Greetings,
I know many of you are probably as surprised as I am at the number of pilot deviations that Jim Timm summarizes in his monthly Executive Directors Report. They can cover the whole range of deviations from failure to follow ATC instructions, to runway and airspace incursions to TFR violations. While I’m sure they represent a relatively small percentage of the total aircraft operations that take place in Arizona in any given month, they still represent opportunities for some really undesirable outcomes.
Fortunately, there are a lot of resources available to educate pilots and help avoid deviations both on the ground and during the flight. A quick search on “Avoiding Pilot Deviations” yields quite a few sources and information summaries with tips for doing just that – avoiding pilot deviations. They are generally quick reads and cover a lot of common-sense tips including:
- Plan each flight – this includes the 30-minute flight from your home airport to your favorite breakfast location that you’ve done more times than you can remember. It’s a quick task using tools like ForeFlight and you can get a full briefing for your intended route and time of flight. You might be surprised what you find in terms of NOTAM’s, etc.
- Focus on Communication – We all know that ATC requires us to read back all instructions and we should have the same expectation of ourselves. If you don’t understand or didn’t quite hear an instruction – don’t be shy about asking for clarification. Do you have a sterile cockpit rule as a part of your personal SOP’s? Do you include it in your pre-takeoff brief with your passengers or copilot? It’s hard to implement one on the fly when once you’ve taxied past the movement area line on the ground or in busy, controlled airspace. Requesting flight following is also a great way to maintain communication with ATC and improve your situational awareness.
- Use the Tools – We’ve come a long way from paper VFR sectional charts and regardless of how sophisticated the avionics suite in your airplane is, virtually every pilot has an iPad with an EFB app available to them during flight planning and once airborne. These are invaluable tools for helping you with airport taxi diagrams and preventing you from blundering into controlled airspace without a clearance. Are your databases up to date? Your GPS is generally more precise than ATC radar, but expired databases only complicate the issue if you need to explain your navigation to an FAA inspector.
- Space and Time – Give yourself some margin, both horizontally and vertically, when you are flying around airspace you want to avoid. Putting the magenta line right next to an airspace boundary and thinking you are clear is only asking for trouble. Again, what’s going to be the tie breaker, ATC radar or your GPS navigation? If you’re trying to
avoid an airspace restriction like a TFR, know when it will go active and give yourself plenty of schedule margin.
There are a lot of resources out there to help us avoid pilot deviations and I would encourage you to take a few minutes to do a refresher over a cup of coffee with one of your flying buddies or your flight instructor.
Thank you for supporting APA’s mission through your membership and please feel free to reach out to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you have any comments, concerns, or questions.
Fly Safe,
Chris