For years before I became an instructor I celebrated my birthday with the gift to myself of a relaxing several-hour long flight. Usually, I flew my school’s Arrow. Once I had tasted taildraggers, however, I was hooked, and it was from then on in our ’46 Champ that all future birthdays were happily celebrated. Arriving back at the home field in the Arrow after a particularly successful Happy Birthday celebration, I taxied to the fuel pumps, then shut down. Climbing out, I was met by my school’s owner, Bob.

Bob began asking general questions about the Arrow, squawks, is she running okay, any complaints, did I have anything to report. His questions puzzled me, but I brushed it off as his just being unusually friendly that morning, perhaps having nothing better to do than to wander aimlessly about the field asking people questions. Bob did not look terribly happy, as I remember it, but it turns out his mood was not in response to anything I had done. His attitude was set by the solemnity of the occasion.

As I refueled the Arrow, a small crowd of men descended upon her, one of whom was to be her next pilot, an instructor, in fact, preparing for a somewhat unusual checkride. Apparently, he had been grounded since landing the school’s Piper Seneca with the wheels stowed safely in the belly. I suppose he thought it a safe place to leave them seeing how sudden contact with the pavement, with all that ensuing smoke, does not display proper stewardship of brand-new rubber.

So, I finished refueling. As I left, an equally-solemn flight examiner showed up to perform the rites. From what I could glean from discussions at that gathering, as well as those later on, I gathered enough information to form a fairly-complete picture of what happened in the cockpit that fateful day.

Several of the older Piper models had a gear indicator system that made no sense from a practical standpoint. Commanches and Senecas, possibly others, offered the pilot only one gear-down indicator light. If that light is illuminated, the presumption is, the gear are all down. Later, it occurred to the engineers at Piper that each gear obviously requires its own light since only one indicator does nothing to inform the pilot of which wheel may not be down and locked. This information could make a difference in how he lands the airplane and under what conditions.

Think about it, an Arrow has three indicators because there are three landing gear legs. A Boeing 747 has five indicators because, what is the answer? There are five landing gear legs. An Airbus A340 has four indicators because it has four legs, while the A380 has five indicators because there are five gear legs. This is logical. However, the Seneca has only one indicator.

While this lighting system was a bad engineering idea from the beginning from a practical standpoint, it played no part in what happened next. I just felt the need right then to offer Piper my two-cents worth.

Apparently, this instructor commented to other pilots that in his level off, that day, then holding her off, that he was convinced this was going to be one sweet landing. Suddenly, the props hit the pavement, then she slammed hard onto her belly and skidded noisily to a stop. So, the landing was sweet until the point where the props hit. His refusal to follow protocol explains his demeanor, as well as the general foul mood of the rest of the men that morning following my birthday flight.

Now, let’s explore everything he did wrong the day of the accident. Let’s assume his preflight was of quality. As I understand the facts, this pilot took off, then selected gear up. Okay, so he took off successfully. What happened after that is where this flight went awry. The Seneca has a gear switch with three positions: down, off, in the middle, and up. When performing the written cruise checklist, he should have returned the switch to the gear-off position. He did not select “gear off” probably because he did not perform the written cruise checklist. The switch spent the entire trip nestled in the “gear up” position.

So, when he returned for landing and eased into downwind, he casually, absentmindedly, and without a glance to confirm what his hand was doing, flipped the gear lever down only one position, in this case, to the “gear off” position, instead of “gear down.”

It sounds suspiciously like he performed the pre-landing checklist from memory and by feel, instead of by sight and by using the written checklist. Being a relatively high-time pilot, he may already have made that transition from flying by procedure to flying by feel. Sure, the actual maneuvering of the airplane, the artistry, the graceful dance, is done by feel, but everything else is procedure, and procedure demands checklists.

Also, what happened to his attitude, his attention to detail? What happened to that acronym we retractable pilots live by, that last-minute, short-final check of systems, that mantra we chant all the way through the pattern, on down to the threshold: GUMP?

Now, I am a Dodge man; I always have been, station wagons, pickup trucks, even a Dodge passenger van. The visibility from the cockpit of this van is superb, windows all around. Since I sit up high, surrounded by acres of glass, there usually is little I miss going on around me. With all that visibility, while the van was not built with an inherent blind spot, from a practical, modern standpoint, it has developed one. Its visibility and drivability are now diminished because most other people on the road these days insist upon driving tiny cars whose roofs are now below the bottom of my huge windows. Consequently, I have trouble seeing these cars lurking in that perilous, ominous region along the right side and rear corner of my van.

