Avoiding LOC-I Part 2: Fly the Airplane First

When you are hiking and a bear walks toward you, you probably stop thinking about whether you drank enough water. Your brain locks onto the threat, and that instinct kept our ancestors alive. But in an airplane, the same instinct can get you killed.

In our last article, we looked at Loss of Control In-Flight (LOC-I) accidents in general. This time we will look at two things that often lead to them: distraction and sudden stress.

Who Is Flying the Airplane?

On a December night in 1972, Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was getting close to Miami. The landing gear was extended, but the nose gear indicator stayed dark. The crew stopped the approach, climbed to 2,000 feet, and flew out over the Everglades. They turned on the autopilot and focused on the gear problem.

At some point, someone likely bumped the control yoke. That turned off the autopilot’s altitude hold. No one noticed, and the airplane slowly sank into the swamp.

Flight 401 was not a LOC-I accident, but it shows something important: a big, obvious problem can pull our eyes away from a smaller one, like the fact that nobody was flying the airplane.

Distraction Is Common

From 2013 to 2024, almost 19% of fatal LOC-I accidents included an engine problem. About 8.9% had a full power loss, and 9.9% had a partial one. Add in other emergencies (3.1%) and simple distractions (4.8%), and “something else” was going on about 25% of the time (see Fig. 1). In one out of four deadly LOC-I accidents, the pilot had more than just flying to think about. And that’s just what the NTSB knows about!

The FAA warns about this in the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge (FAA-H-8083-25). It says distractions can make a pilot fixate on one item and stop watching the instruments or the view outside. Many accidents start with something small, like a gauge that reads wrong.

You Cannot Really Multitask

When a task needs real thought, we do not multitask. Instead, we “task switch.” We work on one thing, jump to the next, then jump back, rotating among them and hoping our memory keeps up. But when one task takes over, we forget to switch. The FAA calls staying ahead of this “workload management” and “task management,” and here are a few ways to do it.

Give yourself time. If Flight 401 had climbed higher, the crew likely would have caught the problem, because the higher you are, the more room you have to recover. Do not go below a safe “recovery altitude” until you can focus on flying.

Use your people. If another pilot is on board, a simple “You fix it, I’ll fly” works wonders. You can even teach your regular passengers what normal looks like and ask them to speak up. The FAA calls using every resource around you “single-pilot resource management,” or SRM.

Use repetition as a signal. If your engine-failure flow does not restart the engine, do not run the same flow again. That is your cue to move on to the off-airport landing.

Separate thinking from doing. Flying should not take much brain power. While you think about what to do, let your eyes watch outside in good weather, or scan the instruments in the clouds. Once you pick an action, do it, then go right back to flying.

Stop chasing perfection. During a real emergency, forget the airman certification standards. Your only job is to get the airplane on the ground safely. If a task does not help you do that, skip it.

Take the Sure Loss

Imagine your engine quits. You run your flows and your checklist, then glide toward a perfect grass field. You roll out on final, and the field is rising in the windscreen. You’re going to land short.

You know you should not pull back on the yoke. Some articles even tell you to push. But you will probably pull anyway.

There are two kinds of accidents: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal accidents, like sliding into trees or running off the end, are usually survivable. Vertical accidents, like a stall and spin, are often deadly. Pulling back will not stretch your glide to the runway. It will convert a crash you could walk away from into one you cannot.

We are goal-driven people. When the engine quits, your goal became “land in that field.” Once you see you cannot reach it, accept the sure loss and pick a new goal: land flat and under control. The FAA’s old rule of thumb fits here: aviate, navigate, communicate. Fly the airplane first.

Practice in Your Head

When I teach aeronautical decision making, or ADM, I start by saying the secret is to avoid it. The best decisions are made on the ground and carried out in the air.

Yes, that is not fully possible. Pilots like Chesley Sullenberger and Al Haynes proved that we cannot plan for every emergency, and that good judgment matters. The FAA agrees. It built ADM and SRM into its guidance, including Advisory Circular 60-22, for exactly these moments. Still, given the choice, I would rather run a plan I have already thought through.

So spend a little time thinking about you, your airplane, and the world outside. Pick an emergency you have never considered. Think through how you would survive it. What are your options? What comes first?

These “practice flights” in your head add up. Then, when a real emergency arrives, you can act with a clear mind, less task switching, and a realistic idea of what success looks like. That success is a safe landing, nothing more.

The post Avoiding LOC-I Part 2: Fly the Airplane First appeared first on AvBrief.com.