The Knowledge Gaps That Lead to Helicopter Accidents | Dirty Dozen #3

It's not that hard to be better than the average pilot. I'm just saying. How do you do it? You study your ass off. You keep your nose in the books. You constantly review. You continue learning. Helicopters don't forgive knowledge gaps. This is video number 3 in the dirty dozen we're covering. This one is lack of knowledge. That's why, as before, we'll credit the Dirty Dozen was developed in 1993 by a guy named Gordon DuPont, a human factors specialist, Transport Canada Civil Aviation. So we're going to apply this to helicopters. In helicopter flying, lack of knowledge appears when pilots do not fully understand the aircraft they're flying. Examples include power margins and available power, density altitude, loss of tail rotor effectiveness, rotor RPM management, Aircraft limitations. Helicopters demand deep understanding, not just memorized procedures. That's what we do here at Helicopter Line Ground School, right? We go through the training, we go through the different concepts, but we also try to give you the information behind the concepts. Just memorizing something isn't going to save you when the shit hits the fan and things start going wrong. You got to understand the why. Helicopters require deep understanding and continuous learning is essential in helicopter flying. And I'm going to give you a perfect example more to the professional environment. However, you can take this from brand-new beginner all the way through seasoned pilots that's been flying for a long time. And the two areas that I want to talk about is the first, I talked about this one of our recent professional pilot videos. I have a good friend who was in helicopters for 40 years, and we were line pilots together in EMS. Eventually, he moved on to to a check airman position. And we used to talk on the phone all the time about helicopters and life and all, everything in between. And he told me one time in a conversation as a check airman, this is pretty sad. He said, if I was holding every EMS pilot that I give a checkride to, a 135 checkride, I would be shutting down half the bases that I go to to give pilot checkrides. And that's pretty sad. And I'll give you another context. Brian Rutledge that helped us with a lot of videos for a lot of years, Brian was involved with the law enforcement agency. And he was an instructor and a chief pilot at a certain point. And he also said the same thing about a lot of law enforcement pilots. He was like, they go out, they do their shift, they fly around, and then they go back, take a break, and they watch TV, and they nap, and they eat, and do whatever. Same as EMS pilots. So I heard from two professionals in this environment, both trainers, that said they could tell— well, we'll go back to the first one. He could tell that when he shows up to give a 135 checkride, which if you don't know what that is, once a year, check airman comes in, sits down, gives you an oral test, and then goes out and does a flight test with you. He said, I can tell that most of these guys are waiting until the night before he shows up to open up a book and start reviewing anything. So his complaint was they have 12 months out of the year, they could spend one shift a week for an hour or two or 15 minutes a day or something throughout the year to keep their knowledge fresh. And he said "if I was doing my job the way it's supposed to be done, I'd be shutting down half the bases that I visit." And he said, "How long do you think my job would last?" And he has since got out of the EMS. He's not even in the business anymore. But, and Brian told me the same thing about the law enforcement, that pilots go out, just fly around, do their thing, and nothing bad's going to happen. Knowledge is key. We have a lot of times where the younger pilots will say, well, hey, I'm trying to get my start in the industry and I'm trying to get my first job. And they'll ask about different things as far as career advice. And I always tell them the same thing. It's not that hard to be better than the average pilot. I'm just saying. How do you do it? You study your ass off. You keep your nose in the books. You constantly review. You continue learning. I can tell you in the EMS environment, just as myself, I was always still doing instruction on my days off. So we would work week on, week off, week on, week off. So doing instruction on my days off helped me keep my knowledge fresh, right? Because I'm teaching people, sending them to checkrides. So that helped keep my knowledge fresh. And the other pilots I worked with, none of them were instructors. They were all just comfortable in their EMS jobs. And on their days off, they just did whatever. They weren't off doing flying jobs, doing instructing. They just flew their EMS. Job. And I'll be honest, many times they would, they'd come in to do our 135 checkrides, maybe one guy's working the line, so two guys on their days off would come in together and do the oral portion of the test for the 135 checkrides. And the majority of the time, if the other guy couldn't answer the question, they learned that they could look over to me, and the majority of time I would answer it. The only reason is I stayed current by being an instructor. So I'm in the books, I'm evaluating other pilots, I'm prepping them for checkrides. So just by the nature of what I was doing was what helped keep me fresh. Any of you across the board, whether you're just brand new starting out or you're a pilot of 25 years and you know it's been a while since you looked in the helicopter flying handbook or it's been a while since you looked in the POH, it's time to just take half an hour out of one of your shifts or one of your evenings and open up a POH, open up the helicopter flying handbook, Take an online course. Do something to help refresh that knowledge. So, do us a favor and put down below your thoughts on this topic on lack of knowledge. Give us an example of something good that's happened that you've experienced. Give us some examples of something bad you've experienced from lack of knowledge. It's a big topic, and we see this on a daily basis. But that's the business we're in, right? We are Helicopter Online Ground School. That's what we do. Help people with knowledge for private pilot, commercial pilot, instrument pilot, and certified flight instructor. Do us a favor, subscribe to the channel, click the bell to be notified of the next video coming out, leave us a comment down below, and we'll see you in the next video. Peace out.