SPC097 [BR] Never Skip the Debrief — Five Questions After Every Flight

All right, grab your logbook.

No, seriously, if it's within reach, grab it.

I'll wait.

All right.

Now flip back six months, any flight, you'll find something

like, I don't know, 1.5 on the tach, and it was a local flight.

I did four landings.

Now, from that entry, tell me one thing you learned on that flight.

Right.

Me neither, on a lot of my flights.

Turns out my logbook knows that I flew, but it has no idea what I learned.

So let's fix that in episode 97 of the "Student Pilot

Cast": Never Skip the Debrief.

Hey, welcome back to the Student Pilot Cast.

I'm Bill, and this is the briefing room where we take one idea and

stick it in your flight bag You know the old line about landings.

A good landing is one you walk away from, and a great landing is one

where they can use the airplane again.

For a lot of us, that's also the entire post-flight debrief.

Everybody walked away?

Check.

Airplane's reusable?

Check.

Great flight, right?

Now, where are my keys?

Where am I gonna eat?

That's not a debrief, folks.

That's a damage assessment.

Now, a little honesty before we start.

This week's episode was supposed to be recording audio in flight, the one where

I show you the cables, the recorders, and what it all actually sounds like, and

how you would choose one over the other, other depending on what you're doing.

And to make that one, I need to actually have a fun flight where I'm not teaching,

with a camera, and in decent weather, on a day when I'm not booked solid.

The weather and my calendar got together this week and voted no on that episode.

So consider this episode a live demonstration of one of the five

questions we're gonna cover today, the one that asks, what's the one

thing I'll fix for the next time?

My answer is, next week, book the plane earlier, check the weather first.

See?

I'm already debriefing.

All right, a couple of callbacks to set this up a little bit better.

Back in episode 91, we covered the three simple questions, the go, no-go framework.

Can the airplane do it?

Can I do it?

And is it legal?

And at the very end of that episode, almost like a postscript,

I gave you five questions to ask yourself after the flight.

I gave them, like, a minute.

They deserve a whole episode.

So today, they get one.

And in episode 96, Adriana from, from Fly ORKA and I talked about a line that's been

rattling around in my head ever since.

As I said in that episode, "Logging is not learning." Her whole

philosophy boils down to this.

We don't learn from experience.

We learn from reflecting on experience.

That episode was the why, and this one, I'm hoping, is the how.

So here's how I want you to picture it.

The three simple questions and these five questions are bookends.

Three questions before the flight to decide whether you go or you don't go.

Five questions after every flight to make sure your next three questions for the

next flight are a little more honest.

So let's start with why that even matters.

So let's go back to that logbook you grabbed.

What's actually required there?

14 CFR 61.51 tells you what you have to log, and it's less

than you'd think probably.

You have to record the training and experience you use toward a certificate,

a rating, or a flight review, and whatever you need to stay current.

And that's it.

Strictly speaking, you don't even have to log every flight.

I think most pilots know that.

And then for each entry, the reg spells out the fields, date, total

time, where you departed from and where you went to, what you flew,

what kind of time it was, like solo, PIC, and dual, and the conditions.

Was it day or night?

Was it in actual or simulated instrument conditions?

Notice what's missing.

Every required field records that the flight happened.

Not one of them records what it taught you.

The only place for that is probably the remarks column, which in

most paper logbooks is roughly the size of a fortune cookie.

So the regulations will make you log.

Nothing in Part 61 will make you learn.

That part is on you.

And here's the problem with, "I'll remember, don't worry."

The problem is you won't.

Within a few hours, the flight starts to compress into a single summary,

like, "Uh, it, it went pretty well."

And the details that actually teach you something, that exact moment that

you got behind, the radio call that you fumbled, and maybe the thing that

surprised you when you were on downwind, those are the first things to go.

The window to debrief is honestly pretty short, and it closes

whether you use it or not.

And this isn't some new age idea, by the way.

Military aviators run on a rhythm.

They plan, they brief, they execute, and then they debrief, and the debrief

is often the longest part of the day.

Airline crews debrief.

Flight test crews.

Adriana's world is built around observing, recording, and

assessing every single flight.

