Single Pilot Looking for CRM - Bell Helicopter

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RESTORED HELICOPTER Paul Faltyn, a retired aerospace executive living in Wheatfield, New York took ten years to fully restore this Bell 47 H model helicopter (serial number 1362) back to a flying condition. Paul is pictured hovering at the Niagara Falls Airport on the initial test flight. DULLES AIRPORT (KIAD) Photo was taken from the southeast looking to the northwest at about 1530 hours. This unusual depiction shows how a large airport can literally be IFR in one sector of an airfield then VFR at another. Police Pilot (and photographer) Chuck Angel with Fairfax County related how airliners were touching down VFR, and then going IFR during the run out due to runway obscuration. VOLUME 19 #2 The HELIPROPS HUMAN A.D. is published by the Training Academy, Bell Helicopter Textron Incorporated, and is distributed free of charge to helicopter operators, owners, flight department managers and pilots. The contents do not necessarily reflect official policy and unless stated, should not be construed as regulations or directives. The primary objective of the HELIPROPS program and the HUMAN A.D. is to help reduce human error related accidents. This newsletter stresses professionalism, safety and good aeronautical decision-making. Letters with constructive comments and suggestions are invited. Correspondents should provide name, address and telephone number to: Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. John Williams, HELIPROPS Manager P.O. Box 482, Fort Worth, Texas 76101 or e-mail: HELIPROPS@bellhelicopter.textron.com 2 VOLUME 19 #2 • HELIPROPS SNAPSHOTS OF INTEREST Single Pilot continued which you will land? Who gave you vectors around a storm? Who is that driving a fire truck near your aircraft? Who last calibrated the fuel gauge? Who will be on the other end of a radio call if you have a problem? Can any of these people affect your mission? Your life? You better believe they can and will. The idea you need to wrap your brain around is how you can manage these resources and ensure they work to your advantage. The purpose of CRM is error management. You don’t really manage errors as much as manage risk and with action prevent errors. If you can’t prevent an error hopefully you have systems in place to minimize the consequences of that error. There are times in every mission when the inherent risks are higher. These are the places you need to give additional thought and have a plan to avoid potential problems before you get into the cockpit. CRM begins well before you ever set foot on the flight line. It continues through the flight and while in flight you will need to constantly reevaluate the mission and the decisions you have made up to that point. You need to keep evaluating even after you return, to learn all the lessons possible. Human errors are inevitable. Humans have limits to their abilities and attentions and aviation is a complex practice on a good day. On a bad day, look out, errors seem to grow by an exponential factor. Knowing that we, as humans, can and will make mistakes, we need to be armed with skills to attempt to avoid them. The
first step to avoiding errors is to avoid the situations which encourage them. This means we need to understand why we make errors. So, we must identify the underlying reason for mistakes. It is rare someone will knowingly make the wrong choice; something influences that choice-good or bad. Fatigue, high workload, harsh environmental factors, inadequate training, loss of situational awareness, and lack of communication are just a few of the factors which lead to “pilot error.” All of these factors influence why we make the decisions and the errors we do. Have you ever finished with a flight and thought to yourself, “Wow, that could have ended very badly” ? If you’ve never had this thought, you are very lucky and very unique in aviation. If this hasn’t happened yet, it will. The reason we sometimes survive these flights is just dumb luck, but more often than not it’s much more. It is usually training and experience and not just ours but everyone who had a hand in the successful mission outcome. Sharing those types of experiences will help you learn from them and you could save the life of another crew by helping them not repeat your mistakes. Avoiding mishaps, errors, or accidents begins well before actually flying. It begins with more than just the pilot. It is in the very fiber of aviation systems and existing practices to avoid errors and increase safety. For the purposes of this discussion we will only look at a few of the factors and attitudes crews can change or affect about their missions. If we covered all aspects of training and maintenance practices, we would exceed the space devoted to this column. With that in mind, proper preparation and attitudes for flight is where we will begin. This is where each crew needs to spend some time breaking the error chain. Integrity is near the top of the list of attitudes which will help prevent mishaps. No amount of tool control, weather reporting, proper briefing, etc. will preclude an error without integrity from the people operating within the systems. If someone didn’t do a fuel sample, why would they sign it off as being good? If someone didn’t account for all their tools, why would they walk away from the aircraft? If pilots don’t For every mishap there were decisions made by the pilot. He called upon the sum of all his knowledge and made a judgment. He believed in it so strongly that he knowingly bet his life on it. That his judgment was faulty was a tragedy, not stupidity. Every person who came in contact with him had an opportunity to influence his decisions, so a little of all of us goes with every pilot we lose. have the training to do a particular mission, why would they accept it? And still people do these things every day. While these are examples of a glaring lack of integrity, most of the time the lapses are much smaller and more insidious. They are things as simple as rushing or cutting corners. You need to work at never letting yourself get into a position when you feel you can or must cut a corner, and just as important never putting someone else in a position when they feel they must cut corners. Knowingly violating regulations leads to numerous mishaps and incidents each year. Which factors of your mission can you control directly on the day of the mission? Did you do a proper and thorough preflight? Are you making your launch decision based on outside influences or your true ability to complete the mission safely on this day? Are you tired? How’s the weather? Are you listening to the other members of your crew/team? Remember your safety and mission success may come down to your willingness to say no. Saying no is sometimes the wisest decision you can make. It could be the one that saves your life and the lives of your crew/team. Be prepared to change your decisions as the day and the mission plays out. You can only make decisions based on what you know at that moment. As you get more information, you are always free to change your course and improve your plan and decisions. Don’t be afraid to say “not today” after you have launched and learned more about conditions. An attitude of personal invulnerability can spell disaster among aviation professionals. When you read about a crash or incident, do you dismiss the crew as simply unprofessional or do you recognize how you could have, under the same circumstances, gone down that same road? Any error on any given day can happen to any crew. Don’t relearn lessons the hard way. Keep your education up to date. There are no new errors. There are sometimes spectacular new ways of committing an error, but they have all been done before. Learn from someone else’s errors. Read mishaps reports on the NTSB website, have a subscription to a professional publication that talks about incidents, or get refresher training annually (more often if you can afford it). Use these resources to avoid the same old errors when you fly. You will not have all the answers yourself. No one knows it all, (despite what some pilots would have you believe). There are loads of resources out there. If you have an incident in flight, chances are, Continued page 4 VOLUME 19 #2 • HELIPROPS 3
Page 1: HELIcopter PROfessional Pilots Safe
Page 5 and 6: Telling It Like It Is By Jim Szyman
Page 7 and 8: Pilot Recounts “Quick Wake-up Cal

Single Pilot Looking for CRM - Bell Helicopter

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