks the right seat pilot's view of the landing gear lever and the gear position indicator lights. About the only things you may have close at hand from the right seat are the circuit breakers, flap switch and cabin heat controls.

When sitting right seat, you're going to be operating the throttle, prop, and mixture controls with your left hand. Virtually every pilot finds this arrangement awkward at first. You may even experience the thrill of leaning the mixture when you meant to retard the throttle, though most pilots rarely make this mistake more than once! I've even seen a few pilots grab the correct control, but in a fit of confusion, move that control the wrong way - advancing the throttle when they meant to retard the throttle.

The best radio push-to-talk (PTT) switch set-up for the right seat is to have the switch located on the right horn of the right seat control yoke. This makes sense because the right-seat flyer needs to have their left hand free for adjusting the throttle, prop, mixture or to set the radios and GPS. So naturally many aircraft manufacturers put the right seat PTT switch on the left horn of the control yoke. This means the pilot must momentarily switch hands or reach across their body with the opposite hand anytime they need to talk to ATC. One plane I occasionally instruct in has the right seat PTT switch mounted on the far right edge of the instrument panel, which can make for some interesting contortions.

Aircraft insurance policies and flying club rules often specify that all flying is to be done from the left seat unless the pilot holds a current flight instructor certificate or has specific authorization. Some aircraft have equipment limitations, like the often overlooked limit on the KAP 140 autopilot that a pilot must occupy the left seat when the autopilot is engaged. With all these limitations in mind, it's clear that flying from the right seat is not as simple as sliding over.

Illusive Landings

For most pilots, the biggest challenge with right seat flying is landing the aircraft. I've lost count of the number of pilots I've trained to fly right seat, but most have been flight instructor candidates. A few have been private pilots who simply wanted to see what it was like to fly from the other seat. I've known several instructors who became so comfortable flying right seat that they actually avoided ever flying from the left seat, even when flying solo. Switching back and forth can be a humbling experience, but flight instructors should be flexible and practiced in flying from either seat. If you aren't an instructor and you don't get much practice in the right seat, factor that into your personal minima and currency requirements. Like most anything else in life, right seat flying is a skill that must be practiced to be maintained.

The majority of learning right seat landing problems are difficulty aligning the longitudinal axis (yaw) and maintaining centerline alignment during the landing flare. Pilots who are new to the right seat frequently apply too much right rudder during the flare and the result is side loading on the landing gear at touchdown. The most effective teaching technique seems to be briefing the pilot on the common errors and solutions, then coaching them with real-time feedback about their rudder input. After 5 to 10 hours of practice, most pilots find right seat landings start to improve.

Double Vision

Ocular dominance, in my experience, plays an important role in a pilot's ability to maintain centerline and longitudinal alignment during the first few hours of landing from the right seat. For most people, their dominant eye is the same as their dominant hand: Right handed people tend to right eyed and left handed people are left eyed. Here's a simple test to determine your dominate eye:

With one of your arms extended and with both eyes open, align your thumb with some object that is more than 20 feet (6 meters) away. Close your left eye and if you see the object appears to remain aligned with your thumb, then your right eye is dominant. If the object no longer appears aligned with your right eye closed, your left eye is dominant.

I've taught right seat flying to at least three pilots who were right-handed, but who were left-eye dominant and these pilots seems to initially report more difficulty and feelings of awkwardness when transitioning to the right seat. Consider my unscientific representations of how ocular dominance might affect one's perspective from the cockpit. These photos have been exaggerated for effect, but illustrate the idea that significant re-learning is required when transitioning to the right seat. Pilots are often encouraged to look at the end of the runway during the landing flare and I suspect the reason this technique helps is because it reduces the parallax introduced by ocular dominance.

Left Seat, Left Eye Dominant

Left Seat, Right Eye Dominant

Right Seat, Left Eye Dominant

Right Seat, Right Eye Dominant

I move back and forth from the right seat to the left seat in a variety of aircraft, but this wasn't always the case. My first few years of instructing provided few opportunities to fly from the left seat, but when I did it always felt more natural. After thousands of hours of dual instruction given and years of flying regularly, I no longer think that much about which seat I'm occupying. Without significant experience and regular flying, switching back and forth would probably not be as easy.

Right-Brain, Left-Brain

There are popular beliefs about right or left brain dominance, also known as brain function lateralization. The usual claims are that right-brain people tend perceive and think in a more global, holistic, and creative manner. Left-brain dominance purportedly helps one excel at procedures and rational thought. There are numerous on-line tests you can take that claim to tell you whether you are left- or right-brain dominant, though I'm not sure how much use this knowledge will be if you decide to try flying from the right seat.

