How did I screw up this IFR Departure so badly? 

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I’m very happy this isn’t an accident case study, and you were able to look back and see where you went wrong. Thank you for sharing, this will definitely help others

Listen! I am an Airline pilot with thousands of hours logged ! And believe me , we all make mistakes. I am very happy that you were humble enough to share this video with us! I have myself done the same mistake , but was able to change the departure during the climb. We were a 2 member crew, both experienced and even going through many checklist before departure we skipped something really simple ! You see, it happens to anyone , we are humans ! The beauty of your video is that makes us think about our mistakes, how to Improve , and above all, how to help others to avoid them ! Congrats for you excellent airmanship as well as your lack of vanity ( which is very common in our industry!). A good flight starts in the ground , never rush and go through your checklist as many time as necessary and never ever let anyone push you. We all have our own pace ! Congrats my fiend !

Sharing these experiences is VERY APPRECIATED. Nothing else maybe besides surgery requires such a high level of precision and rejection of checklist fatigue. I’m sure tiny distractions along the way would derail many of us, so if nothing else this is a good reminder to just go slow and be patient. Thank you for sharing.

I'm not a pilot, and hearing the "terrain" warning still sends chills down my spine! I bet that was an intense moment for you - and huge relief when you broke through the clouds!

Great video, as usual. Small nitpick on your radio work: don’t check in with a heading unless it’s an assigned vector. That’s why the controller said to you, “verify you’re on the Whiteman 1 DP.” He wanted to make sure you were on the procedure (as he expected) and hadn’t somehow been assigned a random heading, because your check-in implied that you had been.

I was an aviator for over 40 years, and it’s always very refreshing to see articles or videos about “I learnt about flying from that” Thank you, stay safe.

When you're the only IFR pilot onboard, the buck stops with you. You are the PIC and nobody is going to save you, unless there is some other intervention. SA is the heart of IFR. If you are putting all your eggs in the GPS NAV basket, you must verify every inch of the route. With this level of automation, it does what it is told. When using a DP, it is critical to verify, crosscheck, and verify again every inch. Your particular error usually occurs with a last minute rwy change. Have a way to cross check your position with radio navigation. If something doesn't make sense, you need to act and use every resource available. Request a vector until you get it sorted out. You must intimately know your equipment and how to use it. Nobody is there to catch your mistakes, so force yourself to slow down and verify your route from the rwy to the enroute structure. Add an item to your checklist if you have to. I think you realize just how close you came to disaster, those holes in the cheese almost lined up. No doubt, this video will help others.

Hard one to share I am certain, but so glad you did! It's raw videos like this that make your channel great!

Thank you for sharing, this could save someone someday. My only recommendation is if you find yourself task saturated always ask ATC for help via vectors, headings, freq’s etc… A lot of people are afraid to ask them for assistance.

I'm glad it all worked out. This type of video and debrief for other pilots is priceless. I appreciate it.

Wow, this is one of the most valuable experiences you’ve shared. Thanks for helping us all learn from your experience and fly safer

Perhaps one of the other good lesson to be learned from this experience could be to not solely rely on GPS to help you do a departure procedure that isn’t a RNAV procedure and also to set it up on the airplane with VORs as a back up. Great video and appreciate you taking time to share this experience for everyone to learn from

This video might save someone’s life. You touched on two key factors in many accidents: distractions and confirmation bias. Having flown this departure many times one could easily become complacent. The issues raised in this video are helpful to any pilot of any skill level. Thanks very much for making it.

Great debrief and excellent job finding the root cause. Also great that you had the bearing pointer already available during the departure. Whenever I find myself making an error, I go back and evaluate if I can modify my SOPs to prevent me from repeating the same error.

36 seconds. That all it took for me to know that you are the best kind of pilot there is. Humble and not just passively willing to learn from your mistakes, you really want to analyze and learn from them. This will keep you and your loved ones alive. Bravo, sir.

Please don't stop sharing mistakes! These videos and your honest analyses are gold learning opportunities for the rest of us IFR pilots. This video has prompted me to go back and study/review climb gradient requirements some more and it really drives home how important they are. Thank you!

Thanks for sharing! In my flight school something simmilar happened. A student sent a route he made in foreflight to the Garmin. One waypoint in the Route was a custom added waypoint in foreflight, all the others were coordinates. The G1000 did not took the Custom waypoint since it was just a name. Long story short this almost ended up in a CFIT since they were doing a night flight. My takeaway from that and your story is that is IF youre going the easy way by just uploading you have to really check every point by point. Another good procedure we use in training wich I can highly recommend is to set your VOR CDI (Green Needle) to the first course to be flown / heading to be intercepted (in this case 325 VNY) and then switch the CDI back to GPS. In case something happens to the GPS directly after T.O. you could easily revert back to Green Needles which gives you some time and situational awareness to troubleshoot or look at the chart what comes next instead of having to deal with a bearing pointer while checking the map and trying to understand what happened to the GPS.

