Everyone makes mistakes. But it's how you grow and learn from them that matters! This week we talk learning from our aviation mistakes.
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00:01
Wally Mulhern
Clear prop 773 Cherokee number two following twin traffic three mile final one trolley. Bravo makesford in Runway two five going four mile.
00:10
Nick Alan
This is behind the prop with United Flight Systems owner and licensed pilot Bobby Doss and his co host, major airline captain and designated pilot examiner Wally Mulhern. Now let's go behind the prop.
00:24
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally?
00:26
Wally Mulhern
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:27
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. This is episode 119. That's almost 120 shows, Wally. That's actually pretty amazing going on our third year, very strong in the middle of our third year. And we keep coming up with good content from people's mistakes, our mistakes. And this one is all about learning from your mistakes. We're going to talk about a lot of things that happen on the radios, a lot of things that happen during flights with instructors and things we maybe might encourage instructors to do. And then we're going to talk a little bit about what Wally sees on both checkrides and in his professional aviation career. But it's all about learning from mistakes. And mistakes aren't all bad. Like some mistakes are good mistakes. And man, how much learning have you received, Wally, from making mistakes throughout your life in general?
01:21
Wally Mulhern
Oh, just a lots of, lots of knowledge has come from making mistakes. You know, we use a lot of sports references in this show and it seems like Tom Brady comes up a lot, you know, maybe the best quarterback ever. But. I just imagine you think Tom Brady watches film of his games, you think he watches film of losses, you think he analyzes all that. And of course the answer is a resounding yes, he absolutely does. But. You know, when I was hired at the airline many, many years ago. We were, were trained to not make mistakes. And you know, the training was, you know, get this right, get this right, memorize this, learn this, know this. And as an industry worldwide, we still kept having incidents and accidents. And so a little bit of the philosophy of the training shifted a little bit.
02:35
Wally Mulhern
The, the training was okay, our pilots are human. They're going to make mistakes. So maybe we teach them how to manage their mistakes. And we called it error management. And then we said, well, how about we teach our pilots how to identify potential threats? And now we call that threat and error management. And we, you know, at my airline, at the end of every flight, we debrief the flight. And it may not be a long debrief. I mean, we're not talking about an hour debrief, but every flight Gets debriefed, and we talk about the good, bad, and the ugly. You know, a lot. A lot of it's really good. Okay, well, how do we handle this situation? Well, we could have done this better, or we could have done this differently, but this worked out really well.
03:31
Wally Mulhern
Hey, the way you did this, I've never seen that technique to enter that. Okay, that was really good.
03:36
Bobby Doss
And.
03:37
Wally Mulhern
And those sort of things. So we do bring it up. We don't just get off the airplane and go to the hotel.
03:45
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Speaking of that, another pilot from your airline works at the school as an assistant chief. And the crew debrief card. I have it pulled up because he sent me a picture of it because I thought how powerful it would be for us to do the same thing as we did stage checks and other stuff, and it's what went well. What could we have done better? In the. The arrows on that card that I guess is in your badge or something points down to CRM and tem skills and planning. Decision maker gives the captain an opportunity to talk through that. And the last thing is, what will we do next time? And that's. That's okay. It's not a bad thing to talk through that stuff.
04:24
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
04:24
Bobby Doss
To realize, look, people make mistakes all the time. I joke sometimes that maybe I'm perfect, that it's solely a joke. But when people do come to me and they've made a mistake and they're scared to tell me because I'm the owner of a flight school or I'm their boss, I tell them, look, if I never made a mistake, I might be able to be angry with you, But I make just as many mistakes as well. Right. There's not anybody that's gonna fly a perfect flight, have a perfect lesson, or execute perfect every time. So we're gonna keep making mistakes. Why not learn from those mistakes?
05:00
Wally Mulhern
Exactly. Absolutely.
05:03
Bobby Doss
So as were preparing for this show, we talked. We kind of broke it up into three buckets. Let's talk about radio mistakes first. Right. And. You'Ve got a bunch from checkrides, and we've all seen a number of them. We've all made our own mistakes. Let's talk about. I know you've told a story a couple times to me about an applicant who called ground multiple times. You want to tell that story?