Barring physical injury or disease, we each use of both halves of our brains every day. While parts of the right hemisphere provide motor control to the left side of the body and vice-versa, aside from obvious processes like speech (which is usually localized in the left temporal lobe for right-handed individuals and somewhat distributed between the left and right temporal lobes for left-handed people), there isn't always a clear pattern of specialization between brain hemispheres for global thought processes. It does seem safe to say that learning to fly from the right seat will require you to use your brain in ways you normally wouldn't, that's why it's difficult, and it's probably a good thing.

The key to safe and successful right seat flying is to get training from an authorized instructor familiar with aircraft you'll be using. Remember that when you reach for a control or switch using either hand, focus on your intention, not on how awkward it may feel. Expect to become fatigued more easily during your first few hours of right seat flying for the simple reason you'll have to concentrate on things you'd normally do unconsciously. Exercising your brain by thinking and coordinating in a different way can be challenging. Don't be surprised if you feel a bit like a student pilot at first, but don't worry. Right seat flying gets easier with practice.

The Problem with Checklists

Having finished reading The Checklist Manifesto, which deals with how checklist procedures can and have improved the delivery of medical care, I found some thoughts on aviation checklist procedures bubbled to the surface. The author, Atul Gawande, credits aviation as the inspiration for implementing checklist procedures in medicine. While there's no doubt that checklists help pilots complete complex procedures, the mere existence of a checklist doesn't immunize us from disaster. Pilot and aircrew performance is tightly linked to the quality and appropriateness of the checklist as well as checklist discipline. And let's not sidestep the whole issue of having to face a situation for which no checklist exists.

Appropriate and Useful

A fellow freight pilot once observed that there are just two kinds of mistakes that pilots can make: Those that embarrass us and those that can damage the airplane and/or kill us. An airline pilot friend once confided that he realized he could make errors in the cockpit at any time. His goal was to uncover any errors and correct them before they became a safety issue. For checklists to be an effective first line of defense against fatal mistakes, they must contain the crucial tasks and actions that apply to the situation at hand. Once a good checklist has been made available, pilots have to follow it. Here's a video a horrific accident during the test flight of a turbine conversion for the Caribou. The crew apparately neglected to remove the control lock, with deadly results.

One of Gawande's central themes is that the development of useful and appropriate checklists is aided by organizations that exhibit teamwork, continuous enhancement, and decentralized control. Gawande cites a study where a checklist was developed for the medical procedure of inserting central line. The steps were simple but it turns out that some of the crucial ones were often skipped, resulting in a high rate of infection, complications, and even patient death. When a checklist was developed for central lines and adhered to, the rate of infection dropped dramatically, survival rates improved and (here's what got a lot of attention) hospitals saved a ton of money. Interestingly, it was nurses who often reminded doctors when they were about to make a mistake, like forgetting to don a surgical mask or use a sterile drape.

The sort of cooperation being suggested by Gawande, where decision making, process improvement and double-checks are performed by people on the front lines, is not always what happens in aviation. Top-down organizational structure is often the rule in aviation, with the FAA being at the top of the heap. When I flew freight, I was astonished to learn that the checklists for our aircrafts' optional equipment weren't included in the regular manufacturer's checklist. Checks that needed to be done every day were strewn throughout the Supplements section of the Approved Aircraft Flight Manual. Creating a company checklist seemed like the answer, but that would have required a lot of time, effort and money since the checklist would need to be ... wait for it ... approved by the FAA. So there were procedures in the manufacturer's checklist that were incorrect or missing and the FAA's regulations (the ones supposed to ensure safety) condoned an environment where required equipment checks were easily forgotten or skipped altogether. At least this gave us something to talk about during recurrent training.

Gawande's glowing view of aviation checklists aside, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that many aircraft manufacturer checklists are woefully inadequate, incomplete, and in some cases they even contain incorrect information. One manufacturer's After Landing checklist for a late-model aircraft in which I instruct contains just one task: FLAPS UP. Don't mistake this simplicity for elegance, because in point of fact it is inadequate. Checklist procedures continue to be spread throughout Approved Aircraft Flight Manuals, due to the manner in which aircraft and their components are certificated, and this may lead a pilot to incorrectly conclude that all of the manufacturer's checklist content is irrelevant. 

The good news here is that student pilots (and certificated pilots, too) flying under 14 CFR parts 61 and 91 can develop their own checklists. Just ensure that whatever checklists you develop contain, at their core, the manufacturer's checklist items. Creating your own checklist can be a great learning experience, but borrow an idea from Gawande's book and have some other pilots and instructors check your work for accuracy and completeness.

