 Welcome to the FAA Production Studios and the FAA Safety Team's National Resource Center, located in the Sun and Fund Complex in Lakeland, Florida. I'm your host, Walt Shammel. And our next presenter is an FAA Safety Team Manager for Mississippi, holy cow, he's got a whole long list of things over here, FSO, IP, CP for the District National Resource Inspector and Helicopters doing a lot of different jobs for the FAA. He served 28 years in the U.S. Navy and retired in 1997 from the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Mississippi. Then he flew corporate, owned an FBO, operated a flight school in Meridian, Mississippi and also served as a pilot examiner with the FAA and a safety counselor for the Jackson FISDO. He holds an ATP and CFI with fixed wing and rotor wing certificates. He was an operations inspector for the Jacksonville, Mississippi FISDO for nine years and then he joined the safety team in December of 2007. His topic is airport surface safety. Let's welcome Theo Mavridoglu. Theo? Thank you, Walt, appreciate it. Thank you for the warm welcome. Beautiful weather outside. I'm sure you're going to enjoy the air show later on today. Airport surface incident mitigation strategy. So we obviously have a problem with surface incidents in order to apply mitigation strategies to reduce those accidents. Those accidents are both costly in terms of life and limb and in cost of airplanes and such aircraft in general. This is what happened after the aircraft collided in the air. This and similar other accidents have occurred even in the state of Mississippi where I reside and work whereby Delta State University, and this is no secret, they were in a pattern. They were clear for landing on the same runway. They were given enough space between base and final, yet they still found each other if you will in the air and landed safely, if on my head, on the ground known was hurt. But you can see some of the issues here, high wing, low wing, and so on so forth. We'll talk more about that in a minute. This is another surface incident that occurred, not enough clearance obviously was granted or observed between the two aircraft taxing. And so this is a multimillion dollar expenditure, there probably fear in the eyes of the passengers if there were passengers inside the time when the aircraft were taxing. So we're going to talk about, I was in the Navy for 28 years, no apologies for that although we have some Marines here in Air Force. I was told to tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell them and tell them what you told them. I'm going to follow this routine that I've been using for years. So we're going to talk about the goals of the airport surface incident mitigation strategy. We'll talk a little bit about the background, how this thing, the concept started, and were developed into what we have today as a presentation and those teams that are working out there to mitigate those accidents and incidents. The components, statistics, and I'm not going to bore you too much with statistics because I know lots of numbers make people confused and they don't really serve a purpose in my opinion. What are the common factors and of course prevention strategies that we all need to be involved in in order to mitigate those surface incidents. Here are our goals, reduce surface incidents at GA airports. So the question is why GA airports? Well we have more GA airports than we have 139 airports and there's more GA aircraft flying than we have commercial aircraft flying. What I mean commercial, I mean 121 carriers and so on and so forth. So plus in the GA airport environment, more likely to not have a tower and a control tower than in the 139 airport of course which requires an ATC airport traffic. Assuring improvement, knowledge and understanding. We need to be crystal clear as to what it takes to be involved in a surface incident and how to avoid a surface incident. And of course achieve support from aviation organizations. Who are those organizations? Of course the FAA were sold on this because this is our goal, is promote safety. I as an aviation safety inspector, my middle name is Safety and of course this is a safety program. So what are the other organizations that need to be involved? U, AOPA, HAI, ALPA and all those other alphabet groups as we call them that need to be involved and they are involved. They have formed partnerships with us in order to reduce these accidents. And runway safety has been around for several years as you know. You probably went to safety seminars and you heard people standing up talk about runway safety and they developed runway safety action teams in order to reduce these accidents. And that's a major concern because that's where life is lost and that's where money is wasted if you will in terms of aircraft damage. A little bit about the background. Call to action, the FAA made this a priority several years ago to promote and reduce runway incidents as a high priority. Fast team, that's what I am. I'm an FAA safety team manager for the state of Mississippi as Walt had mentioned and one of my goals in my flight plan if you will, excuse that term