Having just spent 4 hours cooped up in a 737 simulator teaching people the virtues of the scan then checklist call-out policy of Boeing, I return to pprune to find alligators snapping at my heels.
Leaving aside the personal invectives which have been an all too familiar unpleasant aspect of some correspondence, it is clear I misjudged the almost religious fervour associated with usage of checklists for training aircraft of the C172 et al.
My view of GA checklists as a crutch to remind you of the bleeding obvious, stems from a time when I was teaching a student of another instructor. The student had 12 hours dual under his belt and in the opinion of his instructor was ready for solo. It seems on this occasion, the student had left his checklist at home. When asked to perform his walk-around and before-start checks sans checklist, he confessed that without his checklist to tell what to do, he didn't have a clue. We finally got the show on the road by use of the " old fashioned wartime" left to right scan (used with good effect in modern jet airliners) - which he found easy to accomplish.
We flew, he landed safely, and I asked him to stop the engine on arrival at the flying club. Again, without the availibility of his written checklist, he was unable to recall the close down sequence. Yet he was considered safe for first solo?
A local Air Ambulance company had Cessna 402's. Roller blind checklists were neatly installed on the coaming. The chief pilot put in every imaginable item, a total of 157 of read and do calls, in his attempt to fill up usable space. The opening checklist call was "Good Morning", and No 157 was "Have a Good day". Real professional stuff.
These aircraft could be seen taxying at speed on wet tarmacs, pilots furiously winding the scroll as they performed high power engine checks on the run dragging the brakes. Pity the image of professionalism was spoiled when one pilot, taxying with a misted up windscreen, collected the wing tip of a nearby aircraft as he was shining his torch on the roller blind checklist. Believe me, it really happened.
Or the student that lost 500 feet during a holding pattern after he put his head down to read the descent and approach checks from the written checklist on his knee board. Remember, this is all single pilot stuff - not multi-crew.
Written checklists are appropiate in multi-crew airliners where drills are scannned first by heart, then vital actions confirmed by checklist read by the non-flying pilot.
But in single pilot trainers, using written checklists as a crutch to memory is contrary to the object of staying ahead of the aeroplane. One rarely sees the pilots of a passenger jet conducting a full walk-around pre-flight inspection with a checklist book in hand and torch in the other. Ground engineers either. Not in front of boarding passengers anyway and also not in view of the sticky beaks peering through the airport lounge windows.
We had a Super Connie gracing our airport last week. Lovely aircraft. Saw the flight engineer doing a walk around too. Absent from his gnarled old hands was a checklist.
Blind reliance on written checklists in light single pilot trainers fosters the insidious combination of false sense of security in one's ability in that the checklist will cover everything, laziness in that one cannot be bothered to study the drills and finally the uncomfortable awareness that without the crutch of a written checklist, one really cannot cope with normal flying procedures. In all the above observations I am discussing the use of written checklists for small trainers that are designed for one pilot operation.