What do you expect?

Don’t misunderstand. Roger was otherwise truly proficient at operating the L–1011’s complex systems. The problem was that he often did not take time to verify that the movement of a switch or control actually produced the expected result. He got away with this most of the time because the Lockheed’s systems were so reliable. Once in a while, though, Roger’s hand speed backfired such as when he inadvertently deployed the passenger oxygen masks while preflighting the cockpit before departure. (Our flight was delayed two hours while the masks were repacked.)

Many general aviation pilots fly with the expectation that everything will operate normally. Consider, for example, those who think they have lowered the landing gear only to discover during the noisy and abbreviated landing that they had not.

Experience increases proficiency but also can breed complacency. When a pilot moves a switch hundreds of times and gets the desired result every time, he develops the expectation that the action will continue to produce the same result. This is when the sadistic finger of fate is most likely to point in his or her direction.

When using any system, a pilot should verify it is operating normally before diverting attention elsewhere. When lowering the landing gear, for example, keep your fingers on the switch until verifying that the gear is down and locked.

Other systems require similar attention because things do not always work the way they should. When turning on an auxiliary fuel pump, for example, look for a momentary fluctuation in fuel pressure. This verifies that moving the switch actually turned on the pump. You similarly should check for an ammeter (or load meter) fluctuation when turning on the pitot heat, and so forth.

The closest I ever came to losing an airplane and making a messy hole in the ground was when I became a victim of expectancy. I was executing an ILS approach to Gander, Newfoundland, in a Cessna 310 that I was ferrying to England in 1963. The weather was abysmal, 100-and-one with blowing snow. But because the wind was straight down the runway, and I had plenty of fuel, I opted to execute a look-see approach before diverting to my alternate, St. John’s. Conditions were as advertised, however, and nothing was visible at decision height.

Within seconds of establishing a missed approach, the Gander controller issued an unexpected clearance to Goose Bay. This, I was told matter of-factly, was because the weather at St. John’s had fallen to “zero-zero.” I suddenly found myself rearranging charts, changing frequencies, spinning course selectors, and attending to a flurry of communications. I failed to recognize until it was almost too late that the twin Cessna had begun a left spiraling descent. My initial reaction was that the left engine had failed, but the problem actually was the left throttle creeping slowly aft. I had expected that the throttles would stay where I had put them, but this assumption was almost my last.

In 1982, an Air Florida captain made the fatal mistake of assuming that his power gauges were indicating correctly. If he had considered the possibility that the anemic takeoff and initial climb performance of the Boeing 737 was caused by erroneous power indications (the result of structural ice blocking instrument probes in the engine inlets), he could simply have shoved the “throttles” farther forward to obtain the additional and available power. But he did not, and 78 lives were lost when Flight 90 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge and slammed into the icy Potomac River within seconds after lifting off from Washington National Airport (DCA).

This accident and many others serve as grim reminders that pilots must never take anything for granted. The only thing we can reliably expect is the unexpected.

An acquaintance certainly never expected the aileron cables of his Twin Beech to have been inadvertently reinstalled in reverse while his aircraft was undergoing major maintenance. He was shocked to discover this shortly after liftoff, and only extraordinary airmanship enabled him to nurse the aircraft around the pattern and back to the runway—by substituting right aileron when left was needed and vice-versa, an extreme challenge.

Although not necessarily dangerous, the unexpected behavior of other systems can be traumatic. An example of this is what humorist and friend Rod Machado calls a runaway Hobbs meter. Yikes!

www.BarrySchiff.com