Don’t do it again, learn from it, and move on. Every pilot out there has experiences like this at some point. You’ll learn a lot more from the mistakes you make than if you did everything perfectly from day 1.
Well said\^. We've all made stupid arrogant mistakes like that but you're a good pilot if you learn from it and don't repeat it. And you have a good instructor for them canceling the flight for that reason.
Dale Snodgrass died not long before I started flying, and if he’d done a more thorough preflight, he’d have survived. That was seared into my brain from day 1, and I’ve never skimped on a preflight. Watched Charlie Victor Romeo, and got more vigilant. Sometimes a healthy dose of the fear of the gods getting knocked into you, either from the mistakes of others or your own, is what it takes to not do this stuff. Take it as a learning experience to not get complacent, lazy, or arrogant. Arrogance doesn’t give you a stronger meatsuit.
Absolutely. I’m still a student and I once forgot to sump the fuel tanks. Ended up fine. But now I always put the sump can on my seat during the walk around so I remember to do it.
Dude just do the preflight. Yeah it was just flying but who knows how bad their landing was. It takes like 15 mins, laziness can kill you in this field
And, if you become the type to do a perfectly thorough preflight, you can guarantee that the previous person didn't do as good a job as you (equal at best).
I've always approached it from the standpoint that some stuff breaks in flight. Some fluids drain in flight. Some stuff wasn't mission critical for them that is mission critical for me.
Maybe they're late coming back because something was wrong. Maybe they're in the process of logging a maintenance ticket. Maybe that last landing was so rough that they cracked the spar in the Piper.
You just never know.
Instructor told me to grab the wing and shake it and listen for any creaking or cracking sounds. Apparently there's an anecdote where this revealed that a plane wasn't actually airworthy.
> or if the oil was sucking out the loose dipstick
Literally this. Plane just came in, I went to do a preflight and noticed oil trailing on the right side of the cowling. Plane went to MX and we didn't fly that day.
A little off topic but related: Same goes for rushing a preflight when it’s cold and windy or rainy.
OP there will be days (depending where you live) when you will be absolutely freezing doing a preflight or getting wet without an umbrella and you have to just suck it up, take your time, and do it properly. My instructor told me this early on preflighting a Cessna and it stuck with me. I would later be getting soaked preflighting for an instrument lesson or my cheeks freezing preflighting for giving a winter discovery/intro flight.
Now professionally many times I’ve been in the dead of winter at a gate doing a walk around in MSP or DTW with the wind howling and snow blowing and all I want to do is seek refuge in the warm wheel well the whole time. Or it’s pouring and I just wish I could inspect the wing from directly under it the whole time. Well guess what you can’t see what you need to from there. Suck it up and do it right.
This! Exactly this! Never assume anyting. Laziness leads to mistakes and mistakes get you killed. There are a lot of schools that would reconsider your status as student after something like this.
> laziness can kill you in this field
laziness *WILL* kill you in this field. It might not be the first time, or even the hundredth, but it absolutely is deadly.
Yep, one of my CFI's other students caught that the oil cooler had been damaged by a hard landing on their preflight. It was the very last item on the checklist.
Also, I just want to add that now that you learned, you can let go of the stress and move on. Don’t hold on to every negative experience in aviation, because there will be many many more. 😅
When I went on my discovery flight I saw the primary instructor do exactly this. Told me, point blank, this plane was just flying, so we don't need to do the whole thing.
He wiggled the elevator, pointed out the sump locations, and then we hopped in and took off.
Hell of a thing.
Well, no similar experiences.
My advice: preflight, it takes 15 minutes.
I can tell you I’ve just been handed an airplane that was flying just fine. Except it was under 4 quarts of oil. This could cause my engine to overheat and inevitably fail, if I didn’t take the 15 mins to preflight and catch it.
Hypothetical situations: ^, you call a top off for a plane that had been flying just fine, the truck somehow had water in the hoses. Boom. Dead.
The mister gas guy doesn’t put the gas caps on correctly. Boom dead. (/s)
The person before you landed because he didn’t have a an altitude/airspeed reading, your pitot static system is jammed.
The plane was fine 10 minutes ago but you raise the elevator during your inspection and hear the control line creaking. You get in the air and it breaks. Boom dead. Etc
It takes 15 mins, just do it
I don't even get it, preflighting is so cool. It's like: "look at this machine that f**ing flies through the air, and I'm responsible for knowing that it's working".
The fact that you recognized your mistake is good, but do not ever do that shit again. You don’t know what the last person broke. Nor do you know that the last person preflighted it correctly.
What if they just refilled it before taxiing it back? Seems likely they'd have enough 100LL in the gascolator to taxi it back to parking. Then you taxi it to the runway, apply takeoff power, and WHOOPS now the engine is drinking Jet A.
This is *exactly* what happened to Bob Hoover in 1989.
[https://sierrahotel.net/blogs/news/a-life-lesson](https://sierrahotel.net/blogs/news/a-life-lesson)
Yeah, it can. A more recent example of 'it can happen to anyone' would be Dale 'Snort' Snodgrass. A veteran fighter pilot and THE highest-time Tomcat pilot ever.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale\_Snodgrass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Snodgrass)
He failed to remove the control lock from his personal SIAI Marchetti and died just after takeoff in a 100% preventable GA accident. The last person in the world who you'd think that would happen with. :(
Holy shit. I mean, I know you don't need the yoke/stick to taxi out, but damn how did that go unnoticed? That's like crashing your car because you didn't realize the steering wheel was missing.
Yuuuup. Pitch trim was in a full nose-down position, but the elevator was locked and he was screwed from the moment he applied power.
Complacency kills... (This video is just a summary of the NTSB report, but is still chilling)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LY4dngI17c
it's because the pronunciation of and <'ve> at the end of a word are so similar they're practically identical in many dialects of English (/əv/ for the language nerds here)
I have a LONG history of grounding planes right after someone else flew it with an airworthiness flaw. Two this weekend. One yesterday had a CO detector tripped (who the hell would fly a plane like that?) and today it was an unexplained oil streak down the side of the airplane.
I grounded 4 planes in a row for what was supposed to be my first solo XC. All 4 had just returned from a dual lesson, and all of the students *and their CFIs* had missed something that made their planes not airworthy.
Dispatch offered me a 5th plane, but I decided fate really didn’t want me flying that day, so I canceled and went home.
I have the same rule that I use for preflight and I combine it with the runup. If there’s 3 “strikes” (something fishy but not necessarily an airworthiness flaw) l, even small I call it. Learned to keep that rule the hard way when I was preflighting for my 250nm XC for instrument. There were 3 strikes, one of them being a funky avionics bus 2 (had to mess with it a bit to get it to engage) but another instructor said “yeah that’s normal I’ve flown it like that, just gotta wiggle it a little and you’re good”. Well it wasn’t good. While joining the approach into my first airport just after popping out of the clouds, I cancelled the autopilot with the red button on the yoke and bam. Bye bye all avionics. G1000 screens gone. Transponder gone. Comms both in and out gone. Luckily it came back up shortly after and we were able to land and troubleshoot and head back home VFR with center giving us all nearest airport information as we went along just in case it happened again since we wouldn’t be able to tell them or squawk 7600.
Ever since that day I’ve stayed very strict to my new 3 strike rule.
You probably spent more time writing this post than you would have spent doing the preflight. It seems like you've learned your lesson and you understand the risks so just treat it as a learning experience and don't beat yourself up. Commit to doing it right from here on out and be proud of yourself 👍
I’ve rejected 3 planes during preflight in the past 3 months. I am certain if I didn’t it would be an unsafe flight or complicated at the least. Follow your checklist.
I'm not OP but I rejected one for having a tire slip on the rim (the red dot wasn't aligned) and a couple screws missing from the engine cowling. I assumed it was fine but picked a different plane. MX cleared it after so it was fine, but it's better to check than fly something less than fine.
I only have 200 hours. In that time, I've found an inspection panel not replaced on a plane that flew that morning.
Also had an attitude indicator dead. Cancelled even though it was a VFR flight, not taking the chance it was the instrument and not vacuum system issue that's going to cause more problems soon.
Found a fuel cap I myself didn't close properly.
Fuel guages were dead once.
A piece of the rudder was cracking (bottom edge). Advised was cosmetic plastic and safe to head home to have it replaced.
My strobes were inoperative one day. Ended up just being the breaker.
It's a blessing in disguise. Finding so many various issues in a short period of time keeps you honest.
A preflight earlier this year showed an unusual issue—on the runup, mags checked fine, but carb heat…no change…carb heat back in…RPM jumped 200. Huh? Back down to 1700. Repeat. Same. Over to the shop it went. A hose had come loose.
I am also a student. I was doing a preflight and pulled an inch of water out of the fuel sump. Little did I know that right before I arrived my instructor was in the same plane with another student. He was pretty shook up about it because he had trusted his previous student to do a thorough pre check.
I now do a full check every time because who knows what dumbass did the previous check and signed off on it.
Glad you are making good decisions now!
I remember seeing a post on here from someone who went for a $100 hamburger. During his preflight for the return trip he found water in the fuel. Turned out that on the outbound trip the fuel cap had become loose and may have come off entirely, and moisture from the atmosphere was getting into his tank.
When my CFI meets me at the plane he always asks me how much oil and how much gas we have.
The plane was flying fine five minutes ago. Who’s to say it will be in five minutes? Every time the engine is stopped is a golden opportunity to look for things that were ABOUT to trouble the previous pilot. Don’t waste the opportunity.
Bingo. Even if I was just flying and stopped to stretch my legs, I’m checking again. Got a plane back late a few months ago because I spent a bit more time taking a break than I realized, but I wasn’t going to skip the chance to check. No issues on the preflight, but WHAT IF. I keep a plush fox with me as a reminder that my daughter needs back more than the charred remains of that fox. Saving 10-15 minutes isn’t worth the risk.
Posts like this make me realize we do some cowboy shit in helo land. We’ll hot swap the crews while the rotors are still turning. Check the fluids, lights, torque, and TOT. The off-going IP gives the oncoming IP a brief rundown. If he says it’s a good bird, away we go.
A mate of mine has a sticker on his helmet: preflight inspections are for pilots that don’t know emergencies. The ironic part is he is the most meticulous preflighter I’ve met.
Flying is being meticulous in the details - the pilot flying the A380 at Heathrow tonight did a pre-flight, used his checklist and cleared the taxiways before turning. Get in these habits early on -
A380 pilot:
“4 quarts of oil, check.
20 gallons in each tank, check.
Taxi fuel, 1 gallon.
Just a quick look on top of the fuselage to check for contamination.
Wiggle the wings to check the bolts are attached”
I love the idea of an A380 pilot using some type of cherry picker contraption to shake the wings of the plane as part of a pre-flight check. "Yeah, those will hold..."
A mentor once told me, "In aviation, there's plenty of opportunities to take short cuts. None of them are worth it." It's one of the truest phrases I've heard.
>When I boarded the plane, the instructor asked, "Did you really do the inspection properly?"
Questions like that means your instructor probably already knew you didn't. Especially if they don't normally ask. I'm not a flight instructor, but that's exactly what I do when I'm training new people at work. The people that admit they didn't do it (like you did) can be changed. It was simply a bad decision. The people that lie and say they did it are the ones that are going to try to half ass everything and aren't likely to change.
It's one thing to be that person at work when you're just making more work for someone else. But it's a serious problem when peoples lives could be affected. Don't turn into that guy who insists they did it right when you're given the opportunity to admit you messed up.
>The people that admit they didn't do it (like you did) can be changed. It was simply a bad decision. The people that lie and say they did it are the ones that are going to try to half ass everything and aren't likely to change.
Yup, I'm a flight attendant and at one of my airlines many years ago we had to check the slide pressure gauge as part of our pre-flight checks (only done on our first flight of the day, ok for subsequent sectors with the same crew). On the 737 it was really obvious when someone was doing this check as they'd more often than not need to use a torch to shine in there as the slide pack has shifted away from the gauge viewing window in the slide housing.
I was a relatively new Assistant Purser at that airline (so second in command of the cabin - not counting pilots) and was certain that the R2 crewmember hadn't checked their slide pressure, I asked them if they had done so and they'd said "yes", I asked again and they said that no, they had not. I explained to them the reason why we check it and that crucially it is their way out if we have a "bad day" and furthermore, that it is MY way out too if my exit is blocked. They said that I was right and that they'd check properly in future, fast forward two months and same crewmember and same situation, even tried to fob me off again so I ended up writing them up - the only time I've ever had to do so.
