Do a Preflight, Every Time!

In the beginning of my flying career, I did preflights inspections because I was told to, not because I necessarily saw the importance of them.  I trained at a busy flight school with thorough mechanics, so I didn't really see the need of a preflight.  I mean, I don't do a walkaround before I get in my car, why should the airplane be any different?  Needless to say, I realized the error of my ways and do a walkaround every time!

I didn't have anything too eventful happen when I was in training, but that all changed when I got my Certified Flight Instructor's License (CFI).  I don't think it was bad luck, but things were bound to happen with the amount of flying I was doing each day.  My first instance had to do with checking the tire pressure on the walkaround.  I never did that; well, maybe on the day of my checkrides, but never on a normal training flight.  On this particular day, the tire did need a little bit of air, but I looked at it with my eyeballs, called it good, and me and my student were off for the flight lesson.  I don't remember anything about the flight, but I definitely remember the landing!

I was coaching my student through the approach and landing phase, as he was still learning how to successfully land an airplane.  He did a pretty good touchdown, but then forgot to use the appropriate amount of rudder (or so I thought).  We slowly started drifting to the left of the runway with me saying sternly "keep it on the centerline...where are you going?.... the centerline is over there...More Rudder!"  My student's response was "I have full right rudder in!"  I didn't believe him (lots of students say they have the appropriate amount of rudder when they don't), so I pushed on the rudder with him.  He was right!  Full rudder did nothing.  We must have a flat!

Thankfully we landed on the centerline so we had 75' to drift to the left on our 150' wide runway; and Da20s approach at 60 knots so we were barely moving by the time we touched down.  But once we stopped, still on the runway, we couldn't really move forward with our flat tire.  The mechanics had to come out and change the tire for us on the runway.  I felt bad for the few airplanes that had to go around, and for the time the controllers had to spend switching the runway in use, because I knew that if I'd checked the tire pressure on my preflight inspection, I would  have noticed it was low and this whole situation could have been prevented.  Lesson learned!

This next situation never happened to me, but I was up flying once, and I heard ATC say, "Katana 123NH (I don't remember the exact tail number), we just got a call from the fuelers, looks like you left your fuel cap on the ground by your parking spot."  Ooops!  You do not want to be that person, so make sure you do a walkaround, and check the fuel cap.  I can only imagine how unnerving that would be to do a steep turn and see your fuel gauge drop to zero.  No thanks!  I'll take the 5 minutes and do a preflight walkaroud!

I know sometimes it may be freezing outside, or outrageously hot, or maybe you are short on time, but you will never regret the time you took to do a thorough preflight.   You will only regret the times when something negative happened because you forgot to.  So do a preflight, every time!