Does the idea of solo flight entice you, or does it send your “oh-shit” meter off the charts? Having a second set of eyes is absolutely great, but does having another pilot in single-pilot operations hurt your pilotage?
Recently, I’ve been flying with another member of the club. For anonymity we will refer to this club member as Bob (why not, he’s your mother’s uncle after all). He is great to fly with, arrives early, performs a pre-flight, seems genuinely excited to be flying, and is a CFI! I really enjoy our flights, the advice Bob offers, our conversations, and the general camaraderie we share as pilots. I feel comfortable flying with Bob.
Maybe being comfortable with Bob is why I’m having problems landing?
If you’ve been keeping up, my recent flight to Emporia-Greensville featured a difficult crosswind landing and a fairly routine landing back at home base. The initial attempt at Emporia-Greensville featured a go-around, the second was a good imitation of a professional pilot. Later, at Manassas (KHEF), the landing was rather mundane and unremarkable. However, when flying with Bob, I’ve been… terrible! Not just bad, but to the point that he almost felt compelled to intervene. Maybe being comfortable with Bob is why I’m having problems landing?
As pilots, we have our routines, check lists, habits, etc… Often these habits and routines were built during training, initial (PPL) or commercial. When we are outside our routine, our “game” is… well, just not up-to-snuff.
So, with all that, I took 1.5 hours and 6 laps at Manassas on a 95° day (for those that have flown a PA-28 on hot days… you know) and worked out my landing issues. I spent lap after lap watching my airspeed. Each approach, double and triple checked the checklist items. Every time the rubber hit the tarmac, extra attention was paid to the centerline.
After the 6th controlled crash into the earth, I was satisfied that I can land well and that my previous problems were something unexpected, but shouldn’t have been. I wasn’t paying adequate attention to the airplane during my landings with Bob. We would spend an hour or two flying to a destination chatting about life and family (occasionally talking with ATC) and when it was time to land, I was slacking off! It wasn’t an intentional slacking off, but one of those moments when you are flying with someone more experienced and you just expect that if you are missing something they will pick it up. It was worse, I was getting… Complacent.
I don’t have the experience to be complacent, hell, I don’t have the experience to pretend to be complacent, yet here I was, apparently (when looking back on it) acting as if I was so good that I could slack off and still butter the bread. It was this “ah ha” moment that I experienced on that 6th and final landing of the day. It was the realization that I was a slacker.
Don’t be a slacker! Use your checklist. Verify. And give your landings (and all phases of flight) your full attention.
Leave a Reply