Bobby and Wally share some excellent tips this week on keeping cool when your plan goes out the window!
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00:01
Nick Alan
Clear prop S73 cranky number two following twin traffic three mile final one trolley bravo makesford in Runway two five going four mile. 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.
00:26
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally?
00:27
Wally Mulhern
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:29
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. This week we're going to talk about a few things that you've experienced lately and I've experienced lately in some training environments and some real world environments. We're going to talk about expecting the unexpected. And I think we'd say it a lot. I'm not so sure. Not seasoned pilots do it a lot, but it's really simple to do if you can put it in your routine to expect the unexpected. And I know a famous quote that a famous podcaster recently came up with and it is, if you expect the unexpected will never be unexpected. That's from Wally Mulhern. And it's pretty simple. But really true, huh?
01:12
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I was just thinking of everyday life, you know, how do we adjust to things? If you're in maybe a public building, maybe an airport, for instance, and you need to go to the restroom and you go, and they're cleaning the restroom. Well, what do you do? You adjust. You go to another restroom and it's no big deal. We do it in life all the time. You're driving from home to wherever and there's an accident and you know about it. So you just alter your route a little bit. We deviate from our plan. We, you know, and we do it. We don't even think about doing it, but we do it all the time. And I think sometimes in flying we get so proceduralized that we struggle with the ability to adjust our procedures.
02:18
Wally Mulhern
And you know, that's a little bit what we're going to talk about today. You know, I ask on instrument checkrides, I ask the applicant when an alternate is required and they will give me the. Well, if you're at your ETA, plus or minus an hour, if the ceiling is below this and the visibility is below this, an alternate is required. And I'll say, yeah, okay, that's good. But when I debrief them, what I tell them is, think of it this way. Think of it as an alternate is always required. Always. I don't care where you're going. If you're going five miles from here and the weather is Beautiful. Think of having alternates now. When is it required to file an alternate? When do we need to tell the FAA what our Plan B is? That's.
03:19
Wally Mulhern
That's the 1, 2, 3 rule that we're all familiar with as instrument pilots, but we always have alternates. You know, I flew a. I flew to New Orleans over the summer and just go over there for the day. And it was a beautiful day. It was hot, but there was not a cloud in the sky. We were going VFR, and I think went up to about 11,500ft to get nice and cool. And, you know, I took off. I put in my 5:30. I put direct kn. And it told me that were 252 miles away and was going to take an hour and 10 minutes or whatever, hour 30, whatever. But in my mind, I was going from Houston to Beaumont to Lake Charles to Lafayette to Baton Rouge to New Orleans. I wasn't going direct New Orleans.
04:14
Wally Mulhern
And as I would fly past Beaumont, I'd keep Beaumont in the rearview mirror, and then I would see where Lake Charles was. And then in my mind, I'd say, okay, I'm closer to Lake Charles, so if there's an issue, I'm going to Lake Charles and so forth along the way. So that trip direct to New Orleans really, in my mind was not direct to New Orleans.
04:42
Bobby Doss
And that's definitely a professional pilot's mindset, right? I think I probably have that mindset more at night. You know, I think going back to your alternate comments or kind of teachings, it's. It's because we fly so local, right? And the short hops are what I think get us in a bad habit of not thinking bigger picture. Your, Your global flying makes you have to think about it very differently. And I think that's the way we should all be thinking about it. As you said, five miles, we can still come back. If we're two miles from this airport and three miles to the other airport, there's a problem. The two miles right behind me is a lot better than the three miles in front of me. So we should all always be thinking that way.
05:27
Bobby Doss
Would I feel the same way if I was going to New Orleans the way you were? Probably not. But I would know where those places are. But I bet your mind's working a thousand miles an hour, going, I'm exactly halfway between Beaumont, Houston. What am I going to do now? My plans change. Now I'm going to Beaumont because that's the way you've Been trained for a long time. It's just second nature to you, but something that we should all put into our quiver to use as aids to help us be safer pilots to expect the unexpected.
05:58
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, absolutely. You know, with, you know, when we, with the airline, when we fly over water, it's called etops. Etops which stands for Extended Twin Engine Operations. And it's not really over water, it has to do with distance from an airport. So we, you could fly etops over the middle of South America for instance, but in general we think of it as over water. And when we, you know, I do a lot of flying to Hawaii, as most of you know who've listened. We have a defined point in space and we. It's called our critical point. And back in the day, many years ago it used to be called the ETP or Equal Time Point.
