Common Cause
Help Yourself Kill Cockpit Distractions
Ever have one of those flights where you missed something, and wondered why? Maybe the controller had to call you three times before you heard your call sign and replied. Or perhaps you missed the ammeter reading a discharge, and who knows how long ago it started. And what about that fuel tank imbalance that you just noticed as you fought the roll control on that last ILS down to minimums? Distractions are one of the leading causes of pilot errors; they can cause you to miss something, or tempt you away from the task at hand. Either way it’s bad news for all of us in the flying community.
These cockpit distractions can be caused by a disorganized pilot, or by poor cockpit design in many legacy aircraft. There are solutions to address each of these categories, but we must be aware of them and be proactive to reap their benefits. Some take money and modification, while others require just discipline and prioritization. Some even just require paying attention; what a concept! For example, one only has to look at some of the more modern or higher-end aircraft to see how they mitigated some of our human shortcomings.
Instead of scattered gauges around the panel, turbine aircraft have warning and alarm panels where idiot lights are centralized to call the pilot’s attention to out-of-normal conditions. We in lower general aviation could benefit from this concept, or even glean some improvement from just having ANY warning lights. Look, our cars have a half-way accurate fuel gauge, and a low fuel idiot light; why can’t we have the same protection against inattentiveness as car drivers? Please have your fuel gauges calibrated, get a fuel flow monitor, and hookup the low fuel alarm circuit to an external warning light and audio alarm thru the audio panel.
Recognize your plane’s shortcomings, as well as your own, and mitigate the human problem of not paying attention to the remaining fuel in flight. The same fix applies to the vacuum system: move the gauge into your line-of-sight, get a low vacuum warning light installed, and purchase a backup vacuum system of some flavor when the prime system pump fails. The cost is low, the STCs are available, and the rewards could be priceless.
For the electrical system, you could install a simple voltage monitor in your panel line-of-sight to augment the plane’s ammeter. Many engine monitors now have this capability, as well as the ability to drive some kind of external alarm light or audio signal. In many planes, the alternator low voltage light is out of sight, and may not even trip under all circumstances. You won’t know you’re living on borrowed time (battery power) until it’s too late to call for help, literally.
The CHT and EGT gauges on most older planes don’t have any alarm functions available…you actually have to monitor the temperatures to see if you are in trouble, and manually sequence thru the probe readings to detect any discrepancies. Buy an engine monitor with automatic CHT, EGT, and oil temp alarm functions so you can see trouble developing before you are surprised. External alarm lights and audio alerts can be hooked up to these monitors as well.
How’s your instrumental panel scan, by the way? If your mind is drifting and you are enjoying your flight, you may not be paying attention to your panel gauges and instruments. A disciplined scan is actually required to monitor the performance of our aircraft systems. But we all can be drawn away from this critical task, being human as we are, so insist on some help. Get some warning lights installed to augment those gauges, which have been installed in inconvenient places on the instrument panel. Have some audio alerts hooked up thru your audio panel and headphones. Get some engine and system monitoring capability that will automatically alert you in some manner that all is not well with the machine.
Gathering these alarm lights into some logical and centralized cluster is our pie-in-the-sky goal. Until then, we must pay attention, scan each critical gauge, and continuously make a determination if all is well to continue the flight. And if you’re not paying this attention, you must be the victim of a distraction. It could be fatal, if not expensive. One only has to review the daily toll of gear-up incidents to feel the impact (in the wallet).
Common Cause: Unexpected surprises are a major distraction, and according to Murphy’s Law, they will occur at the worst possible time: probably when we are already dealing with a passenger issue, an ATC rerouting, or turbulence. Most accidents are due to pilot error, not aircraft failures per se, and result from a sad, but clear in retrospect, chain of minor errors, poor decisions, and improper procedural responses to normal flying circumstances or probable developments. And minor distractions, if not recognized and nipped in the bud, can lead to unexpected surprises. A cruel and vicious circle starts. The ergometrics in our legacy aircraft are not the best by a long shot, so we must be aware of the problem, compensate for their design shortcomings, and have the discipline and fortitude to continue the panel scan even under trying circumstances and distractions.
Got a better solution? Let’s hear it.
Mike Sullivan
CSMEL, CFI, MEI at KHEF
C177Pilot@Live.com