Could Not Believe My Eyes

Airlines

New Member
Hey everyone,

I was out doing the preflight the other day when to my surprise, I see a Southwest pilot in uniform. He goes over to a plane (tailwheel, can't remember the manufacturer) to get ready to fly it (he's based out of the airport and commutes to it via his plane) . We both nod to each other and I continue on my preflight. All of a sudden, this guy starts his engine and proceeds to do a quick walk around the aircraft (that was his only preflight check of the plane). He didn't even have his tidown chains on, but was relying solely on the parking brake. He then gets in, proceeds to taxi out to the runway, does not even do a runup, and takes off. It was a shock to witness that, and my instructor said that this guy has a bad name on the ramp. I would not want to be on his flight, I can tell you that.
 
I guess that is how Southwest has such quick turn around times.
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J/K
But seriously, I would not want to be a pasenger on his flight.
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That seems a little wierd, are you sure he didn't do his preflight before you where there or not looking.
 
The thing is, you can probably get away with a skipping a lot of things in preflight. The mags usually work, the flaps usually deploy and retract just fine, and usually, there's no water in the fuel, for example.

But do you really want to risk it?

I'd rather take the 15 minutes it takes to preflight a plane and make sure it's safe!
 
I doubt he did a preflight when I wasn't looking ( I could always be wrong, though), but still, why are you going to walk around the plane with the engine running, trusting your parking brake? I still can't get that.
 
It is absolutely amazing what some people are stupid enough to do. I was in LIT (Little Rock, AR) and had gone to the airport to put my BE-200 in a hangar because of severe wx., whent he tornado alarms started going off. There was a Confirmed tornado w/i 4 miles of the airport, it was raining like a firehose, wind blowing, everything dark as night and it was afternoon, I mean it was scary the weather outside was frighful. I'm looking outside when I sees this little taildragger taxi by I said to the other pilot that this guy shure waited long enought to seek a tie down, when all of a sudden instead of turning left into parkin, he turn right onto the runway and takes off. I'm convinced he was by himself because he would have needed the empty seat to put his balls in. I thought I was going to watch a man die. He disappeared into the blackness of the storm.
 
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I'd rather take the 15 minutes it takes to preflight a plane and make sure it's safe!

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd have to agree...really, it's not even 15 minutes. Yu should be able to preflight most light GA aircraft in about 5 minutes....take more than that and you're probably being overly cautious (unless you find a problem, or water in the fuel, etc).
 
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