Familiarity Breeds ... Complacency

Assuming you have correct and complete checklists, there is another issue to address. Do the same routine countless times and you'll find you tend to skip using the checklist, do the tasks from memory, or use a flow check or mnemonic. Variety is the spice of life and I think it might even be the key to safety. There's emerging research that indicates what we have always suspected; endless routine is booooring and it can actually keep our brains from performing well.

On the ground, I still recommend using the checklist as a do-list, but that doesn't mean you can't have a passenger participate by reading the checklist to you. In the air you can mix things up by alternating between the checklist and a flow check or a mnemonic backed up with the checklist. Mix up your procedural routine and you may find checklist procedures to be less onerous, just be sure you don't skip any steps in the process.

I'm a big fan of Foreflight's Checklist app for the iPhone (it works on the iPad, too). What's nice about this app is that it's hard to lose your place as you check off items. Should you miss something, the app takes you right back to the first thing you skipped. If you discover a missing task or want to change the order of tasks, you can edit a checklist on the spot; no need to print out a new version, laminate it, etc. I fly a lot of different aircraft types and the checklist app really helps me keep it all straight without carrying a gazillion paper checklists.

Infrequently Used = Easily Forgotten

With abnormal or emergency checklists, we're faced with the opposite problem of routine checklists. Under stress and time pressure, these seldom-used checklists can make us feel confused and clumsy. The answer is to review these checklists by doing some arm chair flying from time to time, imagine an abnormal or emergency situation, then work you way through the checklist. You can also practice this in a simulator, just like the airlines do. Review emergency and abnormal checklists once a month and you'll be less likely to be flummoxed should a real emergency occur in flight or on the ground.

Designers and engineers can't anticipate every possible situation that a pilot or flight crew might face, so there isn't a checklist for all possible abnormal or emergency situations. Several years ago, flying in the wee hours of the morning of course, I heard a single, loud chirp every few seconds combined with annunciator lights flashing on and off. After a few confusing minutes (it didn't help that I'd barely gotten 6 hours of sleep in my 8 hour rest period), I determined the generator was being tripped off-line and then coming back on-line, all on its own, over and over. A quick review of the checklists showed there was no defined procedure for this problem. I followed the "generator offline" checklist as best I could and thankfully there was a standby electrical system. When I got on the ground and described the problem to maintenance, their first reaction was "That can't be!" Eventually the root cause was found and it did turn out to be an oddball failure.

I've witnessed numerous landing gear system problems for which there was no checklist. Most aircraft have emergency landing gear extension procedures, but many do not have checklist for situations like the landing gear failing to retract or only two out of three landing gear being extended. One of the most potentially dangerous situations you can face in single-pilot operations is an abnormality or emergency for which there is no checklist. This is where pilots try to use their knowledge of the aircraft systems to decide the correct course of action, in effect creating their own checklist in the moment.

The key in these situations is don't be in a hurry. Think very carefully and avoid impulsively jumping to any conclusions or simple explanations. If you have another pilot or a passenger on board, involve them in the process even if that only means you talking out loud and them listening to your thought process. You can learn a lot by listening to yourself talk.

Pessimistic or Realistic

It's been said that a good pilot is a pessimist, but I think being a realist may be better. Avoid an overly optimistic or inflated view of your skills, your knowledge, or your currency. Remember that there are mistakes that can embarrass you and mistakes that can kill you. The only thing standing between you and a fatal error just might be an open mind and a good checklist.

Darn Clab, Bard Calm

Reading Matthew May's In Pursuit of Elegance got me thinking about how, try as we might to keep things simple, aviation tends to be a complicated activity. Many GA aircraft have a peculiar steam punk sort of appearance when compared to the simplicity of modern automobile designs. Perhaps the lack of progress in simplifying aviation designs has to do with the very regulations that are supposed to ensure aviation safety. Compare a non-IFR-certified handheld GPS receiver with an IFR-approved panel mount unit: The handheld units generally have simpler user interfaces while the panel mounts seem needlessly complicated. But it's not just avionics that complicate the picture. Instrument approach procedures, with the advent of RNAV, have certainly gotten more arcane. The promise of FADEC notwithstanding, GA pilots routinely fly behind aircraft engines produced with the latest manufacturing techniques, but based on designs from the 1950's that require more user input and a lot of monitoring. In the face of research that shows the human brain is not very well-suited to monitoring, pilots, instructors, and the FAA recommend procedures like checklists, flow checks, and mnemonics to help manage the workload and remember to do important stuff.

