We discuss how to be a safer pilot and avoid stacking risks that endanger your next flight!
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00:01
Behind the Prop Intro
Clear prop SR73 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.
00:23
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally?
00:25
Wally Mulhern
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:26
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. This week we're taking an approach where we're gonna talk about some videos we watch, some stuff going on to fly school and some things you've seen on checkrides. Kind of a common theme on some of our shows. But we're gonna title the show Risk Stacking, borrowing the name of one of the videos that we're gonna talk about from the AOPA today. Wally's been doing some long haul trips and watched some videos. We got a talk, got to talking about an old show called Go Oriented.
00:59
Bobby Doss
We were thinking about doing a show called Don't Go Oriented and at the end of the day we landed on Risk Stacking because I think there's been a number of things I've seen and we've talked about where maybe people are trying to find a way to go, a reason to go when things are starting to add up against them and maybe we can provide some guidance or thoughts around maybe a new way to think about it. Wally, why don't you talk a little bit about the videos that you found and shared with me and we've both spent some time doing some research and work on those topics since we watched those videos.
01:36
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I, I, I found two very intriguing videos that I watched. One was a video about a Cessna 208, a caravan up in Idaho and it was a freight operation where they tried to go from, I believe it was Salt Lake to a small town in Idaho and they were not able to get in. And so they bypassed that stop and tried to get in the next day and tried one approach and ended up going missed approach on it and came in on the second approach and ultimately crashed and killed the pilot. So just a, a tragic situation. You know, obviously there were, didn't appear to be anything wrong with the airplane, but that was one I watched. Another one I watched which got my attention as I was going through YouTube looking at these things.
02:46
Wally Mulhern
It was a Saratoga or actually was actually a Piper Lance, which is basically the same thing as a Saratoga. So when I saw that it got my attention being a Saratoga owner. And this was a situation where six people were in the Airplane and they were not overweight, they were real close to being at the max weight, but there was two adults and four kids and took off in the airplane and at a high density altitude airport and never could climb. And they ended up crashing and killed four of the six. And so, you know, it came back and, and the title of one of the videos was called Risk Stacking. And you know, they're talking about all the risks involved in this flight.
03:38
Wally Mulhern
And you know, at some point we all have to have a line in the sand and we have to say, okay, there are just too many risks today. Now is my line going to be different from someone else's line? Very possibly, but we got to have that. We, and we've got to be aware of that, you know. You know, by airline, we, you know, we brief every takeoff. And the first thing that we talk about when we talk about when we're getting ready to brief the takeoff or brief the flight, I should say, because we're briefing a lot more than just the takeoff, but we go through the threats and we try to identify the threats that we have and we put them in three categories. We talk about personal, you know, and we kind of go around the flight deck.
04:40
Wally Mulhern
How's everybody doing today? Everybody could get a good night's sleep. Everybody feeling all right? You know, anybody dealing with personal things at home that might make it to where your head is not as in the game as it should be. And then we talk about environmental, you know, and of course, the first thing we think about environmental is the weather, but it's a lot more than just the weather. Do we have terrain today? Do we have high density altitude? Like, like one of those accidents we talked about? And then the last we talk about is technical, you know, is the airplane in good shape? Is there anything that's inoperative on the airplane that's going to affect us today? And so, you know, right off the bat, you know, I just flew some very lengthy flights.
05:32
Wally Mulhern
I just flew into Japan a couple days ago and you know, as I was briefing the approach, the first threat that I identified was the language barrier. And not so much language, more so the accent. Because for me it's, I had difficulty understanding the Japanese controllers. Luckily, there's four of us on the flight deck. So between the four of us, we have a pretty good idea of what they're saying, you know, and there's enough people to back you up. So when I Say, what did he or she say? There's usually someone that will say oh, you were cleared direct to Soto intersection or whatever. So you know, that's what we do at my airline. Okay, is that what we should be doing at a, a student pilot, private pilot level? I, I think so. I think it's a good thing to do.
