On a recent Friday, my friend Michael called and offered a right seat in his Cessna Citation M2 for a round trip to Austin. The mission was to pick up his dad from Austin Bergstrom Airport and return home. If we left on time, we would be back for a late lunch. Although I don’t have a twin rating or a jet type rating for the Citation, it is still fun to act as an unofficial safety pilot and learn the processes and procedures of flying an unfamiliar plane.
I told my wife Friday evening about my plans for the next day, and she gave me the go-ahead with the caveat that I had to go to a movie with her on Sunday as a compromise. She likes going to the actual movie theater to see movies. Acknowledging that with the tickets, snacks, and a drink, the movie would cost about the same as the trip to Austin, I acquiesced to the movie. I considered it a fair trade and made plans to meet Michael the next morning.
That Saturday, we agreed to meet at the FBO at 10:00 a.m. for a 10:30 a.m. departure. At 10:20 a.m. Michael called and said he was running late because he had to update the Garmin databases since he had not flown in a few weeks. We were not time-constrained with any weather concerns, and his dad lived close enough to the Austin airport that we could text on departure for him to meet us when we arrived. Weather was clear skies with a cold north wind blowing 15 knots, gusting to 20. We anticipated some turbulence on departure and then again as we arrived in Austin. We climbed into the cabin, let the databases finish updating, and fired up the two engines for the first leg.
On the way over to Austin, we discussed how nice it is to have a second pilot in the right seat (even if not type-rated) after not flying for some extended period of time. Although not commercial pilots, classic crew resource management can be used to assist with ATC communication and reduce the pilot’s workload with checklists and systems confirmation. The flight to Austin was a quick up and down, taking just under an hour at 26,000 feet. A rapid turnaround with fuel, and we headed back home.
On the way back, Houston center called up and asked us to verify our routing as we headed east, just north of the Conroe, Texas, airport. We filed the ILEXY4 departure with the ZENZI transition LFK, then the destination. We advised that we were direct destination about 20 miles east of IAH (Houston Intercontinental). ATC’s response was to keep the direct destination, and admonished that we had missed a filed waypoint at LFK. Michael and I were momentarily confused, but somehow, even with both of us in the cockpit, we failed to notice that after the departure’s last waypoint, we were supposed to turn north to Angelina VOR (LFK). LFK is not part of the departure out of Austin, but instead was filed in the route by the pilot, but not transferred to the avionics in the plane. He simply missed transferring it to the flight management system. He was quick to point out his mistake and commented that not flying for a few weeks had made him a bit rusty. The mistake was innocent, but a good reminder that time out of the cockpit can lead to inconsistent results.
I knew exactly how he felt. Often, after not flying for even a couple of weeks, I get butterflies when I climb back into the plane. Longer absences cause more anxiety to the point that I often take an instructor with me when I pick up my plane from maintenance. My annual usually takes about three to four weeks. The shop test flies the aircraft before I pick it up, so my concern is not the mechanical worthiness of the plane but my own time away from flying as pilot in command. Like any learned skill, flying requires practice. Having a safety pilot in the right seat after not flying for a while provides the assurance of redundancy.
I have spoken with multiple friends and acquaintances over the years who talk about their own flying journey and comment, “I got my private pilot’s license, but just didn’t fly enough, so I gave it up.” Or “I tried it and just did not trust myself to take it seriously enough to be good at it all the time.” These are the type of pilots we want to step away from flying. Not because they cannot become excellent pilots if they tried, but because they realized their passion limitations. They simply were not passionate enough to become experts. It doesn’t mean they are not passionate about something else equally as dangerous or even requiring much more intellectual capability to perform. They are just not confident in their own skills as a pilot.
In 2022, I had a mechanical failure in my 1989 Piper Malibu Mirage and executed an emergency landing in Beaumont. The plane was down for more than two months until the new engine was installed, then it was ready to be picked up. I had flown with friends in the interim but had not been a pilot in command for several months. When it came time to retrieve the plane, I called my instructor and asked that he meet me in Beaumont and fly home with me. The purpose was to ensure that my skills were still sharp after my time away from flying. The flight home was uneventful both mechanically and piloting, but I just felt better having a second set of eyes and ears in the right seat, reading back checklists and helping confirm ATC instructions.