because that comes from a higher up, is to reduce surface incidents and accidents. And also the GA in general, the general aviation has an effort to reduce accidents, that's mitigation and methods to reduce the accidents and incidents. What are the components of this program? Collaborate with industry. Who is industry? All of you. If you work for an operator commercially or if you fly on your own, you're part of the aviation industry. Study runway incident, human factors. This is where the bugaboo is, human factors. If we reduce the human errors from the aircraft operations, whether it be helicopters, airplanes, sea planes, whatever, we're going to reduce probably 65 to 70% of all accidents and incidents. But how can that be? You'll say perhaps now we have some unmanned aerial vehicles. Well, the military has to start developing those to some extent for a war effort but not necessarily for general aviation or for commercial aviation. I hope I'm not alive when we have to enter into an airliner to go from Lakeland, Florida or from Tampa, Florida to Chicago and there's not a human being in there. Yet, we know that human beings are the cause of many of the incidents and accidents. It's just nature. That's how we are. We're going to talk about human factors in a minute. Incidentally, if you have any questions between now and when we finish, just hold that thought for a minute until we get a mic to you and then we can just discuss that issue that you have. Everything inside the fence, what do we mean by that? Well, imagine an airport that has a fence. Most airports do have a fence now since September 11th specifically. So anything that happens inside the fence, be it airplane, helicopter operations, vehicles, whether there are people who fuel your aircraft or your own vehicle when you want to unload luggage into your car or offload it, pedestrian traffic, deer, we have lots of that in Mississippi, especially in the fall and the winter time, dogs or other cattle. I was flying with a student some years ago in an airport just south of Merida, Mississippi, and we made an approach to land and I saw something in front of me that didn't look like it belongs there and it was a cow and so we had to call the FBO, please get the cow out of there, but anyway, so those things will happen. And all those cause incidents on the surface. Propose additions to the PTS. We know what a PTS, right? Practical test standards. How many here are private, instrument commercial, ATP, Kingshaw Hand? Private? Okay. Commercial? Okay. And ATP? Okay. Very good. I don't know how much, it's been a while since I've given a certification right. Maybe we could do other rides, check rides, but I have not done one lately with a private and perhaps a commercial applicant, but I feel, and I know you probably agree too, that the PTS needs to have a little bit more requirements when it comes to surface incidents and runway safety. I mean, we have that little placard that shows the markings and signs and we ask a couple of questions and perhaps we as CFIs, if we have any CFIs here, are not doing as good of a job, in my opinion, to promote runway safety when we are preparing pilots and candidates for the next rating. And since we know this is where the buck stops with the CFI level, I think we need to pay more attention there. And I'm hoping that in the near future that the PTS will include some additional elements for ACIMS, mitigation strategies for surface incidents and runway safety. And develop new products. We're already doing that. You may see some in the back or in the FISDO or with your safety teams, you may see that they have products that we need to do more of that and promote aviation safety in terms of surface again in terms of CDs, DVDs, trifolds and anything else that we can use to promote this concern. Collaborate with the FAA line of business. What are the line of business? ATC, of course, plays a major role when we are at an airport that there is a control tower or a ground control. We, pilots, you need to be in that business as well. What are the line of business? Airport district office. It's another branch or line of business of the FAA that designs airports, taxiways, intersections, and so on and so forth. Well, those folks as well need to be part of this effort. And they are part of this effort. To make those taxiways such that they're clear to us who are flying or taxiing or operating a vehicle around the airport. So we don't place ourselves in a predicament. So airport district office, the engineers who design airports and modify them, airport traffic control, FISDO, of course, the people who enforce the rules and the rest of us who fly. CFI and DPE initiative. Well, the CFIs, we're going to touch on that a little bit. The CFIs need to take this upon themselves. Do we have any CFIs here? Very good, sir. And the CFIs, and I do a little instructing on the side for relatives, if you will, need to take this as a charge because these are the people who are going to be able to influence today's and future pilots to be more aware of surface incidents and mitigate accidents and incidents. And of course, the DPE, designated