06:30
Bobby Doss
Yeah. And I think we'll talk about some recent stuff around the flight school and on check rides where it's almost a, a push to go. Right. We did this go oriented show a few weeks ago and it was more about trying to solve the problems and get back in the green when there were things going awry. And this shows really more about when there's 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 things that aren't quite green. We need to take a pause. We need to think about trying to find a reason not to go instead of, to go when the stack starts working against you a little bit. Those, those videos were impactful. If you, if you don't know about or haven't seen any of the Air Safety Institute stuff that the AOPA does. Highly recommended, really good.
07:20
Bobby Doss
Most of them 10 to 15 minute videos and they're not judgmental, they're fact based. They're normally sharing the details from the NTSB report and they're trying to make us all better pilots. So it's really good stuff. But the first video titled High Aspirations and we'll put links to both videos in the show notes, it was somewhat in the first few minutes a video of the family walking out to the plane. Right. And you're, your gut starts to turn over right off the bat when you see that they're walking out to the plane knowing or assuming that something bad's going to happen. They talked about all the things supposedly in the debriefs from the passengers that lived.
08:06
Bobby Doss
They talked over and over about the things that were adding up or stacking up against this pilot and this aircraft and the six passengers and the 5,000 foot elevation and the 90 degree Fahrenheit temperature day well above standard. And a video that is also there of the takeoff just shows that they're not getting anything out of the plane. And we've talked about a lot of examples on this show in the last 138 shows. But we talk a lot about Houston, Texas. We meaning the school and Wally and our teams that are all in Houston. We talk a lot about sea level and what if went to Denver. Right. I think there's, I've in six plus Years now, the owner of a fly school I've seen where density altitude's been negative 2,000ft at sea level. Like that's some amazing air.
09:01
Bobby Doss
And it causes problems because the engines work so good, the prop works so good that left turning tendencies are crazy. And we just, we gotta understand that garment. And we're thinking about doing a show on performance charts because there's so much that learned over the years about what those performance charts tell us. And never judge what someone did, but there seemed to be enough indication that they weren't going to be able to climb at a rate that was going to be healthy. But they continued and took off and didn't stay in the air very long. The second video I found the true risk stacking coming together where the stack was very big and they talked about it and I still have it up in my browser window where the the incident was. The list includes single pilot in IMC winter imc.
09:56
Bobby Doss
So it was snowing and it was a aircraft that was able to fly into known icing but was a prop plane. It had a very demanding approach that the pilot was flying. A non standard obstacle clearance, a non standard vertical descent angle that had to go over some smokestacks that were right in line with the Runway. And then those smokestacks were active and creating a large amount of steam in the direction opposite that the pilot was flying. So they were going to go from IMC icing conditions to visual conditions to plying through a steam cloud over a stack of smokestacks to get to the Runway. And something happened to where that pilot got confused. They alluded that maybe they thought that the lights on the smokestack was the Runway ultimately clipping the smokestacks and perishing.
10:59
Bobby Doss
So again, a lot of things adding up against after already going missed once, all these things at some point might be a reason to divert. And the video also talks about that the pilot had diverted the day before on the same approach. And maybe as a cargo pilot that started creating pressure that I got to get there. And unfortunately they didn't get there.
11:27
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, you know, I go back to my early flying. My, you know, I started out as a flight instructor. I moved into flying charter and the company that I worked for started flying freight. So I was that freight pilot. And this was back in the days where you had to fly canceled checks to the Federal Reserve bank every night. And it was a whole industry of airplanes flying around at night flying these canceled checks. And I say that's where I learned to fly because I was out there on my own at night in a twin engine airplane. I was flying a Beechcraft Baron, which is a very nice, well performing airplane. But you know, you, you started to get this attitude of invincibility. And I'm here to tell you I'm lucky to be here.
12:24
Wally Mulhern
I can remember one night flying in a Dallas Fort Worth and flying through some thunderstorms or not really through, but around, and I had no business being there. And I do remember thinking to myself because a lot of times people would go with me and I remember thinking to myself, it's really good that I'm by myself tonight because there's no sense in two people dying.
