"Richard Kaplan" wrote in message
s.com...

Consider that airlines have a LOT more established emergency procedures
and
a lot more equipment redundancy, so whereas you might be correct that in
an
airline situation there is a proper checklist for almost every situation,
in
piston general aviation the pilot may need to do more independent thinking
to solve a problem. And even in the airline world, there is a Capt.
Haynes
who made a landing in South Dakota a number of years ago who probably
agrees
as well that independent thinking by an airline pilot is a good thing.

You might be suprised Richard. I fly a relatively new design, all glass,
fully automated airliner. Out of all of the 'issues' I have had with this
aircraft, probably only 10% of them were actually corrected solely via an
Emerg/Abnormal checklist. Oftentimes, the problem is a little more compound
in nature and improvisation is definitely necessary and in fact encouraged.

As the old saying goes ... checklists are CHECKlists, not DOlists.

-RH