General aviation is kind of the outlier, especially when we're

talking single pilot general aviation.

We tie it down, close out the flight plan if we filed one, log our, you know,

time in the logbook, go get a burger.

Now, the FAA did notice this, so a quick history lesson, and I say this as someone

who at this point is part of history.

It's an old joke.

So I was there.

I remember steam gauges, and who am I kidding?

I still use them.

up everywhere in general aviation.

Big, beautiful screens.

Back then, they weren't that big, but they were getting bigger, and they

were still pretty cool and beautiful.

Moving maps, autopilots on airplanes that, you know, never used to have them,

and the accident data started telling an uncomfortable story about this.

Pilots weren't crashing these airplanes because they couldn't fly them.

They were crashing them because of decisions and because of how they

were managing all of that automation.

It wasn't a stick and rudder problem.

It was a judgment and button-pushing problem.

So the FAA, together with some in the industry and universities, put

together a program they called FITS, or FAA Industry Training Standards.

Three big ideas: train with realistic scenarios instead of isolated maneuvers,

and, you know, just do this, then this.

Teach single pilot resource management, so basically crew resource management

for a crew of one, and then something called learner-centered grading.

That last one is the part that we care about for today's episode.

Instead of the instructor handing you a grade to, to the flight, you grade

your flight also on your own, and then you and your instructor compare notes

The FITS program itself has mostly been retired, but the ideas didn't go anywhere.

They're still scattered throughout today's Aviation Instructor's Handbook, and that's

the book that we CFIs learn to teach from.

In the chapter on assessment has this, well, assessment part, and

it lays out a four-step debrief.

Replay, so you talk through the flight.

Reconstruct, what would you or could you or should you have done differently?

Next is reflect.

What did you learn, and how would you grade yourself?

And then finally, redirect.

How does this apply to the next flight?

There's one line in that chapter that I really love.

It, it says, "Self-assess- assessment," quote, "establishes the habit of healthy

reflection and self-assessment that is critical to being a safe pilot." It says

that it's critical to being a safe pilot.

Not a nice-to-have, not something we should do.

It's critical.

So the five questions I'm about to give you, think of them as the single

pilot's version of exactly that.

Because here's the thing.

Once you pass the checkride, the instructor kinda goes away for a

while, but the debrief shouldn't.

Keep it going.

All right, so the five questions.

For each one, I'll tell you what it's really catching and what the

dishonest answer, answer sounds like, so you can recognize it, and

where the honest answer goes next.

Question one, the surprise.

What happened today that I didn't expect?

A surprise is a gap between the picture in your head and what actually happened,

and that gap almost always points back to your planning or your briefing.

Something you didn't think about, you didn't expect, and you didn't brief

Now, the dishonest answer for this is, "Uh, nothing really surprised me.

It was all good." And if that's true, you're either a phenomenal

pilot for planning or you weren't really paying attention.

And I've met a lot of pilots.

Statistically, I'm gonna go with the second one, and that includes me.

A good answer sounds like, "Tower gave me a right downwind that I hadn't expected,

and I kind of fumbled that entry.

I got confused a little bit." It's specific, it's small, and it's honest.

So where does it go?

It goes into your next briefing.

If a right downwind surprised you today, guess what you're briefing next

time you're in a similar situation?

Guess what you're thinking about?

the surprise becomes a briefing item, a tool of experience in your toolbox.

All right, so on to question two, workload.

At what point did I feel most behind the airplane today?

Everybody gets behind sometimes.

The question isn't whether it's gonna happen, it's where,

and more importantly, why.

Why did I get behind the airplane?

And here's the thing about workload spikes.

The cause is almost never where you feel it.

You feel it in the pattern, for example.

You're turning base, you haven't done your landing checklist, ATC is calling

traffic, and somebody in the right seat asks what that lake over there is called.

But the cause happened 15 miles out when you started your descent

late, so now you're trying to lose altitude, slow down, and get

configured all in the same two minutes.

You maybe didn't brief the passengers that we need to keep a sterile cockpit.

Um, the, the pattern was just where that bill came due, but you spent it way back

before when you let yourself get behind.