12:50
Bobby Doss
Wow.
12:51
Wally Mulhern
I mean, I actually had that thought. But then, you know, this is one of these things of I got to think to myself, what was I thinking? I landed at Dallas Love. I delivered my checks and I didn't have to be back, but I did. I took off and I went back through it. And as I was going back through it, I'm thinking, man, you're really stupid. I could have gone down to the La Quinta for, you know, back in 1985 or 86, whenever it was probably 19 a night and just slept it off or just stayed in the, the pilot lounge at the FBO and come back the next day, but I didn't, I got back in the airplane and flew back through it and you know, but for the grace of God. I mean, I, I, I'm here to talk about it.
13:51
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I think it's that thought process that was driving me to have this show today was the I gotta get back attitude or I gotta go attitude. Too much lately around the fly school. And I think you'll have some examples of checkrides. I've just been, I've been hearing a theme of well, I've got to go now, we really don't have to go. And I think that might be the first thing that starts stacking up against people that we gotta go or I've got a checkride in two weeks, I really gotta get this flight in. And the weather looks bad the next few days. And again now you're, you're gone from one thing working against you to now three things working against you.
14:35
Bobby Doss
And as that stack starts to build, there's a point where we gotta be recognizing that the stack's getting too big and that we need to make a decision from my check Ride my private checkride. I, I clearly remember getting in the plane, getting the plane started, being so proud that I got a hot plane started without hesitation. The DP sitting next to me. I feel like breathing down my neck. I know I'm moving slow, I want to hurry. I listen to the ATIs. I know. I write the ATIs down. And he asks me, what did you write down? And I look at my notes and my handwriting is not that good. And I said, well, honestly, I can't read. I'm going to listen again. I listened again, wrote it down again. And he goes, what'd you write down?
15:26
Bobby Doss
And I wrote down something to the effect of probably 17, gusting 25. And he said, you gonna fly, Ms. Dawson this tomorrow? And I said, no, sir. And I immediately discontinued. And I was numb to everything going on because I wanted to get that checkride done. I walked in that wind out to the plane, right? I had the chance to see the windsocks. I had the chance to check the weather more before I got to the plane, but I was going through the motions. I was going to take off almost blind, everything else going around me because of the pressure to complete and be successful on that checkride day. I bet there's many people that have failed check rides this week that look back thinking the same thing, that they were numb and had no reason trying to fly that flight, right?
16:17
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, Absolutely. And, you know, it's like you're talking about the wind. I mean, we need to, we need to process the information that comes in. And, you know, if you go to the local restaurant, I think I've used this example on the show before, but if you go to the local grill and you order a burger and fries and a Coke and the person tells you it's going to be $73, you're probably going to question it. Or consequently, I mean, if they say it's going to be 11 cents, you're probably going to question it. They tell you $12, you're thinking, okay, yeah, that's reasonable. So what I see this. A lot of people are just, they're maybe they're copying the ATIs, but they're just flicking. They're just writing down numbers and we're not processing. Yeah, okay. You know, the wind, we.
17:17
Wally Mulhern
We have a north south Runway at our local airport. When 3, 6, 0 at 12. Well, I don't even need to hear what Runway they're using. I know by that, okay, so I'm expecting to hear 3, 5, left and if I were to hear 17 right, I would go, whoa, what? I must have misheard something. Something's not right. These are not adding up well.
17:44
Bobby Doss
And part of it, as a young private pilot on that checkride day, I wouldn't have probably heard that. I wouldn't have put two and two together. I wouldn't have been thinking that way. And if they told me to, to go to runway one seven right, I probably would have followed their instructions and not challenged any of it. But now I think I would have said something to the effect of I copied the winds from 36 0. Are we, are y' all using 17 right? I would have challenged that at some level. Right. And I think that is another example of things starting to stack against you.
18:18
Wally Mulhern
Right.
18:20
Bobby Doss
Not always does it have to be a big deal. But I feel the external pressure from people all the time. We both see it at the flight school. Wally, hey, if I discontinue, when are we going to be able to reschedule this checkride?