05:28
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. What would happen is were. We get in the airplane, and. He makes the initial call, and he calls up ground. He says it happened to be at Hooks Airport. Hooks ground. Skyhawk123 Bravo Charlie at XYZ Flight School like to tax your takeoff VFR to the northwest. And, and while this is going on, I'm. I'm kind of looking down at my iPad, you know, entering some. Some things about the checkride. Well, and maybe I'm not totally paying attention to him. I mean, I'm listening to it, but I'm not watching. Well, then I hear him say, hooks ground Skyhawk one two, three, Bravo Charlie at XYZ Flight School like to, you know, he goes through the whole thing again and no response. So the third time I look up and I'm watching this, he makes the call again. And you can hear the.
06:28
Wally Mulhern
The frustration in his voice because he is now mad at this controller because the controller has the audacity to not answer him. And the. The airplane had a garment either of 4:30 or 530. And after he made that call, I see the RX light up on the 4:30 or the 5:30, whatever happened to be. And, and so this was the third time I, I finally. I finally said to the applicant, I said. I said, you know, this is the third time you've called. Do you think that it's. You're the problem and not him? And he looked at me like I was crazy.
07:17
Bobby Doss
How could that be possible?
07:19
Wally Mulhern
So I said, you know. Are you noticing that? And I did. This was. We had discontinued a previous flight, and what we needed to do was the air work. So this part we, you know, the ground operation, we had already checked the boxes of earlier. And so I pointed out to him, I says, you know, when ATC talks, this RX lights up and he goes, well, I never knew that. And I said, yeah. And every time after you talked, he has answered you. I said, so you know what's coming? I said, he's. He's pissed. You're gonna get yelled at now when you call up. I said, so we got two options. Either we shut the airplane down and come back another day, which I'm not gonna be happy about, or you. You take your licks. And he goes, oh, boy. Yeah.
08:22
Wally Mulhern
So he took his licks. He called again, and. And the ground guy came back. He goes, 1, 2, 3, bravo Charlie. I've called you back three times and I've. You've blocked three clearances and all this and this. And so right off the bat, the guy's anxiety level is through the roof because here he is on a checkride, and he's just kind of made a mistake. And so what I would say is if the mistake seems to Keep happening. Maybe you should look in the mirror. I'll just tell a story about. I remember flying a flight at my airline one time. This is, I don't know, five, six years ago. We're going across country and we noticed that there was a stuck mic on the frequency. And you know, I said something to the first officer, said, some bozo's got a stuck mic.
09:20
Wally Mulhern
And then ATC was able to communicate with us. They told us to change frequencies. So we changed frequencies and lo and behold, there was a stuck mic on this next frequency. And. And I said something to the first officer. I said, hey, that's funny, there's. There's stuck mic on this frequency too. And then we both looked at each other and went, oh wait, we're the bozo. And we found the problem and yeah, it was us.
09:49
Bobby Doss
Yeah, it's funny how many times when mistakes like that occur the, that it's not the other guy that we think it is or the other person.
09:56
Wally Mulhern
Right.
09:56
Bobby Doss
We think it is. It's. It's one of us. I flew recently with an instructor. I try to fly with everybody that works at UFS from time to time. And were flying around, it was a good day. Trying to get kind of a little bit of currency for me and a few approaches in and kind of at our second airport, I think I tuned the wrong CTAF in, missed it by a couple digits. And I was probably overwhelmed because I was shooting approaches and hadn't flown and was trying to impress them with my skills. And I want to say that my hand was on the knob and came off the knob as if to maybe even just check that I was accurate. And I was corrected. It was almost instantaneous that, nope, you're wrong, it's 0.9 instead of 0.7. And I was like, okay, that's.
