Unlike airliner manufacturers that typically produce relatively simple checklists, knowing their customers will modify them to fit their operating needs, business aircraft manufacturers produce checklists that tend to be overly long and better suited to engineers and flight test crews than to pilots. However, corporate aviation department managers and chief pilots do not have the regulatory direction or clear guidance afforded their air carrier counterparts, and much confusion exists about the acceptability and legality of modifying manufacturers’ checklists.
Program managers at the major flight training centers in the United States estimate that well in excess of 50 percent of corporate operators of transport category turbine aircraft use modified checklists during normal flight operations. During simulator training, however, their pilots are required either to use “approved” checklists — almost exclusively those provided by the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) — o…