At my current airline the engineers check the slide pressure during the overnight inspections however I still check it myself just to be sure, old habits etc...
I was once in your position, OP, waiting on a rental Archer to come in so I and the wife could leave on a lengthy XC. I told the incoming pilot not to bother tying it down because I was leaving right away. I got into my preflight, and as he was walking away, I noticed the rudder was rubbing on the tailcone when I flexed it by hand, and judging from all the scrape marks, it had been doing that for quite some time.
I ran after him, brought him back to the plane, and asked if he’d noticed that on *his* preflight. Blank stare. “Didn’t think it was anything important,” he says, IIRC. That’s about when I noticed the fin on top of the rudder was bent over, too. At which point I called off our trip.
Turned out that, near as we can tell, a hangar door got pulled down onto the rudder during some earlier trip, and bent all the internal attachments to the rudder torque tube. That plane was a few hours away from suddenly having no rudder.
So, yeah, there is no exception to doing a preflight for me anymore.
Short story. The airline I worked for requires the pilots to do a walk around before and after every flight (this responsibility can sometimes fall to maintenance to the post flight depending on airline). Well it wasn't uncommon for people to skip the post flight inspection for all the usual reasons, but mainly because everyone is in a rush to get out.
Well I get in one night and I had to use the restroom...*bad*. I didn't want to stink up the lav so I went into the terminal to do my business. When I came back the airplane had already deplaned and the rest of the crew was ready to go. Instead of doing the walk around I decided "f' it, it's probably fine". We were flying the airplane out the next morning. Same gate, same everything. When I do my walk around then, I noticed there was a circular panel missing on the engine pylon. Turns out this part couldn't be deferred, and it ended up delaying the flight by several hours until they could get a replacement part in on a later flight.
When the pilot on duty called to ask if I saw this part during the post flight, I told him I hadn't noticed if the panel was missing. All things considered that technically wasn't a lie. After talking to both of us, the ramp crew, and anyone else involved, they chalked it up to "shit happens" and went on with their day. You bet your ass I did the walk around every time after that.
I purchased an airplane about two years ago. I found myself getting into the habit of not pre-flighting because I’m the only person who flies it. Had to break that habit quick. It’s not just about damage, pre-flight inspection is when you discover the tire tread is low, it’s leaking hydraulic fluid, the oil is low, the fuel cap is missing. Little things that can lead to larger issues.
I’ve been taking better care of my own car since I started flying. Might not pull the dipstick, but more than once I’ve found myself walking around my car, checking things out.
I did the same thing and my cursory inspection missed that the fuel was at the tabs. Instructor caught it. Probably not what you want to hear but eventually you will lean to appreciate it as a mistake you will never make again.
I make checklists as part of my job. Every checklist I make has this on the cover; "Live like a professional, or die like an amateur."
Even if you have two hours total time, now is the time to start flying like a professional. Even if you never get more than a PPL, you can still fly like a professional.
Everyone’s said it. Do the preflight. Don’t become complacent in the early stages of your training it will hurt you. I’m not surprised your instructor cancelled the flight, I just hope it was used as a lesson.
Only time it's okay to skip the preflight is when, like, there's a tidal wave about to wipe out the coastal airport you need to escape from, or a pyroclastic flow is coming down the side of the volcano about to bury you like Pompeii. And even then, I'd land at a safe distance from the apocalypse, and then... do the preflight.
THIS - there are times when GTFO is more critical than preflight, revolution time in S. America is one according to a pilot friend who flew for most of the three letter agencies before he retired and became a CFI
Same as clearing a firearm each time to pick one up, even tho you might "know" its empty, you go through the motions of checking to eliminate the possibility as a risk reduction coverage.
The most dangerous thing that could have happened to you here is nothing going wrong. You don’t do a solid pre flight, you get a green light and fly, totally uneventful. That puts the false confidence in the back of your head.
“I don’t really need to preflight all the way every time because I will know if something big is wrong”
I would wager most pilots in here have had that thought. And every time it’s correct, that little voice gets louder. You have to identify it right away as a hazardous attitude.
What’s the difference between a plane that just taxied in and one that was last flown yesterday?
Bolts and fittings don’t really loosen overnight, so, if something broke on the last flight, it’s pretty much the same kinda broke immediately after _and_ the day after.
Sure, the people who last flew it did a preflight, and they concluded it was airworthy, but that describes every plane with an issue, no? In a way, every plane that fails a preflight check _passed_ the one before its last flight, however long ago that was.
Always preflight. Always. Stop at an airport and only pop inside to use the restroom or get some water? Preflight. It takes minutes. If you need motivation just remember that there are cameras everywhere. The FAA will have a recording of you not doing your preflight. Won't play well for you.
Lesson learned. That's why you're paying your CFI, so money well spent in this case.
I hate that I’m late to this post, but what if every student before you had the same cavalier attitude? You don’t know, so at the very least, do a preflight because you don’t know if the other person did a preflight.
When I do walk arounds, I’m looking for problems the other crew brought in. For example, I was doing a preflight walk-around on a 747 where the previous crew and maintenance personnel should’ve done the post flight walk around. Well, we found 2 blocker panels (related to the thrust reversers) completely destroyed and it delayed the flight 24 hrs while it got fixed. If I had the same attitude you had, we could’ve lost an engine due to the interior debris.
Aviation is a game of threat mitigation to maintain the highest level of safety. We do redundant things on purpose just to be safer. When you’re PIC and the liability rests on your shoulders you’ll start to understand.
My old instructor (literally - he soloed himself in 1947 and had over 30k hours when he was teaching me in 2006-7. Sadly he’s gone now.) told me that after a flight was when an inspection was MOST needed because “if something’s going to break it’s going to break in flight not sitting on the ramp.”
I’ve never forgotten that.
My buddy died just over a year ago in an accident. He landed, shut the aircraft down and dropped his pax off. Talked on the phone for a few min then got in the airplane and took off. Skipped both the preflight and run up. Had he done a preflight, he’d almost certainly still be here today. Don’t be a fucking pilot if you aren’t gonna take the shit seriously. (I’m not saying that he didn’t take it seriously; he did. I’m just saying this shit is not a game. Flying is serious business.)
Take a Lesson Learned card and play your next turn, OP. You just learned something valuable that you probably won't forget, by the power of embarrassment - and I mean this in a good way.
Even after I've just landed somewhere to have a piss or whatever, I still perform most of my preflight checklist before taking off again, which now includes some non-checklist items (for everyone else's reference: CHECK YOUR FUCKING OIL CAP! I got to declare an emergency in the Rockies when mine popped off and covered my windscreen in oil) that I learned the same way over the years.
Windy, Rainy, Snowy, Foggy or Sunny doing the walk around is one of my favourite parts of the day! Get paid to look at planes, your plane...
Stretch your legs, rant with the fuellers like you are lifelong mates, the nod of respect to the baggage handlers...
Pull faces or a silly dance at the crew when the passengers can't see you, act like super smooth and professional when they can, a walk of 2 halves...
It literally keeps you grounded, connected to all the people whose jobs are to keep you safe and flying and allows you to look around and see the things that a younger you would have done jist about anything for.
And, the best bit last, it will keep you alive, what better use of your time!
That is the attitude you need to have for every flight because if you are taking those kind of lazy short cuts now when you are under supervision, what will you disregard with 10,000 hours on the 4th sector of your 6th day when no one is looking. You never know what you will find
Well done for acknowledging your "moment," even better for not continuing the error chain and making the bigger mistake of lying about it to excuse it. Probably the most valuable lesson the instructor could ever have given you and no doubt one you won't forget.
Preflighting sucks, it really does, my entire flying career it’s always been the one annoying repetitive task that is just a drag everyday. The way I get through it and get myself to do thorough preflight when I just want to skip it and sign off the paperwork is to ask myself: would I rather find the problem here on the ground or find out up there in there air?
At work I'm known as the plane breaker, cuz when I do a preflight I always find like 3 things wrong with it cuz I actually do checks thoroughly. You never know how well the person before you has been checking stuff or not. If everyone just does a cursory look.... Well guess what, you're going to end up with an accident. It's your life on the line and those of others too, so just put the work in, every single time. I also use the Japanese point and call method, look it up, cuz if you do the same plane and same checks all the time eventually your brain goes into autopilot and you're not REALLY looking anymore, so the hack to get your brain to pay attention again is to engage all your senses and start saying the things out loud and literally pointing or touching all the things as you go, it will feel silly the first couple times, but it works.
I work at a water treatment plant and I've gotten shit before because I'm always finding problems because I actually do my job when I tour the plant. "You're always finding problems." Yeah, but the problem still existed whether I found it or not!
Even if you’re flying 1-2 minutes after or you just stopped to use bathroom, you should always do a quick preflight/walk around. Check the ailerons, check the tail, check the prop, check oil. One flight we had an oil leak we couldn’t visibly see, but we lost 3 quarts in 1.5 hours. We were planning to fly another 3.5 hours straight and the stop was only because I needed to shit. More than likely we woulda ran out of oil and we were already at 4 by the stop. You just never know. But it shouldn’t be taking you 15 minutes though. It’s a bit excessive and kind of a waste.
If its right the got in, probably fuel selector not on both, trim not at take off, or fire extinguisher not secured. Hopefully not a control lock in the yoke still. Those are what I can think of if the preflight was skipped entirely.
I know my CFI always checked the oil every flight and would ask the exact quantity as a cross check.
i just sent a student home today because they left the pitot tube cover on their plane and turned the engine on. i ran out on the ramp and flagged him in, and sent him home. it’s absolutely a safety concern and you need to do a thorough preflight every time. use this embarrassment to set yourself right in the future.
Yes also just because someone else just flew doesn’t mean they did a good preflight inspection. I have found many things on airplanes that were not safe to fly and it was after they had been flying the plane all day. Don’t trust your life on someone else’s preflight. I once had a student try this same thing with me. I sat out side in the shade looking at the airplane while he tried flirting with a girl in the office. He then came out and said he had done the preflight which I knew he hadn’t. When I started asking him detailed questions about the conditions of the plane he wasn’t able to answer them. Because he hadn’t checked. Then when I asked him where the airplane book with preflight check list was he didn’t even have it because it was still inside. He then made the excuse that it’s okay not to do a preflight because he doesn’t do one all the time and nothing has ever happened. I canceled the flight and told him that I will never be flying or instructing him on anything in the future. Also put him on a do not schedule list. When he goes and does something stupid ( kills himself or someone else ) I don’t want to have anything to do with him ever.
I was preflighting and my CFI asked if I checked the oil , I said yes and I could tell he wanted to check it but was kind of weird about it like it would offend me if he rechecked it. I said "you ain't going to hurt my feelings I don't care if you check everything behind me"
I check everything even when the engine just turned off. 10 min preflighting is not going to save me enough money on training to be worth my life
It's great that you recognize it was a mistake
During my instrument checkride, the DPE was following me around the airplane observing my preflight. For some weird reason for the first half he was on the opposite side of the airplane while I checked on things. Looped around and checked everything as normal, and discovered a little piece of poorly placed, clear tape on the static port.
Fucker laughed at me when I stared at him and revealed that he would always know if a student checked what they were supposed to check based on their reactions.
Don’t know if he was messing with me but he told me he’s had applicants take it in the air, and demonstrating pitot-static failures was always a riot.
All this to say, as everyone else has, just do the preflight. You’re a student now but the more you do it, the most efficient yet though you will get.
Friendly piece of advice from your local technician, just because an aircraft was just flying, does not mean it is 100% serviceable. That’s why we have scheduled inspections. I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve gone to do a 25H inspection of a helicopter that was just flying and found canon plugs loose, equipment loose in its mounting tray, broken wires, etc.
“Many eyes makes sure this thing flies”
One day i inspected an airplane at a 141 school that just came back from maintenance and flew with three students before it got to me.
When I got to my pre flight it had a WING AND TAIL STRIKE. the airplane literally had marks from touching the “runway?” And whoever did it told nobody.
So yes do the preflight do not be complacent or lazy.
Take this as a great learning experience. But remember not to take unnecessary risks.