10:47
Bobby Doss
Thanks, you know, And I was appreciative. But as I reflect on it, I was like, man, we almost need to let that mistake occur. We were 30 miles from the airport. We were going to. It was kind of in the secondary spot because I was still going to listen to the ATIS as I was briefing my approach and going through that. But there were clearly on the, on my iPad, I could see six planes in the pattern. If I didn't hear them a minute later, I would have known something was wrong. What are your thoughts on what you think from a radio's perspective CFI should do? How long should they let that go? Like, what is the, I don't know, professional opinion of Wally Mulhern?
11:29
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, that's a tough call. But I will say this. I mean, the way the industry is going. Most CFIs, well, you know, it's not unusual to have a CFI, and I'm not banging on the CFIs one bit, but it's not unusual to have a CFI who maybe had never flown an airplane 18 months ago. So I think, you know, I think as a parent. As we see our child. Doing whatever, you know, we see them about to make a mistake, you want to jump in so they don't make them mistake. But sometimes that child can learn a whole lot more by making this the mistake. And that's what we seem to have going on with radio calls is, you know, I use the phrase getting yelled at, but is getting yelled at by ground control a horrible thing?
12:38
Wally Mulhern
Well, it's, none of us want to get yelled at or chastised over the radio, but. It'S probably. Probably if you do make that mistake, you're probably not going to make the mistake again because you're going to remember it. And so what I see on checkrides, because on a checkride, I'm not going to step in. I'm going to let the person fumble and make mistake. And I feel like. For the most part, when an applicant gets chastised by atc. Their, again, their anxiety level goes through the roof. And I want to say, I mean, gosh, I've been yelled at so many times by ATC that it doesn't bother me anymore. I just go, yeah, sorry about that.
13:34
Bobby Doss
You mean, you mean Captain Mulhern gets yelled at by atc?
13:38
Wally Mulhern
Oh, yeah, yeah. I got yelled at Conroe, just a couple days ago. And, you know, you just, you can have a fight on over the radio and you can go in and call him if you want. Or, you know, I think the, probably the best way to do it is just roger and taxi.
14:00
Bobby Doss
So the other side of it is maybe when the student or applicant doesn't know they're making a mistake. But we're still talking radios here. What about missed calls? So we've all been there. I, I fly, I almost fly exclusively one tail number. And so when I get another plane, honestly it's a little difficult for me because if I fly that same tail number all the time and I get another plane and I, I'll be. It's almost like someone calling your name that you don't hear them right. How, how much should a CFI. Let that Student or future checkride. Applicant go to make them a better pilot because there is a, there's, like you said, you know, the controller comes back and goes, 66 Foxtrot. I've called you five times.
14:47
Bobby Doss
Are you on the radio like, then I like, whoa, yeah, six Foxtrot needs to pay attention. Oh, wait a second, that's me. I'm in 66 Foxtrot. I apologize. That would make you change the way you listen.
14:59
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah.
15:01
Bobby Doss
What's the right level of that?
15:02
Wally Mulhern
I think letting some of it go is healthy. It's, it is a little bit of a slippery slope. I mean, if it's a. Turn right heading 090 immediately, traffic 12 o', clock, less than a half mile, that probably isn't the time to let the radio call go. But, you know, who's number one at one seven, right. Aircraft, who's number one at one 7, right. Say your tail number. You know, that might be something to let go.
15:45
Bobby Doss
Yeah, it's like you said, it's a slippery slope. But, you know, you're the only plane in the pattern. You just turned crosswind to downwind and they call you once and say, clear to land. You know, you know, the student unrespond. You got another mile to go. Like, you can wait a couple calls. But yeah, I think it does become, when dangerous or even close to dangerous, like, of course fix or correct or solve for it. But I think it's that same example of, you know, me flying a couple of approaches after not flying a couple of approaches for months. You know, I miss, I might not even have missed a radio call. I might have just hesitated to get my thoughts together.
16:27
Bobby Doss
To have that instructor jump in and then answer doesn't do me the good that I'm hoping to get out of that lesson or that instruction for the day.
