April 2005-
Back when the idea was first born a good number of years ago, the concepts known collectively as “cockpit resource management”—CRM, for those of you who enjoy acronyms—was suddenly the single-minded thought of government agencies and airline managements on how larger airplanes should henceforth be operated.
There were lots of mandatory touchy-feely training sessions given over to this new concept which, basically, told the old heads in the left seat to start paying some attention to the younger heads in the crew who sat on the right, sat one row further back, or walked up and down the aisles in the cabin of those big jetliners.
I’ll never forget the reaction of one of the curmudgeons who sat in the back of one of the early classes on CRM. Getting toward the end of the day, the young, bubbly, bright-eyed instructor (known at that time as “facilitators,”since that was a far more politically correct term considering the subject matter involved) wanted to know what the old captain in the last row thought about the things he’d seen and heard that day.
The question that hung in the air was had this old and very senior graybeard bought into this new, standardized concept that was being sold under the banner of cockpit resource management?
“Yeah, it’s all okay, I guess. Most of it’s just kinda common sense,” the grizzled veteran replied.
“Yes, that’s certainly true,” the facilitator said. “But there’s a lot more to it than just that. For instance, how do you plan on presenting your endorsement of these cockpit resource management concepts to the flight crew on your next trip?”
“I’ll just tell ‘em that I’m all for this cockpit resource management stuff that the company’s telling us about.”
The facilitator smiled, nodded enthusiastically, then continued. “That’s very good, captain. And if your crew still has some additional questions about how the cockpit resource management details will actually work throughout the coming trip, how will you handle those questions?”
“I’ll tell ‘em that I’m all for this cockpit resource management idea as long as everyone onboard remembers one thing.”
“One thing? What’s that?”
“That they’re onboard to be the resource. I’m onboard to be the management.”
Good point, captain. No matter what we call it, someone’s still got to be in charge—and the earlier days of CRM did put some level of smoke and mirrors over that issue. On the light airplane side of the ledger, who’s in charge is one area that doesn’t concern most General Aviation pilots.
Being the sole pilot onboard a vessel automatically makes you the management side of the CRM equation. By default, it also makes you the resource side, too. The common sense basis for CRM stems from the notion that a good pilot is one who maximizes all the available resources before making flight-related decisions.
It’s basically about setting yourself up for continual success. The idea of one crew member checking up on the other is the underlying theme in a great deal of multi-pilot CRM techniques – yet nearly these same concepts are just as valid for a single pilot in a small airplane as it can be for a large crew in a big jet. All you need is self-discipline and a little initiative.
Checklist usage in a multi-pilot crew is pretty simple: one person reads and watches, while the other person does the particular tasks. The advantage the smaller airplane pilot has—even when solo—is that the airplane is usually far less complex.
What the small airplane pilot doesn’t usually have as a resource is a suitable checklist that reflects how much simpler their airplane actually is. Most light airplane checklists are incredibly long and Byzantine recitations that hardly reflect the true basic nature of the airplane in question.
What can we do? Ignore the checklists, as far too many pilots seem to do? No. Instead, set yourself up for success by creating your own checklists.
Using what the manufacturer has provided, make a brief notation of the important stuff on it and, sitting in the airplane (in your mind’s eye at the very least; physically is much better) you can develop a reasonable flow pattern from one side of the cockpit to the other. Using a small 3×5 card (it’s okay to go to a 4×6 card if your aging eyes require bigger print), list each of the items to be checked in the sequence that you’d like to check them.
The trick here is to be as terse as possible; less is more when it comes to checklists. For example, for the first entry under the “Before Start” header you might list “Fuel.” There’s no need to write “check quantity and selector” since this checklist is simply a cardboard copilot that you’ve brought onboard today to assist you in efficiently getting the airplane ready for the flight—it is not a training manual.
The next item might be “Master” since, in the logical and methodical flow pattern around the cockpit it is the next “Before Start” item that your hands would naturally go to. Since you are now setting yourself up for future successes, and you are “managing” the process yourself, you are free to make the tasks easier instead of making them more difficult.
Just as it is easier to play the straight scales on a piano than to play Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto (and I’ve seen official airplane checklists where the necessary hand movements emulated a Horowitz Carnegie Hall performance), create this short list of necessary items in the logical order that’s easiest to accomplish them in.
By making it simpler to perform, you are reducing (that is, “managing”) your tasks to a level that will be less prone to error. That’s a good thing. Nearly all light airplanes will have more items on the “Before Start” and “Before Takeoff” segments of their checklists than the remainder of the checklists—which is reasonable, since we should be far more careful about the condition of the airplane before we elect to take it up into the wild blue.
It should be possible to put both the “Before Start” and “Before Takeoff” checklists on the same side of the card, but, even if it isn’t, the question of exactly how to handle the card becomes the next issue to be managed. Having a copilot onboard wouldn’t do you a great deal of good if you stuffed him into a side pocket and had to rummage through a pile of collected cockpit debris just to locate him again. Ditto for checklists.
For that reason, solo pilots who need a free hand to find and use a checklist are setting themselves up for those predictable moments when the checklist is called for but you suddenly find that you don’t have a free hand to grab it with. Go to your local office supply store and get a few of those self-adhering plastic clips that will hold a 3×5 card neatly against the instrument panel (keep a few spare clips in the airplane because these clips will usually shatter on the first leg of a six-leg flight on a bad weather day).
You say that you have no empty space on the instrument panel? No problem, just drape the card in front of a gauge that you don’t need while you taxi out (a VOR head, the turn coordinator), and again at some suitable off-location for in-flight use. Sometimes locating a usable spot can become something of a challenge for nighttime viewing, but, hey, nobody said that all management solutions would be easy ones.
The backside of your checklist card should have the remainder of the terse checklists (“After Takeoff,”“Before Landing,” “After Landing”) that you’ve created. Setting it up that way, the solo pilot will only be called on once a flight to physically flip the card. Other than that one moment of motion, every other movement for the checklist is done strictly with your eyes.
I confess that I’ve actually taken this checklist creation one step further by investing in an office supply store labeling machine and creating my own neatly printed checklists for mounting directly on open spots on the instrument panel (your own airplane, naturally—it’s not going to work on a rental ship).
If you don’t possess enough open areas on the instrument panel in your airplane for all the items you want to be reminded about, you can still manage the outcome handily by using a hanging 3×5 card for the “Before Start” and “Before Takeoff” checklists, then using the panel mounted stuff from that point on when your hands are probably otherwise filled with piloting duties.
If you don’t want to invest in a labeling machine, you can print out (or even hand-print!) a card that you’ve sized for the open panel spots and tape them up. This is sometimes a good interim step anyway, since once you’ve made a few flights with your new checklists you might want to modify them some.
Irrespective of how you actually set this up, what this CRM-savvy pilot has done is to manage himself into an atmosphere of procedural success. Knowing that you have this terse, silent, but all-knowing copilot along with you on each and every flight will provide you with the sort of backup that we all sometimes need to prevent us from making mistakes.
Having created this sort of success-oriented atmosphere in the cockpit, you can then turn to that very useful set of checklists that you’ve created and, pointing to them, say the same thing that the old grizzled captain did in CRM class: those are the resources, and I’m the management. (NEXT MONTH: Other areas of surrogate-CRM to help manage yourself to success)
Editor-at-large Thomas Block has flown nearly 30,000 hours since his first hour of dual in 1959. In addition to his 36 year career as a US Airways pilot, he has been an aviation magazine writer since 1969, a best-selling novelist, and the owner of more than a dozen personal airplanes.