So the fix is almost always the same.

Move a task earlier.

Start the descent earlier.

Get the ATIS earlier.

Brief your approach before it's busy.

Brief your, brief your passengers on how to act when

you're coming into the pattern.

You can't add minutes during the approach, but you can take workload

out of it by doing it earlier.

And remember back in episode 91, I asked, "Have you ever gotten on the

ground and realized that you had completely skipped the pre-landing

checklist and maybe even missed the GUMPS check that you normally do?"

And, and then back then in that episode, and I said, quote, "We'll get

to your personal debrief in a bit." And that little bit turned out to be

eight minutes later in the episode, and it lasted about 50 seconds.

So consider this the rest of that little bit.

That missed checklist wasn't a memory problem.

It was a workload problem and/or a missed trigger problem.

Something earlier ate your bandwidth, and the checklist was

the thing that fell off the table.

So on to question three, skill.

And this one has two halves.

What did I fly at a C grade today?

And what did I fly at an A grade?

What did I do really well?

So let's start with the C. Be honest.

Nobody's watching.

It's just for you.

And be specific.

M- my landings were meh.

That's not a grade.

It's a mood.

It's how you're feeling about it.

My crosswind correction in the flare was late, and I landed with some side load.

That's a grade.

That's something you can work with Now the A grade, and I'm adding this on purpose

because I do it with my students all the time, especially when a student is

getting down on themselves a little bit.

A debrief that's nothing but criticism is a debrief you'll start skipping.

Nobody wants to sign up for a daily beating.

The debriefs aren't beatings.

So find the thing you flew well today and say it out loud.

"My radio calls were pretty clean today," or, "That steep turn held altitude within

50 feet, so that was pretty awesome."

That's good.

Do it again and reinforce it.

And this isn't me just being nice.

The Aviation Instructor's Handbook literally says, "An effective

critique considers good as well as bad performance." It also

says those self-assef- assessment grades are not self-esteem related.

And my favorite line, "The learner cannot flunk a lesson."

You learn or should learn on every one of them.

Write that on a sticky note and stick it right on the panel.

And that's where this answer goes, straight into question two of the

three simple questions, can I do it?

Your C grades are the honest answer to that.

No matter what your currency says, it gives you something concrete

to work on or at least check on the next time you're flying.

All right, so on to question four, decision.

Did I make any choice today based on solely convenience instead of safety?

This one can sting, and it's supposed to, because the dangerous decisions

are almost never the big dramatic ones.

They're the little ones that didn't bite you this time.

You skipped a checklist item because there was a line of airplanes behind

you in the run-up area, or you took off with fuel that was legal but not really

comfortable just because the fuel truck was saying they're 20 minutes out.

Or you looked at three yellow flags.

Remember the three strikes rule from episode 91 from the three questions?

So you looked at three yellow flags, but you didn't count one of them

because you really wanted to go.

Here's the problem with this.

A shortcut that never gets debriefed doesn't stay a shortcut.

It becomes a habit, and habits become what we call in the

industry normalization of deviance.

Do some research and find out how many accidents in aviation come

from either organizational or personal normalization of deviance.

In fact, I'll likely do an episode on this someday in the future, but for

now, keep the deviances as deviances.

Don't normalize them.

And one way to do that is to honestly debrief when it starts to creep in.

Keep it deviant, my friends.

Might be the only time I say that But same as the skill question,

give yourself credit too.

If you made a conservative call today, you went around when the

approach wasn't really stable, or you turned back for weather and you

said, "Not today," say it out loud.

That's a decision worth reinforcing, and good decisions become habits too.

All right, so on to question five, the goal.

What's the one thing that I wanna work on in the next flight?

One thing, not five.

If you have five goals, you have no goals.

You have a to-do list, and we all know what happens to to-do lists.

So pick one thing.

The C grade cr- crosswind landing maybe, the, the late descent, that right

downwind I didn't really understand the instruction for, or the risky decision.

One thing.

And this is where the whole idea comes together, because a goal is only worth

something if it actually makes it into the next flight, which is our next problem.

We gotta make it stick.

