TMPFISCH – I was taught a variation of that some thirty plus years ago and I still teach it today.
My pet hate at the holding point is the student who labours over a checklist, as if a recipe for disaster, without any attempt to consider the written words before him. Trip after trip and still not committed to memory. Therefore my students have been taught to systematically scan the cockpit, completing the checks and following up with the checklist or a mnemonic. No, it is not a repeat of the checks but a quick cast of the eye down the list or recall of the mnemonic to simply reassure that nothing has been forgotten, or everything has been done. It is surprisingly how quickly my students grasp a more logical process to each flight phase normally requiring a checklist.
Checklists work fine in two crew operations and that is why they exist in the above stated B767/744 scenarios. Challenge and response between two crewmembers. The mnemonic is also a challenge and response in a single crew environment and ensures that all checks are done.
Centaurus, surely you are not suggesting that ‘single pilots’ should become distracted by wading through pages of checklist items when an aide-memoire allows the checks to be undertaken whilst lookout is maintained?
Vcl: I hear what you are saying about auto-pilots and APU’s but these are airmanship items. So are raising the gear and flaps after take-off, turning off the landing lights, engaging the yaw damper and disarming the auto-ignition. That is one reason for the brief checklists in turbine aircraft compared to the comprehensive checks imposed by many schools. Airmanship come with experience.
Centaurus: I recall the rapid rise in GA retractables in the late sixties, early seventies and the not infrequent gear-ups that were occurring. Instructors approached the problem with the undercarriage check on down-wind. We always taught two responses; ‘Fixed’ for non-retractables and ‘Green & down’ in retractables. At least the abinitio student was becoming aware of the possibility of a retractable undercarriage. Maybe if 50,000 RAAF/RAF pilots were taught those items in their fixed gear training we wouldn’t hear the tower calling ‘check gear’ to military pilots on ‘final’. :o