Originally Posted by
Genghis the Engineer
Ah but.
A pilot displaying an appropriate level of professionalism, is surely doing all of these things.
G
Professionalism isn't something you are born with it takes two things
1) The inculcation of "professional" habits during your training
2) The personal commitment to sweat the details on
every flight no matter how routine or simple
GA in general does not IMO do very well on either count. Using again the PFL as an example. In flight training there is very little emphasis about preventing engine failures it is all about after the engine fails and features ethereal strategies for choosing the "right" field, unrealistic multiple approaches to the same field and cook book procedures to pass the flight test (ie turn final over the red house and you will always make the field
). The first half of my preflight briefing for the forced appraoch exercise has nothing to do with flying the forced approach it is all about what you as a pilot can do to avoid having the engine fail in the first place. The next quarter deals with getting the engine going again if it does fail and only the last quarter talks about flying the forced approach.
I am reasonable confident that no student of mine will miss the tell tail signs of a failing engine (eg reducing oil pressure and increasing oil temp) because I regularly cover the engine gauges in flight with my hand and demand that the student tell me
exactly the needles are so they get into the automatic habit of regularly scanning the gauges.
I am reasonably confident that no student of mine will run out of gas because I make my students correlate the dipstick reading to what the fuel gauges are indicating during the pre flight inspection and before fill ups I want the student to tell me how much he/she thinks the aircraft is going to take and I want them to be able to tell me the aircrafts practical endurance with the fuel on board, with a mental estimate using a block fuel flow, before takeoff and at any point in the flight
I am reasonably confident that no student of mine will let the engine fail due to an accumulation of carb ice because I make a big deal about understanding the causes and symptoms of carb ice and want to see carb heat use correlated with the present existing atmospheric conditions
etc etc.
None of this is very revolutionary but in its totality it builds the "professional" habits that
prevent accidents.