Checklists & Do Lists

Every practical test standard (PTS) publication from the FAA contains the phrase "... completes appropriate checklist ..." Not just once, but several times. Typically checklists contain a series of tasks grouped by the phase of flight - preflight inspection, engine start, taxi, before takeoff, and so on.

A checklist can be used as a "do list," where a pilot completes one item at a time, in sequence. Some instructors teach pilots to read the check list out loud in a single-pilot environment. In multi-crew environments, one pilot may read the challenge part of the task while the other pilot responds after the required action has been completed. Checklists need to be used intelligently in single-pilot operations, which is why the FAA included the following language in the Instrument Rating PTS:

The situation may be such that the use of the checklist, while accomplishing elements of an Objective, would be either unsafe or impracticable, especially in single-pilot operation. In this case, a review of the checklist after the elements have been accomplished would be appropriate. Division of attention and proper visual scanning should be considered when using a checklist.

That's good advice, though I'd change the word "should" to "must." In any event, what the FAA seems to be suggesting is that the use of a flow check or mnemonic is called for during high workload situations, after which the pilot can use their checklist to verify that they haven't forgotten anything.

Go with the Flow

A flow check is a procedure where a pilot sets aircraft controls in a particular sequence that follows the layout of the controls, thereby making the position of the controls a reminder to the pilot of what to do. The flow check may or may not group the actions to be accomplished in the same exact order as the checklist. A flow check is not foolproof because as your attention shifts to each gauge or control, you must take the appropriate action and take notice of any abnormal or emergency conditions. When using a flow check in single-pilot operations, you'd best to back it up with a real checklist when time permits.

Becoming a (Wo)Man of Letters

Mnemonics are memory devices that can help a pilot accomplish a sequence of tasks from memory when they don't have the luxury of picking up and reading a checklist. I've taught many of the common mnemonics (like CGUMPS and the five T's), even though I'm not necessarily fond of some of them. My teaching experience has shown me that to be effective, an acronym needs to be catchy and it should contain unique letters that spell out some recognizable word. While no mnemonic is perfect, correlating a series of tasks to a string of identical letters requires more mental effort. And if the same letter is used multiple times, the order of the tasks is more likely to be mixed up in the heat of the moment. Consider the following two mnemonics for an approach briefing.

M - Missed approach
A - Altimeter(s) set
R - Radios set, Nav & Com
T - Time from FAF to MAP
H - Heading on intermediate and final approach
A - Altitudes at FAF, stepdown fixes, DH or MDA

A - ATIS

A - Altimeter

A - Airspeed

A - Approach speed

A - Avionics

I've seen pilots make more mistakes with the five A's, the five C's, and the five T's. I've seen pilots unintentionally omit one of the items. Just as often they confess that they know they are forgetting something, but are only able to recall the first letter of the item.

Of course, which mnemonic works for you is up to you. Here's a mnemonic that seems to harken back to an era when smoking was more commonplace. I don't use it, but some pilots swear by it.

C - Controls, free and correct
I - Instruments, left to right, top to bottom
G - Gas set to fullest tank, auxiliary fuel pump
A - Altimeter set
R - Radios, runup completed
T - Trim(s) set for takeoff
I - Interior, doors and windows secure
P - Propeller full
S - Seatbelts, switches

Lastly, here are some memory devices I learned from Lou Fields, a Naval aviator who returned to civilian life in the late 1960's and has been an instructor and designated examiner at the Oakland Airport for as long as anyone can remember.

This is Lou's before takeoff check for an IFR departure:

D - D/G, De-ice

A - Airspeed, Attitude Indicator Altimeter

R - Radios

N - Needle & Ball

C - Clearance, charts, cockpit

L - Lights

A - Altimeter error

B - marker Beacons

And here's Lou's instrument approach checklist.
B - marker Beacons on
A - ATIS recorded
R - Radios set
D - Directional gyro checked/set

C - Clock
A - Altitude error noted
L - Landing check completed
M - Missed approach briefed

In single-pilot operations, it's obvious that mnemonics have shortcomings similar to flow checks: You best back-up a memorized list of tasks with a checklist.

Mistakes Still Happen

After a long day of flying behind glass panel aircraft, is it any wonder how some pilots might yearn to fly a taildragger made of wood and fabric, with a few simple controls and the minimum compliment of instruments? The problem is that even in a simple aircraft a pilot with good checklist discipline can still make critical mistakes. There are steps pilots can take to reduce these risks and I'll cover that in my next installment.

Taxi via Delta, Juliet ...