pilot examiner, who gives the examination after the CFI has finished preparing the candidate, the student, to take the examination, either for the initial rating of private or for commercial and up the ratings, they need to ensure that the candidates have the knowledge, the adequate knowledge, to perform an aircraft on the ground, of course, in the air as well, and to perform in a safe manner when they're on the ground. Office of runway safety. I think Dan Sealy has been here, and he's probably going to be again. He works in this particular area, runway safety. And if you have not heard Dan speak, make it a point to do because he's a very dynamic speaker and he has a lot of information. That office as well, both at the national level in DC and at a regional level, where I am in Southwest region, in Dallas, Fort Worth, we've taken that effort, not only on the fast side, like I said, but ATC, ADO, and all those other lines of business within the FAA. And national and local ATC personnel. ATC is one of the most important parts of the FAA which can ensure or help us ensure with an E that is, not with an I, okay, ensure separation enough on the ground and understanding of what routes we need to take in order to taxi from point A to point B. We'll talk a little bit more about that. Human factors, study regarding runway safety. Again, this is gonna come over and over and over again. Human factors is number one. If we reduce the human factor errors when it comes to runway safety or surface incidents, we've reduced 65 to 68% of all incidents on the ground. Identify typical runway incidents. What are the ones that are most common? If you put them on a bell curve, where is the first, the most common area where we see them? And what are they? We're gonna talk a little bit about this later on in the presentation. But think about this while we're talking about what are the things that you saw or you have been involved in and how you dealt with this. Categorize human factors common to runway incidents. And Dan Sealy's office, runway safety, has done that. And again, I'm gonna pitch for you to come back to listen to Dan talk because he's got a lot of good information on runway safety. And incorporate this information into product development. And again, we've done a fairly good job in the FAA doing this but we need to do a little bit more in terms of CDs, DVDs and presentations outside this particular forum back in our homes. Promotional campaign, that's what it's all about. Promote safety. Signage identification. Now when was the last time, and this is a rhetorical question, don't raise your hand. What was the last time you looked at signage in one of those pamphlets? Things have changed. They try to make it more clear. The single straight line, yellow line with a broken yellow line now has become a double continuous line with a double broken line. Did you know that? So they're trying to do make it obvious to all of us who fly or operate on the airport surface where we need to stop or where we can go across and stop and then do the rest of the items that we need to do prior to taxing to our destination. So signage is important. Not in terms of what is on the ground as well because we may be in a tailwheel airplane or an airplane that's pretty high. After raining, maybe dust or sand on the taxiway, it will see a scenario that happened up in Denver of how an airliner almost got into trouble because of snow on the ground and some other factors too. That's later on the presentation. But also the sign is also the ones that you see in color black, red or yellow. You knew there were three colors, right? Surface maps, 121 carriers, airlines and 135 operators, we used to call them air taxi operators have a requirement under the FARs, Federal Aviation Regulations, to have the taxi chart open before they start taxi, before they release the brakes. Why we in the part 91 world don't do the same? I don't know. Maybe we can discuss this later on. But that's a requirement for 135 operators. It's a requirement for 121 operators. And I have several 141 schools that I have a certain influence on to increase their safety to a higher level because safe enough is not safe enough. And so trying to elevate that level of safety for 141 schools, which we certificate if you will, to have the requirement to have the charting on the ground in front of them as their taxing. But before the tax you review it. We'll talk a little bit more about this, hold that thought. Operational planning, what do we mean by that? Well, I know you plan to leave Lakeland, Florida and to go down to Miami. You find out the runway lengths, how much fuel you need, weight and balance, what else are you gonna go based on the winds and all those other variables that you must be informed in order to conduct a safe flight. But do you, and don't answer this question, do you plan your taxi route? Well, you tell me Theo, taxi route, this airport is a simple airport, one runway, maybe one taxiway. I know this airport, I don't need to do this. Well, yes you do. Because the other person who's operating in the airport approximately at the same time either landed and