Famed aviation author Paul Craig returns to talk about the 3rd edition of his hit book "The Killing Zone".
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00:01
Behind the Prop Intro
Clear prop S73 Cherokee number two following twin traffic three mile final one trolley bravo makesford in Runway two five going four mile.
00:10
Bobby Doss
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. What's up Wally?
00:26
Wally Mulhern
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:27
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. Always fun to have guests. Always better than just me and Wally talking. We are welcoming back for his fourth show. I believe we have Paul Craig joining us. The author of the Killing Zone, edition one and edition two and soon to be edition three. Welcome back to the show, Paul
00:47
Paul Craig
Bobby and Wally. It is so fantastic to be back with you guys. I appreciate it so much, man.
00:55
Bobby Doss
This all started, I think the first time we ever talked to was Covid and we couldn't even think about being in the same place. We still have never met in person but have talked many times, sent hundreds of emails. I got the most touching email from Paul somewhere. I want to say that was maybe December, if not, it was January. Paul Craig sends an email to about a dozen people and says the book's done, it's in the can. It's going to be released in the next six months or so. I wanted you all to hear from me first that you have been named zone busters. And I was sitting next to my wife and I literally choked up telling her this guy has named me a zone buster. And she's like, is he mad at you?
01:40
Bobby Doss
And I'm like, no, this is a good thing. The author, the author of the Killing Zone puts me on a list of a dozen people and says I am making an impact and I am busting the zone. I am making a difference in the number. And it really was touching. And Wally was on the list. And Paul, I can't tell you, unbelievable thrill to be named. And I'll probably ask you to sign one of your books with my name in it. That's a big deal to me. Really big deal.
02:07
Wally Mulhern
Well, let me tell you my story about that. The morning of that email, I believe we got that email in the evening. But that morning I was administering a checkride and I always say to my applicant, tell me about yourself. You know, and I want to, you know, I want to get to know the person a little bit. And then, you know, maybe I, you know, if they're really into cooking, maybe I'll compare a recipe to a checklist, that kind of thing. So anyway, so this young man was. Was telling me about himself. And he goes, he says, I'm just. I'm just a geek. He says, I really, I love to read. And I said, well, what are you reading right now? And he goes, he says, you probably never heard of it, but maybe you have. It's a book called the Killing Zone.
02:59
Wally Mulhern
I go, killing Zone. Of course I know the Killing Zone. Yes, I do. And so we talked about the book, and that night I went home and got. And received the email. And it's funny, I saw the young man the next day out at the particular flight school, and I said, you'll never guess who I got an email from last night after we talked for 10 minutes about the Killing Zone.
03:24
Paul Craig
Well, you guys truly are providing a service to the aviation community and specifically general aviation pilots. That is a value that you probably don't even realize, and probably you won't realize because, you know, the things you say, the examples you set, are ingrained into people's mind. And they'll remember these things at a time, May not remember how they learned something, but sometime it happens more than we think that in a moment of truth, a word of wisdom is in the back of their head that they heard from you guys that they learned on the podcast. And they don't call you and say, hey, thanks for saving my life last night, Wally. They don't ever do that. So we never really know. But we do know that the accident rates are coming down and flying is safer, and. And that's.
04:18
Paul Craig
There's got to be a reason for that. And you guys are part of that reason. A big part.
04:22
Bobby Doss
Well, I don't know if the list you emailed us is the full list, but I figure you have more than 12 acquaintances, so I still can't believe I'm on that list. But it is humbling and makes me want to work harder, Paul. Makes me want to do more for aviation, and hopefully we'll get to continue to do that for many years to come. So we. We wanted to talk about a bunch of things, but, Paul, you had some questions. We're actually gonna let you host this show and maybe ask the first question here. Fire away.