16:36
Wally Mulhern
Right, right. You know, there's, you know, there are some things that I hear a lot of student pilots or applicants, whatever, say, on checkrides. A lot of it has to do with the lingo. I mean, I will hear pilots say, ask atc, would you repeat? And really the phraseology should be say again. And is it a big deal? It's probably not a big deal. But over the middle of South Africa in the middle of the night, when you're talking to a controller whose native language is not English, maybe it is a big deal. You know, they have a limited command of English language. They know aviation language, so they're expecting the lingo, the phraseology to be exactly correct. So, you know, we don't say repeat, we ask to say again. Try to stay away from the police or the army lingo, you know.
17:40
Wally Mulhern
Six, six Fox shock traffic, 12 o', clock, three miles. Do you have them in sight? Yeah, I have eyes on that traffic. You know, that's kind of, I think that's army stuff. You know, I have eyes on the subject, whatever. You know, they, what you should say is traffic in sight. But. Anyway, it's, you know, it's all.
18:02
Bobby Doss
About why not be right? But, but yeah, they're going to have to learn the phraseology. They're going to have to actually open up the terminology book and it's all written down. Right. If you want to be great. And if you are going to be lazy, just know you're not going to be right in those instances. But as instructors, I think we should teach the right way and make sure we're teaching the right phraseology for sure.
18:28
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
18:29
Bobby Doss
So let's go part two or part. The second part of this podcast. The physical items that are also interesting that maybe instructors should let happen but then correct at different stages. Right?
18:45
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
18:46
Bobby Doss
I asked you before we started recording on a check ride or if you were instructing a family friend in your own airplane or whatever, and they were at the point where they should be managing things, would you let them leave the plane chalked? You know, you get the ufs and there's a plane on the side of my building with chalks on it and the person pre flights it all and you're standing out observing them, the front wheels chalked, and they say, let's go get in the plane. And you know, it's still chalked. Are you gonna let them leave it shocked or what are you gonna do?
19:18
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I'm gonna let them leave it shocked. And the reason is, I think I do believe that. You know, I could say, hey, what about the chocks? And they go, oh yeah, okay. And really. By the time we got to the end of the Runway and we're taking off, they probably will have forgotten about that. But if you leave it shocked and we start the engine and they try to move it and they won't move it, and they realize, oh boy, I've got to shut the engine down. If it's in a Piper, they've got to make me get out of the airplane, they've got to hop out, and then they've got to go get it Then they come back in, they come back and they have their tail between their legs a little bit. I guarantee they are not going to forget that.
20:07
Wally Mulhern
I'll tell a little story about this. I was doing a checkride, I don't know, a year and a half ago, and the person left the tail tied down and so we. And it was a situation where they're out at the airplane and then they needed to get some oil, so they went back to the hangar and then they came back and then they wanted to go wash their hands and then they came back and then we're about to get ready to go, so they decide they need to go to use the restroom. So there are about four trips back and forth to the hangar as I was sitting out there baking in the sun. And we came out and left the tail tied down.
20:52
Wally Mulhern
And the irony was that an instructor and a student walked by us and they saw it and they did all kinds of motions to us, waving at us, and the applicant just waved back. And then pretty soon a car drove by and honked at us, did all kinds of motions and the applicant just waved back. And then we started the engine and guess what? We didn't go anywhere.
21:25
Bobby Doss
He thought everybody's wishing him luck.
21:27
Wally Mulhern
Exactly, exactly. And so he finally said, oh boy, I think I left the tail tied down. And so he got out and untied it. And I jokingly said, I wonder if that's why everybody was waving at us. And he goes, oh yeah. I was wondering, they've never done that like that because they were waving passionately.
21:57
Bobby Doss
Well, I tell this story quite a bit. You know, I was probably a 80 hour pilot, took a couple friends to Galveston, we ate at the beach and came back to the airport, jumped in the plane and of course did the pre flight, jumped in, it started it, tried to go, plane wouldn't go, they'd have no chalks. And I was like, golly, I left that tail tied down. Just, just completely embarrassed with these two buddies of mine in the plane. And I say, I've flown a lot at night. I've been all over the United States in a single engine prop plane that's been tied down. I have only done it once because that one time was so memorable and so embarrassing that I probably check the tail 50 times. You know, it's more important than fuel, Wally.
