Aviation safety is one of my favorite topics. There’s a lot to do to improve the safety of our flying, and not only in the cockpit. These posts will give you food for thoughts and hopefully make you a safer, more prepared pilot. I organized them in various topics, pick your favorites, and take the time to explore the others. There’s always something to learn.

Checklists – an important tool for pilots and great enhancement of safety. But there are some pitfalls associated with the use of checklists. Do you know the difference between check and do lists ? And what about the risk of reciting checklists like mantras instead of really checking their items ?

• Do you write your own checklists ?
• Checklists and memory items
• Flow patterns, do lists and checklists
• Line-up check ? Done ! Really ?

Basic rules – best practices, common sense, many principles are known, assimilated, become a second nature… but accident reports periodically show what happens when they are disregarded. A refresher is always good.

• The top priorities in flight – yes, the good old aviate, navigate, communicate
• The clean cockpit strategy – well known by the airlines, easy to implement in light aircraft as well
• Airspace watch – one other pilot’s basic duties which is often disregarded
• 3 rules for safer night VFR
• What are your aviation golden rules ?

Aircraft systems – safe pilots know their aircraft inside out. Reading the manual is not the funniest thing to do but a very sensible one. Particularly when it comes to degraded modes and emergencies. Modern equipment makes aviation safer, as long as pilots know how to use it…

• The Cirrus Perspective “blue button”
• Equipment failure training
• Is GPS bad for general aviation ?

What if ? – we all know about typical emergencies. The best way to be prepared is to think well in advance, in the comfort of your club chair, and not to improvise under pressure.

• Emergency landing gear extension – Keep it simple
• In flight incapacitation – What would you do ?
• Flight plan and alerting service – When to use it ?

Human factors – most of recent aviation accidents have human factors as contributing causes, if not main cause. Human factors exist at many levels, during the flight, but also well before…

• Bank angle illusions
• Learning from other’s mistakes
• Are rich pilots safer ?

And if this not enough, you can visit this last one: 5 links for safer flying.