04:54
Paul Craig
Well, I will. I'm asking both you guys, but. But really, Wally, from his standpoint, as a. As an airline captain, it occurred to me the other day I was talking to some. Somebody who was not in aviation, just a friend of mine, and I mentioned that in the everyday comings and goings of the airline pilots, a captain and a first officer will arrive at an airport and they don't know each other, they've never met. Nevertheless, they sit down and they go to work at the cockpit. And they have excellent communication skills and they have excellent teamwork skills. They're total strangers. And they safely fly this huge airplane through the sky with hundreds of people. And this is a normal thing. And you would think that would be backwards, right?
05:35
Paul Craig
You'd think that they need to work together over time and learn to know, you know, how to finish each other's sentences and that's what would make a good team. But that's just not how the airline schedule works. So it's kind of remarkable. So Wally, how does this work?
05:50
Wally Mulhern
Well, it's really, you know, it goes back to the training, the procedures and sop. Standard Operating Procedures. You know, I may be stereotype right away. I mean, I can, I'll look at the person that I'm flying with and I'll just look at maybe how they wear the uniform. You know, are they wearing the uniform properly? Something as simple as that. And I make note of it. I think, okay, this person doesn't do this. Okay, what else are they not doing that they're supposed to be doing? But by and large, yeah, I mean, we, everything is standardized and the training, you know, the airline training is pretty intense. I mean, it's, I don't know how long it takes. Six weeks, eight weeks, something like that.
06:45
Wally Mulhern
And you, I mean, you got a few days off here and there, but you know, you're very intimate with that book. You're very intimate with the procedures. And I know it, at United Airlines, I mean, day one of training, you were in some sort of a training device. I mean, back in the day, you'd be in a classroom for three to four weeks before you'd ever see an airplane. You'd see pictures of it. But that's not the way it works anymore. I mean, I know when I Transitioned to Triple 7 training, within 90 minutes of meeting our first instructor, were in a cockpit mock up. It wasn't quite a simulator, it was more of a procedures trainer, but were flipping switches and running checklists. And it's kind of a different way of training. It's a lot better, I believe.
07:43
Paul Craig
I'm very relieved because that's almost the answer that I gave my friend. I mentioned standard operating procedures, SOPs, and that's how we're, you know, when you do this, you expect the other one to do that, and it's just that way. But general Aviation. We, you know, we have a similar version of this. I know, Bobby, at your flight school, you work with flight instructors and you'd like for them to have sort of a standard way of doing things. So how do you go about it?
08:09
Bobby Doss
Well, if any of those instructors are listening, they know that's the only thing I think about right now. And they're all a little nervous right now. I was going to say, you know, I only fly single pilot jets, Wally, so I don't have that crew mentality yet. But one day if I get to that, I'll understand that. But I just have to talk to myself when I fly jets. That's just my one jet comment for the day. But, you know, we did come back from Redbird Migration was our last show. We did our live show there and I heard some really cool stuff that a school in the D.C. area is doing to do some standard procedural compliance checks with their flight instructors. And I thought were really close and I thought were doing a lot of really good.
08:53
Bobby Doss
And as I dug into the, to the checking the. Of my. What is happening on some of our maneuvers, I was shocked that there was things that people were calling technique that were really different ways of teaching stuff. And it's frustrating because I don't think there should be that. I don't think that's technique. You can't change the order or use a different acronym for a flow and call that the same procedure. That's not true. I hope they all want to be professional pilots. They all want to fly right seat with Wally. They're not going to get to say different stuff. You know, my joke with pros is if the procedure at Wally's airline is for the first officer to call gear up, three green. I don't think they're allowed to say three green, gear up.
09:43
Bobby Doss
And I bet if they did, their captain would like roll their eyes and write a note down and talk to somebody. I dream of that. And we're going to get there.
09:51
Wally Mulhern
I was going to say gear down, three green.