The main goal of any runway or taxiway safety initiative is simple: Prevent aircraft from running into each other whether they are taxiing, taking off, or landing. The FAA announced there were just 12 runway incursions for the 2010 fiscal year (ending in October), a 50% reduction from the previous year. The FAA's press release attributes the drop in runway incursions to new technology at airports, improved signage and markings, and improved pilot training on runway conflict scenarios. Surely all those capital improvements and increased pilot training helped reduce runway incursions, but there are low-cost improvements, too. There have also been FAA safety initiatives that may actually decrease safety as well as some widely used procedures that need to be changed.

Who's in Charge?

The dominant paradigm in aviation is to have an air traffic controller be the authority that manages conflicts, prevents collisions, and keeps the big picture. The ground controller gives instructions to pilots and flight crews and those guys and gals follow those instructions. Problems can still happen when pilots or controllers are confused or tired and make mistakes. Here's a simulation of a situation that occurred at Theodore Francis Green Airport during low visibility at night. A United flight crew makes a wrong turn while taxiing to the terminal, which takes them back to the active runway. The situation gets worse when the United crew realizes something is wrong, but twice they identify their position incorrectly to the tower controller. The tower controller loses The Flick and in the end, a US Airways crew makes a wise choice that averts disaster. (I chose this particular re-creation because it doesn't edit out the transmissions that reveal the tower controller's frustration, which I think figures prominently in this incident.)



This incident was probably the reason why Theodore Francis Green was one of thirty some airports where Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X (aka ASDE-X) was installed or will be installed to help  controllers keep The Flick during low-visibility situations. Pilots operating on taxiways or runways set their transponders to squawk altitude and the controller sees each aircraft's position on a color display. This is surely a welcome addition in low-visibility situations.

Where You At?

A supporting approach to the Controller is the Boss paradigm is to provide rules and a clear context to pilots and flight crews so they can prevent conflicts on their own initiative. Several years back, an experimental system was tested at the Concord airport that involved placing sensors in the taxiway pavement at hot spots - locations on the airport where history had shown pilot were likely to get confused. When an aircraft taxied onto one of the sensors, a low-powered transmitter would broadcast a recorded message of the pilot's position and the pilot received these messages through their marker beacon receiver.

Though this was a clever use of existing avionics equipment, this system was expensive to install. Pavement had to be ripped up, sensors placed, and pavement reapplied. I tried this system several times and found that it worked, but there were limits to its usefulness. A disoriented or confused pilot still had to interpret what the recording was saying, find their position on a taxiway diagram, and then get un-confused. The system was deactivated after about a year, if memory serves me.

One safety enhancement left out of the FAA's press release was an important change that became effective in June of this year: New air traffic control phraseology for issuing taxi instructions. The gist of these changes was that ground controllers were required to explicitly provide the taxiways that pilots were to use when repositioning or taxing for takeoff. Prior to this, controllers were not required to specify a taxi route and (here's the amazing part) clearance to cross any runways along the way was implied. This procedure had the advantage of requiring controllers to say less, but this always seemed like a recipe for trouble. Add to this some controllers' tendency to be ... impolite when under stress and you can have a really bad situation.

At one airport where I teach, approval was provided years ago for a large corporation to construct a hangar that blocked the line of sight between the tower and portions of two taxiways that cross a runway. So ground controllers would tell aircraft "taxi to the Old Tees via Delta, hold short of runway 15 and report holding short." Some controllers are extra careful and add "That area is not visible from the tower." After hearing this countless times, pilots taxiing in that area became accustomed to stopping at the runway and reporting to the ground controller.

There was a particular air traffic controller (long since retired) who had a widely recognized reputation for being terse and impatient (I'm being nice here). At the conclusion of a long night flight, my student requested taxi clearance from this controller, but missed what the controller actually said: "Cessna 123, taxi to the Old Tees via Delta." There was no mention of holding short at the runway. The airport was dead quiet and as we approached the usual hold short point, my student put on the brakes. Confused, he asked me "Did he tell us to hold short?"

Thinking this to be one of those teachable moments, I offered "Anytime you are in doubt, you should ask." So he reported holding short. The controller let loose with a verbal fusillade the likes of which few of us have heard on frequency. My student turned to me, his mouth was open, but no words were coming out. During the debrief, I spent much time trying to undo the damage done by the controller, explaining to my student that he had indeed acted correctly and the controller's response was both unprofessional and contrary to safety. Visibility to the area I mentioned should not be a problem once the new control tower is completed. The new tower will replace the two, separate towers and will be more centrally located (near the FedEx ramp).