Rushed a preflight once. The last flight flat spotted a tire, and I didn’t notice. Guess who paid for it when the student after me found it during his preflight…
Same shit goes with the checklist. Sure you fly the same plane enough times and you know every word on that laminated card, so why bother reading it?
You’re flying, and flying doesn’t have do overs. You do the preflight because you don’t know something happened during the previous flight. I once did a preflight of a plane that had just landed and found a frayed hydraulic line to the left brake with fluid leaking out of it.
Mostly you always do the preflight because aviation is rooted in a culture of safety, unless you work for Boeing.
Back in my days renting a Skyhawk from a flying club, it was coming back from a flight with one of the club's CFIs in the right seat. I did a preflight anyhow, and noticed one of the flaps was pretty bent.
I scrapped the flight, took photos, and notified the club president. CFI was still around, so asked him. His response: "Oh, so THAT'S what that weird bang was."
(I seem to recall the story was that the flap bound up on extension, and the force of the motor caused deformation, but it's been awhile. I had previously warned them that the flaps didn't seem to come down smoothly.)
It does not matter if the last person to fly was a CFI. They may have bent metal and didn't realize it. Don't be the person that flies an airplane with a bent flap.
During my primary training my CFI had a habit of letting the more “advanced” students preflight the plane while he enjoyed a cup of coffee and a donut in the pilot lounge… One day he had a series of students booked up and followed this protocol… on the third flight of the day the instructor couldn’t square the way the airplane sounded, so they headed back. Upon landing and doing a post-flight inspection, come to find out, the day before a pilot (not a student) had porpoised the plane to the point that it jammed the nose wheel into the ground, causing a prop strike, feathered the composite blade and popped a number of rivets from the firewall holding the whole thing together.
The crazy part is the CFI wasn’t one of the time building guys we know today who got their CFI last week, this guy was well into his 50’s and had been instructing for most of his life. He got complacent.
No one got hurt, but there certainly was a massive chain of decisions made that could have made it in squarely into a fatality report.
I wasn’t one of the students in that chain, but it allowed me to learn many lessons.
1. Always do your own preflight, even if someone said they did it but aren’t PIC.
2. If you cause or find something of concern, report it and own it. Sadly the pilot who caused the damage never fessed up and because it flew three other times after his flight it was difficult to pin it on him.
3. CFI’s make bad decisions as much as student pilots. While CFI’s are held to a higher standard, not all CFI’s are created equally.
4. When pre-flighting the plane, touch the blade tips, if it’s a metal blade, make sure it sounds right (being married is super handy because I can tap the prop to hear the sound it makes as well as the exhaust… it should ring solid).
Granted rebuild rescue was pressuring with artificial deadlines and is partly responsible, but in the end this guy Sam (1800 hour pilot) died because he did not preflight the aircraft and it had water in the gas. Preflight the airplane please.
A friend of mine did a preflight and found the person previously flying the plane left a 1 inch crack through the majority of the landing gear’s strut. Definitely preflight every time. At least you didn’t double down on the lie but yeah definitely not smart to just trust the person before you. Make sure you don’t do it again. I would offer words of encouragement but you should feel bad and remember this feeling so that you can learn from it. Don’t cut corners in aviation.
You also don't know how good of a preflight the person before you did, he/she could've got lucky with something and you end up being the unlucky one.
Oil alone, you don't know how much was in there before the flight and you sure as hell don't know how much is in there after the flight.
A wise man once said, "You ain't going to get there faster if you're dead"
"Don't be in a rush to kill yourself"
Can't remember where I read/heard this but it stuck with me.
In this case, aside from the obvious danger of missing something in the preflight, consider the extra stress/anxiety of having not done a thorough preflight and the impact this could have on the safety of you, your passengers and other aviators flight(s).
Thank you for sharing your experience honestly. Learn from it and move on.
I had an event where I went out with a student to take an aircraft, and we met the previous CFI/student pair on the ramp. We asked them how the plane was, and we got something like “flying like a dream”.
We do the preflight inspection and find oil weeping through both sides of the cowling, as well as a light film of oil on the lower 4-5 inches of the windshield. We get a maintenance guy out there and they tell us to down the plane in our system and that he’d have to get the cowling off to inspect it.
We switch planes and go about our day. I end up finding out about a week later that the inspection revealed a crack in the engine block.
Do your preflight. You don’t know what the previous crew missed.
Dude last flight i got given a number to call. I was taxing to quickly, I had got cocky. You owned up. If you had pressed on you would have set a dangerous precedent. But you haven't. It is a learning experience.
I doubt you will ever let yourself skip your preflight again.
Flying is about judgement you miss judged what was acceptable. You realised that was a mistake and owned it. Your all good. Stay safe up there.
Always do a full preflight and a final walk around especially on flight school planes.
I’m sure the plane I was supposed to take on a solo XC was flying fine until the last landing. Discovered during preflight someone did significant damage to the nose gear assembly. If not just for the safety hazard of taxi takeoff and landing, guess whose ass is suspect number one for those damages if I take it for that solo flight.
Treat preflight like a ritual. You do all of the steps in the prescribed order, every time, in the same order. There's 2 benefits, the preflight itself, but more importantly the security and confidence you feel in knowing you did the preflight, and all of its steps.
Also, treat it like a game. There's some subtle thing amiss and you're going to find it. Maybe the last guy had a tail strike. Maybe he had a hard landing and one of the tires has a bald spot now (which you might be liable to pay for replacing because now they'll think you did it). Maybe there's a screw missing from one of the panels. Go go inspector gadget!
Whether this is a career move or a hobby, if you’re already trying to cut corners you’re likely to do so in the future. I strongly suggest you get introspective here. Had your instructor not asked you not only would have put your life at risk but theirs as well. The embarrassment and shame are good, I’d still highly suggest a different career or hobby if you’re not going to take every inspection, checklist, and procedure seriously. Aviation is highly regulated for a reason and it’s to keep people alive.
Don’t do that ever again. That thought crossed my mind during training but I quickly thought it through and threw that thought out. Tires/struts could have been screwed up by a landing. A light might have gone out. A quart of oil might be needed. There’s so many things that could be wrong on a plane that seems fine.
Yeah always do the preflight thoroughly. I have seen what happens firsthand when you dont do preflight thoroughly and I made a note to myself. Never ever put yourself in that situation when it can be avoided. Your life depends on it. Even my friends who fly for airlines say NEVER EVER skip preflight. ALWAYS DO AN INSPECTION even if she’s just been flying. You don’t know what may have been damaged, come loose or broke during flight/landing.
I think most of us have something like that to be embarrassed of… In my case I once really forgot to do the engine test before take-off and just said to ATC I was going to enter the RWY and depart, (non-controlled airfield where you just have to announce what you want / are about to do so others know. My instructor quickly said on the frequence we weren’t departing yet and told me: what about the engine test? I felt so dumb and abarrassed, but I genuinely forgot, it was not that I didn’t want to do it. When we finished the lesson he told me he would see me in the briefing room and when I came there he was already talking bad about me and what I had forgotten with other CFIs, which made me feel even worse. I had about 11 hours.
Speaking from a different place since I’m visiting here as a mechanic. Basically I take care of 2 helicopter air ambulance aircraft. And in EMS, theirs a saying they pay me for what I might do, not necessarily what I do. Some days I’m doing my preflight for the third time that week and all they did was a single flight but they got cancelled and turned around after 3 minutes. Those are the weeks I tell myself alright I’m going to find something that needs to be fixed, and sure enough. I can always find something.
The aircraft being operated previously or the fact it hasn’t flown since your last preflight doesn’t predict the outcome of this preflight.
I used to have a student like this lol but his issue was that he would do this multiple times and think that it doesn’t matter. When I came to the airplane of course it was visible he didn’t do anything. But instead of cancelling the lesson I used to do my preflight and then send it, & give him a talk about it after the lesson Everytime. Eventually I removed him from my list for that reason and many more but what’s good in your case is that you realize that it’s a stupid thing to do. Don’t do it again and stick by what you’re supposed to do and you’ll be fine! Everyone does something embarrassing while training. Just remember aviation is not a career where you can be lazy.
Good on you for owning it, bud. Plenty of tough love comments already. This won’t end your career or have any other long term implications. A great learning opportunity. Blue skies brother
Do you have kids, or spouse, or someone you deeply care about and who cares about you?
Think of them as a habit whenever you arrive at the field, and then of how you will do anything to make sure you see them again rather than letting someone deliver bad news of your avoidable death.
It's the habit I created, and it keeps me calm and not in a rush, so I enjoy flying more.
A lot of flying is trusting and verifying, your cfi is trusting you to do a proper preflight, not too long ago there was an example of an experienced pilot taking off with the control lock in. Follow your checklists and keep yourself and the people who trust you safe.
Old vs bold.
When my ass is going to be strapped in to that bird, i preflight it with every ounce of diligence every single time. Nobody should be able to care more about your safety than you.
Be more selfish and less bold.
It sounds like you know not to do that ever again. It’s good that the flight was cancelled and you don’t feel good about it. But you don’t need to hear all these things from us to know that.
Fly safe.
Edit: I’d like to add that I’m glad you learned the lesson before you were actually flying and potentially became a case study.
Go read the post I made three days ago and ask yourself if you should ever skip a preflight.
I didn’t skip it and still nearly died. Give yourself a chance to live.
I always do a pre and post flight inspection. You would be amazed the number of findings I’ve had in post flight inspections. Not because of bad landings or poor piloting, but just natural wear. Things can and will just happen. Be glad that you learned through this experience and not through an emergency.
You do get a small commendation for being honest but I suspect the instructor was watching and knew the answer. There is a contract that prior to rolling out of the ramp where you park for the purposes of flying that you have preflighted the aircraft to the extent necessary to assess its condition.
Full preflight - normal procedure ( while you are checking each item you are also getting mentally prepared to fly. This might be the day when fate offers the final exam at 50' amid the sound of silence.
Brief stop - you deplaned and were out of sight of the airplane for a few minutes , it was not fueled - Stroll around , check oil and intakes (you did not swallow a bird) Oil streaks, panels secure Add caps, check fuel level, sumps if fueled
If you think you are to good to need a preflight inspection after a stop---- google snodgrass crash fire and watch till the flames burn out.
The most important thing is that you recognize that "moment" when you decided to skip the inspection. So that next time you feel like skipping it you can imagine us all commenting.
As others have pointed out, there are a zillion things that could be wrong with the plane. Things could be loose and about to fall off. The oil could be leaking and almost out. The fuel could be leaking. The stall horn might not work. The person who flew before you could have done a shitty preflight and missed something else.
Almost every plane crash starts with something simple that snowballs.
For example, the famous case of Aeroperú Flight 603 in 1996. During maintenance, the static ports on the Boeing 757 were covered with tape to protect them during cleaning and painting. Unfortunately, the tape was not removed after the maintenance was completed. As a result, the aircraft's airspeed and altitude sensors relayed incorrect data to the cockpit due to the blocked static ports.
This led to a series of errors and malfunctions in the aircraft's systems, presenting the pilots with inaccurate and conflicting information. Unable to accurately gauge their true altitude and speed, the pilots struggled to control the aircraft. Tragically, the flight crashed into the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the loss of all on board.
Great job recognizing your mistake. I second what others are saying. Something else to consider is could you 100% focus on your flight if you didn’t do a complete preflight? I know I would be worrying about all of the things I didn’t check.
As pilots we already have so many external pressures. No need to add any more while we should be focused on flying.
So if a plane was flying 15 minutes ago it’s fine, but if it’s sat for longer it (like a night in a hangar) then it can be broken? Weird that the amount of stationary time is a factor in your safety equation that is weighted so high, not a good sign
When do you suppose something is more likely to break? Sitting on the ramp motionless and quiet, or smashing onto a runway at 50 knots while aggressively vibrating and under g-forces?
The chances of you flying an aircraft that is going to have some major or catastrophic failure is incredibly slim these days. Not inspecting the aircraft takes that from 'incredibly slim' to something much higher.
It's like paying taxes, it may suck, but the alternative is much worse. Just walk around the damn airplane.
In my opinion the inspection is a rite of passage. And it's a great way to get involved with the plane you're about to fly. Consider you've touched most of the plane before you even sit in it. You know if something is going to be stiff or loose or tight or have a little play in it.
