Originally Posted by
Check Airman
In my opinion, things as trivial as that can be done slightly out of order. SOP is important, but not at the exclusion of good sense and judgement.
Consider this- SOP has us go to the cockpit first, perform a few checks, then go out to do the walkaround. When the inbound airplane is late, or it's about to rain etc, it's quite common to see a pilot go down the jet bridge and do the walkaround before stepping onto the plane. SOP? No. Sensible and safe? Yes.
I partially agree. Sometimes the sensible way to do something would go against SOP like your example. But then the SOP should be designed to allow things to be done that way! Merrily going about your way violating SOP (because this one item is stupid) now undermines the entirety of the SOP structure (because any other item may be considered to be stupid and worth ignoring). Every single time a plane has crashed due to a violation of SOP, the crew thought that item was stupid and not worth doing. So how do we know we're not making the same mistake?
A safe and efficient operation is approached from both ends. Crew complying with SOP, and SOP being designed in accordance with sensible and efficient operation.