Another change has been the FAA's long-anticipated adoption of the ICAO phraseology Line up and wait. The old phrase "Taxi into position and hold" was often elided to "position and hold" and could be easily confused with the phrase "hold your position." This phraseology change is certainly a step in the right direction and required no expensive equipment to be installed.

Enhanced Centerline, Runway Guard Lights

The enhanced centerline became a Part 139 standard a couple of years ago. The idea was to make a taxiway centerline change appearance as an aircraft approaches a hold short line at a runway crossing. While the motivation for this change was safety, it's my feeling that the enhanced centerline is actually visual noise. Assuming there are no other unusual surface markings nearby, the enhanced centerline may help a flight crew avoid blowing through a hold short line. In areas where taxiway edge markings and patched pavement exist, all the dashed lines can become a confusing distraction.

Can you find the Enhanced Centerline?

Flashing runway guard lights can be installed adjacent to a hold short line or they may be embedded in the pavement prior to the hold short line. When these lights are embedded in pavement, they can actually obscure the runway centerline unless lead-in lights are also installed. Lastly these lights aren't the best for preserving night vision adaptation.

Taxi My Frequency

A very hazardous procedure that is often used by ATC is having one controller at an airport running both tower and ground frequencies. While this may save money by having one person doing two jobs during off-peak hours, it a dangerous practice. With one controller listening and transmitting on two frequencies, pilots and flight crews are robbed of The Flick because they can only hear one side of the conversation. This was a contributing factor to a near collision I had while taxiing one night.

I'd called ground to taxi to parking from the fuel island and received my clearance. As I began taxiing I saw a business jet rolling out on the runway parallel to me. The jet taxied clear and I heard the controller ask the jet where they were headed, but since the jet was still on the tower frequency I didn't hear their response. I did hear the controller tell them "You can taxi either route" and my spidey senses started tingling.

Sure enough, the jet chose the route that had it headed right toward me, the controller hadn't mentioned my presence to them, and they didn't appear to see me. I turned on my strobes and poured on the coals. The jet missed hitting me by a few feet and the irony was at the time, we were the only two aircraft on the airport. I mentioned to the controller that we'd nearly had a collision to which he simply replied "Roger." Had there been a separate ground controller and had the jet been on the same frequency that I was on, everyone could have cooperated to prevent a conflict. The FAA really needs to stop this practice of one controller running multiple frequencies because, quite frankly, it's dangerous.

More Progress Needed

The drop in runway incursions is a significant achievement. The latest hi-tech and high-cost initiative is NexGen and ADS-B, which we're told will enhance safety, reduce airline delays and prevent athlete's foot. Hopefully the folks at the FAA (and their contractors) will keep in mind that along with these expensive solutions, there are still many simple, low-tech, and low-cost changes that can provide significant safety enhancements. Of course that means that pilots, controllers, and the FAA must have the will to change old habits.

Limits of See and Avoid

On November 16, 2000, at 1548 eastern standard time, a U.S. Air Force F-16CG, operated by the 347th Wing, Air Combat Command, collided in mid air with a Cessna 172, N73829, near Bradenton, Florida. The F-16, based at Moody Air Force Base (AFB), Valdosta, Georgia, was on a low-altitude training mission. The Cessna 172, registered to Crystal Aero Group, was operating as a 14 CFR Part 91 personal flight. The airline transport (ATP)-rated Cessna pilot was killed. The F-16 pilot, who held a commercial pilot's certificate, ejected from the airplane and sustained minor injuries. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.

This accident offers a dramatic illustration of the risks of fast-moving military aircraft operating in the vicinity of slow-moving GA aircraft. And as you'll see, the accident also illustrates that military personnel are human: They can and do make mistakes. Safely sharing airspace with military aircraft requires an understanding of regulatory and non-regulatory airspace, including special use and other airspace. It's also important to recognize the limits of the "see and avoid" collision avoidance technique. Last but not least, knowing where military aircraft are scheduled to be operating can help you avoid coming into close proximity with fast moving hardware.

Rules or No Rules?

The national airspace system is divided into two basic categories: Regulatory and Non-regulatory. Regulatory includes Class A, B, C, D, and E (aka Controlled Airspace and defined in 14 CFR 71) as well as Restricted and Prohibited areas (aka Special Use Airspace and defined in 14 CFR 73). As implied by its name, regulatory airspace has specific regulations that define who can enter and operate in that airspace. Break those regulations and you'll find yourself in trouble with the FAA.