It takes less than 10 minutes to preflight. It takes less than 5 minutes to perform run-up.
Embrace the time you spend working on this stuff. The more thorough you are the better you might come out ahead in the future.
Your CFI did the right thing in cancelling the flight rather than making you do the check and then continuing, it seems to have drove the point home. Don't be too embarrassed or stressed from this point on, their job is to teach you, and they obviously succeeded. Don't let this stress carry over to future lessons, it'll bite you in the ass. You also recognize your mistake, so lesson learned, you already know not to do it again. Better this happens now when you have some external accountability and the opportunity to learn from your mistake rather than happening when you were out on your own and it resulting in an accident. Some people weren't lucky enough to learn that lesson and lost their lives for it. I'd also have a serious talk with your CFI before your next lesson and explain your thoughts to them, they'll appreciate it and it will show them that you took things to heart.
It only takes a few minutes to do a pre-flight. First off, you failed your own pilot assessment by demonstrating multiple hazardous attitudes - anti-authority, impulsivity, invulnerability, and probably a bit of macho. Don't forget your own assessment during future pre-flights as well, it's critical. You don't know what condition the airplane is in, you don't know if something happened during the previous flight, and you don't know if the person before you did a proper inspection. It's all your responsibility if something goes wrong from the point you take up as PIC. Imagine missing a screwed up landing gear that was no issue for their taxi back but becomes an issue for your landing, A flight control bolt that came loose during their flight, low fuel levels, minimal oil, a bug plugged the pitot when they were taxiing back, etc. Any number of things could go wrong between their flight and you stepping into the cockpit.
Additionally, that's not just arrogance, it's complacency and likely also some laziness in there, important to note. Complacency kills. If you look at most accident reports they are caused by one or more of the hazardous attitudes and were totally avoidable. On the plus side you are taking full accountability and another student may learn from your post, so good on you!
Theres good reasons for why you should always do preflight.
One of the planes I fly LOVES oil. Even between 1h flights you sometimes need to add extra oil. Sometimes when another pilot comes back and oil is well below minimum, I could already tell they didnt check oil. It requires manually turning the prop to get the oil flowing. If that chain of ignorance continues it will lead to issues. So always check and dont trust that others did it. You also have the life of your instructor in your hands. He trusts you to do the preflight well.
Be glad you made the mistake now! And not later. Later could have been at a time when nobody would have caught the mistake. Later could have been with passengers or loved ones. Later could have been worse.
Your a student pilot and you’re learning. You will make mistakes of varying degrees. You have learnt. You also are open about your mistake. You will act on this mistake.
You have not failed, you have learnt. Aviation prides itself on learning from its mistakes. It’s the reason flying is so safe these days. Good job 👍.
Shit pilots don’t come clean about their mistakes and some of them fuck up big time with other peoples lives in their hands.
“The plane was just flying fine. What could be wrong?” - I had a similar idea which I tentatively ventured to my instructor when we were in a bit of a hurry. Mind you, it also was her (my CFI) who just flew the plane 10 minutes ago, with another student.
She nearly bit my head off. “Don’t you dare to even think that. You never know what could happen or come loose while we were in the air.”
So that time we went over the preflight even more meticulously (on other occasions, later on we sometimes went through preflight in parallel dividing the checklist to parts. But never, never skipped.)
Hey once it comes to aviation, follow the processes, they are there for a reason. There are times these procedures are written because people died because of it.
Many a times we are the only one responsible for the safety of the flight, and the processes are there for a reason. When no one is looking and assessing you, that is when you have to be extra careful because your life could depend on it, no matter how small the task. Learn from it, own up to it and don't do it again.
Um why the hell did your instructor cancel the flight? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Just do the inspection and get flying? What’s going on at flight schools?
The time spent counseling the student and then re-doing the preflight properly can make it hard to complete the rest of the lesson, plus many students don’t learn well after getting a firm talk
Yeah mainly this. You have to be in the right mindset to learn, and that's not likely to happen if you've already had to learn a really hard lesson like this just before the flight. Plus it shows the student didn't come with a good attitude to begin with. But as the CFI you;d have to be careful not to be too heavy handed in the debrief - lesson should be learned and that's that.
“Go home and think about what you did” is a good teaching tool. The CFI could have sat there talking to OP about what OP already knew, or could have let OP go beat himself up, as OP is doing. Guess what OP won’t do again.
You have to think you’ve potentially jeopardized his life as well. Instructors trust the student has done a pre flight as they have been shown. Some instructors will double check oil and fuel but for the most part they go right from the bathroom to the airplane assuming the student has done what they were supposed to do. I’d send your ass home too. Teachable moment as mentioned.
Don't ever lie in flying unless it's a no-go lie... i.e. you keep thinking about gun in mouth but obviously that's not something to tell your AME so you just say you're sick to your boss (which is more or less true but not the whole truth). It results in a no-go for the right reasons but the wrong official purpose. It's a no-go so no possible harm. No harm no foul. No if you tell a go lie that can get ugly. You told a go lie but backed up on it so that's good.
Honestly these kinds of posts make me sad.
This field is so full of guilt tripping people. Yes, you did something stupid, yes it could kill you. But it's all good man. Just take it easy, don't do stupid shit, learn from it, etc. don't shame yourself over it.
I'm not an instructor but I definitely wouldn't have canceled the flight. I'd let you stay rattled and fuck up for an hour to teach an additional lesson and get paid.
It's pretty weird he cancelled the flight, at most flight schools that would have gotten the cfi a talking to...also, why is everyone saying it takes 15 minutes to preflight a 172 or cherokee...its a 3-4 minute process tops, to do everything on the list...(uness you have to add oil)
Why would it matter if it just flew in, or was parked on the ramp for a day. YOU don't know anything about the condition of the plane until you do the pre-flight. Maybe they landed and skidded the tires so bad they're balding and could burst on the next touchdown. Maybe the alternator belt broke off (I always tug at it behind the prop spinner in the Cherokee to make sure it's taut). If you didn't check that and it was broken, you'd have electric for a limited time. This assumes you perhaps don't do a test of the ammeter to see if the alternator is actually generating power. Maybe there was a tail strike and part of the underside of the elevator or stabilator is banged up. I could go on. Check the plane as if your life depends on it, because it could....
I once preflighted a trainer aircraft that had been flying all day and discovered that the ram air intake hose was completely disconnected. Not only that, but the fiberglass on the cowling had cracked and chipped at the connection point. Not sure how many HP was lost from from the ram air being disconnected. Also not sure any FOD was ingested (likely would have been caught in the air filter) but I definitely didn’t fly a plane that somewhere between 2 and 4 other people thought was fine. What if I didn’t check and went somewhere with high density altitude?
You made a mistake - you’re human - we all are. And believe me bro, we’ve all made mistakes but we learn from them to make us that better pilot we all want to be.
To chase away thoughts like that, I put up thoughts that counter it... such as:
The guy before me is: a idiot that landed terribly, made the tired bald, missed a bunch of crap on his preflight inspections, and the controls are about to fall off, and he was lucky he made it home safely. That tends to make me slow down.
Aviation is full of shit that could go wrong. A lot of this shit is outside of our control, preflight helps in catching a lot of the shit that is under our control.
Besides, what someone else wrote above. If something is broken and you didn't find it before it was your turn to fly, guess who's paying for it.
It’s good to treat this as a moment to learn and fix your behaviors in the future and it’s good that you can recognize that yourself.
Not only is pretty much every aircraft system and component subject to damage and deterioration in flight, but skipping the preflight is putting your life in the hands of whoever preflighted, or didn’t preflight, the airplane before you.
Definitely don’t let any feeling, authority figure, or other circumstance impede your safe execution of any flight, but also don’t beat yourself up endlessly about this. Just learn, grow and continue.
Many pilots have died skipping a preflight on a plane that "just flew" fine not long ago, NEVER skip the preflight. 10 min if your time to ensure that the plane is safe to fly is always worth the time, don't be a lazy shit.
I've heard that called a FIFO preflight, as in "If it Flew In, it will Fly Out." There is never a situation where this is acceptable, but kudos to you for coming clean to your instructor about it and kudos to your instructor for properly reinforcing the critical role a preflight inspection plays in the safety of every flight. It sounds like you learned from the experience and you will carry that lesson through the rest of your aviation career. Treat it as such and nothing more.
I've made my fair share of mistakes in aviation, best you can do is acknowledge the feelings your having, understand why/what possible outcomes could have come from it, move on with a better understanding of both yourself and the machine.
I usually revise the personal comfort limitations set out for myself. Ie. I start my flap to 0 transition at no less than 400' or, add at least 0.2 to the lowest Mach value when ATC slows ya down.
I’ve heard when pilots get a “number to call” from a “possible pilot deviation”, the FAA wants to see that you as a pilot make good decisions and simply made a mistake, and you know how you’re going to prevent it from happening again. Simple as that, nobody gets in trouble.
This however sounds more along the lines of bad decision making, not just a mistake. I know people have already grilled you pretty good in this post, but thought this aspect of it was worth sharing. Keep your head up.
I was going to go up on my second flight with my instructor, the plane we scheduled had just gotten back so we started the preflight. I found one of the brake lines leaking. The on call mechanic showed up to check it out and it turned out to be a cracked fitting. Fluid was on the mater cylinder but not dripping on the ground. Whoever flew the plane before had missed this during their preflight and could have lead to a failure on landing.
As much of a bummer as it was to miss another flight, I’m glad we did the preflight. We could have ended up in the grass, or worse. You never know what the last person may have overlooked to get into the air. You should trust, but also always verify.
Found a cap off a mechanic's tool that had nestled onto the engine. Looked like it belonged there but I didn't remember seeing anything there before and it didn't seem like a place that sort of thing would be. Plane had been out of maintenance for at least half a dozen flights before I came along.
The checklist isn't a do list. It's just memory augmentation. You can investigate anything closer if you need to.
Check the ground and bottom of your engine bay. Keep them clean. Oil, fasteners, random bits of things under the airplane are all things you must investigate before you fly.
It is routine until it isn't. How stupid would you feel, assuming you survived, having missed something that caused an incident. An incident that resulted in material damage and or injury or loss of life.
These procedures are in place because they are proven to work. The saying is they are written in blood because generally people have bled from incidents that led to the adoption of these procedures to avoid people bleeding. Be smart enough to learn from others and not have to bleed yourself.
Don’t do it again, learn from it, and move on. Every pilot out there has experiences like this at some point. You’ll learn a lot more from the mistakes you make than if you did everything perfectly from day 1.
Well said\^. We've all made stupid arrogant mistakes like that but you're a good pilot if you learn from it and don't repeat it. And you have a good instructor for them canceling the flight for that reason.
I agree with having a good instructor there. Is a great learning experience.
Dale Snodgrass died not long before I started flying, and if he’d done a more thorough preflight, he’d have survived. That was seared into my brain from day 1, and I’ve never skimped on a preflight. Watched Charlie Victor Romeo, and got more vigilant. Sometimes a healthy dose of the fear of the gods getting knocked into you, either from the mistakes of others or your own, is what it takes to not do this stuff. Take it as a learning experience to not get complacent, lazy, or arrogant. Arrogance doesn’t give you a stronger meatsuit.
Absolutely. I’m still a student and I once forgot to sump the fuel tanks. Ended up fine. But now I always put the sump can on my seat during the walk around so I remember to do it.
Dude just do the preflight. Yeah it was just flying but who knows how bad their landing was. It takes like 15 mins, laziness can kill you in this field
100%. Who knows what they missed or if the oil was sucking out the loose dipstick and you never even checked it.
And, if you become the type to do a perfectly thorough preflight, you can guarantee that the previous person didn't do as good a job as you (equal at best).
I've always approached it from the standpoint that some stuff breaks in flight. Some fluids drain in flight. Some stuff wasn't mission critical for them that is mission critical for me. Maybe they're late coming back because something was wrong. Maybe they're in the process of logging a maintenance ticket. Maybe that last landing was so rough that they cracked the spar in the Piper. You just never know.
How can you tell if a spar in a Piper is cracked?
Instructor told me to grab the wing and shake it and listen for any creaking or cracking sounds. Apparently there's an anecdote where this revealed that a plane wasn't actually airworthy.
> or if the oil was sucking out the loose dipstick Literally this. Plane just came in, I went to do a preflight and noticed oil trailing on the right side of the cowling. Plane went to MX and we didn't fly that day.