taxing back or is about to take off as well, taxi to take off may not know the airport well. May not be able to read the tetrahedron or the windsock or the wind is not significant enough for him to have a tailwind long enough runway to take off the opposite direction. Not knowing that there's another operator at the airport. So you really have to be on your toes. Really have to be on your toes. So operational planning is not at the time when you put the throttle forward and start rolling down the runway but it starts when you're chalked before you taxi. Human factors, we're gonna talk about that as well. Lots of errors, most errors occur because of humans making mistakes. Now how are we gonna deal with this? We cannot eliminate a human, okay? We cannot transfer that, that's another presentation on itself. Transfer, some people say, well the insurance company will take care of it or my medical insurance will fix me up if I have an accident or the insurance company will fix my airplane but that's not transferring of the error or the risk. So we need to mitigate and manage the risk in situational awareness. When we are taxing we have to, have to and have to three times know exactly where we are, okay? This is not the time to pulling out charts, punching in the GPS which has been a problem ever since it became with a nice screen and a little TV there. I catch myself watching those things myself. It's just a human condition. So when we're taxing we need to be looking at the task at hand. Additions to the PTS, that's another objective that we have. Emphasize critical nature of ground operations at the instructor level, of course a DP for checking. Incorporate ground operations as a primary phase of flight. When does the flight begin? Does it begin when we actually leave the ground? No, it does not. When the aircraft starts to move on its own power. So unless you're pushing the aircraft you get the engine starting or the engine starting the chocks are off and you're moving those power levels or throttles forward the flight has begun and I'll tell you why. The NTSB agrees with the FAA in that particular description because the NTSB says it's an aircraft accident or incident if the aircraft was to conduct a flight or returning from a flight and something happened on the ground. So both the NTSB and the FAA agree to that. I think we all need to agree that if it's on its own powers moving then we started the flight. So here we are. So it's a primary phase of flight. Establish standards for ground operation performance. Standards, what are the standards? Well, one example that I gave earlier was the chart, the taxi chart in front of us as we're ready to taxi not only for the professional pilots because we're no less professional than 121 carriers or 135 carriers. New product design. Design of new products for FY09 and beyond. This is part of the flight plan for the FAA. DVDs and storyboards and airport specific awareness graphics posters and brochures. Now you see the products that we have in the back or in the FBOs that we leave products there both of the safety team and the FAA in general and they're generic to all airports. We advocate that we make the signage specific to that airport that you operate on. So you can go to the FBO, order your fuel and get a poster that shows the taxiways, the numbers, the names of the taxiways, the runways and so on and so forth and ingress and egress points. I don't know what's about to happen here, if anything. But, now is that C-17 taking off? Is he landing? Is this a runway incursion? I don't know. I'm not sure anybody does. But I wouldn't want to be the soldier that stands right there. Have you seen a C-17 fly? That's one big airplane. I guess, again I told you, I'm not gonna bore you with statistics too much but we need to put some of them in here. We know that 58% of all operations with this ground operations or flight operations are general aviation. There's more of us than there are commercial pilots. And we're one of the last countries, incidentally, that have that privilege. Even Canada, our country to the north doesn't have that ratio. In Europe, of course, it's almost nonexistent. 65% of all pilot deviations are general aviation. Why would you say that happens? Is it because we're less professional? I don't think we're less professional. Maybe we're not practicing the professionalism we should when it comes to surface incidents. However, the airports that we operate out of, in many cases, are non-towered airports. Therefore, we don't have the assistance of ATC to give us guidance from here to there. One serious incursion happens every day. That's pitiful. That's 365 a year. And here's some more pitiful information. Most happen during the day in good visibility. Why do we think big sky, small airplane theory? Big sky, smaller, I mean, big airports, small airplane theory? I hope not because there's a lot more of us flying these days in spite of the gas prices because we still can and we enjoy it, we love it. Pilot experience makes no difference. 