22:44
Bobby Doss
Just because I don't want to leave the tail tied down anymore. Yeah, yeah, let's talk about fuel caps. What if, what if an instructor sees that A student left the fuel cap off. Is that, is that a. Let's quickly fix it or is that, do we let that one go?
22:59
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, that's a tough one that. And I'll tell on myself. I was getting my seaplane rating up and in Ank Fairbanks, Alaska five, six years ago and we're in a 172 and the airplane was beached facing out. And we didn't have fuel trucks. What the way they fuel the airplanes up there is you put five gallon fuel cans out there and the fuel truck comes up and fills up these cans. So to put 30 gallons of fuel in that airplane takes six cans. And it's a very labor intensive thing because you got to walk out on the float, you gotta, you know, put the, lift the gas can up, put five gallons in and come back get another one. You got to do that six times.
23:52
Wally Mulhern
And through all of that going on, I, I left a gas cap off and you know, my instructor was sitting over there and I don't think it was six gas cans, it was probably four, probably 20 gallons. But I mean I was worn out and I just. The guy's name was Tom Trainor.
24:14
Bobby Doss
He's a pretty good name for an instructor.
24:16
Wally Mulhern
It is, it is Tom Trainer though, the pilot Trainer. Actually a chemistry professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks. Super nice guy. But he just, he says, why don't we give the airplane one last look over from behind. And when he said that, you know, right off the bat I thought, oh God, he is. That is code for hey idiot, you missed something. And I immediately looked back up and that's when I, I realized that the best vantage point to see the wing is from the back of the airplane because you could see everything from the back of a 172. And sure enough, there's one of the gas caps just laying there with thank goodness it had a little chain on it because it would have been in the little canal. And I went oops.
25:05
Wally Mulhern
So I went back and put the gas cap on, you know, and that's a disadvantage of a high wing a Cessna. You, you're in the airplane, you don't know, at least on a low wing you can look out and you can see.
25:21
Bobby Doss
Yeah. One of our instructors, it's probably been, oh, maybe even two years now, tells a story where he was doing a par 61 stage check and student, as we all know, there's some nerves involved and did the pre Flight started the plane and the instructor just kept, I guess one tip is if the instructor asks you like 15 times, is everything good? It's probably not going to be good. But kept asking him, is things good? Is everything good? And they did. And this is in a 172. So the Pitot cover is not too far from the pilot. But he kept saying, is everything good? And he tells the story. The pitot cover was still on the aircraft. So they have now taxied to the run up area. They have done the run up area.
26:05
Bobby Doss
They have been cleared to go to the whole short line at the runway and they get to the whole short and he says, are you sure everything's good? There's again this stage check. Pilot is confident. How you don't see that big red thing flapping in the wind next to you is still beyond me. But they pull out on the Runway and the student gives a full power and he tells them to abort and they just taxi on down the Runway and they exit. And he's like, you left the pitot cover on, right? And I think that's an appropriate level of mistake making, right, to be able to let that go for a while. But how many times do you think that guy takes pito covers off now?
26:49
Bobby Doss
How many times you think he looks out that window and looks at that pito tube to make sure there's no red sock over that thing?
26:56
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, definitely, all the time. All the time. Yeah. I. I had the pleasure, I guess you will say, of taking off in a 150. This is a long time ago with a CFI candidate. I wasn't an examiner, I was just the instructor. And we took off with a rudder gust lock installed. And. We, at this particular flight school, we had these rudder gust locks in these airplanes and we never used them. So it was something that was kind of not on our radar screen. But whoever flew the airplane before us felt the need to use it. And yeah, were climbing out and he said, this airplane just isn't flying right. And I said, well, let me see.
27:47
Wally Mulhern
And I, I felt the rudders and I looked back and I said, well, it might have something to do with that big remove before flight flag that's flapping behind us. And so we kind of wiggled the rudders and got the gust lock to come out and landed in somebody's front yard, probably with this big flag that said removed before flight.
