Looking, but not Seeing...

A gentle, warm breeze was drifting across the airfield on this bright summer’s evening long ago. The smell of recently mown grass was mixing with the aroma of fresh coffee wafting from the clubhouse, and there was a faint whiff of kerosene in the air.

A heady cocktail of scents for any aviator. So instead of conducting our debrief indoors, my student and I had chosen to sit outside at a picnic table, to review the rights and wrongs of the circuit training lesson we had just flown. After he left for home, I eyed the club C172 which gleamed temptingly in the lowering sun, and decided yes, why not treat myself to just one solo circuit? The field would be closing in about twenty minutes, so there was just enough time. And having obtained my instructor rating only a month previously, it had been a little while since I had flown alone in the left hand seat. A warm engine, almost full tanks, not much traffic around, just a breath of wind: ideal conditions for an uneventful, relaxed pleasure flight. Or so it seemed.

External checks completed, I climbed on board the Cessna, and after a quick (that’s the ominous word) run through the checklists I taxied out, lined up, and was airborne. On reaching the downwind leg, I stole a few moments to admire the beauty of the city and the bay spread out around me, before commencing my pre-landing checks from memory. All seemed right with the world as I intoned the familiar mantra: brakes - off, undercarriage - down, etc, until reaching fuel - my lips automatically started to shape the word “on”, but as I looked down at the fuel tank selector, the label “OFF”, to which it was actually pointing, glared up at me with laser-like intensity. Reflexively I reached and roughly yanked the lever 180 degrees to the “both” tanks position, at the same time shouting “ON!” at the top of my voice. In that instant, the idea of the perfect summer evening flight became a forgotten fantasy. Threat and peril were suddenly lurking. With heart rate doubled, I listened anxiously for the engine cough or splutter which, if my correcting action had been too late, might portend imminent fuel starvation and a possible forced landing. Mercifully it kept running, but still I endeavoured to stay within gliding range of the runway, while coaxing my craft around the base and final legs. Eventually, with a huge sense of relief, I landed, taxied back to parking, and wiped the sweat from my brow.

In the resounding silence after shutting down the engine, I realised what had happened. My student, correctly obeying a recent change in club operating rules, had dutifully switched the fuel selector to OFF after our flight. I, following the ingrained habit of previous procedures, vision perhaps blurred by my impromptu, rushed desire to fly on this perfect evening, had “seen” it as pointing to BOTH before starting. Even when presented with the exact opposite information in front of my eyes.

While I was tying down the Cessna, our maintenance chief Tony approached and, with the wary intuition of the experienced engineer, asked if all was okay. I recounted my tale of error, finally muttering something like “there must have been enough fuel in the lines to get me to downwind”. The look of skepticism on his face was almost cruel, in its obvious dismissal of my theory. “Impossible”, he said. “I’ll ground the airplane and take a look at it tomorrow”.

Even from a distance, when I arrived at the hangar next morning, Tony’s body language told me I was in for a drubbing. When I got within earshot, he wagged a reproving finger in my direction. “You’re one lucky pilot”, he chided me. He had discovered that although the selector had been turned to OFF for the initial part of my flight, there was a fault in the valve mechanism and it was permitting fuel to flow anyway. Fortune was on my side - this time. In any case, the avgas I had speculated as being “in the lines” would have drained to empty long before I reached downwind, he pointed out. But I conjured ruefully with the thought that if the valve was working properly, the fuel might have brought me just aloft, and then, if suddenly exhausted, dumped me into the trees. Even that was unlikely, given the small volume which would have been available. The simple fact was, I didn’t know how it would have performed. And that is not a good place to be, when it comes to flying machines.

So yet another pilot had fallen victim to the age-old mistake of doing a quick check, rather than a thorough check. I was looking, but I wasn’t seeing. From that moment onwards, I resolved to be focused and alert in confirming the true status of checklist items, whether written or memorised. In the many years and flights since that sunny afternoon, I’ve continued to make my due share of piloting errors. But I’ve never failed to double-check the fuel selectors.

The mental-emotional processes that make us see things that aren’t there, or apprehend situations to be more favourable to safe outcomes than they actually are, can occur in flying just as easily as in less hazardous human activities. More easily, on some occasions. My certainty that the fuel was “on”, had surely sprung from a mixture of impending fatigue at the end of a busy day’s flying, coupled with haste, in trying to get airborne quickly to “beat the clock” of the airfield closure. Undoubtedly there was also an element of confirmation bias - to coin the academic name of a very real phenomenon - the psychological tendency, when our guard is dropped, to select and (mis)perceive only those events, evidence and information which support our desires and intentions, rather than considering them impassively and objectively. Moreover, I was young and still in the honeymoon period of my new instructor qualification - that precarious time when a pilot’s estimation of his or her abilities can be at its (inevitably inaccurate) utmost. And finally there was what I have come to describe as the “threat of perfect weather”: there is nothing like hearing the word "CAVOK" on the ATIS broadcast to lull the inattentive flyer into a false sense of security.

Every pilot is vulnerable to such dangers, from selecting the best bits of a forecast in order to justify a flight in potentially marginal weather, to postponing examination of an unusual mechanical sound until the next flight, or overestimating one’s abilities at the end of a busy day. It behoves instructors to keep a watchful eye so as to identify occasions where these brands of wishful thinking crop up, possibly to ensnare either their students, or themselves. This is useful not only to enhance the safety of the current flight. Such events also present fruitful and interesting learning opportunities for both parties, if identified and discussed. Just as aircraft handling skills require frequent practice to acquire and maintain proficiency, so decision-making skills, in the face of ambiguous information, can benefit from rehearsal and repetition at times when the stakes are not the highest. In addition to waiting for such events to happen (don’t have any doubt, they will), instructors might prepare a repertoire of useful scenarios for appropriate practice. On quite a few occasions, for instance, I have watched a student announce that all the gauges were “in the green”, when in fact a tripped - by me - circuit breaker had set them all to zero. (Caution: this is not recommended in some types). Similarly, if instructors observe rushed pilots who misread altimeter settings, overlook checklist items, misinterpret clearances they copied only moments ago, and numerous other incidences of “looking but not seeing”, these are opportune moments to rewind the tape a minute or two, to admit their own similar past mistakes, and to consider and rehearse together the procedure at hand with fresh, calm attention.

Few instructors at the outset of their teaching career might readily imagine that teaching pilots to see could be an important part of their skill set. But vision is as much mental and emotional as it is physical - another subtle element in the complex, fascinating business of being a pilot.

-oOo-

A version of this article was first published in "Flight Training News" (UK), September 2015