Non-regulatory airspace includes Military Operation Areas (MOAs) as well as Warning, Alert, and Controlled Firing areas and these are defined in FAA order JO 7400.8: Special Use Airspace, which describes the location, dimensions, times of use, and identifies the controlling agency. There are no specific regulations restricting flight into these areas, other than those for VFR cloud clearance and visibility. There are some common sense operating procedures that pilots should follow and failing to use those procedures may get you some unwanted adventure, or worse.

Mysterious MTRs

The above-cited accident involved, at least peripherally, a Military Training Route (MTR), a type of non-regulatory airspace that has been given the innocuous classification of other airspace. MTRs are depicted on VFR charts as subtle (some say nearly invisible) charcoal lines with a two-character prefix followed by a three or four digit number. Flights on MTRs with an IF prefix are conducted under IFR while those with a VF are usually conducted under VFR. A three digit number following the prefix indicates the military aircraft should be operating above 1500' AGL and, to the maximum extent possible, under IFR. A four digit number indicates the aircraft may be operating below 1500' AGL. In general, you can expect military aircraft on these routes will be operating in excess of 250 knots. They may be operating close to the surface or they may be at higher altitudes during descent to or climb out from the route.

Other that what's encoded in the MTR identifier, there is precious little information available to the average pilot who does not possess a current copy of the DoD's flight information publication Area Planning: Military Training Routes: North and South America, also known as the AP/1B. About the size of a small phone book, the AP/1B is published every 56 days and defines each MTR's location, hours of operation, route description, operating procedures (VMC or IMC), route width, and entry/exit points. Many routes have specific restrictions and can only be flown by certain types of military aircraft, but I know of no way for civilian pilots to get their hands on a current copy of AP/1B.

The flight lead stated that the two F-16s were assigned a block altitude of between 25,000 feet and 26,000 feet en route to the entry point of visual military training route (MRT) VR-1098. As the flight approached the SRQ area, Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) cleared the F-16s to descend to 13,000 feet. At 1543:39, the Miami ARTCC controller instructed the flight lead to contact Tampa Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) controllers. The flight lead was not successful (because he was given an incorrect frequency), and he reestablished contact with Miami ARTCC and canceled IFR. Miami ARTCC advised him of traffic at 10,000 feet, which was acquired on radar. The controller accepted the cancellation and asked the pilot if he wished to continue receiving radar traffic advisory services. The flight lead declined. According to the air traffic control (ATC) transcripts, the controller then stated, "radar service terminated, squawk VFR [transponder code 1200], frequency change approved, but before you go you have traffic ten o'clock about 15 miles northwest bound, a Beech 1900 at ten thousand [feet]." The flight then began a VFR descent to enter VR-1098.

See and Avoid

In addition to the laissez-faire character of special use airspace is the fact that most traffic collision avoidance is accomplished with the see and avoid technique. When a mid-air accident occurs, the NTSB always states that the cause of a mid-air was the pilots' failure to maintain adequate lookout for other traffic.

There have been several studies that attempted to determine how pilots scan for traffic, what a good scan is and what a bad scan is, how head-down time (due to complex avionics and pretty colored moving maps) affects the scan. Traffic collision avoidance hardware (whether installed or portable) can be a help and I always fly with a Zaon PCAS affixed above the instrument glare shield. The problem is that in spite of training, admonishments, and collision avoidance hardware, mid-air collisions continue to occur at about the same rate and most occur in visual conditions.

Speed can Kill

When quizzing pilots about 14 CFR 91.117 (airspeed limits) during a flight review, I hear comments that these regulations don't apply because they fly slow moving aircraft. I usually counter that it's important to know how fast the other guy might be going and then add that there is an escape clause which can result in the other guy going even faster (emphasis added):

(d) If the minimum safe airspeed for any particular operation is greater than the maximum speed prescribed in this section, the aircraft may be operated at that minimum speed.

The minimum recommended cruising speed for an F-16 below 10,000 feet is 300 knots, but this flight of two was going even faster (emphasis added):

The F-16 flight entered the top of the class B airspace about 380 knots airspeed and left the airspace at 6,000 feet about a minute later at 360 knots. Speeds of up to 450 knots were noted during the descent. The airspace between Tampa class B airspace and Sarasota class C airspace is Class E airspace, with a lower floor at 700 feet. About 30 seconds after leaving the Tampa class B airspace, the flight entered the Sarasota class C airspace at 380 knots. The flight remained in the Sarasota class C airspace where the midair collision took place. The flight lead's speed remained above 300 knots until the accident F-16's collision with the Cessna. 

A Cessna 172 cruises between 110 to 120 knots, but a normal climb speed is around 80 knots. Needless to say the closure rate between the two accident aircraft was very rapid with just over 20 seconds between the time ATC received a conflict alert and the impact.