28:08
Bobby Doss
Hopefully not in a windshield.
28:10
Wally Mulhern
Oh, yeah.
28:12
Bobby Doss
So the big question, I think the listeners want to know, Wally, is how Far do you let mistakes go on checkrides, what's okay, what's not fail worthy, etc. But even before that, one of the best stories that I know you've told many times is someone maybe squawking an altimeter setting or something like that.
28:33
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah, we. If you've listened to many of our episodes, you've heard this story, but this was funny and. Just, I don't know, it's a mistake. But were doing an instrument check ride and were doing three approaches at three different airports. We had done the first one, we had done the second one, and were going missed approach on this one and going to fly back and land at airport number three. And the check right up to this point was pretty much flawless. I tell people on an instrument checkride, the best compliment that I can give you at the end of the day is it was a very boring flight for me. And this was pretty boring. And so we go, missed approach at airport number two. And Tower says, okay, contact approach 119.7. He calls up approach 119.7. He says, you know, Cessna, whatever.
29:41
Wally Mulhern
Skyhawk 123 Bravo Charlie, missed approach, climbing out of 1200 for 2000. And the approach guy said, 1, 2, 3 Bravo Charlie hooks altimeter 3014. And the applicant just said, Roger, 3014. And he knew it needed to be entered somewhere. And the first thing he saw was a transponder. So he types in 3014 in the transponder. And I just remember looking at it thinking, oh, wow, what now? And. I actually said something to him. I said, well, that's an interesting technique. We're squawking the altimeter and he looks at me and goes, oh boy. He says, what were we squawking before? I said, I don't know. And he goes, he says, well, I guess I better say something to approach. I go, yeah, that'd probably be a good idea. So he calls up approach and he says, approach Skyhawk 123 Bravo Charlie.
30:55
Wally Mulhern
I'm sorry, but I'm squawking the altimeter. And the approach controller was so cool about it, he goes, yes, sir, I see that it's no problem. You're cleared for the approach. But yeah, that was a mistake. And at the end of the day we laughed about it. And occasionally I see this guy and I always bring it up and he tells me to shut up. And, and. And we have a.
31:25
Bobby Doss
Not a best practice necessarily, but a good way to Remember the squat, the, I mean, the altimeter setting if you don't have a pen and paper.
31:31
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah. So I, I guess, you know, what are we, at the end of the day, we're talking to CFIs and we're saying, how far should you let it go? You know, it's, your kid is learning to ride a two wheel bicycle. Do you let your kid fall? I don't know. Some parents are going to say, yeah, some parents, no, I mean, if they're going to fall and hurt their head, absolutely not. But I remember somebody talking to me about being a parent and they said, about being a parent, they said, you have to pick your battles with kids. If your kid wants the green sippy cup rather than the red sippy cup, is it okay to switch them out and give them the green sippy cup? That's probably a battle not worth fighting for.
32:31
Wally Mulhern
Your kid doesn't want to wear their shoulder harness in their car seat. Is that something you're going to fight for? Absolutely. It's something you're going to fight for. And I think as CFIs, we need to let the applicant, let the student, as a cfi, they're going to be students, but let the students make some mistakes and. You know, if it causes ATC to yell @ them, well, it might be good for them. Maybe we need to thicken up our.
33:02
Bobby Doss
Skin. Well, recent flight with me in a cfi. I was a dot deflection off on the glide slope. And I think the flight was great. So if they're listening and this is not me knocking you, but I thought 1 dot being corrected at the 1 dot was kind of a little early. I'm not a flight instructor, I've not been trained to be a flight instructor. But I think one dot of deflection on glide slope or left or right on the approach course, that's probably the opportunity for the pilot to learn something.
33:44
Wally Mulhern
Right?
