You’re “oops” moment aviation?

I left the oil door open during preflight. Didn't notice until I had started the engine and was getting ready to taxi. On my PP check ride. :eek: I shut down and closed it. DPE laughed at me.
 
My first trip after getting my ppl, forgot to take the chocks out on the left side main. Why isn’t the plane moving??? Doh. Glad I was alone!
 
Unkljohn said:
My first trip after getting my ppl, forgot to take the chocks out on the left side main. Why isn’t the plane moving??? Doh. Glad I was alone!
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Meh.... Try doing it while giving rides for the 99's and having the Chief Flight Instructor (also a 99) crawl under the wing to pull them for you, after you tried taxiing away. :oops:
 
upstateny said:
Along the same line:

I pointed out the airport to my wife and said, "There it is. We're going down." Should have said "We're beginning our descent." Boy, she has a long memory!
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Mine was similar. Short private airport with hill on final. I was a bit too high so decided to do a go-around.

Just before I powered up, apparently I said —“we’re not going to make it”.:(:(:(

No screaming. She just got real quite.
 
I learned that the Navion has a very short ground roll if you take off with full flaps. Doesn't climb worth anything though.
 
In the far past I've taken off a couple times in the summer with the door open. Once I was able to get it closed. Once I went around for a stop and go.

Took off once on a short runway with way too forward stabilizer trim. Interesting. Too interesting.

Now, I go with the takeoff flow, then verify with the checklist. And, I'm anal about resetting nose trim to neutral AFTER touchdown.
 
Domenick said:
Took off once on a short runway with way too forward stabilizer trim. Interesting. Too interesting.

Now, I go with the takeoff flow, then verify with the checklist. And, I'm anal about resetting nose trim to neutral AFTER touchdown.
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I took off once without resetting my landing up-trim. It got my attention...so odd to push forward on the stick when climbing out aggressively! I heard my CFI's voice in my head: "Just fly the plane."

Checklist amended shortly thereafter. :)
 
flyingron said:
The thing with Disney is the lack of any parity for any other similar installation. If Disney, why not Six Flags, or Paramount? Nope, this one was a political move, specifically for the Florida property to restrict banner tows with the company feels is an intrusion.

You sir,are lost.
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NoHeat said:
Forgot to put the oil cap back on, when pre-flighting a Skyhawk.

I discovered the problem only after landing. There was oil all over the side of the airplane, and not much in the engine.
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I know someone who did this as well. I helped clean up the oil mess.
 
Wasn't me but as a pilot I feel I was equally responsible. In a friends Arrow, he pulled the plane out of the parking spot and left the tow bar on for some reason. We started up and taxied about 3000' to the fuel pump which was right in front of a maintenance hangar. On the way I heard an odd clanging noise and as we neared the pump, a couple of mechanics start running toward the plane while we shut down. I got out, saw the tow bar still attached and just hung my head in shame. Thank God it never bounced up and hit the prop.
 
Took off once with the Cherokee’s door open. Did a turn around the pattern, landed and calmly walked into the FBO and asked where the men’s room was. Didn’t really need it but that made a reasonable excuse for an extremely short flight.

Cheers
 
Was volunteering to clean an airplane in return for some flight time. I had to use a tow bar to move the plane closer to the water hose. Washed down the plane then jumped into the pilot seat when finished and started her up to reposition to another spot nearby. I don’t recall if I actually heard anything when I was taxiing, but when i shut down afterwards I discovered I had left the tow bar connected. Realized instantly how close I came to damaging the prop, or worse, the engine.
 
Sinistar said:
Wrong runway and a phone number :(
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Did that at 17 years old during a solo cross country. Thought it was right traffic because I turned “right” to enter the pattern. I was coming from the west and should’ve landed 21. I turned right for “right traffic” per the tower instructions and landed 03. Tower told me to give him a call. As soon as I landed I knew I just messed up as it hit me when I had to turn right to exit vs left.

My instructor was a controller at that tower and man did I hear about it. I also got some serious remedial instruction. Never made that mistake again. Such a stupid mistake.


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I can’t believe all of you that have tried to taxi with the chocks in. Don’t you do a final walk around? Isn’t it obvious that they’re still there? Wow!

Now I have tried to taxi with the tail still tied down. :)
 
Low Level Flyer said:
I can’t believe all of you that have tried to taxi with the chocks in. Don’t you do a final walk around? Isn’t it obvious that they’re still there? Wow!

Now I have tried to taxi with the tail still tied down. :)
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Fortunately I've never done the "Turns Around a Tie-Down" ground reference maneuver!
 
I had to fly from Nashua NH to Manchester NH to take my PPL checkride with Charlie Cashin. Despite a careful preflight, I forgot to untie the tail tiedown before I started trying to taxi. That was embarrassing, but at least it wasn't during the checkride.
 
I got a frequency change once and said “with you” will never happen again!
 
I turned down the radio 1 so I could hear and talk to a really quite person on radio 2, had to turn around and could not raise tower on radio 1. Spent some time circling outside of D before trying to figure out why I couldn't contact the tower, before I just tuned their freq into radio 2. I figured out what I had done before shutting down, so at least I didn't have a mechanic look at it. :oops:
 
1) I’ve done some variation of nearly every “oops moment” described so far. Weirdly, I’m still alive and can say I’ve never been involved in an accident or violation. Yet.

2) A bunch of those listed already could have been avoided by doing a final 360° walk around just prior to getting in the plane. That will usually catch the camera on the wing, chocks/tiedowns still in place,etc.

3) Better checklist discipline would have helped in a lot of cases listed above.

4) I think my worst oops moment is described here:

https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/com...ecklist-use-a-habit.68235/page-2#post-1384445

Lesson there: if you use a customized checklist, make absolutely sure it has all the critical items on it.
 
1) For my non-flying oops moment, I used to work cleaning airplanes overnight for a major airline. Normally we did this when they pulled the plane into the maintenance hangar, but this night they left the plane at the gate for minor maintenance. When this happened, the maintenance guys would let us borrow their van since it was on the opposite side of the airport from the hangar we worked out of. I had to reposition the van for some reason, and being tired and not thinking things through, I thought I'll just back it around to where we need it. I immediately ran over the chocks and bounced the crap out of that POS van, and nearly backed into the engine nacelle in the process. I got out thinking "That was dumb, but at least nobody saw." It turns out the maintenance supervisor had been watching me from the terminal building. The next day he asked if that was me backing the van up. I hung my head in shame and he said "I don't ever want to see you back the van up in the gate area again."

2) For my flying oops moment, it was weather related. I was out on a training flight with my instructor. This was summer time in the Midwest where storms can pop up out of nowhere. There wasn't even a chance of rain forecast when I was doing the preflight. As tends to happen that time of year, small showers started popping up. As we were flying along, we were discussing how you can see the outflow of wind blowing dust out the bottom of a rain shaft. About that time, I noticed that the building storms were starting to box us in. I made a beeline for the airport and we landed just as a storm started dumping rain on the airport. I remember the instructor saying "We need to stick this landing or our go-around is going to put us into a storm." I got much better at being proactive with pop up storms after that.
 
Trying to start the Cherokee once for a solo joyride as a brand new PP and was having a hell of a time. Would try to start and would die almost immediately.

Dad walked over from the hangar to see whats wrong, pushed the mixture in and said "try it now". :oops:

I had the checklist out but had still somehow managed to skip over that particular item.
 
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