06:57
Wally Mulhern
It's the point basically halfway between our two alternate airports which say maybe let's say you're going from Houston to Honolulu and let's say we're hitting the coast over Southern California, Louisiana may be an alternate and Maui may be alternate on the other end. So we will have a defined point in space, you know, a lat long and that will be our critical point. And it is the exact halfway point in time which in still air theoretically would be the same, would be equal distance but with winds it'll be different. So we know, and we display it on our, you know, our map display, we display it on our electronic flight bag or iPad. And so we know that we have not crossed our critical point yet.
07:59
Wally Mulhern
So it gives us some situational awareness to where if we had a critical problem it would be quicker to turn around and go back or maybe we're past that, it would be quicker to continue. So you know, there's some situational awareness that we get flying over water because your options are much more limited.
08:25
Bobby Doss
The. And I guess you could have two of those on a segment as well, right? You could be flying somewhere and have a suitable airport two and a half hours away and then another suitable airport two and a half hours away, you might have two of those hurdles that you're watching or tracking.
08:42
Wally Mulhern
Oh yeah. Going ok. It's not unusual for us to have, you know, for every two alternates you will have one critical point. So I think the most I've ever had was maybe seven alternates going. Either it was going over tokyo from San Francisco I believe and we, I don't know, the routing was Strange because they had volcanoes going off up north. So. But anyway, we had quite a few ETOPS alternates. So we had, you know, seven alternates would mean six critical points. So if you're between these two airports, okay, our closest alternate is here. And so it's, it's. I'm not going to quite say it's defined for you, but, you know, it's almost, almost.
09:40
Wally Mulhern
I mean, there's always the ability to say, okay, I, I know this is closer, that one's two minutes farther, but I have a compelling reason to go to that airport. Maybe the weather has changed and something like that. Right.
09:58
Bobby Doss
Well, those of you that have listened to the show or have spent any time with me in the last two weeks, you know, I'm a jet pilot now, and I think that as I was going through my jet type rating training and really just the prep work up to it, the mindset changed, you know, from the memory items to the things that you have to understand and know from starting the engine. And we think about a few simple systems when you're starting a prop plane to some more complex things in the jet. It's at a type rating class and you've been to many more than me, Wally. There's not too many normal flight legs. Would you agree with that?
10:40
Wally Mulhern
Definitely agree with that, yeah.
10:42
Bobby Doss
So when you first go to your first sim in the type rating course, they pretty much give you a little heads up, like, we're going to have one bad start, you're going to have one good start, and you're going to have something happen on takeoff and they kind of walk you through it, right? Well, you learn really quick, like after the first one, that you can't have a bad start after a good start. So the bad start is always going to come on. Which start do you think?
11:09
Wally Mulhern
The first start.
11:11
Bobby Doss
So every time you go to start the engine, you are ready for it to fail. It's going to be a different failure every time, but you know it's going to fail. And there's different procedures and memory items depending on what's failing and how to resolve it or how to take care of it and then what you're supposed to do afterwards. So you get really used to expecting the unexpected in a typewriting course like that. And I think it was good for me as a flight school owner to see that and think about the way we teach how to expect the unexpected, because we go through a lot of the teaching process of how to go from A to B, how To navigate, how to land those sorts of things.
11:50
Bobby Doss
But I think in the grand rigor of stuff, we don't really brief what we're going to do if we have a problem while we're still on the roll, right? We do. But do we do it every time? Man on a type rating course. When you're going to take a check ride in a jet, you have to say what you're going to do on the ground. Wheels up, Runway remaining. No Runway remaining 600ft. In a cirrus plan, you got to know that you can pull caps or caps is available. And it just grows and grows. There's like a million of those critical points. That's an exaggeration. There's dozens of those critical points when you take off in the jet and you think about all dozen of them. Because you know you're going to see 12 of those things happen somewhere on that flight. Right.
12:34
Bobby Doss
You're going to see the best start. You're going to see the. Every time you had the bad start, good start happen. The next thing would be something happening on the ground. You go full throttle or thrust to take off as we're supposed to say thrust the takeoff and how many times think the cabin door opens up something?
12:53
Wally Mulhern
Probably a lot.
12:54
Bobby Doss
Yeah.
12:54
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
12:55
Bobby Doss
So then you reject it. And it's interesting tip vision jet. When you pull the throttle, it pitches up because the where the motor sits on the back of the plane. So if you go throttle to idle or thrust to idle, as they want you to say thrust to idle and you haven't hit the brakes, the plane's going to pitch up. And if you're going fast enough, it's enough angle of attack that the jet can come off the ground. How well do the brakes work when the plane's three feet off the ground?
