It is true that there should be no place for ego on the flight deck, but that ignores reality. The reality is that people care about what other people think about them. Society and social pressures have a great impact on us in all aspects of our lives and to single out one specific situation and say that on the flight deck it doesn’t matter what others think is unrealistic. There are many examples of this in the accident reports ranging from low-hours PPLs doing low-level aerobatics to impress their friends to high-hour airline co-pilots who would rather keep quiet and risk death rather than saying something to the captain – the 1977 Tenerife disaster with the greatest aviation loss of life is an example of this.
There are also different degrees of ‘being lost’. Just because you don’t know where you are doesn’t mean you’re lost. I don’t know where my car-keys are at the moment – they could be in one of several places, but it would be wrong to say that I’ve lost them. Pilotage and dead-reckoning involves position fixes about every 10 minutes with a period of uncertainty between these fixes. It would be wrong to say you were ‘lost’ between these fixes even though you might not know precisely where you are.
Put these two aspects together. Consider a young low-hours PPL who’s just got his license and is taking his new girlfriend out for her first flight. Everything was going well until a few minutes ago when he couldn’t make that last position fix – which was 10 minutes after his previous position fix. So he’s feeling a little uneasy because that means it’s now 15 minutes ago when he knew where he was. Uneasy, but he doesn’t feel that one missed position fix means he’s lost. One thing he really doesn’t want to do is get onto Distress and Diversion and say ‘I’m lost’! This is the first time he’s taken his girlfriend out flying and what will she think! She’s nervous enough as it is and she’ll never go flying with him again if that happened! Those dreams of flying holidays to France go right down the pan with that one press of the PTT button.
How much easier is it for him to get onto D+D and get a training fix? Confirming your position is a perfectly proper use of the service and that’s all he really wants because he’s not lost – he just couldn’t find that last position fix. It’s even easier for him to do if he’s asked for a training fix in the past when he knew exactly where he was and so has some experience of talking to London Centre. It may be that the position fix will not confirm his position, but confirm that he’s lost and he’ll be able to inform D+D of this and ask for further assistance, but at least he’ll know and know earlier than if he’d kept quiet.
I’ve only ever spoken to London Centre once. One lazy evening when I was just to the north of the Severn estuary with no-one in particular to talk to, I thought about this Training Fix advice and I thought I’d give it a go – and the chaps at London Centre were great! It was so easy, so un-stressed and I won’t hesitate to talk to them again if required.
My reasoning was that I’ve never spoken to D+D so I gave them a call and ask for a Training Fix. That way I’ve spoken to them once and in the future if the chips are down and I do have a real problem at least it’ll be one less thing I’m doing for the first time. Yet again it’s a perfectly proper use of the service and I’m sure one Training Fix once in a flying career won’t cause too many missed clearances for the airlines (besides they’re the main uses of 121.5. Sometimes it sounds like a fencing competition the number of people who are on there saying ‘on guard’!)
Also in future I will ask for a training fix if I am a little uncertain and I want confirmation of my position – and I’ll do it early rather than waiting until I am lost. I doubt it will ever happen because my GPS, nav-aids and my general navigation skill means that I nearly always know where I am, but it’s nice to know it’s there if needed.