Train like you fly. Fly like you train. That's a phrase I've always liked. When I was in training, it motivated me. It helped me understand that all the hours and effort I was putting into my flight training were for a good cause, and that the things I was learning might someday save my life.
One day, that was confirmed. The work I had done throughout my training career did save me. I was single pilot, IFR in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) when my airplane suffered an alternator failure. Instrument pilots know the complete loss of electrical power (after alternator failure and battery depletion) is a serious emergency when flying in IMC. The airplane I was flying was an older Piper Cherokee with passive warning annunciator lights. A faint amber glow of the letters "ALT" on the panel is all the warning of an alternator malfunction the pilot gets, so you'd better pay attention. Alternator malfunctions must be detected early because once the alternator stops producing electrical power, your minutes of battery power start ticking down immediately. And you'd better not count on more than thirty minutes of juice; that's not a lot of time to get to an instrument approach and land, so every minute is precious.
My flight instructor had taught me to always keep a proactive instrument scan of the entire panel, not just the flight instruments but the engine gauges, ammeter, and annunciator panel as well. When failures or abnormal indications are detected early, they're usually easier to deal with. Had I not been maintaining an aggressive instrument scan, I may not have detected the alternator failure until the battery was depleted, or nearly so. That would have left me with no way to navigate, communicate, or find my way to an approach procedure and get down out of the clouds. Pilots greatly depend on electrical power while trudging through the murky gray.
My early detection of the "ALT" annunciator light enabled me to divert to a nearby instrument approach (which was shot to minimums) and land safely without incident. Most pilots are familiar with the "accident chain" theory, meaning almost all aviation accidents are the result of a chain of factors which link up to create an accident. My accident chain had started that day, but I broke the chain by flying like I trained, detecting the alternator failure early, staying calm and completing the appropriate checklist, and diverting to a nearby airport. The chain was broken before it ever got close to an accident. By staying calm and putting to use the skills I had learned in my training, I avoided what could've become a serious emergency.
Human factors research has indicated that pilots do a better job of dealing with inflight problems when they use the skills they learned during training. In other words, pilots manage emergencies better when they stick to their plan. As I've mentioned in previous posts, improvising is a bad idea in an airplane. When actors improvise during a take and their choices bomb, the director yells "Cut" and the actors try it again differently from the top. Pilots don't get a second take, and instead of a director yelling "Cut" after a bad choice pilots end up dead. Don't improvise. Stick to the plan. Improvisation is experimental... It may or may not work. That's certainly not something you'd want to engage in when your very life is depending on the outcome of the experiment. Remember: Train like you fly. Fly like you train.
Some pilots have a tendency to throw all the skills they acquired during emergency training to the wind when things get nasty. Ironically, that's when they need those skills the very most. Accident studies have shown that last second changes usually create problems, such as a last second decision to go around after touching down three quarters of the way down a runway with high trees off the departure end. What would've been a survivable runway overrun turns into a fatal inflight collision with trees.
Remember, pilots do best when we stick to our plans. You worked hard during your training to acquire life-saving skills, so use them when you need them! There's no better time to put to use your emergency procedures training than during an emergency.