18:34
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I hear that all the time. And the first thing I say is that should not be part of the decision making process. I mean, either it's the situation is good enough to fly or it's not. It's, it's kind of black and white. So I mean, we shouldn't say, all right, I'll do the checkride because you can't get me in for another two weeks. You know, if I say I can get you in tomorrow, you know, again, it should not. There's no correlation between the two. And I understand where people are coming from because they want to get it done. And there may be, you know, external. We hear this every year, usually in the summertime, you know, in the middle of August, we start getting panicked.
19:21
Wally Mulhern
People calling up for checkrides because they're, they got to go back to college in three days and they have to have a check ride tomorrow. Well, you know, maybe we should have thought about this back in June.
19:36
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I think it's just adding to that stack. And you're right. I think it should be a fine, a really fine dark black line that says this is my line. And it's, I'm not going to deviate. And we've done shows on personal minimums and all those things. But if you're a pilot who says, well, seven knots across winds my limit unless I can't get a Checkride retake in two weeks, then I'll go to 10. But that's a real slippery slope that 3 knots is almost 50% of your personal minimums. And if you'll do that and add clouds to it and precipitation and possible colder weather, then you start doing a lot of really negative things towards what might be creating a real risk stack for yourself as well.
20:23
Wally Mulhern
Right. And, and I do feel, you know, I, I use sports analogies a lot. I, I feel like going into a check ride, you've got a strike against you already because you're nervous. You really are. And, and the data tells us, and it proves to us that we perform, our performance is degraded in a stressful situation. We don't get better under stress. We, we get worse. And I believe it. A long time ago, maybe I was a little bit of a cocky young guy. Maybe I didn't believe it back then, but after looking at all the data, I certainly believe it now. So I almost feel like on a checkride you've already got one strike against you. It's like you're walking up to the plate and the count is 0 and 1. So you add something like, okay, significant weather, significant wind.
21:28
Wally Mulhern
The wind is, you know, a crosswind at 12 gusting to 17. So, okay, maybe that makes it two strikes. So you got very little margin for error. And, and I don't want this to be about passing a checkride. I want this to be about not dying. Okay, that's really what we're talking about. But we are using the checkride and that analogy a little bit here. But anyway, that, so, you know, let's try to stack the deck in our favor as best we can.
22:06
Bobby Doss
No question. I asked you before we started recording, do you have an opinion on whether IMC is one of those criteria that might stack against you if you're doing an instrument checkride or a CFI check ride, you know, do you have a go, no go. And I think your opinion is that doesn't come into play for you personally. But what is the pilot's thought process? That's the applicant. What are they thinking and how do they approach that? It could be, it could be a negative, it could be a risk factor that's stacked against them.
22:40
Wally Mulhern
Right. You know, the, our guidance from the FAA is that they strongly suggest we not be pilot command on a flight. So if I have an instrument candidate and we're going to fly in IMC conditions, I have to then assume the position of pilot command. So there's some things I have to do. I mean, I always check with the flight school if a, am I insured? You know, with the flight school in general, I don't do that. Have there been cases where I have assumed the role of pilot command? I have, I know the day I was doing checkrides the day before one of the Super Bowls was here in Houston and they weren't allowing any VFR traffic or out. So the only way we could get out and do approaches was to file an IFR flight plan.
23:36
Wally Mulhern
So I mean the weather was fine, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but technically I had to be piloting command. Now couple that with a double eye check ride where I'm doing a cfii. I actually kind of like seeing the applicant file IFR or get an IFR clearance in the air. Now does that mean I'm going to do a double eye checkride in 400 overcast? No, absolute do that. But you know, 1800 broken where maybe we're in and out of the clouds. I think that's a good opportunity to actually see what the candidate has.