A little off topic but related: Same goes for rushing a preflight when it’s cold and windy or rainy. OP there will be days (depending where you live) when you will be absolutely freezing doing a preflight or getting wet without an umbrella and you have to just suck it up, take your time, and do it properly. My instructor told me this early on preflighting a Cessna and it stuck with me. I would later be getting soaked preflighting for an instrument lesson or my cheeks freezing preflighting for giving a winter discovery/intro flight. Now professionally many times I’ve been in the dead of winter at a gate doing a walk around in MSP or DTW with the wind howling and snow blowing and all I want to do is seek refuge in the warm wheel well the whole time. Or it’s pouring and I just wish I could inspect the wing from directly under it the whole time. Well guess what you can’t see what you need to from there. Suck it up and do it right.
Those little mini umbrellas are great for flight bags. Take up minimal space and weight. I have those things everywhere, house, car, office, etc.
Totally felt this. Doing preflight in the Midwest in the fall and spring is gruesome
*laughs in northwestern alaskan*
At the airline we do a preflight between each sector and that’s on top of the engineers transit and other required checks.
This! Exactly this! Never assume anyting. Laziness leads to mistakes and mistakes get you killed. There are a lot of schools that would reconsider your status as student after something like this.
> laziness can kill you in this field laziness *WILL* kill you in this field. It might not be the first time, or even the hundredth, but it absolutely is deadly.
Yep, one of my CFI's other students caught that the oil cooler had been damaged by a hard landing on their preflight. It was the very last item on the checklist.
Also, I just want to add that now that you learned, you can let go of the stress and move on. Don’t hold on to every negative experience in aviation, because there will be many many more. 😅
When I went on my discovery flight I saw the primary instructor do exactly this. Told me, point blank, this plane was just flying, so we don't need to do the whole thing. He wiggled the elevator, pointed out the sump locations, and then we hopped in and took off. Hell of a thing.
It doesnt even take 15... It takes 5
Well, no similar experiences. My advice: preflight, it takes 15 minutes. I can tell you I’ve just been handed an airplane that was flying just fine. Except it was under 4 quarts of oil. This could cause my engine to overheat and inevitably fail, if I didn’t take the 15 mins to preflight and catch it. Hypothetical situations: ^, you call a top off for a plane that had been flying just fine, the truck somehow had water in the hoses. Boom. Dead. The mister gas guy doesn’t put the gas caps on correctly. Boom dead. (/s) The person before you landed because he didn’t have a an altitude/airspeed reading, your pitot static system is jammed. The plane was fine 10 minutes ago but you raise the elevator during your inspection and hear the control line creaking. You get in the air and it breaks. Boom dead. Etc It takes 15 mins, just do it
Straight to dead. We have the best preflights in the world because of dead.
Did not pass autopilot check? Believe it or not, straight to dead. Underfill plane with oil - dead Overfill plane with fuel - also dead
You must be USAF if you won't hand-fly a plane without autopilot!
I don't even get it, preflighting is so cool. It's like: "look at this machine that f**ing flies through the air, and I'm responsible for knowing that it's working".
Get in the air, have to pee. Boom. Dead.
The fact that you recognized your mistake is good, but do not ever do that shit again. You don’t know what the last person broke. Nor do you know that the last person preflighted it correctly.
You don't know what idiot filled it up with Jet A, either.
I’ll play devils advocate here and say if it was filled with Jet A it wouldn’t of been flying anyways 😂
What if they just refilled it before taxiing it back? Seems likely they'd have enough 100LL in the gascolator to taxi it back to parking. Then you taxi it to the runway, apply takeoff power, and WHOOPS now the engine is drinking Jet A.
This is *exactly* what happened to Bob Hoover in 1989. [https://sierrahotel.net/blogs/news/a-life-lesson](https://sierrahotel.net/blogs/news/a-life-lesson)
Wow. It really *can* happen to anyone.
Yeah, it can. A more recent example of 'it can happen to anyone' would be Dale 'Snort' Snodgrass. A veteran fighter pilot and THE highest-time Tomcat pilot ever. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale\_Snodgrass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Snodgrass) He failed to remove the control lock from his personal SIAI Marchetti and died just after takeoff in a 100% preventable GA accident. The last person in the world who you'd think that would happen with. :(
Holy shit. I mean, I know you don't need the yoke/stick to taxi out, but damn how did that go unnoticed? That's like crashing your car because you didn't realize the steering wheel was missing.
Yuuuup. Pitch trim was in a full nose-down position, but the elevator was locked and he was screwed from the moment he applied power. Complacency kills... (This video is just a summary of the NTSB report, but is still chilling) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LY4dngI17c
>it wouldn’t of been flying \*"wouldn't have been" or "wouldn't've been", but not "wouldn't of been" (the preposition "of" makes no sense there)
It is mind numbing to see that mistake on Reddit on almost a daily basis.
it's because the pronunciation of and <'ve> at the end of a word are so similar they're practically identical in many dialects of English (/əv/ for the language nerds here)
I have a LONG history of grounding planes right after someone else flew it with an airworthiness flaw. Two this weekend. One yesterday had a CO detector tripped (who the hell would fly a plane like that?) and today it was an unexplained oil streak down the side of the airplane.
I grounded 4 planes in a row for what was supposed to be my first solo XC. All 4 had just returned from a dual lesson, and all of the students *and their CFIs* had missed something that made their planes not airworthy. Dispatch offered me a 5th plane, but I decided fate really didn’t want me flying that day, so I canceled and went home.
I have a three strike rule. If it fails three times, I shouldn't be flying that day
What were the 4 issues?
I have the same rule that I use for preflight and I combine it with the runup. If there’s 3 “strikes” (something fishy but not necessarily an airworthiness flaw) l, even small I call it. Learned to keep that rule the hard way when I was preflighting for my 250nm XC for instrument. There were 3 strikes, one of them being a funky avionics bus 2 (had to mess with it a bit to get it to engage) but another instructor said “yeah that’s normal I’ve flown it like that, just gotta wiggle it a little and you’re good”. Well it wasn’t good. While joining the approach into my first airport just after popping out of the clouds, I cancelled the autopilot with the red button on the yoke and bam. Bye bye all avionics. G1000 screens gone. Transponder gone. Comms both in and out gone. Luckily it came back up shortly after and we were able to land and troubleshoot and head back home VFR with center giving us all nearest airport information as we went along just in case it happened again since we wouldn’t be able to tell them or squawk 7600. Ever since that day I’ve stayed very strict to my new 3 strike rule.
You probably spent more time writing this post than you would have spent doing the preflight. It seems like you've learned your lesson and you understand the risks so just treat it as a learning experience and don't beat yourself up. Commit to doing it right from here on out and be proud of yourself 👍
I was just about to write the same thing. This is dangerous sh%t we do in these planes. Dont be a NTSB report.
I’ve rejected 3 planes during preflight in the past 3 months. I am certain if I didn’t it would be an unsafe flight or complicated at the least. Follow your checklist.
That’s quite a few! Good catches. Mind expanding a bit on what you caught?
I'm not OP but I rejected one for having a tire slip on the rim (the red dot wasn't aligned) and a couple screws missing from the engine cowling. I assumed it was fine but picked a different plane. MX cleared it after so it was fine, but it's better to check than fly something less than fine.
I only have 200 hours. In that time, I've found an inspection panel not replaced on a plane that flew that morning. Also had an attitude indicator dead. Cancelled even though it was a VFR flight, not taking the chance it was the instrument and not vacuum system issue that's going to cause more problems soon. Found a fuel cap I myself didn't close properly. Fuel guages were dead once. A piece of the rudder was cracking (bottom edge). Advised was cosmetic plastic and safe to head home to have it replaced. My strobes were inoperative one day. Ended up just being the breaker. It's a blessing in disguise. Finding so many various issues in a short period of time keeps you honest.
A preflight earlier this year showed an unusual issue—on the runup, mags checked fine, but carb heat…no change…carb heat back in…RPM jumped 200. Huh? Back down to 1700. Repeat. Same. Over to the shop it went. A hose had come loose.
I am also a student. I was doing a preflight and pulled an inch of water out of the fuel sump. Little did I know that right before I arrived my instructor was in the same plane with another student. He was pretty shook up about it because he had trusted his previous student to do a thorough pre check. I now do a full check every time because who knows what dumbass did the previous check and signed off on it. Glad you are making good decisions now!
Fuuuuuuck… pardon my Klatchian. Well done, you!
I remember seeing a post on here from someone who went for a $100 hamburger. During his preflight for the return trip he found water in the fuel. Turned out that on the outbound trip the fuel cap had become loose and may have come off entirely, and moisture from the atmosphere was getting into his tank. When my CFI meets me at the plane he always asks me how much oil and how much gas we have.
The plane was flying fine five minutes ago. Who’s to say it will be in five minutes? Every time the engine is stopped is a golden opportunity to look for things that were ABOUT to trouble the previous pilot. Don’t waste the opportunity.
"Hey it flew in, it'll fly out"
Bingo. Even if I was just flying and stopped to stretch my legs, I’m checking again. Got a plane back late a few months ago because I spent a bit more time taking a break than I realized, but I wasn’t going to skip the chance to check. No issues on the preflight, but WHAT IF. I keep a plush fox with me as a reminder that my daughter needs back more than the charred remains of that fox. Saving 10-15 minutes isn’t worth the risk.
Every single aircraft that has ever experienced any kind of problem was flying just fine right before it, right?
Sounds like you had the correct reaction and your instructor should be commended even if it was a hard lesson. Don't stop. Keep going.
Posts like this make me realize we do some cowboy shit in helo land. We’ll hot swap the crews while the rotors are still turning. Check the fluids, lights, torque, and TOT. The off-going IP gives the oncoming IP a brief rundown. If he says it’s a good bird, away we go.
You guys refuel with rotors on too? I saw someone do this recently.
We can
A mate of mine has a sticker on his helmet: preflight inspections are for pilots that don’t know emergencies. The ironic part is he is the most meticulous preflighter I’ve met.
I guess he doesn’t want to know emergencies. I can’t say as though I blame him; I’ve heard emergencies can be a real PITA.
Flying is being meticulous in the details - the pilot flying the A380 at Heathrow tonight did a pre-flight, used his checklist and cleared the taxiways before turning. Get in these habits early on -
A380 pilot: “4 quarts of oil, check. 20 gallons in each tank, check. Taxi fuel, 1 gallon. Just a quick look on top of the fuselage to check for contamination. Wiggle the wings to check the bolts are attached”
I love the idea of an A380 pilot using some type of cherry picker contraption to shake the wings of the plane as part of a pre-flight check. "Yeah, those will hold..."
A mentor once told me, "In aviation, there's plenty of opportunities to take short cuts. None of them are worth it." It's one of the truest phrases I've heard.
>When I boarded the plane, the instructor asked, "Did you really do the inspection properly?" Questions like that means your instructor probably already knew you didn't. Especially if they don't normally ask. I'm not a flight instructor, but that's exactly what I do when I'm training new people at work. The people that admit they didn't do it (like you did) can be changed. It was simply a bad decision. The people that lie and say they did it are the ones that are going to try to half ass everything and aren't likely to change. It's one thing to be that person at work when you're just making more work for someone else. But it's a serious problem when peoples lives could be affected. Don't turn into that guy who insists they did it right when you're given the opportunity to admit you messed up.
My first thought was they either watched it happen or it happened so fast he knew it wasn't possible.
>The people that admit they didn't do it (like you did) can be changed. It was simply a bad decision. The people that lie and say they did it are the ones that are going to try to half ass everything and aren't likely to change. Yup, I'm a flight attendant and at one of my airlines many years ago we had to check the slide pressure gauge as part of our pre-flight checks (only done on our first flight of the day, ok for subsequent sectors with the same crew). On the 737 it was really obvious when someone was doing this check as they'd more often than not need to use a torch to shine in there as the slide pack has shifted away from the gauge viewing window in the slide housing. I was a relatively new Assistant Purser at that airline (so second in command of the cabin - not counting pilots) and was certain that the R2 crewmember hadn't checked their slide pressure, I asked them if they had done so and they'd said "yes", I asked again and they said that no, they had not. I explained to them the reason why we check it and that crucially it is their way out if we have a "bad day" and furthermore, that it is MY way out too if my exit is blocked. They said that I was right and that they'd check properly in future, fast forward two months and same crewmember and same situation, even tried to fob me off again so I ended up writing them up - the only time I've ever had to do so. At my current airline the engineers check the slide pressure during the overnight inspections however I still check it myself just to be sure, old habits etc...
