A big part of the problem is ridiculously long flight school generated checklists. They are often filled with extraneous fluff and have no logical organization. Recently I was asked to do a flight Instructor course at a local flying school. I said yes on the condition that they used my checklists. My checklist had exactly half the number of items compared to the existing lists and all the checks are based on a counter clock wise flow starting at the fuel selector on the floor and working around the instrument panel ending at the engine controls. The checks are "do lists" (ie read the item and then do it, move to the next item read then do etc) only for when the aircraft is stopped on the ground (prestart, pretakeoff, shut down) the rest are "check lists" (ie you do all the checks as a flow not looking at the checklist and then when able check the list).
Unfortunately operational efficency is often ignored in flight training. The goal should be to safely ready the aircraft for the intended flight in the minimum time.
Last edited by Big Pistons Forever; 7th January 2011 at 16:51.