So we'll get to that in a second.

But first, how long should this debrief take?

Honestly, it kinda depends.

Sometimes it's two minutes at the tie-down when you're putting the cover on.

Uh, but after a check ride or a flight that kinda rattled you, it might

be 20 minutes and a cup of coffee.

Some flights have more to say than others.

The length, I wanna stress this, the length doesn't matter.

Skipping it does.

It's the consistency, doing this every single time, that matters.

The most thorough debrief I've ever done was a flight that ended with me,

my airplane, and my son in a field.

But nobody needs a reminder to d- debrief that kind of flight.

Trust me, that one debriefs itself for weeks.

It's the routine ones that we skip, the nice day, the familiar

airport, the nothing happened flight.

And those are exactly the flights where the small stuff creeps

in without anybody noticing.

So debrief the boring ones.

Debrief the good ones.

Your A-grade questions need material.

Don't just skip it.

The handbook says the critique should come immediately after, while the details

of the performance are easy to recall.

It's not a stopwatch.

It's not a specific amount of time.

That's just telling you do it while it's fresh.

So here's a trick.

Don't just think about the five questions, say them out loud.

Walk to the car, pull out your phone, hit the voice memo, and talk through all five.

Talking forces complete thoughts in a way that thinking doesn't.

In your head, the landing was kinda off feels like an answer.

Out loud, you hear yourself and go, "Off how? How off was it?" And remember,

the handbook's first step, replay.

The learner verbally replays the flight.

It's the same idea.

Bonus, now you've got a record that you can find later if you do an

audio, if you do an audio recording.

And if you recorded the audio of your flight, debrief again

after you've listened to it.

I am telling you, this one will surprise you.

The flight you remember and the flight you actually flew differ

more than you probably think.

You'll hear things you have zero memory of, a read back that you

clipped or a call that you missed completely, the exact moment your

voice went up half a, half an octave, and that's when your workload spiked.

You have it on tape with a timestamp.

Something your instructor may have said that you never registered.

All of these things you'll hear on the audio that maybe you don't even remember.

Then compare your first brief to your second one.

Whatever your memory quietly edited out, that's a lesson all by itself And

how do you record your flights without turning your cockpit into a radio station

or a mess of wires or a distraction?

That's next week's episode, weather permitting.

See?

I'm still working on question five and setting goals.

All right, so you've got your one goal.

Now what?

I heard a college classics professor say something that I wrote down in a book.

I still have that book.

Even then, I wrote it down as unknown because I didn't know

who said it, and he didn't know who said it at that time either.

It's probably one of those sayings that's been passed around for a very

long time, but here it is: "A goal not written is only a wish." I love that.

And right under it, the second half, "A goal not read is a wish that is written."

Because that's the trap.

You debrief, you pick your goal, you even write it down, and then three weeks

later, you show up for your flight.

Hopefully, it's not three weeks.

Even a week later, you show up for your flight, pre-flight the

airplane, and never look at it again.

The goal didn't fail.

It just never got invited to the flight.

So here's a simple system.

capture it, bridge it, and close the loop.

So here's the capture part.

Write the goal wherever you'll look first when you plan your next flight.

If you use an electronic logbook, there's a comments field.

ForeFlight has one, all of them have one, and it's usually searchable.

Or keep a one running note on your phone called Debrief Log, newest

flight on top, or a little notebook that lives in your flight bag.

And if you did your debrief as a voice memo, still type it out.

Type out the goal.

You can skim text in five seconds.

You can't skim audio, at least it's not very easy.

All right, now the bridge.

This is the part a lot of people skip, getting the goal from the

last flight into this flight.

And there's actually research on this.

Researchers who pulled together almost 100 studies found that simple if-then

plans, when this happens, I'll do that every time, make people a lot more

likely to actually follow through.

So make it an if-then.

When I open my EFB to plan a flight, the first thing I read is my last goal.

Or add a line to your pre-brief, last flight's goal, blank, right?

Make you think about it.

Make you read it.

Or put it right on the calendar entry when you book the airplane, or just say it out

loud to your instructor or your passenger.