300-hour private pilot, 10,000-hour commercial or ATP makes no difference because those individuals with the ATPs in the 10,000 hours have to deal with complacency. They've been there, they've done this, they know how it's done. The other people perhaps don't have that experience level. You catch the error, this is a teacher's union, incidentally. So we have our embarrassing moments, too. Some of them we just discussed and we're gonna discuss a little bit more. Here's some of the errors. Now, we can sit here for hours, talk about errors that we're gonna giggle and laugh and joke, but I know that some of us have been involved in some of these things or observe some of these errors occurring, okay? And you can read this yourselves. Enter runway after acknowledging hold short instructions. Happens all the time. Unfortunately, happens all the time. Taxi wrong route and enter runway. Crossed runway without clearance. Given position and hold instructions, then departed without clearance. So his taxi in the position hold gave him or her the clearance to take off as well, at least in their minds. Did you know the term have changed? It is no longer position and hold. IKO is trying to change that term. If you'd not, I'm not gonna bring it up. Landed and departed without communication or clearance. And given clearance to land on runway, landed on a taxiway. Now, why would anybody do that? Unless the taxiway, again, this is back to engineering, ADO, airport district office, which is part of the FAA. Perhaps the runway was not marked as well and the taxiway was. And so it's full. Now, how many of these happened? Not too many. However, the engineering part is also, needs to get involved in reducing, if you will, these incidents. I feel sorry for that. What is this? It's a beach product, is it not? Is it a Cherokee? Okay. Wow. Look at the wing. Now we know what happened here, right? The truck drove into the wing because the airplane couldn't have done that. So, not only the incidents occur because of aircraft, helicopters or airplanes, but also vehicles. When we are taking our, what do you call it, our car over to the aircraft that we rented or we owned and we parked it. We need to park it in such a way as not to, obviously things have things like that. And also when we walk across a taxiway in certain airports, you can still do that. And that's unfortunate we can. You need to be careful. This happened up in Memphis, Tennessee. Okay, this is FedEx and UPS. Now, don't raise your hand, but I know that we are taxing sometimes faster than the runway to take off because we see another aircraft starting to tax, taxi himself or herself, okay? We need to be the first ones out. Conversely, coming into an airport that's busy in the pattern, we need to sneak in there on base leg instead of entering in a 45, left on wind, base and final on land, see if we can cut that person. Don't do it. Just like Nike says, don't do it. Competition is fun, but not to this extent. Okay, common factors on these incidents, surface incidents. First is memory. We all know that we can only remember seven related items. That's human. I mean, the psychologist came up with these numbers. I accept them as sets. I was told in instructional management school in Quantico, Virginia that on a slide, you never put more than seven items there. So maybe that's what it is. Or when I was an officer in the Navy, it said your span of control should be no more than seven, okay, and so on and so forth. So anyway, seven is a number that we use as far as memory. Stress can influence this memory now. So if we're stress, if we're thinking about something else, and when I mean stress, I don't mean negative stress. Something happened to family, house burned down, had a car accident, but also positive things. Your daughter is getting married. You just won the Florida Lottery. And if you did, I'm your best friend, incidentally. So positive events are stressors just as negative events are stressors. So don't discount the positive stressors in your life because your mind, when you come to work or you go fly the next day, is gonna see how can I spend a million dollars to learn in the Florida Lottery? Well, 500,000 comes to Theo, of course, but the other 500,000 is what boat you're gonna buy, what improvements you're gonna make in your airplane and all those things. Of course, I'm joking. We remember what we want to remember. Future tasks are hard to remember. When you were getting your instrument rating, you remember your instructor was saying, remember what you're gonna do very next and the one after that, just two items. Anything more than that, and we kinda lose that memory. Attention, focused attention allow us to filter out irrelevant information. When we're taxing, we're taxing, we're taxing. That's all we need to be doing. If we're gonna be running radios, charts, talking to people, a passenger behind us, we need to stop on the taxiway, take care of those issues, and then taxi again. Assuming we can't, we don't have two or three aircraft behind us. But one thing at a time, folks. Too much attention on one thing can lead to error. You agree with that? Because you focus on one thing to the exclusion of other things that are relevant to the tasks that you're