24:17
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I think that statement alone gives guidance to the fact that you have personal minimums. You're not going to do 400 foot overcast. I want to say when I was pulling up to the fly school on Wednesday it was about 300 foot overcast and I have to cross outside the airport on a public road at the end of the Runway and they were taking off to the north and I saw a Piper Warrior go over my car at about 200ft AGL and I thought wow, that's a lot of cajones to be able to take off in 300 foot ceilings. There's just a lot of risk like. And so I, I got to the airport and I pulled up FlightAware and they were going to an airport less than 60 miles away. Who knows, maybe they were transporting a heart and it was really important.
25:10
Bobby Doss
But I think I might have waited another hour based on the forecast because 300 foot overcast is not a lot. There's not a lot of options if something goes wrong for sure.
25:21
Wally Mulhern
No, no, you again we're trying to stack the deck and I feel like if I'm up at 8000ft and I lose an engine, I feel that the chances are really good that I'm going to be able to put the airplane on the ground. But again that's being able to see the ground. If it's 300 foot overcast, you're going to come on down and you're going to break out and you're going to have one option. Yeah, two at about, you know, 20 seconds to figure out where you're going. And, and if you don't like what's straight ahead, just close your eyes, I guess.
26:01
Bobby Doss
So when do we have the opportunity to make the stack be in our favor, Wally? What? What? How many opportunities before and after a flight or during a flight, should I say, do we have the opportunity to stack the gate, stack the deck in our favor?
26:17
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. Well, you know, that stack isn't just for the flight. It's for every maneuver or every portion of the flight. In other words, we're rolling down the Runway and something doesn't sound right. There's a vibration, you know, can we reject that takeoff? Well, we probably can. You know, we don't see it so much on takeoffs, but we see it on landings a lot. If you're coming in and you're not in a position to land the airplane. Well, we've got an option. It's called a go around. And I just wonder how many people have done a go around for real. In other words, hey, you know, I was too fast or, I don't know, I, I wasn't in a position to land the airplane on the center line. We've all probably done many go arounds.
27:23
Wally Mulhern
Probably 95% of them are because your instructor said go around.
27:30
Bobby Doss
Does your company have a plan or a rule that says X, Y and Z, you must go around?
27:36
Wally Mulhern
Oh, yeah, yeah. We have stabilized approach criteria. You know, at certain altitudes we need to be configured this way. Airspeed plus or minus this amount. And. Yeah, and if we don't have it's a go around. And there's never.
27:55
Bobby Doss
That's stacking the favor. That's stacking that deck in your favor for sure.
27:58
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah. And there's never any punitive penalty for going around. I mean, I'm trying to think in my 36 year career, maybe five go arounds, maybe I've. Nobody's ever called me about them.
28:20
Bobby Doss
Yeah, because this is one of those things. It's got to be assumed that it was the right decision no matter what. And then if there is a debrief and a learning from it, then you learn from it. But yeah, I question, you know, there's been a few off Runway things that have happened since I've owned the flight school and you can almost always go back and the stack is large. The risk stack was not the last thing that made them go off the Runway. It was all kinds of other criteria. We were too low, entering the pattern. We. We landed way too long. We were going too fast. You know, I could. I could say every time something has happened, luckily no one's been hurt, but you could have made the decision to go around many times prior to. And it just doesn't.
29:05
Bobby Doss
It never seems to be the right thing. So I think the point is you have the chance to stack the deck in your favor on the takeoff at the hold short line as soon as the wheels come off the ground. I think I've shared it, but one of the times where my stomach rolled over and I got, you know, you're in the air and you get real nervous, like something's going wrong. I probably had three or four of those happening. I was in the plane with someone riding with me in the co pilot seat. I was piloting command. We took off. Everything seemed normal. Climbed to about 900ft. We turned right to head towards the practice area. And as soon as we start turning right, there was this. And I was like, oh, my God.
29:51
Bobby Doss
And I did not know where it was coming from. It was kind of coming from the lower left side of the fuselage. I'm thinking the wheel strut is hanging off the plane and just swinging. Of course, your mind doesn't go to simple things, Wally. It goes to. The plane is deteriorating in real time. And I asked the copilot if they could see anything, and they couldn't see anything. And it's. When you level off, then there is noise. And when you turn, bank to the right a little bit, There was a lot of noise. I'm thinking, this cannot be good. We got to go back. And funny thing, the tower wasn't open. This was so the tower wasn't open. I couldn't even coordinate with the tower to help me get back around. I was gonna do it on the common traffic frequency.
