What common turbine pilot mistakes irritate DPEs the most and could even possibly lead to a busted 61.58 checkride? CJP Safety Consultant, Master CFI and longtime jet mentor Neil Singer presented his personal “Top Ten” list during a rousing session on the final day of CJP 2024.
“We’re looking at accident reports,” he prefaced. “We’re looking at NASA ASRS reports. And then conversations with other DPEs like myself about what they see when they’re out there giving checkrides.”
The “absolute number one” error, Singer continued, is not verifying the autopilot status bar (or “scoreboard”) following a mode change and the pilot’s failure to monitor the selected mode. “Every time we are making an input to the autopilot, we should be checking the status bar,” he said. “If we change the lateral mode, we want to verbally enunciate my lateral mode is now ‘Heading.’ Another really common status bar error is pushing a button twice. What happens if you push the NAV button twice? Are you still in NAV mode? Of course not!”
Inadequate energy management is another common mistake. That includes failure to manage both potential and kinetic energy, and their direct relationship to altitude and airspeed. Pilots also often display a lack of profile discipline, including not following the correct action sequence and then attempting to remedy that error without reference to checklists or utilizing proper CRM.
That leads right into the fourth checkride frustration: failure to use checklists in all phases of flight and to properly confirm each checklist item. Singer used an example involving the pressurization checklist from a recent checkride.
“Typically, we have a climb checklist, or climb and cruise,” he said. “We have a ‘pressurization checked’ item, and this pilot said, ‘pressurization checked.’ I didn’t say anything until we got to about 5000 feet, and I said, ‘do me a favor. Read that climb checklist again.’
“This is how people die in hypoxia events in airplanes,” Singer continued. “Not rapid decompressions, but failure to pressurize as the plane keeps climbing. So, this pilot read the climb checklist again. They read ‘pressurization checked’ again … Guess what? The next two words out of their mouth were, ‘oh, shit!’ We returned back and landed following a legitimate failure to pressurize the airplane.”
That, again, ties into another common fail point: lack of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and flows. “This is not a vague [step],” Singer said. “Some people say, ‘I did a flow. I went through the cockpit left to right, checking all the switches.’ That’s not a flow! A flow is a specific sequence of specific steps.”
Similarly, “I see a lot of problems in engine starts,” he added. “How many of you in the sim, either yourself or your sim partner, fail to catch a problem introduced by the instructor like no fuel pressure on start? Maybe you went 15-20 seconds and as you go to start the engine, but the instructor asks ‘how come we don’t have light off?’ I blame that on not having a really orderly scan for an engine start.”
Singer also called out the common lack of understanding and discipline in using VNAV. “Aspen is a good [example] where you’re flying a non-precision approach with about a half-dozen step downs,” he noted. “You could do this with vertical speed and keep moving ground selector down, but in all of our airplanes, the VNAV can make this a one button-push event. Get together with your instructor and practice that. You’ll find you have more of your cognitive ability freed up to monitor the descent.”
Especially as GPS has come to dominate navigation, Singer also stressed the importance that pilots maintain their basic IFR skills, including the ability to navigate by VORs and fly an approach using non-directional beacons (NDBs.)
Often, pilots also fail to prioritize flying the airplane in an emergency. “Priorities, priorities, priorities,” Singer said. “‘Aviate, navigate, communicate,’ right? Aviate first, and then if you’re done aviating and everything is good, move on to navigate. And if everything is done with aviating and navigating, and you have some bandwidth, that’s when you can communicate with ATC. Too many pilots want to do it the other way around.”
In conclusion, Singer also encouraged pilots to tighten up their communications with ATC. “There’s nothing that ATC hates more than when somebody calls up says, ‘Beverly Ground, November 12345.’ Now, they have to come back and say, ‘November 12345, say request.’ Just say, ‘November 12345, we’re ready to taxi with Alpha.’
“And if the controller tells you to, ‘fly present heading and expect to be number three for the approach, there’s a Cessna 172 in the pattern, and you’ll probably want to plan to also roll out to the end,’ what do you read back?” he asked. “‘Fly present heading.’ You only have to repeat back clearances. Everything else is information.”