33:44
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Full deflection. Someone trying to recover is an unsafe thing. It's like in the book that, you know, you should go, missed. That's understandable. But if I'm one dot off on the glide slope and the instructor saying, get down, get down, that's probably going to be less opportunistic for me to learn. Right? I might. What am I going to do when I'm out there by myself and I'm a dot off and no one's telling me am I going to get in a situation or am I going to recover? I don't know that I know if I'm always corrected, so there is some balance there for sure. And I like your analogy about kids, but I think one dot you'll let them, you let them get the two, and then you maybe say something, but.
34:30
Bobby Doss
And maybe you let them go full deflection and go missed and do it again. Yeah, you want to make sure that they know what they're doing.
34:36
Wally Mulhern
Right? I, you know, I, I get the look so many times on checkrides, and I, I brief this at length. I tell people, look, I am an observer, okay? Don't think of me as a pilot. If we, now, if we get into an emergency situation, I said, the checkride is going to be over and we're going to do our best to get the airplane on the ground safely. But under normal circumstances, I am an observer, and I tell them, I says, you may look over at me like, what do you want me to do? And I may just look back at you and go, I don't know. And I know some people have never gotten that feedback from their instructor. Sometimes the instructors are just a little bit too close to jump in and save the day. And.
35:27
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I mean, if, boy, if, if we're about to land on the wrong Runway or, or something like that, I mean, you know. For. Here's an example, okay? We, we go missed approach and we're going to another airport, and they, they forget to retract the flaps. You know, is, is that something to let go? I think it.
36:02
Bobby Doss
Is. I've flown a long way with flaps down 10, 10 degrees. Because my instructors never corrected me, and I've learned from that.
36:10
Wally Mulhern
Right?
36:10
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Now why are we going so.
36:13
Wally Mulhern
Slow? Yeah, you may throw things out there, like, wow, seems to be some vibrations that we normally don't have. Yeah, it's only 85 knots. That's interesting. You know, and a lot of times it just goes right over the applicant or the student's head. They'll just go, yeah, it's not flying fast today. Well, gee, what's going.
36:36
Bobby Doss
On? I'll tell one funny story, and I think it kind of wraps up the whole show. And I wasn't even thinking about sharing this, but on two separate occasions recently. We have a full motion simulator at United Flight Systems. And I, I sit kind of close to it. My office is really kind of close to it. And an instructor said, I'm gonna have to cancel the sim session. It was a rainy day. They were gonna do some session but none of the avionics would work. And I was like, man, that's terrible. I hate that the sim's broken, that the avionics don't work. And while you and I talk about this all the time, it. It's this younger generation where it's never their fault, it's always the other. It's the equipment's fault always. Right, but right, the avionics would work.
37:24
Bobby Doss
And so they scrubbed the flight. You know, they'd already had the sim on for point two. And, you know, school eats the point two. And they go back and I'm like, I'm gonna troubleshoot this thing. So I go in and takes. Takes a long time to get the sim kind of up and going. And I got up and going and jump in, and sure enough, the avionics wouldn't work. And I kind of just went through my checks and someone had pulled the avionics circuit breaker. And the simulator that's got the same circuit breakers that planes do. So they must have been simulating a failure in the last flight. And the circuit breaker had been pulled so they couldn't get the 530s to come on. I'm like, golly, all we gotta do is pre flight this thing.
38:04
Bobby Doss
But we get a little lazy in a simulator because it's a simulator and we don't go through all that shutdown and pre flight stuff. So I was frustrated. And here we are month fast forward and same instructor is in the simulator and they can't start the plane. And I'm like, this is not realistic. Like, planes run. This is a simulator. Like, it's got to be something obvious that we're missing here. The starter is working, the prop spinning. Nope, it's just a simulator. And I almost fell into the exact same trap, Wally. The prop was turning. It would turn over blue blood and stop. Any thoughts, Wally, on what you would have done in that situation in a simulator? Your new home simulator guy. Like, what would you have looked at.
38:52
Wally Mulhern
First? It sounds like.
38:53
Bobby Doss
Fuel. Sounds like fuel. Because you need gas. You need. You need gas, you need air and you need spark, right? Gas. You need those three things. So I had the turning over, I had the spark, I'm pretty sure. And I looked and I'm like, the fuel tanks are fuel full. The. Everything was work. Everything was on. I was like, golly, this is so frustrating. So were about to go and I looked at the floor and what's on the floor of all Cessnas.