doing. Brief the airport diagram. Brief it. What do you mean? Theo, I'm flying by myself. Well, you can talk to yourself. I do it all the time. My wife says I do. So, brief the plate. Where am I? I'm at the FBO. I need to turn right on Charlie, taxi to X-ray, make a left on X-ray, and so on and so forth. When you say it, how many senses are involved? Your eye, your mouth, your ear, okay? The more senses are involved, the more memory you'll be able to capture. So talk to yourself. I know as an instrument pilot, you do this. And if you don't, please do. Brief the approach plate to yourself if you're by yourself. Remain alert even in familiar locations. Again, this is the complacency issue that I mentioned earlier. Communications, another major issue, probably one of the biggest ones. I count for most runway incursions. Failure to read back. Now he'll say, taxi to the runway 3-4, hold short of Charlie. And what do we say many times? Roger. Well, Roger does not say anything, he says that you heard something. You did not hear everything. Taxi to runway 3-4, hold at Charlie, 2-2 Alpha Golf. But if you say Roger, it means that you heard a communication, but not necessarily the communication. Blocked or stepped on communication. The airlines have a nice feature. They wait for about 30 seconds after communication before they key the mic, okay? Of course you may not be able to, if you're flying in Chicago or Miami or Orlando, have all the time, but beware of that. Accepting clearance of another aircraft. My aircraft tail number is 2-2 Alpha Golf. Well, there's another operator, a piper there, that's 2-1 Alpha Golf. Well, that sounds a lot the same in the air when you're busy and some of the other people talking to you in the aircraft and so on and so forth. And misunderstanding instructions. So what do we do when we misunderstand instructions? Say again, thank you, sir. Fatigue, major issue with us, because we're humans, lack of sleep. I did a presentation with Dr. Bill, I forgot his name, who is the Human Factors PhD at a conference in Mississippi. And we talked about that. And he talked about the circadian rhythm and the two o'clock in the afternoon and the two o'clock in the morning where we are less attentive and how much sleep we think we're getting. We always overstate how much sleep we have gotten. You go to sleep at 10 o'clock, it doesn't mean you're gonna fall asleep instantly. You're probably gonna think for a while before you get any REM sleep and so on and so forth. So be aware of that before I trip. Fatigue can lead to decreases in memory and attention. Caffeine. Well, it works for me for about 15 minutes, then there's a down slope to that. So be careful with caffeine unless you have it intravenously, okay. 20 minute power naps may help. My wife is a good example of this. She can actually take a 10 minute nap and she is up and at it like she woke up seven o'clock the next morning. I go down for 10 minutes, I'm not waking up till tomorrow morning. So know thyself. Take frequent breaks, even if it's just relaxing, closing your eyes, putting your feet up. Teamwork, what do we mean by that? ATC, ground personnel, pilots, and so on and so forth. That's the team. That's how we're gonna solve this problem. Fail to coordinate or clarify with whomever you're talking to. Some of the problems are don't catch any read back errors. And ATC has that burden in that they give you direction. You repeat it, but your repeat is not exactly as they give you the direction. But they're not catching that error. Okay, and we have ATC involved as well. Forget what you were told. Now, some of us are getting old. I wanna see what time it is. So I'm gonna look at my watch and it says about seven after nine. And at 30 seconds later, I forgot what I saw. Does it happen to you? Don't raise your hand. So we tend to forget. Not only because of age, but because we have some other things in mind as well. The recognize that it's a system problem, not a pilot or an ATC. It's just is. It is what it is and we just need to deal with it. Humans cannot be eliminated, just managed. We know that. Eventually, I guess in 3000 AD, there may be flying without people in there, but I'm not gonna be around. I don't know who's gonna win this battle here. What can we do? This is the meat and potatoes. Communications, think and listen first. I know these are things you already know. We all know, we all try to practice, but we're gonna discuss them again, okay? Think about what you will say. Think about it before you key the mic. Who are you talking to? Who are you? Where are you? Relative to who you're talking to. And what are your intentions are? If you're announcing in the blind, are you talking to ATC? And of course, use standard phraseology. That's another good presentation. If there is in the FA Safety.gov, standard phraseology, I recommend that course highly. Be concise and precise. Don't spend too much time on the radio. Finding out where the pizza place is when you land. When you land, find out where the pizza place is. Okay, not in the air. Identify and write down all count frequencies. Now, back in the days when I was flying, we had a