30:34
Bobby Doss
Blood pressure's going up. It turns out it was the seat belt hanging out the door. And it was very frustrating because that. You can't let that just beat the plane to death. But it was calming to know that it was only a seatbelt hanging out the door. But we made the decision to turn around, land, fix the problem and go forward. But there's no reason to continue that risk, create more of a problem, possibly.
31:03
Wally Mulhern
Right.
31:04
Bobby Doss
And I think that as good pilots, as pilots that are always learning, as pilots who always want to better, I think we can stack the deck in our favor every stage along the way. I'm not as Frequent of a flyer as I used to be, but I've committed that I'm going to start flying a lot more real soon. My son goes to Arkansas. I want to go to Fayetteville soon. And all I can think about is I'm even thinking about going, how am I going to spend all that time? How can I use every downtime second to prepare for what's coming? Going to a new airport. I've never been to the Fayetteville airport. I got to learn a lot. And every downtime second in that flight, I'm going to continue to try and stack the deck in my favorite and become a better pilot.
31:50
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know that the scenario about the seat belt, you know, when you first start telling the story, right off the bat I said, okay, the seat belt was out of, at the door. There's, there's those of us who have done it and there's those of us who will do it. I think, I think what, you know, what I've Learned in 36 years is when something is going wrong, the first place I need to look is in the mirror and figure, okay, what did I do wrong? Because most of the time it is something I've done wrong. It's something I forgot. Oh gee, I forgot to turn that on or, or whatever. But, but look there first and you know, have a plan that's, that's a great learning experience. The, the seatbelt making that noise.
32:50
Wally Mulhern
Another thing is what happens if the door pops? You know, you get a door that opens. Are we going to reject a takeoff for it? I'm kind of the school of thought of, no, I'm not going to reject the takeoff. Now if I'm doing less than 20, would I?
33:08
Bobby Doss
Says the man that does a V1 call out every time he. Almost a little different. Different, different experience.
33:15
Wally Mulhern
Well, our policy is if a cockpit window comes open that we continue and we come around and you know, it's probably our policy because it's probably happening.
33:28
Bobby Doss
Probably, no question.
33:31
Wally Mulhern
And I, I know of an airplane that went off the Runway all because of a door. The, the door popped open and it, there's different noises that you hear. If it's winter time, you know, you're going to feel cold air. There's just different sensations that you're not used to. So.
33:56
Bobby Doss
Yep. I think, I think it's a great example of just one little risk that continues to grow in a stack of things that could make your outcome different than better. And you should be always analyzing that. Every little stage of the flight. You can be doing something to stack it in your favor.
34:17
Wally Mulhern
For sure. Yeah. And you know, if you've listened to the podcast enough, you know that every check right. I ever do, we're going to talk about an electrical system failure. You know, one thing that I always bring up to people is, you know, because I'll ask what we're going to lose if we lose have an electrical system failure. And, and people can go through and get most of the big stuff, but the one thing that almost everybody misses is you're going to lose the intercom system. And when's the last time you flew in an airplane without the intercom? And a significant number of my applicants will say never. So that might be something to do. Take off that headset and talk to your people in the airplane. Just to show you the. I won't say the difficulty. It's different and it is harder.
35:15
Wally Mulhern
It's not as easy as just talking in the microphone, but it's pretty noisy. So it might be something. Something to do.
35:23
Bobby Doss
You might go horse, but you might learn something that will help you stack the deck in your favor in the future. As always, I would tell everyone to go watch these AOPA videos from the Air Safety Institute. It was high aspirations. And the other one was called Risk Stacking. We'll put the links in the show notes. As always, do everything you can to stack the deck in your favor and stay behind the prop.
35:52
Nick Alan
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.