09:54
Bobby Doss
There you go. Thanks. I'm sure we'll get some posts on social media about that mistake that Bobby made. But you get the point. If it says say it like this, Wally, as a Czech airman, is going to expect a captain that's flying with him to say it exactly right. And the captain's going to expect the first officer to say it right. And I think that's what we all strive to be, not just to be rigid that's what makes us safe. That's everything that's in the procedures at Wally's airline. They're there because something happened that made someone say, we got to do it this way to better.
10:32
Paul Craig
Yeah, that is exactly a great point because, you know, in general aviation we're not regimented. And I have run into situations where I've had pilots and flight instructors sometimes that kind of did a little bit of pushback about SOP because they thought were robbing them of their freedom to do it or their creativity. And so rather than just say do it because I said so, which always falls flat when you do that with your kids, then it's maybe better to explain to them what you just said and that these SOPs are really the product of lessons learned in the past. You know, we don't have to make every mistake. We can actually use the lessons that other people have learned and adopt them through our SOPs, or whatever you want to, or however you want to call them.
11:20
Paul Craig
And so that's really the, I think the thing that is important, that we won't live long enough to make all the mistakes. We've got to learn from others.
11:31
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. And I think as flight instructors, we can do a better job of insisting it from our students. And one thing that's a little bit of a pet peeve of mine is radio phraseology. We are all over the place with what we say. One of the latest is the latest trends in flying at non controlled airports is Cessna 123 Alpha Charlie is taking Runway 18. And I tell my applicant, me, as been flying for a lot of years and a lot of time, I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means when you're taking the Runway. Yeah, well, that's what I'll say. I'll say if some. There have been times where I've, on the radio, I've asked the airplane to bring it back because we really need it. But I don't know if that means you're taking off.
12:28
Wally Mulhern
Does that mean you're lining up and waiting? What does it mean? So, so where did this come from? It's kind of a trendy phrase around here in Houston to say taking the Runway. And the example I use, I say, okay, so if you're down over South America, over the Andes Mountains in the middle of the night, and you're talking to a controller whose native language is Portuguese and speaks just a little bit of English, and you're in the weather over these really high mountains and you have a fire on board and you need to get down. You want to just be very square. You want to stay within the box as far as standard phraseology because you've got many strikes against you. So let's start at this level and start using exact right phraseology.
13:21
Paul Craig
So here's an example of a flight instructor I had once who did not follow a standard operating procedure. He was conducting a simulated engine out exercise. Our standard operating procedure was whenever you're going to demonstrate a loss of an engine that you reduce the throttle to idle, you don't actually shut the engine off. It's running, it's just windmilling at idle. But the airplane now has no power. So it's as if the engine had quit. This one particular flight instructor decided he would do it a different way. He forego the lessons learned. He shut off the fuel valve on a Cessna 152. Now 152 only doesn't have left right both it just has off on. He shut it off. To further complicate the situation, he, for some reason he felt like he needed to make this demonstration over a lake. So he.
14:18
Paul Craig
They maneuver, I suppose into a position so they can, if they really had to land or ditch or something like that, they would at some point, I don't know how high. The instructor decided that this was enough of the demonstration. So he turns the fuel valve back on, but the fuel doesn't get there to the engine immediately. And S152 doesn't have any electric fuel pump, so the fuel doesn't get up there in a big hurry. So the engine didn't start. And it's getting lower. And the engine doesn't start. It's getting lower. And they hit the water. They hit the water. When they hit the water, that's when the student pilot informed the flamster that he didn't know how to swim.
14:56
Wally Mulhern
Oh my gosh.
14:57
Paul Craig
The water's coming into the airplane. Somehow they both get out and they're hanging on to the wing, the trailing edge of the wing. Fortunately, a couple of fishermen were nearby and saw this whole thing. Now their engine did start and they were racing to the scene. They get there and they haul the guys into the boat as the plane sinks below the water. And so we sent another instructor over there to the lake to get him. And the student had called his parents, told him what had happened. And so the parents actually arrived at the flight school before the student and the instructor arrived back. And so when they arrived there, the parents were so grateful that this flight instructor had saved the life of their son and just gushing and so forth and so on.