Frustrated that these people are not cognizant that driving their Matchbox cars immediately in the potential blind spot of such an obviously tall, imposing, and heavy vehicle presents an equally obvious threat to their health and security, I took steps to install an adjustable, wide-angle mirror on the passenger-side mirror of my van, then learned to trust this mirror. While still frustrated that the driving skills and common sense of these other people still has not reached pre-Neanderthal proficiency, with this new visibility aid on my van, I have learned to adapt to some of their handicaps, as well as those of my vehicle’s.

Now, since this flight instructor flying the Seneca that day, who should have known better by virtue of his title and his training, elected to operate an aircraft with an inherent handicap, his job thus became to adapt to its inherent deficiencies. The best way to adapt to that handicap is to religiously follow the airplane’s written checklist. Imagine the performance differences and the driver’s ultimate satisfaction negotiating a curvy, mountainous roadway in the Alps in a modern Porsche 911, then attempting the same course and with the same passion in a 1964 Beetle.

More to the point, however, is that regardless how many positions the gear selector switch has, regardless if the airplane has only one gear-down indicator or a row of bright, flashing neon lights instead, this pilot took an action without being aware of what action he was actually taking. It does not take a seasoned pilot in the cockpit to accomplish a task wrong. Someone with no flight experience at all can accomplish that task just as successfully.

When I was in high school, my family had two cars: a 1963 Ford Country Squire station wagon and a 1964 VW Bug. I held in my heart an enduring love for that Bug, caring for her, adjusting her valves, changing the oil, meticulously sewing her seats when the stitching gave out. I hated it when my sisters took the Bug out because they did not share the same love or sense of protection for her as did I.

One day, my sister visited some friends out in the country. When she returned, she complained bitterly that this Bug, with all her forty horsepower, had been unable successfully to pass a tractor-trailer climbing a hill. I painstakingly tried to point out to this visibly-uninterested sibling the flaw in her logic. I said to her, “forty horsepower is barely enough power for a Bug to climb the hill, much less pass another vehicle at the same time. There are lawnmowers with more power.”

“Well, it should do it!” was her speedy verdict. “Stupid car!” followed her bitter condemnation.

Regardless the obvious performance differences between, on the one hand, the Ford station wagon, whose peppy V8 had the power easily to carry our entire family of seven, plus camping gear and dogs, and on the other, this 35 mpg Bug, she expected this little car to perform like its big sister. Her bitter reproach reflected her steadfast refusal to adapt to the little Bug’s inherent handicaps.

Unlike most other pilots, we instructors often find ourselves in the unique, sometimes demanding position of having to be proficient not only in several models, not only in multiple classes, but even in different categories of aircraft, as well as VFR and IFR training environments. This is the nature of the job. It comes with the territory. We simply are expected to know.

With the pressure of this expectation comes the weighty responsibility of becoming that much more aware of who we are, where we are, and what we want to do. “Checked out,” as it were, in so many types of aircraft, we can afford to leave nothing to chance, to make neither assumptions nor presumptions, to skip checklist items, or to skip that checklist altogether.

As a freshly-minted private pilot, one day many years ago I occupied the back seat of a Cherokee 140 casually flown by two instructors. Yes I, a tall man, actually occupied the back seat of a Cherokee, a feat never before accomplished by a human. I believe I said “I occupied” the back seat. I did not say it was comfortable. At any rate, the instructor flying leaned toward his colleague in the right seat and asked blithely, “What’s Vx in this thing?”

Now, that question seems fairly innocuous, but it does raise a valid point. Chuck Yeager and probably many other pilots have made the observation, no doubt more times than can be counted, that, “A pilot cannot be proficient in five different airplanes.” Instructors, however, are expected to do just that, then teach the material, as well, and to proficiency, no less.

So, where does that leave us, that infamous “us” whose every utterance, every action, every nuance, is being scrutinized by our students? They emulate us.

I happen to be the proud owner of an older, since-discontinued model, David-Clark H10-80 headset with the dual volume controls, upgraded now with the thicker gel-seal cuffs I installed many years ago. I love the set! It’s now comfy and, of course, reliable, as well as virtually indestructible.

When a student was positioned to buy his first headset, he searched at length on eBay and elsewhere to find one just like mine. While he ultimately ended up with a David-Clark, he clearly was disappointed he could not find the same model as mine.

If we exercise caution when entering the pattern, or act foolishly instead out in the practice area, we can eventually expect similar behavior from our protégés. So, if we instructors do not respect the checklist, we should likewise expect our disciples to perform with similar abandon. What we instructors say or do not say, what we do or do not do now, whether we like it or not, will influence the skill, happiness, and longevity of generations of pilots.