"Today, I'm working on my crosswind flare." Saying it out loud makes it real.

Now, when I read about that if-then research, I kinda laughed to myself

because it's exactly how I've been teaching checklist usage for a long time.

I just didn't know anybody had studied it.

With my students, passing 1,000 feet on climb out is a trigger.

If we hit 1,000 feet, then we say it out loud, "1,000 feet. The airport is

now available to us." And that triggers, oh, after takeoff flow and the after

takeoff checklist every single time.

And of course, there's triggers, there's these if statements

all throughout our flying.

So if we do it every time, it's not even a memory anymore.

It's an automatic trigger.

I've been doing if-then planning this whole time, and

I didn't know it had a name.

That's a whole episode, and it's probably coming.

And speaking of triggers, here's one for the gadget crowd.

Most of us already fly with an iPhone or an iPad or both.

With the Notes app and a couple of simple Apple shortcuts, you can

put a debrief button and a last goal button right next to your

ForeFlight or your Garmin pilot icon.

Shut down, tap one, talk or type your five answers, create a goal,

sit down to plan, tap the other.

There's your goal, front and center.

You open that EFB before every single flight anyway, so put the

goal right next to it, and the trigger almost builds itself.

I'm not gonna walk you through how to set that up today, but if you'd like

me to, I'll do a future episode on it.

So close the loop That's the next step, and here's how it all ties together.

At your next debrief, before you even get to the five questions, ask one more:

Did I work on last week's flight goal?

Now, every debrief feeds the next flight, and every flight feeds the next debrief.

Fly, learn, repeat.

That's not a slogan anymore.

That's literally the system we're talking about here.

And look, I'll be honest with you.

I've been asking my students these five questions for a while, but

writing it down, my own goal, actually writing it down and reading

it before my next flight, that's new for me, and I started this week.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Some future episode, I'll report back in.

So one last thing for students and instructors.

Students, when you debrief with your CFI, you answer first, then your

instructor answers, then you compare.

That's exactly how the handbook describes it, and it gives a

great example in the handbook.

A student named Brian grades himself as perform on a maneuver.

His instructor grades himself, or grades him, the student, as

needing practice or practice.

Brian, buddy, that gap is the whole conversation, right?

And honestly, that's the most useful part of the debrief, when you find the gap.

CFIs, let them go first.

Keep your grade in your pocket until they're done.

And if they need it, start with your A grades for them.

So the whole episode on the back of a napkin.

One, the learning isn't over when you shut down.

Debrief every single flight.

It's the consistency that counts, not the length of the debrief.

Two, five questions: surprise workload, skill, the C grade and

the A grade, decision, and goal.

Be honest, especially with the one that stings.

And three, write the goal down.

Importantly, also read it before your next flight.

Make it part of your next flight.

Otherwise, it's just a wish.

If you want all of this in your flight bag, that free go, no-go PDF at

studentpilotcast.com/threequestions has the three simple questions and the debrief

questions all in one place on a two-pager.

Grab it, and that also gets you the Friday Flight Brief, the weekly newsletter

for pilots who never stop learning.

And here's my ask this week.

Leave me a voicemail with your answer to question five from your last flight.

What's the one thing you'd like to work on?

What's that one goal?

Just go to studentpilotcast.com/radiocheck.

That's radiocheck, all one word, and hit record.

It's in the show notes, too, or you can find out how to reach me

on the contact page of the website.

And while you're there, if you'd like an episode on setting up those debrief

buttons using notes and shortcuts right next to ForeFlight, let me know.

If enough of you want it, I'll build it, and we'll do it together.

And remember, those voicemails, those emails you send, I listen and

I read every single one of them.

So here's what I want you to take with you.

Your logbook records where you've been.

The debrief decides where you're going.

Every pilot you admire, the smooth one on the radio, the one who greases

it on the crosswind, and the one who always seems to be two steps ahead

of the airplane, got that way the same way, one honest look back at a

time, mostly when nobody was watching.

The last few minutes of every flight after the shutdown are the cheapest

flight instruction you'll ever get, and you already paid for it.

So don't skip them

So here we are, still flying, still learning, never skipping the debrief