15:54
Paul Craig
So finally, I had the chance to bring the flight instructor back into my office for a private discussion. And I asked him what possibly went wrong. And that's when he told me that he had turned off the fuel. And he's kind of making it sound like it was the airplane's fault. So this flight instructor was quickly an unemployed flight instructor, okay, because he didn't follow our SOPs. The insurance company dragged the lake. I don't know what that means exactly, but they were trying to find the airplane, and they couldn't find it. And so they settled with us and they paid us for the airplane, although it was a shipwreck now, and that should be the end of the story.
16:34
Paul Craig
But it wasn't, because two years later, a guy by the name of Dr. Michael Baden, who you might remember, had a television show on HBO called Autopsy, and he is a forensic pathologist who's made some famous discoveries. And so he called me and said, by the way, we're going to go get your airplane out of the lake. And I said, well, first of all, it's not my airplane. It's a shipwreck. And he said, but why do you want my airplane out of the lake? He said, well, he was working on a case where somebody had discovered an airplane underwater with some human remains in the plane, and nobody knew how long he had been there.
17:12
Paul Craig
So he was going to bring my airplane up because they knew exactly how long my plane had been underwater and compare the two to see, you know, what deterioration of the metal or the plastics or whatever, to see if the plane that was the mystery plane had been in the water longer or shorter than our plane. And I said, well, you're not going to find it. Because they tried and they never got it. And he said, oh, no, we'll get it. And in about two weeks. In about two weeks, he called me, said, well, we found your airplane. And I said, okay, when you bring it to the service, at least take the sticker that has my school's logo on the tail and peel that off. And so they brought it to the surface. I don't know exactly how they did that with the.
17:50
Paul Craig
How the outcome of their investigations took place. But the student pilot, in that particular example, he sadly stopped flight training. He today is an associate operations director for International airport. And after Dr. Baden was finished with it, he gave the propeller to the guy, and he's got it in his office now. All that's to say if the guy had just followed standard operating procedure, we would never had this story. The people would not have been in danger because those guys really were risking their life, especially man that couldn't swim. And if those fishermen hadn't been there, we would be telling a different story. So this is, this, you know, when we talk about these things, these lessons learned are passed on through various ways. And one of those is SOPs.
18:39
Bobby Doss
So Paul, you know, we've talked a lot about your first two editions. Killing Zone. The third edition is going to be released sometime this summer in the year 2025. What, what drove you to take another look or do another set of dates? The work you do is awe striking. It's not a simple task. I, I, I am shocked. Tell me, tell me and Wally, what's the plan or why you did it and what's, what have you learned on part three?
19:08
Paul Craig
You know, I, I didn't know that there would ever be a part three. I didn't, you know, wouldn't it be nice if there hadn't been any accidents and we didn't need to any part three. But, but the third edition is going to cover the years of 2012 through 2023. A 12 year period. That's about the same amount of time that's covered in the second one. Most of the time when you do a second edition or a third edition of something, the editor, the publishers would like to see that it would be about a 10 or 15% difference in the two. Well, this is about 85 or 90% different because everything in this new edition has happened since the last edition. And so many different things are new challenges to us these days that weren't challenges or that we even thought about.
19:52
Paul Craig
I mean, I don't remember talking about the possibility of laser strikes, you know, in the 90s or the 2000s, but that's a thing now. And so there's a lot of things have changed. So that's what really came about. I did switch publishers. I had done 10 books with McGraw Hill and had a wonderful experience with those folks. A lot of the editors and publishers that I worked with had moved on or retired or whatever. And I'm the kind of guy that likes to get to know people I'm working with and operate on a handshake, that kind of a thing. And actually McGraw Hill was kind of getting out of the business anyway, so I asked them to release me from the contract because they had the rights of all the future editions. And they did.
