Airmanship

What is airmanship ?

Throughout the training course for the PPL(H) and CPL(H) you will hear airmanship refered to all the time, but what is it really ?
Thats a difficult question to answer, some would say its any safety related matter, some would say its common sense whilst in the air, the americans tend to term it aeronautical decision making and it is part of their training syllabus..
In reality is is probably these and several other things besides. Some of these things we can teach others we can't because there are some situations which would require a high degree of instant decision making in a circumstance no one else has encountered before.

Some Common Airmanship Points

Lookout

The maintenance of a good lookout cannot be overstressed. It is highly unlikely that any of the instruments are going to jump off the panel and injure you. It is likely that at some point in your flying career that another aircraft will get closer than you might like while in the air. In uncontrolled airspace we operate on the see and avoid principle, and are responsible for our own seperation from other aircraft, controlled airspace as a general rule the air traffic controllers are responsible for seperation, this does not stop errors being made so keep looking outside when flying VMC.
There is another good reason for looking outside when operating VMC, the Artificial Horiszon is 2.5" wide version of the 50 mile wide real thing, which one do you think will be more accurate ?

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Engine Temperatures, Pressures And Fuel

There are several good reasons to check these on a regular basis.
Engines don't keep running without fuel, if the fuel system develops a leak or we are not making progress due to higher than expected winds, it may be prudent to think about landing or diverting to another airfield.
Engines don't work too well without oil in, or if the oil cooling or pumping system fails either. Constant checks of engine temperatures an pressures can warn of an impending engine failure. We must however resist the temptation to label every instrument indication of an unusual temperature or pressure as an approaching disaster. Several aircraft have been lost due pilots panicking on seeing an abnormal indication and rushing to get the aircraft on the ground.

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Control Handover

In the training or multi-crew environments there must be NO confusion about who is flying the aircraft at any given time.
Worldwide we employ a system of verbal confirmation to ensure that we each know who has control. At first this can seem a little strange to be acknowledging who is doing what, with which control and when, particularly during the first stages of training when control is constantly being passed between instructor and student.

If we imagine a scenario were the instructor has control of an aircraft and he wants his student to take over and fly, the conversation between instructor and student will normally go something like

Instructor - Follow Me Through On The Controls
Student - Following
Instructor - You Have Control
Student - I Have Control

Under certain circumstances it may be necessary for your instructor to take control immediately, this will normally be for the sake of flight safety. If your instructor says at any point 'I Have Control' then relinquish control to him immediately, and do not try and override his inputs on the controls.