Have you ever noticed how many aviation stories start with those four words? Usually they’re the stories that have happy endings, because they’re being related in the first person. There’s something to be learned from these tales. Airplane accidents are never good things, but if we can learn from them and not repeat the mistakes they illuminate, we’ll all be safer.

This year I got a phone call with a "so there I was" story from a friend of mine. We had decided to cross-inspect each others’ airplanes – we fly the same type – and see if we could spot any snags that we might have missed on our own planes. When you’ve done the same preflight a hundred times, it’s just too easy for defects to slide by without your eyes taking note. Sure enough, we each found faults on the other’s plane: rivets starting to come a bit loose, moving parts chafing lightly against stationary ones, and the like. My friend’s plane, despite having few hours on it and being pretty new, was showing signs that exposed sections of the fuel system’s plastic tubing were getting a bit stiff from UV exposure. It was not close to being due for replacement either by flight hours or by the calendar, but we snagged it as something that would have to be dealt with some time soon.

Early one evening a month or so later the phone rang. My friend’s first words, even before "Hello", were – yes, you guessed it – "So There I Was". He had been flying and smelled fuel. He landed, and sure enough the fuel tubing we had decided would do for a while had started leaking. "Some time soon" had arrived well ahead of schedule. We realized that we had only half-executed our agreement to cross-inspect our planes. We had done the inspections, and found it very worthwhile at the time, but then we had failed to follow up and actually deal with all of the snags. Fortunately, the worst of the result was that he and his whole plane ended up smelling like 1 in 50 premix. A lesson learned; but now I need to take you back another few weeks, to the reason we cross-checked each others’ planes.

Another friend had been flying with a passenger in the same type of ultralight, which he’d just finished building. Some time after his AULA approval inspection (which went flawlessly) he had decided to modify the elevator controls on his plane. We don’t know why he did that. We probably never will: his modification caused the controls to fail in flight. He and his passenger were both killed in the resulting crash.

The problem modification was spotted by a couple of people before the accident. Both were experts on the model of plane my friend was flying. One was able to point it out to the fellow, but did not realize it was quite as serious as it was, and my friend decided not to take the advice. Another saw the modification and tried to find him to tell him it was unsafe, but didn’t reach him in time. This accident didn’t need to happen. If my friend had gotten someone to check his work, or had taken the advice of someone who told him it didn’t look safe, he and his passenger would be alive today.

As I write this I am waiting to hear about some surgery that another of my flying friends is awaiting, to see how permanently disabling his injuries are. He committed a tiny oversight during some maintenance on his plane: a turnbuckle came unscrewed in flight because he had forgotten to safety wire it. That resulted in a barely controlled crash that seriously damaged his plane and himself. His mistake was exactly the sort of normal, inevitable memory failure that all humans are heir to. It could have happened to any of us. It pains me that if he had asked someone who knew the type to check his work he would be phoning me now, bugging me to come out flying with him. Instead I’m waiting for the phone to ring for a much less happy reason.

Neither of the two tragedies need have happened, if the pilots had asked someone to thoroughly check their work. Even my friend’s experience that ended in him smelling like Eau de Two-Stroke could have been prevented if we had followed through on our own intentions.

If you have been flying ultralight, homebuilt or user-maintained airplanes for a while you may have experienced some similar event, or perhaps you know someone who has. You may have landed after a flight and found that something was close to falling off, or perhaps it was mysteriously missing from the plane when you landed; or something may have been bent that was designed to be straight; or you compared your plane to another of the same model and couldn’t account for why something was installed very differently.

Your plane probably has two spark plugs per cylinder, and two magnetos. Why not give it two pre-flights as well? I want to propose the following to you, my fellow aviators, and to the flying organizations to which I belong. Let’s start a movement, or a program. Or more informally, let’s just acquire a new habit. We can call it the Cross-Check. All you have to do to participate is the following:

• Ask a knowledgeable friend to inspect your plane every time you do maintenance on it, before you go flying.
• Take advantage of opportunities to have your plane inspected by others whenever it’s practical.
• Inspect other peoples’ planes if they ask you to.
• Commit to fixing the snags you find in each others’ planes before any of you take off again.

In either case, this is a simple thing we can do to help each other stay healthy, and provide a safeguard against our own human failings. In our national sport, cross-checking is illegal. In aviation we should consider it mandatory.

Fly safely.
Andrew Forber