13:26
Wally Mulhern
Not very good.
13:28
Bobby Doss
So they want you and you have to use brakes first, then thrust the idle because you could come off the ground. So you got to slow first, which is, that's hard to do when you've only flown Cessna's. And the first thing you're going to do, anytime something goes rise, pull the throttle. So lots of little things. Nonstop expecting the unexpected. And I've been most excited about not hearing fire, fire for the last two weeks since I've been back. But it does. It challenges me as a guy who's gonna get back in the 182 in a few days and says, okay, how am I gonna brief my departure differently now than I did before I went to this Training because it's very specific. You have to brief a bunch of things and you have to be ready in the cirrus.
14:15
Bobby Doss
You know, it's got an auto land button, it's got a parachute that people can pull. You got a, you got to brief your passengers. Very different about the pressurization, oxygen, all those things that I think we don't think about in these simpler training prop aircraft that I think I'll incorporate some of that when I get in the 182. I don't think it'll be quite as long as it is in the vision jet. But I think the departure briefing is going to be a lot different. Making sure my passengers know what to do if we have to get out of the airplane, it's going to be a little different and I think I'm going to expect the unexpected better than I did prior to my training for sure.
14:54
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. And you know what prompted the idea for this show is my last leg that I flew in a triple seven resulted in a go around just last week. And as I, I think back on my 37 and a half year career, I've probably, I'm thinking I've done five or six go arounds for real at the airline. So about every six to seven years or so I do a go around. And, and I, I joked with my first officer after it was all over with, I said, well, I'm done. I've, I've got less than that. I have less than six years before I'm going to retire so I, I shouldn't have any more go arounds.
15:42
Wally Mulhern
But having said that, you know, at my airline, I, I don't remember when it was Maybe, probably about 10 years ago it became a requirement for us on our approach briefing to brief all the call outs on a go around. And you know, why is that? Well, I, I think it happened because we probably weren't doing great jobs on go arounds. But now, you know, a go around is, it was no big deal. I mean we debrief every landing that we do and when we came in and landed, you know, we completed the parking checklist and I looked over at the first officer, I said, I always start off my debriefings with well, what could we have done differently? And you know, I said what could we have done differently?
16:39
Wally Mulhern
And, and again, maybe a third set of eyes would have seen things differently, but we just kind of looked each other and went, I don't know what we could have done. Differently. I joked that I would have left the autopilot on longer so that the go around would have been an autopilot go around because I had turned it off. We were probably, I'm guessing were about 500ft. There was an airplane ahead of us that landed and they didn't get off the Runway. So it was an ATC directed go around. And so we just went around. And it was funny because tower handed off us off over to approach control. An approach or somebody, some FAA agency will always ask what the reason for the go around was. So we're talking about real world go arounds, not in a training environment.
17:35
Wally Mulhern
And he was very blunt. He just blurted out the name of the airline who didn't clear the Runway in front of us. I'm not going to say that here, but it wasn't my airline. It wasn't, it was a different airline. They said, can you state the reason for the go around? And he goes yeah, so and so. And the controller just said okay. It was kind of funny. I said, well, that was straight to the point, wasn't it? So.
18:04
Bobby Doss
Well, another reflection on my training. You know, most of the activities are probably to get you through the checkride, but the, you do everything in imc, of course. And very often something would happen right as you broke out of the clouds and could see the Runway environment. I've had in that training environment, I had a 747 pull out in front of me. I had a 747 coming down the Runway at me and got directed to go around some. And I think that behavior, it's very different when you do the go arounds that frequent that you're just expecting to do it and when you're expecting to do it, as that was once, wise man said, when you're expecting the unexpected, it's really not that big of a shock once it happens, right? It's not unexpected. And that was really good in that training environment.
18:53
Bobby Doss
And I want to make sure that in my flying environment post training that I continue to keep that in my routine so that I'm really good. Because going around is no big deal when you've done it 14 times in one week. But I could see if you're not thinking it. And so we got in the habit as a class that we just added it to our call out at the final approach fix that were stable and ready and at the final approach fix and that were planning on going around because in our mind we wanted to be thinking we're going around, not that we're going to land. And I think I'll incorporate that a lot moving forward, especially when I'm flying in actual conditions, because it's, it's very likely that I'll be going around, and I want to be ready to go around.
