Read Time= 4 Minutes
All of us know the afamed B-17 used during WWII, which helped to win the war. You probably didn’t know, however, that the B-17 was the first aircraft to get a checklist!
This came about when, on the first B-17 flight, 3 men we’re seriously injured, and a few later died, when the aircraft stalled shortly after takeoff. After further investigation, it was found that the Captain had left the elevator lock on, and the aircraft was unresponsive to pitch control.
At the time, in 1935, the aircraft was challenging a few other companies for large government contracts that could mean either the demise or the success of Boeing. Therefore, Boeing set out to find out what they could do.
During a major think-tank session, it was determined that the pilots needed a checklist. It wasn’t a knock to the pilots, or that the aircraft was too hard to fly, rather the aircraft was just too complex for a pilots memory.
The first checklist was born!
So, as a flight simulator pilot, how should you use checklists in your virtual flying? Read on.
Many people have the notion that a checklist is supposed to be checked off, one item at a time, as they are done. This is time consuming, distracting, and potentially more dangerous than not having a checklist!
Throw out those old ideas, and clear your mind for something that works!
Here is my method for using checklists, that I think you’ll find very useful!
- Memorize your checklists to the best of your ability. Some may use simple acronyms, and others just flat out memorize item-by-item. While memorizing a checklist, it may be best to do the old “step-by-step” method and gradually work your way out of needing to see everything on paper.
- As you move through memorizing the checklist items, it’s important to simply start doing things because they are in your memory. Your memory-to-kinetic connection is much faster than the “What’s next? Read. Look. Do. Back to Checklist” way of doing things. A proactive method of doing checklists is much better than reactive.
- As you begin to memorize the items for certain phases of the flight, soon you won’t need the checklist at all. Does this mean that you shouldn’t still read it? Not at all! Now the checklist is used to VERIFY what you have done. I can tell you right now that things get busy and you’ll often forget something. Although you may think you know it, ALWAYS VERIFY. Very, very few pilots are perfect, and those that are use checklists.
- When you finally have a checklist memorized, you’ll do all the items, THEN you’ll grab the checklist and VERIFY everything has been done.
I challenge you to try out this method of using checklists. Feel free to report back with your findings. Doing checklists this way will certainly improve the speed of checklists in your virtual flight deck.
Oh yeah, and the B-17? After the accident the Boeing company was threatened with collapse. By implementing the checklists, they flew 1.8 million hours with 18 B-17s without incident, proved to the government they were safe, and eventually nearly 13,000 were built. What is more telling is the images of these four engined, resilient monster fending off the evil forces of the Axis Powers.
And to think that this aircraft could have been eliminated from it’s place in history because they continued not to use checklists.
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