After an annual in Atlanta, I could not find a “safety-pilot” to accompany me to retrieve the plane at Gwinnett Field (KLZU) outside Atlanta. It had been about a month since I dropped the plane off for the annual. I hopped into the cockpit and began the engine start checklist, taking a little more time with it than a normal flight. The engine fired up fine, and I went through the pre-taxi portion of the checklist. When testing the autopilot, I continued to get a fault, such that the pre-flight test failed, and the trim switch was not working. I was frustrated, shut down the engine, walked back into the shop, and explained the anomaly. About an hour later, the problem was solved when the mechanic who had worked on the plane admitted to pulling the trim breaker during maintenance. The technician commented that I had not done my checklist thoroughly because it requires checking all breakers. I was frustrated with the comment, but he was correct. I had done a cursory check of the breakers as the normal part of the checklist, but I somehow missed the autopilot /trim breaker being pulled. A second pilot may have suggested checking the breakers again, avoiding the time wasted to shut down the engine and diagnose the cause.
On another occasion, I was leaving a busy Class B feeder airport in Atlanta that serviced a lot of jet and turbine traffic as well as a local flight school. I had to wait for a long while to take off behind a number of flight school planes doing pattern work and other landing and departing business traffic. During the waiting period, I feathered my prop to reduce the possibility of foreign object damage (FOD) from ingesting items from the taxiway into the engine while I sat and waited for my departure slot. I was finally cleared for departure with an instruction of “no delay.” As I began the takeoff roll, I immediately noticed reduced thrust and that my airspeed was not climbing rapidly enough to get to my takeoff speed. I aborted the takeoff, notified ATC, and exited the runway. I knew immediately that I had not moved the prop out of feather before beginning the takeoff roll. I was focused on the “no delay” instruction from the tower and frustrated by the long wait behind all of the flight school traffic. Embarrassed, I had to explain to the tower what happened, have them refile the flight plan, and wait again behind all of the departing flight school and GA traffic.
In both instances, I think a second pilot would have helped me avoid the two simple mistakes. First, having an observer makes you slow down during all of your
processes because you know you are being watched. Second, a safety pilot, rated or not, helps with crew resource management. Simply reading off the checklist to the pilot and waiting for acknowledgement ensures that every check item is touched. When we fly our own planes, we don’t expect anything to be changed because no one else has been in the plane. Checklists can become more routine. For instance, the breakers are something I usually just touch and press with my palm. I know they have not been intentionally pulled because I am the only one flying the plane. But after maintenance, everything requires a little more attention, and a safety pilot can help focus attention on necessary items. The same is true with my prop error and aborted takeoff. The tower hurried me, but not so much that I should have missed the prop setting. A safety pilot reviewing the checklist one last time would have prevented the error.
I know some private pilots who always take a safety pilot with them. These people have taken and passed their private pilot and maybe even their instrument rating, but still feel they need a safety pilot for each trip. Good for them. When we play golf, we hit at the practice range. When we give a speech, we practice in the mirror. Practice equals proficiency and confidence, so why is it not the same for very professional and proficient pilots to get a little practice when they have been away from the cockpit for a while? That decision is one every pilot should weigh. Is a week a long time, or a month, or three months? What is your comfort level? It may be that after a month, a pilot is perfectly comfortable until looking at the forecast and noticing an approach will probably be necessary. That information locks in another decision matrix, and maybe now a safety pilot would be a good idea.
I fly a lot of hours all over the country. I’m not embarrassed to say that in the more than 20 years I have been flying, I have made multiple mistakes. None of them led to anything serious, but all were learning experiences. We all make mistakes when flying. Not everyone wants to talk about them, and admitting mistakes is hard. But like everything in life, we learn from mistakes, and ultimately admitting to them makes all of us better pilots. Mistakes are also a function of being out of practice. If you want to minimize your mistakes, think about it as you think about getting to an expert level in any endeavor. Would a professional coach help you get to the next level or back to where you were after not practicing for a while? If the answer is yes, ask a CFI or another competent pilot friend to sit right seat on your next flight. The friend you ask will be as excited as I am every time I get to fly right seat with a friend, regardless of whether there’s a propeller in front or two jet engines on the back.