20:38
Paul Craig
And so I quickly was able to shift over to aviation supplies and academics, ASA, which is ASATofly.com because Greg Robbins is a very good friend of mine and he's there. And so he was excited about being able to move forward with the new edition. Of course, we stayed with the same title and I know always have this issue with the title. It's not the kind of title to the Killing Zone that you would lay out on a coffee table maybe, or Wally or Bobby would put in the counter for new pilots to see. But it is supposed to be shocking, it's supposed to be abrupt, it's supposed to grab you by the shoulders, especially new private pilots, new sport pilots, low time pilots, and say, guys, this really can happen to anybody.
21:31
Paul Craig
An accident can take place and none of us, no matter what our experience is or years or flight time in our logbook, are immune. In those 12 years, I wrote down some numbers so I would get them right. There was 12,406 general aviation airplane accidents. I didn't look at helicopters or balloons, any other categories, just airplanes. So that's like 1,000 a year or about three a day during those 12 years. But here is, I guess, the good news. Of those, only 17.5% were fatal accidents, meaning that 85, 82.5% were survivable, with most of those having no injuries or very minor injuries to the pilot or passengers. So that comes out to 8,000, 915 survivors. You got to figure since this was the most recent group of numbers, some of those survivors are listening to us right now.
22:35
Paul Craig
And I think that probably when you think about it, they're very good teachers. Somebody might argue, well, because they were in an accident, that's evidence that they're not very good pilots. But I would argue the opposite. These people no longer believe that it cannot happen to them. Right. They understand. They understand. But clearly that. And they weren't sloppy pilots. They weren't, you know, doing something that was reckless for the most part. It's usually something as simple as a simple mistake or a judgment call or they let outside pressures, that's the thing that always gets us in trouble. They let outside pressures influence our decision making. What I learned, See if you think this is interesting, what I Learned in the 12 year period, which day of the year had the most accidents of any of the days of the year? What do you think?
23:32
Paul Craig
I'm going to say Saturday. Saturday. Is there a specific Saturday, a specific date?
23:39
Bobby Doss
Okay, so I would say Christmas or Thanksgiving because of family pressure to get there.
23:44
Paul Craig
So the answer is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Christmas holiday seems to be a little bit more stretched out. But you know, how many people have to work on that Wednesday? And then they go to the airport and trying to get to see family that night. And the pressure is immense to get there. If they were going to fly, to go, just go, you know, fly some place to get a hamburger. And the weather was low and the visibility was bad, they wouldn't go. There's no question. But when the family's counting on them, they go, they shouldn't. And that. And so those outside pressures really build up and it really showed in the numbers this time.
24:17
Bobby Doss
Wow, that's another good story. I think Wally and I always joke around about if your fiance or your soon to be fiance is waiting for you in Brenham, Texas, which is about 30 minutes from here, and you're supposed to go fly and ask her to marry you and you got a photographer there and your family's gonna show up. I mean, I can't imagine the immense amount of pressure to get there. Itis that I would have in that situation. So that Thanksgiving story is going to be my new example of for kids, you got to go. You feel like, I got to go.
24:49
Paul Craig
I think you have to back up in time. I think you got to make your go, no go decision several days in advance. Right? You can't wait till the last minute when you have no choice to make your decision because the pressure is very high. It's not like, oh, these guys are weak, they should have been smarter than that. No, anybody's pressure that we deal with can be immense. And you think, you know, I've done this before, maybe got away with it, I'll just get away with it again. So you can see that a lot of this is not just they don't know how to fly the plane. Stick and rudder skills can be strong. It's the decision making skills that seem to be the biggest issue.
