AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2018 - 22

FLYING LIFE

Slower is faster

BY NATALIE BINGHAM HOOVER

Good planning makes good landings
IF YOU ARE EVER BRAVE ENOUGH to attempt a climb
up Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro, your guide will
continually remind you to slow down. Because a
large majority of the guides speak Swahili, it will
sound something like this, "Polepole ni kwa kasi."
Translation: Slower is faster. In the world of mountain climbing, speeding through the process will
only lead to altitude sickness and fatigue. Taking the
time to acclimate to local conditions will allow you
to reach the summit faster and in better shape than
if you had rushed up the mountain.
It turns out that in aviation, the "slower is faster"
rule applies as well. I recently took a trip to Dallas,
Texas, for my annual recurrent training in the
Beechjet 400A. Over the course of two hours in the

I sometimes find it tempting to rush an approach
or landing just because I've been cleared for one.
This doesn't save any time.

NATALIE BINGHAM
HOOVER was

named 2017
Southeast Regional
FAA Safety
Representative
of the Year.

22 | AOPA PILOT January 2018

simulator, we saw multiple instrument approaches,
engine failures, icing conditions, electrical malfunctions, wind shear encounters, ground proximity
warning system alerts, and more. At times, as we were
running checklists to get an engine restarted while
also trying to set up for a single-engine approach into
New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport,
we felt like we were hanging on by the tail. Everything
was happening so fast; we had to work really hard just
to keep up.
During the debrief, our instructor, Jim Collins, a
retired F-16 pilot with the U.S. Air Force, gave us the
advice that in order to stay ahead of the airplane, we
had to do everything in our power to make things
happen at a more manageable pace. "Slower is faster,"
he said. One of his students had just made the trek up
Kilimanjaro and shared the Swahili phrase with him,
although that particular bit of wisdom was certainly
not new to Collins. With his fastest groundspeed on
the F-16 reaching 1,470 knots, the idea of slowing the
airplane down to normal human processing speeds is
one of Collins' soapbox topics.
Airplanes go fast. That's kind of the point, right?
So how do we slow down an airplane that is moving

at speeds faster than we can keep up? I think this
process starts on the ground before we ever get into
the airplane. I find it helpful to do a two-minute
"chair flight" of my entire route, from parking space
to parking space, including expected departure and
arrival runways and taxi routes as well as planned
VFR pattern entry or IFR approach, depending on
the weather. That way, when I'm in the air, I can
devote my feeble amount of mental energy to holding straight and level or looking outside for traffic.
Also, I sometimes find it tempting to rush an
approach or landing just because I've been cleared
for one. This doesn't save any time. I end up flying
distracted while trying to finish setting up, or having
to do a go-around because of the unstable approach.
One of the things I often remind my checkride applicants is that ATC can give delaying vectors until you
are ready to commence the approach. Also, I like
to take care of all descent and landing checklists as
soon as possible so that when the time comes to fly
an approach, I can focus on what's important: flying
the airplane.
Once you begin the approach, if you start to get
that "everything is moving too fast" feeling, remember
you still have several tools at your disposal. Reducing
the power or changing the pitch is not the only way to
slow an airplane down. We also have various methods
of drag, i.e. flaps, landing gear if retractable, propeller
angle if controllable, spoilers, or just a good old-fashioned slip when all other options are exhausted. Do
keep in mind, though, that if the entire approach has
felt rushed, there is a good possibility that the unstable approach will result in a landing you're not going
to like. Also, remember that takeoffs and landings are
high-workload situations. Rushing the process may
lead to pilot task saturation, leaving no mental power
to handle the unexpected, such as inoperative equipment, wind shear, or crossing traffic.
Although it may feel painfully tedious at times,
remember that thorough preflight planning and
long, stable approaches may actually be the fastest
way to arrive at our destination. Just like the mountain climber, we can arrive in much better shape,
unscathed and unstressed, if we can just adopt the
motto that slower is faster.
AOPA
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2018

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