Five months in jail (and PTSD) - pilot found criminally negligent fornot following a preflight checklist

On Friday, February 14, 2014 1:03:15 PM UTC-5, Soartech wrote:

There is not a culture (in hang gliding) of using a written, rigid check list. Yet, like us, they assemble their craft before every flight.

I see that the title that I chose for this topic reflects my hasty interpretation.

To put this in a more correct context, the pilot plead "guilty". He was not found guilty of not using a checklist. But I think that it would have boiled down to that if the case had been tried.

excerpt from article:
Had Orders (the pilot) performed those safety checks, Godinez-Avila's family would have been spared the heartbreak they now endure, said B.C. Supreme Court Judge Brian Joyce.

"I do not accept the suggestion made ... that what occurred here was merely a momentary loss of attention," Joyce told the court.

"There is a clearly established procedure that is to be followed in conducting a tandem hang-gliding flight. ... Mr. Orders failed to do all of these things."

So unlike the judge, I find it easy to accept that due to a "momentary loss of attention" the pilot simply forgot to check the passenger's attachment to the hang glider. Like every other human, my memory is faulty and I'm prone to distraction. The judge expected the pilot to follow the "clearly established procedure". So the judge expected the pilot to flawlessly remember and execute all of those steps. That is an unreasonable expectation and if the case had been tried, the point would have been clarified.

I speculate that it would have come out in trial, that knowing the unreliability of his memory, the pilot was negligent every time he flew without a written pre-flight checklist.

My take away is that some future prosecutor will argue that it is criminally negligent to NOT use a written preflight checklist. In the meantime, that judge in Canada expects pilots to have perfect memories, so we might as well use written checklists.

Yes in the hanggliding world checklists are pretty
much non existent, you would get laughed at for having one, but what they do use is something called a "hang check"

What this is is before you launch off of a cliff or slope,
you have an assistant hold your nose wires and you drop
down into the prone position, when you do this you can crank your
head around and visibly see that you have connected your carbineer
correctly to your hang strap and backup hang strap. Usually your
assistant also verifies this but I always preferred seeing the
connection with my own eyes.

This was always common at any site I ever flew at.

I also owned a tandem hangglider and did 60-70 tandem flights
total, I would never consider launching tandem without doing
a proper hangcheck, and I have never been at a site where anyone
ever launched tandem without doing this, you could expect a bunch
of people to start screaming if they ever saw this.

I am not confident a checklist would have saved this tragedy, but I
am confident that a hangcheck would have avoided it.

By the way hanggliders are far more complicated to assemble
than a sailplane is.

On Friday, February 14, 2014 5:57:41 PM UTC-5, joesimmers wrote:
Yes in the hanggliding world checklists are pretty
much non existent, you would get laughed at for having one, but what they do use is something called a "hang check"

So do you go through an unwritten preflight checklist for anything that is not verified by the hang check?

On Friday, February 14, 2014 7:22:14 PM UTC-5, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Friday, February 14, 2014 5:57:41 PM UTC-5, joesimmers wrote:

Yes in the hanggliding world checklists are pretty

much non existent, you would get laughed at for having one, but what they do use is something called a "hang check"



So do you go through an unwritten preflight checklist for anything that is not verified by the hang check?

So typically we perform a preflight of the hang glider itself. This is a walk-around/touch-around of the glider after assembly or a hard landing to insure that it is assembled correctly, no bent tubes, wires straight and unkinked, double check bolts/nuts, etc. This is a pretty standard procedure and is documented in the glider manual.

I personally also perform a prelaunch check (just as I'm getting situated to launch) similar to the "SCRUB CATS" verbal check that some sailplane pilots use. I've modified it a bit for the hang glider but it works for me.

S= Straps; hooked in and check the suspension.
C=Canopy; helmet on and buckled.
R=Release; When towing, check the release system.
U=Undercarriage; rock upright in the harness to insure harness leg straps are proper.
B=Brakes; Check parachute pins.
C=Controls; insure clearance above the base tube.
A=Altimeter; check altimeter, vario, and other instruments to be on and properly set.
T=Trim; check the VG.
S=Slop; insure that nothing is dangling which could create problems with launch (especially with the tow cart.)

I also verbally state "Hooked in, Locked in, and Preflighted". This is where I will look and confirm that I am hooked into the hang strap, the carabineer is locked, and mentally recall the glider preflight process. I then verbally say "Attitude Check" where I make a final assessment of my physiology at the moment to insure I'm up to the task of committing aviation.

Not all hang glider pilots use a written or verbal check list but the preflight walk around is pretty standard.

The Canada incident is really sad and could have been prevented with a full and proper hang check.

Danny Brotto
LS-8/18 "P6"
Wills Wing U2 145
Wills Wing Falcon 170

On 2/14/2014 5:57 PM, joesimmers wrote:
Yes in the hanggliding world checklists are pretty
much non existent, you would get laughed at for having one, but what they do use is something called a "hang check"

What this is is before you launch off of a cliff or slope,
you have an assistant hold your nose wires and you drop
down into the prone position, when you do this you can crank your
head around and visibly see that you have connected your carbineer
correctly to your hang strap and backup hang strap. Usually your
assistant also verifies this but I always preferred seeing the
connection with my own eyes.


Yeah, me too. I personally knew 2 people that failed to do that on cliff
launches - they were not hooked in. One was fatal, the second pilot was
a gymnast who "simply" hung onto the base tube, swung up, trapeze like,
hooked in and landed safely.

Tony