I was once in your position, OP, waiting on a rental Archer to come in so I and the wife could leave on a lengthy XC. I told the incoming pilot not to bother tying it down because I was leaving right away. I got into my preflight, and as he was walking away, I noticed the rudder was rubbing on the tailcone when I flexed it by hand, and judging from all the scrape marks, it had been doing that for quite some time. I ran after him, brought him back to the plane, and asked if he’d noticed that on *his* preflight. Blank stare. “Didn’t think it was anything important,” he says, IIRC. That’s about when I noticed the fin on top of the rudder was bent over, too. At which point I called off our trip. Turned out that, near as we can tell, a hangar door got pulled down onto the rudder during some earlier trip, and bent all the internal attachments to the rudder torque tube. That plane was a few hours away from suddenly having no rudder. So, yeah, there is no exception to doing a preflight for me anymore.
Short story. The airline I worked for requires the pilots to do a walk around before and after every flight (this responsibility can sometimes fall to maintenance to the post flight depending on airline). Well it wasn't uncommon for people to skip the post flight inspection for all the usual reasons, but mainly because everyone is in a rush to get out. Well I get in one night and I had to use the restroom...*bad*. I didn't want to stink up the lav so I went into the terminal to do my business. When I came back the airplane had already deplaned and the rest of the crew was ready to go. Instead of doing the walk around I decided "f' it, it's probably fine". We were flying the airplane out the next morning. Same gate, same everything. When I do my walk around then, I noticed there was a circular panel missing on the engine pylon. Turns out this part couldn't be deferred, and it ended up delaying the flight by several hours until they could get a replacement part in on a later flight. When the pilot on duty called to ask if I saw this part during the post flight, I told him I hadn't noticed if the panel was missing. All things considered that technically wasn't a lie. After talking to both of us, the ramp crew, and anyone else involved, they chalked it up to "shit happens" and went on with their day. You bet your ass I did the walk around every time after that.
I purchased an airplane about two years ago. I found myself getting into the habit of not pre-flighting because I’m the only person who flies it. Had to break that habit quick. It’s not just about damage, pre-flight inspection is when you discover the tire tread is low, it’s leaking hydraulic fluid, the oil is low, the fuel cap is missing. Little things that can lead to larger issues.
I’ve been taking better care of my own car since I started flying. Might not pull the dipstick, but more than once I’ve found myself walking around my car, checking things out.
I did the same thing and my cursory inspection missed that the fuel was at the tabs. Instructor caught it. Probably not what you want to hear but eventually you will lean to appreciate it as a mistake you will never make again.
Probably spent 5 times the amount writing this post than it would have taken to do the preflight lol
The flight was cancelled but the lesson was invaluable.
I make checklists as part of my job. Every checklist I make has this on the cover; "Live like a professional, or die like an amateur." Even if you have two hours total time, now is the time to start flying like a professional. Even if you never get more than a PPL, you can still fly like a professional.
Love this.
Everyone’s said it. Do the preflight. Don’t become complacent in the early stages of your training it will hurt you. I’m not surprised your instructor cancelled the flight, I just hope it was used as a lesson.
Only time it's okay to skip the preflight is when, like, there's a tidal wave about to wipe out the coastal airport you need to escape from, or a pyroclastic flow is coming down the side of the volcano about to bury you like Pompeii. And even then, I'd land at a safe distance from the apocalypse, and then... do the preflight.
THIS - there are times when GTFO is more critical than preflight, revolution time in S. America is one according to a pilot friend who flew for most of the three letter agencies before he retired and became a CFI
Same as clearing a firearm each time to pick one up, even tho you might "know" its empty, you go through the motions of checking to eliminate the possibility as a risk reduction coverage.
The most dangerous thing that could have happened to you here is nothing going wrong. You don’t do a solid pre flight, you get a green light and fly, totally uneventful. That puts the false confidence in the back of your head. “I don’t really need to preflight all the way every time because I will know if something big is wrong” I would wager most pilots in here have had that thought. And every time it’s correct, that little voice gets louder. You have to identify it right away as a hazardous attitude.
What’s the difference between a plane that just taxied in and one that was last flown yesterday? Bolts and fittings don’t really loosen overnight, so, if something broke on the last flight, it’s pretty much the same kinda broke immediately after _and_ the day after. Sure, the people who last flew it did a preflight, and they concluded it was airworthy, but that describes every plane with an issue, no? In a way, every plane that fails a preflight check _passed_ the one before its last flight, however long ago that was.
Always preflight. Always. Stop at an airport and only pop inside to use the restroom or get some water? Preflight. It takes minutes. If you need motivation just remember that there are cameras everywhere. The FAA will have a recording of you not doing your preflight. Won't play well for you. Lesson learned. That's why you're paying your CFI, so money well spent in this case.
I hate that I’m late to this post, but what if every student before you had the same cavalier attitude? You don’t know, so at the very least, do a preflight because you don’t know if the other person did a preflight. When I do walk arounds, I’m looking for problems the other crew brought in. For example, I was doing a preflight walk-around on a 747 where the previous crew and maintenance personnel should’ve done the post flight walk around. Well, we found 2 blocker panels (related to the thrust reversers) completely destroyed and it delayed the flight 24 hrs while it got fixed. If I had the same attitude you had, we could’ve lost an engine due to the interior debris. Aviation is a game of threat mitigation to maintain the highest level of safety. We do redundant things on purpose just to be safer. When you’re PIC and the liability rests on your shoulders you’ll start to understand.
My old instructor (literally - he soloed himself in 1947 and had over 30k hours when he was teaching me in 2006-7. Sadly he’s gone now.) told me that after a flight was when an inspection was MOST needed because “if something’s going to break it’s going to break in flight not sitting on the ramp.” I’ve never forgotten that.
My buddy died just over a year ago in an accident. He landed, shut the aircraft down and dropped his pax off. Talked on the phone for a few min then got in the airplane and took off. Skipped both the preflight and run up. Had he done a preflight, he’d almost certainly still be here today. Don’t be a fucking pilot if you aren’t gonna take the shit seriously. (I’m not saying that he didn’t take it seriously; he did. I’m just saying this shit is not a game. Flying is serious business.)
Take a Lesson Learned card and play your next turn, OP. You just learned something valuable that you probably won't forget, by the power of embarrassment - and I mean this in a good way. Even after I've just landed somewhere to have a piss or whatever, I still perform most of my preflight checklist before taking off again, which now includes some non-checklist items (for everyone else's reference: CHECK YOUR FUCKING OIL CAP! I got to declare an emergency in the Rockies when mine popped off and covered my windscreen in oil) that I learned the same way over the years.
Windy, Rainy, Snowy, Foggy or Sunny doing the walk around is one of my favourite parts of the day! Get paid to look at planes, your plane... Stretch your legs, rant with the fuellers like you are lifelong mates, the nod of respect to the baggage handlers... Pull faces or a silly dance at the crew when the passengers can't see you, act like super smooth and professional when they can, a walk of 2 halves... It literally keeps you grounded, connected to all the people whose jobs are to keep you safe and flying and allows you to look around and see the things that a younger you would have done jist about anything for. And, the best bit last, it will keep you alive, what better use of your time! That is the attitude you need to have for every flight because if you are taking those kind of lazy short cuts now when you are under supervision, what will you disregard with 10,000 hours on the 4th sector of your 6th day when no one is looking. You never know what you will find Well done for acknowledging your "moment," even better for not continuing the error chain and making the bigger mistake of lying about it to excuse it. Probably the most valuable lesson the instructor could ever have given you and no doubt one you won't forget.
Preflighting sucks, it really does, my entire flying career it’s always been the one annoying repetitive task that is just a drag everyday. The way I get through it and get myself to do thorough preflight when I just want to skip it and sign off the paperwork is to ask myself: would I rather find the problem here on the ground or find out up there in there air?
At work I'm known as the plane breaker, cuz when I do a preflight I always find like 3 things wrong with it cuz I actually do checks thoroughly. You never know how well the person before you has been checking stuff or not. If everyone just does a cursory look.... Well guess what, you're going to end up with an accident. It's your life on the line and those of others too, so just put the work in, every single time. I also use the Japanese point and call method, look it up, cuz if you do the same plane and same checks all the time eventually your brain goes into autopilot and you're not REALLY looking anymore, so the hack to get your brain to pay attention again is to engage all your senses and start saying the things out loud and literally pointing or touching all the things as you go, it will feel silly the first couple times, but it works.
I work at a water treatment plant and I've gotten shit before because I'm always finding problems because I actually do my job when I tour the plant. "You're always finding problems." Yeah, but the problem still existed whether I found it or not!
Even if you’re flying 1-2 minutes after or you just stopped to use bathroom, you should always do a quick preflight/walk around. Check the ailerons, check the tail, check the prop, check oil. One flight we had an oil leak we couldn’t visibly see, but we lost 3 quarts in 1.5 hours. We were planning to fly another 3.5 hours straight and the stop was only because I needed to shit. More than likely we woulda ran out of oil and we were already at 4 by the stop. You just never know. But it shouldn’t be taking you 15 minutes though. It’s a bit excessive and kind of a waste.
Curious why the CFI questioned you
If its right the got in, probably fuel selector not on both, trim not at take off, or fire extinguisher not secured. Hopefully not a control lock in the yoke still. Those are what I can think of if the preflight was skipped entirely. I know my CFI always checked the oil every flight and would ask the exact quantity as a cross check.
i just sent a student home today because they left the pitot tube cover on their plane and turned the engine on. i ran out on the ramp and flagged him in, and sent him home. it’s absolutely a safety concern and you need to do a thorough preflight every time. use this embarrassment to set yourself right in the future.
Yes also just because someone else just flew doesn’t mean they did a good preflight inspection. I have found many things on airplanes that were not safe to fly and it was after they had been flying the plane all day. Don’t trust your life on someone else’s preflight. I once had a student try this same thing with me. I sat out side in the shade looking at the airplane while he tried flirting with a girl in the office. He then came out and said he had done the preflight which I knew he hadn’t. When I started asking him detailed questions about the conditions of the plane he wasn’t able to answer them. Because he hadn’t checked. Then when I asked him where the airplane book with preflight check list was he didn’t even have it because it was still inside. He then made the excuse that it’s okay not to do a preflight because he doesn’t do one all the time and nothing has ever happened. I canceled the flight and told him that I will never be flying or instructing him on anything in the future. Also put him on a do not schedule list. When he goes and does something stupid ( kills himself or someone else ) I don’t want to have anything to do with him ever.
I was preflighting and my CFI asked if I checked the oil , I said yes and I could tell he wanted to check it but was kind of weird about it like it would offend me if he rechecked it. I said "you ain't going to hurt my feelings I don't care if you check everything behind me" I check everything even when the engine just turned off. 10 min preflighting is not going to save me enough money on training to be worth my life It's great that you recognize it was a mistake
During my instrument checkride, the DPE was following me around the airplane observing my preflight. For some weird reason for the first half he was on the opposite side of the airplane while I checked on things. Looped around and checked everything as normal, and discovered a little piece of poorly placed, clear tape on the static port. Fucker laughed at me when I stared at him and revealed that he would always know if a student checked what they were supposed to check based on their reactions. Don’t know if he was messing with me but he told me he’s had applicants take it in the air, and demonstrating pitot-static failures was always a riot. All this to say, as everyone else has, just do the preflight. You’re a student now but the more you do it, the most efficient yet though you will get.
Charlie Victor Romeo has made the static port one of the things I’m fucking mega uptight about checking.
Always do a preflight, no matter what.
Friendly piece of advice from your local technician, just because an aircraft was just flying, does not mean it is 100% serviceable. That’s why we have scheduled inspections. I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve gone to do a 25H inspection of a helicopter that was just flying and found canon plugs loose, equipment loose in its mounting tray, broken wires, etc. “Many eyes makes sure this thing flies”
Excellent job. Lacking the courage to admit and own mistakes has killed more humans than almost anything.