knee board, VFR, IFR, you name it. I don't see that very much. I don't see it even in 141 schools. Well, perhaps because the GPS has now have a bank of 10 frequencies, both calm and nav, and we can just flick through it, but guess what? It takes our attention outside and in the cockpit when we're doing these things. Where a glance at the knee board was I think much better. Check CTaf, non-toward airports, other airports using same frequency. So you may be in a vicinity of an airport that uses a similar frequency. ATC does their best not to assign frequency that they're so close for one to the other for airports that are proximal to each other, but sometimes it happens. So be careful. Listen to approach, control frequency. You can find out a lot more. You go on into, let's say, pick an airport, Naples. If at 15, 20, 30 miles out, you can put that on number two, calm, and listen to that and see what's happening in the pattern. As opposed to all of a sudden ATC drops you, it just says change to your local frequency and now you're the newcomer and you have no idea what's happening at the airport you're about to land. So listen way back then, maybe perhaps in number two. Listen to approach, control frequency. Understand ATC instructions. Do you? Were the instructions confusing? Yes, many times they are. I'll give you an example, but I think we're gonna be running short of time here. Check with ATC if actual instructions are against expectations. If you expected to receive this and you were given something different, you may wanna clarify this and please do because the instruction may have been intended for another aircraft and not for you because they're humans too and they make mistakes. You hear about this, right? ATC makes a mistake? Paradise. Mechanic makes a mistake? Paradise. We make a mistake, we die. Waiting longer than one or two minutes. If you have not gotten a response back from ATC after you made a call, then you may wanna check the frequency or call back again. In a position hold, this is something that I have a pet peeve with, an instrument departure, they put you on the runway waiting and I don't know what's happening behind me, who's coming on top of me. I don't like that I would rather wait at the hold short line and I can make a quick takeoff rather than be on the runway, but that's me. The instructions don't make sense. If they don't make sense, call them back. Anytime you're unsure, never assume. You know what happens when you assume. If in doubt, ask. If unsure, verify. Hold short instructions. Again, make sure you understand those and you comply, position the whole instructions. There's a difference now, right? Active runway crossings. Read back all instructions. Are you on the correct frequency? If you're using an old chart, you may not be. If your database in the GPS has not been updated, you may not be. Two-way communication, what does that mean? Cause and effect. You talk, they respond. We both understand it's not one way. Communication is two-way. Dialogue. Repeat heading, altitude and airspeed on a clearance because those are the three things that'll keep you away from other aircraft when you're in the air. Beware of similar call signs, similar frequencies, parallel runways, left, right, center, and intersections or full length clearances. The assumption is you're 152 and it's a 10,000 foot runway. You can go to the very end of it and take off and you still take off and land three times and maybe that's the expectation of ATC but you're taxing all the way to the end to take all 10,000 feet. Which is advisable. Airport familiarity. Review and use airport diagrams, plan taxi routes, know where you are and know where you're going. And how you're gonna get there. As for progressive taxi. Now, you need to ask for progressive taxi once or twice. If you're gonna be going to that airport many times, please study the environment so you don't have to do that. Thank you. All right, this is, timing is good. I'll show you a video, Denver. Oops. Well, I may show you a video. Here, trouble hole bar, what's up? Got 4216 north on mic, enter the ramp at alpha, alpha for three, four. Marked on mic, alpha for three, four, kilo on 4216. The assertion. The approach is for Delta for 31. 628, Denver, grass out on Lima, enter the ramp at alpha, November. South on Lima, alpha for the map for 2620. So you see the directions to go on Lima. I understand there was some snow there and perhaps the taxiway was not clearly marked. That's not a, that's not clear. That's a 106, you know it's on mic. 6106, enter the ramp at alpha, November, then ramp there. Up to that by like 736. Notice the ceiling, visibility, half a mile and 600 feet fog and snow. Another airways is landing. He was supposed to turn, okay? The aircrew deviated from the assigned taxi clearance of mic. They saw two, not three, perhaps because of the snow or fatigue or unfamiliar with the airport, whatever the reasons were. So he thought there were two versus three. Lima, mic and the runway. So he crosses the whole short line. And you know what the whole short line looks like. There's some more markings and signs that tells him where he is. That he thinks on mic taxiway taxing down. Clues, yellow versus white. Runway markings versus taxiway markings. 