A review of altitude data and ground track data (and airspace boundaries) determined that Tampa TRACON's intruder conflict detection software noted a conflict between the flight lead and the Cessna, and generated an aural conflict alert in the TRACON facility at 1547:39 that continued until 1548:03.

Hazardous Training

It's interesting to note that training activities figure prominently in this accident. The flight of F-16s were training and the Tampa TRACON controller was receiving instruction from another controller.

After continuing to descend, the flight lead looked back to the left and observed the accident F-16 slightly below him at the 7 o' clock position and about 4,000 feet to 5,000 feet behind him. The flight lead also observed a white, high-wing white airplane (the Cessna) in a 30 to 45-degree right turn. The Cessna and the accident F-16 collided in a left-to-left impact at the flight lead's 10 o' clock position, he stated. After the collision, the flight lead observed vaporizing fuel on the F-16's right side. The flight lead did not see the Cessna. The flight lead called the accident pilot and stated, "it appears you have had a mid air and are streaming fuel." There was no response. 

The Cessna pilot had departed Sarasota-Bradenton, was inside class C airspace, and was in communication with Tampa approach.

The Miami ARTCC controller contacted Tampa TRACON at 15:47:55 and asked Tampa TRACON for the flight lead's altitude because he had lost radar contact with the lead F-16 (only the flight lead had his transponder activated because formation flights are handled as a single aircraft by ATC). Tampa TRACON replied at 20:48:00, stating "ahh hang on I see him down at two thousand." At 15:48:09, Tampa TRACON informed N73829 that he had traffic off his left side at 2,000 feet. N73829 did not respond.

The biggest single factor in this accident may have been that collision occurred inside Class C airspace where the Cessna pilot least expected encountering fast moving fighters because the F-16s were off course by several miles. The lead pilot may have thought he was at the entry point for VR1098, but he was mistaken.

Lockheed Martin examined the download data from the crash survivable flight data recorder (CSFDR), the SDR, data printouts from the general avionics computer (GAC), the global positioning system (GPS), the inertia navigation system (INS) and the AVTR tapes from the flight lead's airplane. Lockheed Martin's examination report stated that M Aero stated that GPS "was removed from the navigation solution at some time prior to the midair. It cannot be determined from the data why the GPS was removed from the navigation solution." The report added: "A position error of approximately 9-11 nm was entered into the navigation system at some time on the mishap flight prior to the video recording. It can not be determined from the data what caused this position error."

Avoiding Military Activity

There is no regulation that prevents you from operating in or around an MOA or MTR, but the conventional wisdom is to avoid these areas when they are active. If you must operate in or around these areas, then by all means get flight following from ATC. This accident illustrates that ATC traffic advisories are no guarantee that you'll be safe, but you want as much help as you can get.

To determine if an area is scheduled for use, contact Flight Service before you fly or talk the controlling agency. The FAA's VFR charts require that you first look up the identifier for the area you're interested in, then look on the edge of your chart to find information about times of use, altitudes, and the relevant radio frequencies. It would be a heck of a lot simpler if they just put that information next the depiction of the area, but they don't.

You can also reference this web site to get a graphical representation of regulatory and non-regulatory airspace, though there's a disclaimer that the most up-to-date information is only available through Flight Service.

The conventional wisdom I've heard from fighter pilots is that best strategy for avoiding an imminent collision with a fast moving military aircraft is descend. The fighter aircraft is likely going to climb to convert their fast airspeed into altitude, so you're best bet may to descend rather that turn away.

If you think military pilots can see you on radar and will avoid you, think again. They are focused on their training mission and don't have a lot of extra time to look for you. If you think military pilots are so highly-trained that they never make mistakes or errors in judgement, read the NTSB's probable cause (emphasis added).

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows: the failure of the F-16 flight lead pilot and F-16 accident pilot to maintain an adequate visual lookout while maneuvering. Factors contributing to the accident were: the F-16 flight lead pilot’s decision to discontinue radar traffic advisory service, the F-16 flight lead pilot’s failure to identify a position error in his aircraft’s navigational system, the F-16 pilots subsequent inadvertent entry into class C airspace without establishing and maintaining required communications with air traffic control (ATC); and ATC’s lack of awareness that there was more than one F-16 aircraft in the formation flight, which reduced the ATC controllers ability to detect and resolve the conflict that resulted in the collision.

And if you think you're Super Pilot, you can operate in these areas whenever you want, and that you'll be able to see a flight of two fighter jets operating close to the ground at high speed, well good luck to you. You're going to need it.