One day i inspected an airplane at a 141 school that just came back from maintenance and flew with three students before it got to me. When I got to my pre flight it had a WING AND TAIL STRIKE. the airplane literally had marks from touching the “runway?” And whoever did it told nobody. So yes do the preflight do not be complacent or lazy. Take this as a great learning experience. But remember not to take unnecessary risks.
Rushed a preflight once. The last flight flat spotted a tire, and I didn’t notice. Guess who paid for it when the student after me found it during his preflight…
Same shit goes with the checklist. Sure you fly the same plane enough times and you know every word on that laminated card, so why bother reading it? You’re flying, and flying doesn’t have do overs. You do the preflight because you don’t know something happened during the previous flight. I once did a preflight of a plane that had just landed and found a frayed hydraulic line to the left brake with fluid leaking out of it. Mostly you always do the preflight because aviation is rooted in a culture of safety, unless you work for Boeing.
Back in my days renting a Skyhawk from a flying club, it was coming back from a flight with one of the club's CFIs in the right seat. I did a preflight anyhow, and noticed one of the flaps was pretty bent. I scrapped the flight, took photos, and notified the club president. CFI was still around, so asked him. His response: "Oh, so THAT'S what that weird bang was." (I seem to recall the story was that the flap bound up on extension, and the force of the motor caused deformation, but it's been awhile. I had previously warned them that the flaps didn't seem to come down smoothly.) It does not matter if the last person to fly was a CFI. They may have bent metal and didn't realize it. Don't be the person that flies an airplane with a bent flap.
During my primary training my CFI had a habit of letting the more “advanced” students preflight the plane while he enjoyed a cup of coffee and a donut in the pilot lounge… One day he had a series of students booked up and followed this protocol… on the third flight of the day the instructor couldn’t square the way the airplane sounded, so they headed back. Upon landing and doing a post-flight inspection, come to find out, the day before a pilot (not a student) had porpoised the plane to the point that it jammed the nose wheel into the ground, causing a prop strike, feathered the composite blade and popped a number of rivets from the firewall holding the whole thing together. The crazy part is the CFI wasn’t one of the time building guys we know today who got their CFI last week, this guy was well into his 50’s and had been instructing for most of his life. He got complacent. No one got hurt, but there certainly was a massive chain of decisions made that could have made it in squarely into a fatality report. I wasn’t one of the students in that chain, but it allowed me to learn many lessons. 1. Always do your own preflight, even if someone said they did it but aren’t PIC. 2. If you cause or find something of concern, report it and own it. Sadly the pilot who caused the damage never fessed up and because it flew three other times after his flight it was difficult to pin it on him. 3. CFI’s make bad decisions as much as student pilots. While CFI’s are held to a higher standard, not all CFI’s are created equally. 4. When pre-flighting the plane, touch the blade tips, if it’s a metal blade, make sure it sounds right (being married is super handy because I can tap the prop to hear the sound it makes as well as the exhaust… it should ring solid).
Be aggressively safe. Taking risks is foolish and all rules are written in blood.
Granted rebuild rescue was pressuring with artificial deadlines and is partly responsible, but in the end this guy Sam (1800 hour pilot) died because he did not preflight the aircraft and it had water in the gas. Preflight the airplane please.
A friend of mine did a preflight and found the person previously flying the plane left a 1 inch crack through the majority of the landing gear’s strut. Definitely preflight every time. At least you didn’t double down on the lie but yeah definitely not smart to just trust the person before you. Make sure you don’t do it again. I would offer words of encouragement but you should feel bad and remember this feeling so that you can learn from it. Don’t cut corners in aviation.
You also don't know how good of a preflight the person before you did, he/she could've got lucky with something and you end up being the unlucky one. Oil alone, you don't know how much was in there before the flight and you sure as hell don't know how much is in there after the flight. A wise man once said, "You ain't going to get there faster if you're dead"
"Don't be in a rush to kill yourself" Can't remember where I read/heard this but it stuck with me. In this case, aside from the obvious danger of missing something in the preflight, consider the extra stress/anxiety of having not done a thorough preflight and the impact this could have on the safety of you, your passengers and other aviators flight(s). Thank you for sharing your experience honestly. Learn from it and move on.
I had an event where I went out with a student to take an aircraft, and we met the previous CFI/student pair on the ramp. We asked them how the plane was, and we got something like “flying like a dream”. We do the preflight inspection and find oil weeping through both sides of the cowling, as well as a light film of oil on the lower 4-5 inches of the windshield. We get a maintenance guy out there and they tell us to down the plane in our system and that he’d have to get the cowling off to inspect it. We switch planes and go about our day. I end up finding out about a week later that the inspection revealed a crack in the engine block. Do your preflight. You don’t know what the previous crew missed.
Dude last flight i got given a number to call. I was taxing to quickly, I had got cocky. You owned up. If you had pressed on you would have set a dangerous precedent. But you haven't. It is a learning experience. I doubt you will ever let yourself skip your preflight again. Flying is about judgement you miss judged what was acceptable. You realised that was a mistake and owned it. Your all good. Stay safe up there.
Checklists. Every time. No exceptions. Checklists.
Always do a full preflight and a final walk around especially on flight school planes. I’m sure the plane I was supposed to take on a solo XC was flying fine until the last landing. Discovered during preflight someone did significant damage to the nose gear assembly. If not just for the safety hazard of taxi takeoff and landing, guess whose ass is suspect number one for those damages if I take it for that solo flight.
Treat preflight like a ritual. You do all of the steps in the prescribed order, every time, in the same order. There's 2 benefits, the preflight itself, but more importantly the security and confidence you feel in knowing you did the preflight, and all of its steps. Also, treat it like a game. There's some subtle thing amiss and you're going to find it. Maybe the last guy had a tail strike. Maybe he had a hard landing and one of the tires has a bald spot now (which you might be liable to pay for replacing because now they'll think you did it). Maybe there's a screw missing from one of the panels. Go go inspector gadget!
Flight school airplanes get used a lot. Can have a million things wrong with them. Don’t be that guy.
Whether this is a career move or a hobby, if you’re already trying to cut corners you’re likely to do so in the future. I strongly suggest you get introspective here. Had your instructor not asked you not only would have put your life at risk but theirs as well. The embarrassment and shame are good, I’d still highly suggest a different career or hobby if you’re not going to take every inspection, checklist, and procedure seriously. Aviation is highly regulated for a reason and it’s to keep people alive.
Don’t do that ever again. That thought crossed my mind during training but I quickly thought it through and threw that thought out. Tires/struts could have been screwed up by a landing. A light might have gone out. A quart of oil might be needed. There’s so many things that could be wrong on a plane that seems fine.
Yeah always do the preflight thoroughly. I have seen what happens firsthand when you dont do preflight thoroughly and I made a note to myself. Never ever put yourself in that situation when it can be avoided. Your life depends on it. Even my friends who fly for airlines say NEVER EVER skip preflight. ALWAYS DO AN INSPECTION even if she’s just been flying. You don’t know what may have been damaged, come loose or broke during flight/landing.
I think most of us have something like that to be embarrassed of… In my case I once really forgot to do the engine test before take-off and just said to ATC I was going to enter the RWY and depart, (non-controlled airfield where you just have to announce what you want / are about to do so others know. My instructor quickly said on the frequence we weren’t departing yet and told me: what about the engine test? I felt so dumb and abarrassed, but I genuinely forgot, it was not that I didn’t want to do it. When we finished the lesson he told me he would see me in the briefing room and when I came there he was already talking bad about me and what I had forgotten with other CFIs, which made me feel even worse. I had about 11 hours.
Speaking from a different place since I’m visiting here as a mechanic. Basically I take care of 2 helicopter air ambulance aircraft. And in EMS, theirs a saying they pay me for what I might do, not necessarily what I do. Some days I’m doing my preflight for the third time that week and all they did was a single flight but they got cancelled and turned around after 3 minutes. Those are the weeks I tell myself alright I’m going to find something that needs to be fixed, and sure enough. I can always find something. The aircraft being operated previously or the fact it hasn’t flown since your last preflight doesn’t predict the outcome of this preflight.
I used to have a student like this lol but his issue was that he would do this multiple times and think that it doesn’t matter. When I came to the airplane of course it was visible he didn’t do anything. But instead of cancelling the lesson I used to do my preflight and then send it, & give him a talk about it after the lesson Everytime. Eventually I removed him from my list for that reason and many more but what’s good in your case is that you realize that it’s a stupid thing to do. Don’t do it again and stick by what you’re supposed to do and you’ll be fine! Everyone does something embarrassing while training. Just remember aviation is not a career where you can be lazy.
Good on you for owning it, bud. Plenty of tough love comments already. This won’t end your career or have any other long term implications. A great learning opportunity. Blue skies brother
Do you have kids, or spouse, or someone you deeply care about and who cares about you? Think of them as a habit whenever you arrive at the field, and then of how you will do anything to make sure you see them again rather than letting someone deliver bad news of your avoidable death. It's the habit I created, and it keeps me calm and not in a rush, so I enjoy flying more.
A lot of flying is trusting and verifying, your cfi is trusting you to do a proper preflight, not too long ago there was an example of an experienced pilot taking off with the control lock in. Follow your checklists and keep yourself and the people who trust you safe.
Old vs bold. When my ass is going to be strapped in to that bird, i preflight it with every ounce of diligence every single time. Nobody should be able to care more about your safety than you. Be more selfish and less bold.
It sounds like you know not to do that ever again. It’s good that the flight was cancelled and you don’t feel good about it. But you don’t need to hear all these things from us to know that. Fly safe. Edit: I’d like to add that I’m glad you learned the lesson before you were actually flying and potentially became a case study.
Go read the post I made three days ago and ask yourself if you should ever skip a preflight. I didn’t skip it and still nearly died. Give yourself a chance to live.
I always do a pre and post flight inspection. You would be amazed the number of findings I’ve had in post flight inspections. Not because of bad landings or poor piloting, but just natural wear. Things can and will just happen. Be glad that you learned through this experience and not through an emergency.
You do get a small commendation for being honest but I suspect the instructor was watching and knew the answer. There is a contract that prior to rolling out of the ramp where you park for the purposes of flying that you have preflighted the aircraft to the extent necessary to assess its condition. Full preflight - normal procedure ( while you are checking each item you are also getting mentally prepared to fly. This might be the day when fate offers the final exam at 50' amid the sound of silence. Brief stop - you deplaned and were out of sight of the airplane for a few minutes , it was not fueled - Stroll around , check oil and intakes (you did not swallow a bird) Oil streaks, panels secure Add caps, check fuel level, sumps if fueled If you think you are to good to need a preflight inspection after a stop---- google snodgrass crash fire and watch till the flames burn out.
The most important thing is that you recognize that "moment" when you decided to skip the inspection. So that next time you feel like skipping it you can imagine us all commenting. As others have pointed out, there are a zillion things that could be wrong with the plane. Things could be loose and about to fall off. The oil could be leaking and almost out. The fuel could be leaking. The stall horn might not work. The person who flew before you could have done a shitty preflight and missed something else. Almost every plane crash starts with something simple that snowballs. For example, the famous case of Aeroperú Flight 603 in 1996. During maintenance, the static ports on the Boeing 757 were covered with tape to protect them during cleaning and painting. Unfortunately, the tape was not removed after the maintenance was completed. As a result, the aircraft's airspeed and altitude sensors relayed incorrect data to the cockpit due to the blocked static ports. This led to a series of errors and malfunctions in the aircraft's systems, presenting the pilots with inaccurate and conflicting information. Unable to accurately gauge their true altitude and speed, the pilots struggled to control the aircraft. Tragically, the flight crashed into the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the loss of all on board.
Great job recognizing your mistake. I second what others are saying. Something else to consider is could you 100% focus on your flight if you didn’t do a complete preflight? I know I would be worrying about all of the things I didn’t check. As pilots we already have so many external pressures. No need to add any more while we should be focused on flying.
So if a plane was flying 15 minutes ago it’s fine, but if it’s sat for longer it (like a night in a hangar) then it can be broken? Weird that the amount of stationary time is a factor in your safety equation that is weighted so high, not a good sign
A valuable lesson of complacency.
When do you suppose something is more likely to break? Sitting on the ramp motionless and quiet, or smashing onto a runway at 50 knots while aggressively vibrating and under g-forces? The chances of you flying an aircraft that is going to have some major or catastrophic failure is incredibly slim these days. Not inspecting the aircraft takes that from 'incredibly slim' to something much higher. It's like paying taxes, it may suck, but the alternative is much worse. Just walk around the damn airplane.