236, 12 ramp there. ATC does not know where he is right now. We're going to go around 209, we're going to Bravo 19. You have 529 into the ramp at Robin, November in the ramp there. And Elon 42-16, where are you at right now? Signature. Sagan, the frontier 297 go around. We're just coming up with the signature. D-Ride, that's you on the runway. That's just that thing. Yes, sir. 32-16, thanks. Which one of these is correct? Taxi two. We're going to be here all day, folks. Which one would you say it is? Excellent, we're going to skip this one because we're going to be running out of time here. But yes, it is, sir. Absolutely right. Okay, what can we do to mitigate some of this threat? Cockpit procedures. Clean the windscreen. As simple as that. Some of ours are wearing glasses. The windscreen is, what do you call it? It's dirty, it's hazed, perhaps clean that. Remove charts from the windscreen. I have a pet peeve with that too. Do a CFI checkride or an ATP checkride and you put those charts right there and it makes a reflection. And you cannot see not only this part out of the windscreen, but this part out of the windscreen. Use current charts and AFDs. Install see-through sun visors. Well, let me tell you. I put those in my airplane and sometimes when I fly into the sun, I wish I had those solid ones. So, for what it's worth. Install see-through sun visors. Use all lights. Landing lights on the runway like the airlines do. When they take the runway clear for takeoff, all the lights come on. Position three feet, they say. Left or right of the center line so you don't blend in with the markings of the runway. I think it's a good idea, especially in big airports. And sterile cockpit. Now if the airlines have a 10,000 foot sterile cockpit, we should at least have a what? A 4.4 nautical mile or a five-statue mile from a geographical center of the airport where we talk about nothing but the operations of the aircraft at that time. Not where we're gonna go get that burger. Sterile cockpit from engine start to cruise altitude. For us, sometimes it's only 2,000 feet, 3,000 feet. So let's make that a geographical boundary versus an altitude like the airlines. Yes, sir? Position, the gentleman's asking about positioning your aircraft. There's lines in the center of the runway, center of what do you call it? Center line markings. If we position a white aircraft, most of us have white aircraft or a fly, position a little bit left or right of it, that kind of shows that there's some anomaly between what you should see when you approach an airport as you're landing. Yes, sir, that's exactly right. It's for the benefit of someone else. Yes, sir. Thank you. Use all aircraft lights, especially low visibility conditions. Goes without saying. Beware of fatigue and low visibility conditions as you're taxing in low visibility, you're squinting, you're paying more attention. Therefore, fatigue comes in a little bit sooner. Assign tasks to other crew members. Believe it or not, passengers who are not pilots like to have some responsibility. We all do. We like to contribute. So even if you have a young child, left, right seat, back seats, give them responsibility to look at, you know, outside for traffic and make sure we're sitting in the center of the runway and so on or taxiway. If lost contact ATC, immediately stop where you are and touch base with them. Teamwork. What I mean by that is ATC, us pilots and other CFIs and other groups, ADO as I mentioned earlier, need to be involved in order to mitigate this issue that we are dealing with. Any questions? You're not gonna let me out that easy, are you? Well, I appreciate your attention. Thank you for coming. I know it's an early start for presentations, but I appreciate you coming. It's gonna be a great air show today, 86 degrees. I hope everybody has fun in a safe drive or flight home. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Leo. Leo, Theo. You brought up some good points about communication. I work with a lot of flight instructor applicants and I never know what they're gonna say. And here they are, they're supposed to be the pros. They've got all this flight time, they've worked with ATC a lot and I'll get airplane so-and-so ready to taxi. And the tower says, ground control says, okay. And they look at me and they said, what do you mean by that? And I said, what are you supposed to tell them? Who you are, where you are and what you wanna do. Exactly. And then you get the, I'd like to taxi to the runway and the tower sent a note out that says, do not ask for our permission. Tell us what you want. Isn't that interesting? I thought ATC ran everything, right? Well, 9123 says that we will comply with clearances and instructions. Exactly. But I like that. If the pilot makes a mistake, pilot dies. If ATC makes a mistake, pilot dies. There's something wrong with this picture. So, situational awareness, positional awareness. Absolutely. Things you talked about. Very important. Where you going from here? I'm gonna amend the booths, FAA safe.