25:27
Wally Mulhern
You know, that's fascinating data, Paul. I mean, I, I remember it's, I, I shouldn't say funny, but it's ironic that you say that. I remember getting a phone call on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving from a number up in Toronto, Canada, and I didn't answer it and they left a long voicemail and somebody I'd given a checkride to was involved in a, an aircraft accident. And yeah, it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you know, to jump on the title of your book, you know something that when I do the flight portion, the briefing portion for the flight of a checkride. You know, we've done the ground, we've done the oral, and now we're about to head out to the airplane. We do a little briefing. I tell my applicants we have three goals today. Number one goal, don't die. Number two goal, complete the flight.
26:25
Wally Mulhern
Number three goal, have some fun. I say, if we get all three, it's a great day. If we get two, it's a good day. If we get one, we live to live another day. And I actually, I don't know, a couple months ago, I was playing around on the Internet and I did a, a search about me and reviews of me giving checkrides came up and that came up and everybody. There was one person who was a little bit taken back that I would have the nerve to say, don't die. But everybody else kind of came to my defense. They said, well, that is the ultimate goal.
27:03
Paul Craig
I've had student reviews that were kind of harsh at the time, but then that same person would call me back later, 10 years sometimes and says, you know, I blasted you on that review, but, you know, I understood now what you were going for. You know, I was. Because sometimes I work with 18 year olds, but I'm training 25 year olds, but they're not 25 yet. They haven't figured it out yet. But yeah, the actual name, the zone killing zone was. I didn't know what that was. When I did this original work back in the first edition, what I was trying to do is trying to figure out was there some kind of correlation between the number of flight hours a person had on the day of their accident.
27:45
Paul Craig
And so what started coming up is that pilots that had between about 50 and 350 did have a higher accident rate, not just the raw number of accidents, because you could think, well, of course there's gonna be more pilots with 300 hours in an accident because there are more pilots with 300 hours. Right. So you have to calculate and normalize the data to some kind of baseline. And the baseline that's ordinarily used in our industry is the accidents per 100,000 flight hours. That's what the Air Safety foundation uses. That's what the Bureau of Transportation Statistics uses, what the FAA uses. So that's what I used to try to figure this out, what was the actual rate. And so that bump, that spike in the rate between 50 and 350, student pilots are very safe.
28:38
Paul Craig
So I got to figure that's the influence of a flight instructor is why they're that safe. But as soon as they get cut loose and now they're on their own and they're their own pilot in command, they're making their own decisions. You don't have a CFI giving you veto power. And that's when we start to see that jump. So in the second edition, I want to know, does this thing still exist? I mean, is it still there? And it turns out that it was. And in the third edition it still is. The good news is there are fewer accidents in total. That's, that's the big, that's the takeaway, that's the good news. But that still, that zone between 50 and 350 is, still does still exist. And that's what we're all attacking. That's, we're going after the zone to eliminate that at some point.
29:26
Paul Craig
That's why you guys are the zone busters.
29:29
Bobby Doss
So are the accidents all the same? You know, one of the better stories in the first or second edition was something I think we've all dealt with is the person flies at night, visibility starts to go down, they get caught, it's too late. Is it, is it still flying into unknown IMC? Is it other stuff?
29:49
Paul Craig
Well, it's interesting. VFR into IMC was always the number one accident cause. But in the last 12 years it's not. It has been replaced by loss of control. It still happens. People fly into IMC conditions when they're either not current or not rated or both. And it still creates problems. But loss of control is now cited more often. Now, you could argue if you fly into a cloud and you get spatially disoriented and you lose control, isn't that a loss of control accident? Yes, but I separated it out. The loss of control accidents that I defined were not imc. They're just you got too slow either on takeoff or landing or maneuvering or somewhere. And so there were efforts in the last 12 years to make it easier, for instance, to add angle of attack indicator on an airplane.