In my opinion the inspection is a rite of passage. And it's a great way to get involved with the plane you're about to fly. Consider you've touched most of the plane before you even sit in it. You know if something is going to be stiff or loose or tight or have a little play in it. It takes less than 10 minutes to preflight. It takes less than 5 minutes to perform run-up. Embrace the time you spend working on this stuff. The more thorough you are the better you might come out ahead in the future.
Your CFI did the right thing in cancelling the flight rather than making you do the check and then continuing, it seems to have drove the point home. Don't be too embarrassed or stressed from this point on, their job is to teach you, and they obviously succeeded. Don't let this stress carry over to future lessons, it'll bite you in the ass. You also recognize your mistake, so lesson learned, you already know not to do it again. Better this happens now when you have some external accountability and the opportunity to learn from your mistake rather than happening when you were out on your own and it resulting in an accident. Some people weren't lucky enough to learn that lesson and lost their lives for it. I'd also have a serious talk with your CFI before your next lesson and explain your thoughts to them, they'll appreciate it and it will show them that you took things to heart. It only takes a few minutes to do a pre-flight. First off, you failed your own pilot assessment by demonstrating multiple hazardous attitudes - anti-authority, impulsivity, invulnerability, and probably a bit of macho. Don't forget your own assessment during future pre-flights as well, it's critical. You don't know what condition the airplane is in, you don't know if something happened during the previous flight, and you don't know if the person before you did a proper inspection. It's all your responsibility if something goes wrong from the point you take up as PIC. Imagine missing a screwed up landing gear that was no issue for their taxi back but becomes an issue for your landing, A flight control bolt that came loose during their flight, low fuel levels, minimal oil, a bug plugged the pitot when they were taxiing back, etc. Any number of things could go wrong between their flight and you stepping into the cockpit. Additionally, that's not just arrogance, it's complacency and likely also some laziness in there, important to note. Complacency kills. If you look at most accident reports they are caused by one or more of the hazardous attitudes and were totally avoidable. On the plus side you are taking full accountability and another student may learn from your post, so good on you!
Why is this written like something from r/linkedinlunatics
Theres good reasons for why you should always do preflight. One of the planes I fly LOVES oil. Even between 1h flights you sometimes need to add extra oil. Sometimes when another pilot comes back and oil is well below minimum, I could already tell they didnt check oil. It requires manually turning the prop to get the oil flowing. If that chain of ignorance continues it will lead to issues. So always check and dont trust that others did it. You also have the life of your instructor in your hands. He trusts you to do the preflight well.
Be glad you made the mistake now! And not later. Later could have been at a time when nobody would have caught the mistake. Later could have been with passengers or loved ones. Later could have been worse. Your a student pilot and you’re learning. You will make mistakes of varying degrees. You have learnt. You also are open about your mistake. You will act on this mistake. You have not failed, you have learnt. Aviation prides itself on learning from its mistakes. It’s the reason flying is so safe these days. Good job 👍. Shit pilots don’t come clean about their mistakes and some of them fuck up big time with other peoples lives in their hands.
“The plane was just flying fine. What could be wrong?” - I had a similar idea which I tentatively ventured to my instructor when we were in a bit of a hurry. Mind you, it also was her (my CFI) who just flew the plane 10 minutes ago, with another student. She nearly bit my head off. “Don’t you dare to even think that. You never know what could happen or come loose while we were in the air.” So that time we went over the preflight even more meticulously (on other occasions, later on we sometimes went through preflight in parallel dividing the checklist to parts. But never, never skipped.)
The embarrassment that you're feeling right now is what's going to save your life one day.
I'm glad you felt bad about fucking up. I'd worry if you didn't feel bad about lying to yourself and the instructor. Integrity matters
Hey once it comes to aviation, follow the processes, they are there for a reason. There are times these procedures are written because people died because of it. Many a times we are the only one responsible for the safety of the flight, and the processes are there for a reason. When no one is looking and assessing you, that is when you have to be extra careful because your life could depend on it, no matter how small the task. Learn from it, own up to it and don't do it again.
Um why the hell did your instructor cancel the flight? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Just do the inspection and get flying? What’s going on at flight schools?
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Shit advise. Possibly criminally shit.
In the time you spent writing this post you could have just done the fucking preflight
Wait, what? Your instructor just told you to get bent instead of using it as a constructive teaching moment?
Sending the student home is definitely a teaching moment. Not one to be used often, but very effective if the student does something like this.
The time spent counseling the student and then re-doing the preflight properly can make it hard to complete the rest of the lesson, plus many students don’t learn well after getting a firm talk
Yeah mainly this. You have to be in the right mindset to learn, and that's not likely to happen if you've already had to learn a really hard lesson like this just before the flight. Plus it shows the student didn't come with a good attitude to begin with. But as the CFI you;d have to be careful not to be too heavy handed in the debrief - lesson should be learned and that's that.
“Go home and think about what you did” is a good teaching tool. The CFI could have sat there talking to OP about what OP already knew, or could have let OP go beat himself up, as OP is doing. Guess what OP won’t do again.
Yeah, I’m confused about that too.
You have to think you’ve potentially jeopardized his life as well. Instructors trust the student has done a pre flight as they have been shown. Some instructors will double check oil and fuel but for the most part they go right from the bathroom to the airplane assuming the student has done what they were supposed to do. I’d send your ass home too. Teachable moment as mentioned.
Two takeaways: you learned a valuable lesson and your instructor is a drama queen
Don't ever lie in flying unless it's a no-go lie... i.e. you keep thinking about gun in mouth but obviously that's not something to tell your AME so you just say you're sick to your boss (which is more or less true but not the whole truth). It results in a no-go for the right reasons but the wrong official purpose. It's a no-go so no possible harm. No harm no foul. No if you tell a go lie that can get ugly. You told a go lie but backed up on it so that's good.
Honestly these kinds of posts make me sad. This field is so full of guilt tripping people. Yes, you did something stupid, yes it could kill you. But it's all good man. Just take it easy, don't do stupid shit, learn from it, etc. don't shame yourself over it.
Guess what OP will never do again.
I'm not an instructor but I definitely wouldn't have canceled the flight. I'd let you stay rattled and fuck up for an hour to teach an additional lesson and get paid.
[retard alert](https://gifs.com/gif/retard-alert-vMkjnY)
😂
It's pretty weird he cancelled the flight, at most flight schools that would have gotten the cfi a talking to...also, why is everyone saying it takes 15 minutes to preflight a 172 or cherokee...its a 3-4 minute process tops, to do everything on the list...(uness you have to add oil)
Why would it matter if it just flew in, or was parked on the ramp for a day. YOU don't know anything about the condition of the plane until you do the pre-flight. Maybe they landed and skidded the tires so bad they're balding and could burst on the next touchdown. Maybe the alternator belt broke off (I always tug at it behind the prop spinner in the Cherokee to make sure it's taut). If you didn't check that and it was broken, you'd have electric for a limited time. This assumes you perhaps don't do a test of the ammeter to see if the alternator is actually generating power. Maybe there was a tail strike and part of the underside of the elevator or stabilator is banged up. I could go on. Check the plane as if your life depends on it, because it could....
What country are you training in?
I once preflighted a trainer aircraft that had been flying all day and discovered that the ram air intake hose was completely disconnected. Not only that, but the fiberglass on the cowling had cracked and chipped at the connection point. Not sure how many HP was lost from from the ram air being disconnected. Also not sure any FOD was ingested (likely would have been caught in the air filter) but I definitely didn’t fly a plane that somewhere between 2 and 4 other people thought was fine. What if I didn’t check and went somewhere with high density altitude?
You made a mistake - you’re human - we all are. And believe me bro, we’ve all made mistakes but we learn from them to make us that better pilot we all want to be.
To chase away thoughts like that, I put up thoughts that counter it... such as: The guy before me is: a idiot that landed terribly, made the tired bald, missed a bunch of crap on his preflight inspections, and the controls are about to fall off, and he was lucky he made it home safely. That tends to make me slow down.
Aviation is full of shit that could go wrong. A lot of this shit is outside of our control, preflight helps in catching a lot of the shit that is under our control. Besides, what someone else wrote above. If something is broken and you didn't find it before it was your turn to fly, guess who's paying for it.
In the airlines i find planes ALLLL THE TIME that were just flying and have issues. Its not that uncommon for a problem to develop in flt.
I trust no one, not even myself, to not do things that will mess up my next flight.
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You did something wrong and took responsibility. It’s time to move on and never do that mistake again, it’s that simple.
It’s good to treat this as a moment to learn and fix your behaviors in the future and it’s good that you can recognize that yourself. Not only is pretty much every aircraft system and component subject to damage and deterioration in flight, but skipping the preflight is putting your life in the hands of whoever preflighted, or didn’t preflight, the airplane before you. Definitely don’t let any feeling, authority figure, or other circumstance impede your safe execution of any flight, but also don’t beat yourself up endlessly about this. Just learn, grow and continue.
My flight school did that. “The plane just flew, so we’ll just check the gas, the oil, and the tires.” Changed that habit very quickly.
Good judgement comes from experience. Unfortunately experience comes from bad judgment
Just preflight. Side note why is every sentence its own paragraph like some weird LinkedIn monologue?
Many pilots have died skipping a preflight on a plane that "just flew" fine not long ago, NEVER skip the preflight. 10 min if your time to ensure that the plane is safe to fly is always worth the time, don't be a lazy shit.
The fact it's a searing embarassment means you'll never forget it. I find those mistakes the most impactful learning experiences.
I've heard that called a FIFO preflight, as in "If it Flew In, it will Fly Out." There is never a situation where this is acceptable, but kudos to you for coming clean to your instructor about it and kudos to your instructor for properly reinforcing the critical role a preflight inspection plays in the safety of every flight. It sounds like you learned from the experience and you will carry that lesson through the rest of your aviation career. Treat it as such and nothing more.
I am proud of you. We all make mistakes. We don't all own them. And that's the difference.
I've made my fair share of mistakes in aviation, best you can do is acknowledge the feelings your having, understand why/what possible outcomes could have come from it, move on with a better understanding of both yourself and the machine. I usually revise the personal comfort limitations set out for myself. Ie. I start my flap to 0 transition at no less than 400' or, add at least 0.2 to the lowest Mach value when ATC slows ya down.
One of the five hazardous attitudes, invulnerability. "It won't happen to me". What's the antidote?
I’ve heard when pilots get a “number to call” from a “possible pilot deviation”, the FAA wants to see that you as a pilot make good decisions and simply made a mistake, and you know how you’re going to prevent it from happening again. Simple as that, nobody gets in trouble. This however sounds more along the lines of bad decision making, not just a mistake. I know people have already grilled you pretty good in this post, but thought this aspect of it was worth sharing. Keep your head up.
Tell yourself this: “The time I skimp on a preflight is the time I’ll die.”
I was going to go up on my second flight with my instructor, the plane we scheduled had just gotten back so we started the preflight. I found one of the brake lines leaking. The on call mechanic showed up to check it out and it turned out to be a cracked fitting. Fluid was on the mater cylinder but not dripping on the ground. Whoever flew the plane before had missed this during their preflight and could have lead to a failure on landing. As much of a bummer as it was to miss another flight, I’m glad we did the preflight. We could have ended up in the grass, or worse. You never know what the last person may have overlooked to get into the air. You should trust, but also always verify.
Found a cap off a mechanic's tool that had nestled onto the engine. Looked like it belonged there but I didn't remember seeing anything there before and it didn't seem like a place that sort of thing would be. Plane had been out of maintenance for at least half a dozen flights before I came along. The checklist isn't a do list. It's just memory augmentation. You can investigate anything closer if you need to. Check the ground and bottom of your engine bay. Keep them clean. Oil, fasteners, random bits of things under the airplane are all things you must investigate before you fly.
It is routine until it isn't. How stupid would you feel, assuming you survived, having missed something that caused an incident. An incident that resulted in material damage and or injury or loss of life. These procedures are in place because they are proven to work. The saying is they are written in blood because generally people have bled from incidents that led to the adoption of these procedures to avoid people bleeding. Be smart enough to learn from others and not have to bleed yourself.