39:21
Wally Mulhern
Close to the floor, fuel shut off.
39:23
Bobby Doss
Valve. The instructor before them must have reached down there and flipped that thing to off and had a little engine failure. And that was the, probably the end of the last sim.
39:32
Wally Mulhern
Session.
39:32
Bobby Doss
Right. But they didn't clean it.
39:33
Wally Mulhern
Up.
39:34
Bobby Doss
Right. And I was like, are you. And of course, I'm so excited that I found.
39:39
Wally Mulhern
It.
39:39
Bobby Doss
Yeah. I'm like, have you checked everything? This is my only opportunity to pretend to be a flight instructor. I'm like, have you checked everything? Yeah. Well, I guess we're just gonna have to scrub this. Before you scrub it, you mind reaching down there and grabbing that fuel switch and turning it to both real quick? And they were like, oh, my gosh. And it was fun for me. But it's, it is kind of that mindset that we're all in nowadays that, yeah, surely it couldn't be me making this mistake. But how many times do you think they'll ever have trouble starting the sim.
40:08
Wally Mulhern
Again? Yeah. Never. Never. And I will say this. With the airline, I mean, we have just an extensive maintenance support network. Basically anywhere we fly, we have maintenance on staff. All we got to do is get on the radio and call them, and usually within minutes they're out there to the airplane. And then we do an electronic write up through to the electronic system we have in the airplane. But anyway, I will say this, you know, flying long haul stuff, most of the my flights, we have at least three pilots, sometimes four. So there's four, three or four sets of eyes up on the flight deck most of the time. And, you know, being at an airline for many years, you know, we've all made the call to maintenance and they come out and they go, well, turn the switch on.
41:04
Wally Mulhern
And you look up and there's a switch that normally is on, but for whatever reason, today it's off. Or maybe it is a circuit breaker. So now before.
41:16
Bobby Doss
We. Four pros. With four pros looking.
41:18
Wally Mulhern
At. Yeah, and before we call maintenance, you know, it's like, okay, the, the flux capacitor isn't working. All right, what are we missing? I mean, that is our first thought, at least mine. You know, we all look around like, okay, are we missing anything before we pick up this mic and get maintenance to come out here? No. Yeah, circuit breakers are in. Everything is on. Okay, all right, let's make the call then. So, you know, over the years, because of being a little bit embarrassed, and our maintenance guys are really good. They'll come out and they'll just say, yeah, flip that switch on and maybe it'll work. Turn it.
41:56
Bobby Doss
On. Well, we've all been there, we've all made those mistakes. And I think that's kind of theme of the show is we do learn from our mistakes. Flight instructors, the more that you can balance the fixing, the correcting, the coaching, you know, let. Let students make mistakes, they're going to learn more from those mistakes than if the, if you just correct those mistakes. I think we talked a lot about the radios and some of those simple pieces. The one thing I will say we missed, that I just saw in my notes, Wally, is that Piper and that door getting closed. You've. You've brought it up a lot, right? Flight instructors, you gotta let the pilot close the door. They may never have experience without an instructor in the plane, but the first time they solo, they gotta close the door.
42:46
Bobby Doss
The first time they're on a checkride, they gotta close the door. So let the pilot close the door on a Piper. If they've got this one door on the co pilot side, because the DP is going to make them close it. And the first time they take their wife, girlfriend, brother, sister, husband, they got to close that door too. So give them that shot to make that experience happen for once, for sure. And I guess just let them learn from their mistakes. And if you do that, we're going to make better pilots. And as always, fly safely and stay behind the.
43:20
Nick Alan
Prop. Thanks for checking out the behind the Prop podcast. Be sure to click subscribe and check us out online@brave.theprop.com behind the prop is recorded in Houston, Texas. Creator and host is Bobby Doss. Co host is Wally Mulhern. The show is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to replace actual flight instruction. Thanks for listening and remember, fly safe.