30:47
Paul Craig
Adding a device on an airplane after manufacture used to be very difficult and expensive to do. And it was a barrier to a safety device. So it's not solved. It's still issue, but that's something that's better. But looking at categories, so many things were different. Pilot distractions is an issue and a category now. And by that I mean pilots distracting themselves with electronic devices. And it doesn't have to be electronic flight bags, although that's part of it. It can be taking a selfie, it can be posting on social media from flight. It can be several. There were several accidents, completely avoidable, where people were distracting themselves with these other devices and kind of violating the long standing principle that when you fly, you got to be present in the airplane and that's your full attention.
31:43
Paul Craig
You're piloting command and you got to leave those other things, the bills you have to pay, all those kind of things have to be left on the ground. And apparently that is not being honored as much in the second edition. I did a very poor job of addressing anything having to do with mental health issues. Now mental health is an issue in all of society. All people and pilots are people. So you would imagine that there'd be mental health issues among pilots as well. And that has become a very big issue in the last 12 years. I think I might have spent a page on stress in the last one, which was not very adequate for the problem. And so now there's been a lot of movement, especially with FAA and medical examiners to try to.
32:39
Paul Craig
The issue has always been if I have an issue or if I need to take medication or these things, am I going to lose my medical, Am I going to lose my whole career? Am I going to lose my passion for flying? So they stay quiet, they don't seek any help because they're afraid that would be more problematic. We're getting to the point where that's not as problematic. Now. I try to go into detail a lot about what are the changes and what do the airmen's medical examiners do these days. So that is another issue. Another. This is not a category of accidents. It's just the fact that used to be home built airplanes were kind of a fringe of aviation. Right.
33:19
Paul Craig
I have a very good friend of mine, Mike Williams, and he was building an airplane in his garage for like a decade. You know, he was always working on it, he's tinkering with it. You know, it was just, it was. He had this, you know, this love affair with getting this thing done. And he says, one guy was walking down the street and looked into his garage and says, is that what I think it is? And he said, I don't know, what do you think it is? Well, it was an airplane in his garage. Well, last year there were more experimental amateur built, home built airplanes, single engine airplanes built than there were single engine airplanes manufactured by the legacy manufacturers. So that's not a fringe anymore. That's a thing, that's a big part of aviation that we should address and talk about it.
34:12
Paul Craig
They're not more dangerous. Their Accidents are not greater. They face the same challenges as anybody else. But it's a new category, I guess. Drones, artificial intelligence, laser strikes. These are all things we wouldn't even consider to be something to worry about or have an accident cause over in past years. But all these things are on us now. And, and that's really what drove me to think about doing this third edition. Because, you know, these are things we've not covered yet. It's, it's new. Things are moving faster than we can write about, certainly going faster than we can regulate. So getting the knowledge out there and understanding what we're up against is really important.
34:57
Bobby Doss
Yeah. One of the things that is a big pet peeve of mine and I see it every day at the fly school. It's somebody who sticks their iPad on the side window and they lose about 33% of the vision that they have. And you think you're a VFR pilot. The first letter stands for visual. You need as much visual as you can get. I'm sure it's not a category, but surely somebody's been hurt because they couldn't see because of their, their Audi, their device in front of them.
35:26
Paul Craig
Well, they're, you know, mid air collisions continue to be a problem. Wally talked about it earlier and is that a contributing factor? Sometimes you just don't know. But you got to figure it's something to think about.
35:41
Bobby Doss
Well, Paul, I love talking to you. You got more stories to share. What else can you tell us? Give us something fun, give us something to end on strong.
35:49
Paul Craig
How about something that's a little lighter and has a more happier ending? There you go. Well, I work with a lot of college students and I had this guy in our syllabus. We had a requirement for them to fly 100 nautical miles to an airport that had an operating control tower. So he picked himself out on a class D airspace that was 100 miles away. It also happened to be his hometown and his parents lived there. So his plan was to fly down in the afternoon, have his parents pick him up and go home, get a home cooked meal and then fly home in the evening and satisfy a night cross country requirement from the syllabus. And so the day came and the weather was fantastic. And you know, this guy was looking forward to this because he's a college student.