19:38
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. And I will say this. You know, if you watch Pilot debrief our friend Hoover on YouTube, you know, he's, he loves, he has the T shirts that say, aviate, navigate, communicate in that order. And that's what we got to remember. I, I see this a lot on check rides pretty well every, you know, the commercial and private, you're going to do a, A, you know, go around from a balked landing and on an instrument, you're going to do a missed approach. But I, what I see a lot is, I'll say, okay, you know, we'll. We might be at 50ft. I'll say, let's go around. And almost simultaneously, as we're pitching up and adding power, the applicant is on the radio telling ATC that we're going around and, or telling traffic if we're at an uncontrolled airport. And at that point, who cares?
20:43
Wally Mulhern
Who cares? I mean, what behavior or behavior are you going to change of anybody else on the ground? So what, you're going around. You know, if I'm waiting to take off and I see you going around, well, okay, what's the big deal? But, you know, we're. We're talking on the radio before we're getting flaps up, before we're getting carburetor heat off. Maybe, maybe we haven't even gotten full power in there. But it seems like it's something that CFIs are telling their students, oh, my gosh, you gotta tell ATC that you're going around. Well, if it's a tower. They're looking out the window, they see you're going around. So remember to fly the airplane first, navigate second, then communicate.
21:34
Bobby Doss
You're making me have flashbacks, Wally, because I feel like I'm in my training again. The knack that I had was to say, I'm going around on the radio, and I don't know why. And my instructor kept saying, you don't think they can see that you're going around? Just do the right things. Don't try to talk. And it really was kind of halfway through the week in the. Where I might have been struggling with memory items or other things, it all clicked that's what it's about aviating, navigating and communicating. It's so the memory items got so simple for me once I realized, okay, what's the most important thing right now to fly the plane in this emergency situation? Right. And if it's a fire, it's to just get to point.
22:21
Bobby Doss
The memory items are throttle to idle and find a point towards where you want to land. Right. Well, that's aviating and that's navigating. Nowhere in those memory items did it ever say talk to anybody. And I got to a point where I did the aviate navigate. Am I in trouble? Are my passengers in trouble? Now I'm going to communicate. And by doing that, for whatever reason clicked about halfway through the week, my memory items got real basic, real simple. I knew what I was going to do. First I was going to aviate no matter what it was, that never changes in the memory items. And then I was going to navigate, which is kind of hand in hand almost. But then if I was in danger, I probably was going to put my oxygen mask on.
23:05
Bobby Doss
If my passengers were in danger, I was going to probably deploy the oxygen masks for them. And then I was going to follow the checklist and still never communicate with anybody. But it got real easy. And it's funny listening to you as a pro because I was still stuck in that mindset of Memphis tower. I'm going around, makes no sense, did nothing for me or anybody at that airport.
23:29
Wally Mulhern
Right, right. And it just clogs up the frequency. I had a situation a couple weeks ago where we're coming into land at an airport. And it just so happened that the main FBO was at the far end of this long 7,500 foot long Runway. And were coming in and I was, I knew I was going to give the applicant to go around. I don't remember what kind of checkride it was, but it doesn't matter. And so we get down to about 50ft and I say go around. Well, he added power and pitched up. And then I hear tower say to the airplane behind us who he knew was going to this fbo. He said, you know, so and so. I don't remember what kind of airplane was. I believe it was a jet.
24:21
Wally Mulhern
But they said so and so you can roll to the end. The aircraft in front of you is going around. And then my applicant keys the mic to tell him that we're going around. And I thought, well, okay, I guess that's okay. But when we landed, as were debriefing I said, do you remember what tower said? And he did, he quoted it. He said that tower told the aircraft behind him that he could roll to the end because the aircraft in front of him was going around. And I said, well, he knew you were going around, so why were you so all, you know, all prime to have to tell him you're growing out because he just, he knows it. He looks that he saw you.
25:09
Bobby Doss
Well, Wally, some of us, not established pilots feel like we want to do something right so bad that we do something wrong, it's almost detrimental. But we feel like we got to do it right and then we do it wrong.
25:22
Wally Mulhern
Well, you know, I have said to people, you know, sometimes you get in a, a texting argument or an email argument with somebody, sometimes the most powerful thing to say is to say nothing, you know, and I use this in my musical experiences as a drummer in a band. Sometimes the best thing I can play is to not play. And, you know, sometimes you just don't need to say anything.