36:40
Paul Craig
So he'd been living off of ramen noodles and going to the laundromat. So he was looking forward to this dinner. And he also threw some of his dirty clothes into a duffel bag. And threw it in the back of the plane. So he flies down, he, his parents are waiting for him. So they go home, they have a wonderful dinner, mom does the laundry, they have a great time. So the sun goes down and it's time for him to fly back. So they drive back out to the airport and the parents standing there on the fence looking as their son does the pre flight waves and taxis out and you know, they're proud parents as they watch their son take off. They get back to the car and the duffel bag full of the laundry is still in the back seat.
37:28
Paul Craig
They have forgotten to take the laundry. Okay, so the mother does what mothers do, right? She walked down about 30 yards to the control tower and she pushes the control tower call box button and they say, control tower, what can we do for you? And she says, well, my son just took off in that little blue airplane just a minute ago and he forgot his laundry, so could you tell him to come back and pick it up? Now the only reason I know what happened next is because there were several other pilots on the frequency who overheard what's going to take place and they were more than happy to report back to me, I'm sure. Okay, so I don't exactly remember the specific call sign, so let's call it 1234 Alpha just so we have a number.
38:21
Paul Craig
Okay, so the tower calls and says, cessna three four Alpha, request that you make a 180 degree turn and return to the airport. Now if you're the pilot, you know, what do you think? That's about it. Did you do something wrong? Did somebody see something, you know, wrong with the airplane? Am I in trouble, you know, what's going on? So he called back and said, okay, roger that, I'll make a 180. What, what is the reason I need to come back? And the controller said, well, your mother's down here with your underwear and she wants you to come by and pick it up. Now I've spent, I've never been a controller, but I've spent hundreds of hours with air traffic controllers and they have a very, you know, difficult, challenging job. Very few times do they ever get to have any fun.
39:17
Paul Craig
But this particular controller took this opportunity to have a little fun. So he changed the call sign from Cessna three Four Alpha to Underwear Three Four Alpha and use that call sign the rest of the way. He told Underwear Three Four Alpha to enter a report left downwind for Runway 27. So he flies back, he's entered. So now the guy's thinking, well, I'm supposed to report back, you know, what calls. So he's going underwear Three four Alpha downwind, all right? So he lands, he runs over. I don't know what conversation he had with his parents, but it must have been like something. Mom, you can't tell the controller that I left my underwear. So he probably wasn't on the ground more than about 10 or 12 minutes. Throws the duffel bag now with the clean laundry into the back seat and taxis out.
40:14
Paul Craig
Now, in the time that he was on the ground, those pilots that had overheard the previous conversation with the new call sign, some of them had landed and, you know, gone in. Others had flown, you know, out of range. So I got to think that maybe everybody on the radio frequency right now hadn't heard the previous conversation. Now, the controller did use Cessna 34 Alpha as the guy taxied out. And when he was ready to take off, the tower says, 34 Alpha, you're cleared to take off. Verify your underwear now. Anybody else listening on the frequency would have thought that was really weird, right? Why does the tower need to know that? I don't think we ever let that guy forget his underwear flight.
40:58
Wally Mulhern
Oh, that's great.
40:59
Bobby Doss
That would be one that would stick with you for a while. No question for sure. Wow. I wish, I wish we had time for more stories. Great as always, Paul, to have you on the show. I can't wait to get my copy of the Killing Zone, third edition. I will be asking for another autograph.
41:15
Paul Craig
It'll be out and asa2fly.com will have it's when the time comes, awesome.
41:20
Bobby Doss
The second it gets released, we're going to pump it out on the show over and put QR codes and links in the show notes. Whatever we can do to help. It's a great, great concept, great book. And everybody should read or listen to that book for sure. It will possibly save your life. As always, Paul, thanks for being on the show. And if you're flying and you're a pilot, don't forget, stay behind the prop. Fly safely. 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.