25:57
Bobby Doss
Often. Easier said than done.
25:59
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
26:00
Bobby Doss
What are some other things that might inhibit us or create the guise of something that was unexpected that we should start planning for or expect to happen?
26:12
Wally Mulhern
Well, I, I, I jotted down a few things here, you know, and I bring this up on a lot of checkrides. You know, we have to talk about systems. So I, I, you know, in the scenario that I'll bring up, we're going from airport A to airport B, and I'll tell the applicant, okay, halfway to airport B, both of us really have to use the bathroom. So we decide to divert to airport C, we'll call it. So we go land at airport C, and this is a really good time to pull out the sectional or whatever we're using to talk about Runway lengths at that airport. If this is an instrument checkride, the approach that we would use, let's pull up the weather at this airport. And oh, by the way, where's the freezing level at this airport? All kinds of things like that.
27:09
Wally Mulhern
And so we'll land it in our scenario. Again, we're still in the briefing room. We're in the oral portion. I'll say, okay, so we land at the airport. You know, Instead of a two hour flight, it's an hour and 15 minute flight. We go into the FBO and they say, hey, boy, there's a really good barbecue place just down the road. We got a crew car. You guys want to go grab some lunch? Yeah. So we go Grab some lunch. We come back, we get in the airplane and you look down and you go, oh my gosh, I left the master switch on. So we got a dead battery. You know, how are we going to handle that? And by and large, most people say, I'm going to walk in the FBO and tell them I got a dead battery.
27:58
Wally Mulhern
And I'm going to, you know, I want them to do a little bit of troubleshooting, figure out how we can proceed. But a lot of people will tell me, yeah, I'm just going to have to call the flight school I got the airplane with and tell them to come get the airplane. And you know, that's not what we're looking for. Most airplanes do have a starting with external power. And you know, we get into all that kind of stuff. You know, another situation is, okay, maybe the airport of our intended fuel stop. And maybe you've, you know, you've mapped this out on foreflight and you've looked at fuel prices and you say, hey, I'm going to go into this really little airport because they have very reasonably priced fuel. So you go in there and you're, you're stretching it.
28:50
Wally Mulhern
You land, you pull up to the fuel pumps and there's a big out of order sign on the fuel pumps. Now what are you going to do? LG I've only got about 35 minutes worth of fuel, so I'm not really legal to go anywhere unless it's five minutes away. So, you know, there's a scenario of, well, maybe that was poor planning, maybe we shouldn't have stretched it. Yeah, we would have saved $18 maybe. But now what's it going to cost you? So, you know, there's a couple type things like that. I mean, you're a power outage away from not being able to get fuel or you're a wreck on the road where the fuel truck couldn't get in to fill up the fuel tank. So, you know, just be prepared for something like that.
29:46
Wally Mulhern
When you're planning out this cross country, do I really want to land with very limited fuel? Another thing is, okay, you're going from point A to point B and you know, the weight of your passenger, well, now your passenger shows up with, with their spouse and so you got another £130 to put on the airplane. Well, what are you going to do?
30:16
Bobby Doss
Yeah, all good things. One, that one that creeped in recently and it was something I overheard was someone said they didn't need to be night current because they were going to leave before dark. You think every. Everybody's always left before dark with their passengers before that.
30:33
Wally Mulhern
That's. That's a great one that really.
30:35
Bobby Doss
I want to stay nightcrer no matter what. Because it would. And it's. It could be just expensive. Right? But imagine you're you fly over to College Station. You think you're going to get off the ground before and get back on the ground before dark. Well, what if something delays the meetings till something happens? Got to have the plane jumped, whatever. And now you and your passenger can't come back because you're not legal to have passengers. Well, you go fly three laps in the pattern there. Cost you an extra $150 of rental time in the plane and then you land, pick up your passenger and fly back. That's just as you said. That could just be poor planning, but that's inexpensive. Poor planning.
31:17
Bobby Doss
Always expect that something like that could happen and try to stay within the confines of the regulations so that you don't have to go make up something like your night currency and stay out in front of all those things. Great show. Great content. My mind's racing with some of the things I need to expect so that it's not unexpected. And that famous quote again from a famous podcaster, is if you expect the unexpected will never be unexpected. Wally Mulhern with that, we'll wrap up the show. As always, thanks for listening and stay behind the Prop.
31:55
Nick Alan
Thanks for checking out the behind the Prop podcast. Be sure to click subscribe and check us out online@bravetheprop.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.