So impressed that you shared this. So often, pilots feel like the don’t dare show their weaknesses, but it seems to me that we are just lying to ourselves. I flew the other day out of TRM and I was rusty. My landings were naturally not what they are when flying all the time and my partner in our plane was creating all sorts of distractions unintentionally as he was fiddling with our equipment. It made me realize how important it is for a pilot to be able to quickly differentiate what is important in a flight vs. items that just don’t matter. In this situation, figuring out what was going on with the gps was so unimportant compared to clearing lower terrain. I can so relate to this because every time we get new equipment, which we all love, there is a learning curve that makes it a headache in the short term.

Thanks for sharing!!! this is awesome. Being humble enough to recognize your mistakes and share it. Im a 400-hour private pilot with Instrument Rating. I always think about the worst scenario and prepare as much as possible before my trips. but these kinds of videos are the ones that help us to be reminded that a single mistake could lead to a terrible situation or catastrophe. again, thanks for posting this.

Such a fantastic lesson for all IFR pilots. Really good debrief and shows that having the VOR dialed in as a quick backup to the GPS is definitely a nice thing to do.

A Very SOF Debrief to hash this out in the view of the public. Its a gift to be able to thrash ones self with others watching, and learn from it. The combination of mountainous terrain in IMC conditions in a limited performance acft,...only give yourself a second to figure out the problem, (dont trouble shoot while not climbing and heading towards terrain) then let ATC know you are having a navigational issue and need a vector away from the mountains. They can be that copilot you need to lighten your work load so you can get things straightened out and not parked against a CumuloGranite cloud.

Huge balls for posting, also an enormous learning moment for all the aviation

Dude...that is scary. Student pilot here and I want nothing to do with IMC (yet). Glad it didnt turn out worse. Made me think of the Kobe helicopter crash.

Problem with familiarity is familiarity. You simply must approach each flight as the first time you are flying it. Thanks be to God you survived this lesson.

Thanks for the video. I am not a pilot but I did learn something. Input directly straight to gps or equipment and don't rely too much into the iPad. I am a paramedic and we have a saying, " treat the patient not the equipment" the equipment can tell you something but the presentation of the PT tells you the truth. Happy flying.

As a student pilot working on his PPL this video was a great watch. Even though I’m not working towards instrument yet still great lessons to be learned from this. Thanks for sharing and glad you made it to your destination safely!

Nothing like a "CHECK YOUR SHORTS" moment! Really gets the adrenaline going!

It seems apparent this was difficult to not only experience but to contemplate the possible outcomes especially given the precious occupants on the plane. We've all had moments that have caused us to question our circumstances and choices. I appreciate your willingness to confront this straight-on and then share it with the rest of us. It makes us all better pilots. Thank you, sincerely.

Do you have a ‘PLAN’ mode in that fully-sik CHIX of yours? That is, a plan view of the route? What we do in the airlines (at least Airbus operators) is to bring up the plan view and extend the range until we see the full departure plus a couple of following waypoints after the SID. That way, the we can confirm that the SID and initial airways tracking look correct. Then we check track and distance of SID waypoints to confirm integrity. If you do that from here on in, you will IMMEDIATELY see that you have entered the correct runway. Just doing it using the waypoint/legs page will happily allow confirmation-bias to join you on your trip…you got away with it once, so don’t push your luck a second time.

You did a really good thing here by sharing this. Possibly, saving a life.

I can’t tell you how much sharing this means to me and many other IFR pilots. THANK YOU for sharing this I hope you feel that you did the right thing posting this video. I’m glad you and everyone on board are safe! Best of luck to your daughter her sophomore year and remember the best pilots are ALWAYS LEARNING.

I always try to back up my GPS with the secondary NAV radio and CDI in my panel. On this DP I set it to R325 and if the needle starts to center up and GPS course guidance doesn't have me in the turn I know something is up. Modern GPS is a wonderful thing, but there is a lot of button pushing and one wrong tap can spell disaster. The old VOR navs are pretty hard to screw up. I hope they keep them around a bit longer.

When in doubt, don't hesitate...just as SoCal for vectors. I don't know why people don't do that more. Instead of troubleshooting and busting your clearance (which you did), just say something is up and get some vectors on course.

A seriously great debrief and analyzation. As an instrument student at KVNY, I picked up a lot of valuable information here and especially close to home. Thank you!

This is a great example, in my opinion, in being too focused on GPS and not utilizing the "old school" VOR course. Yes having The GPS loaded for the incorrect runway and therefore the incorrect departure led to confusion, but you briefed the approach and mentioned the VOR radio you needed. I think this is a great learning opportunity that I will show my students of what happens when you get expectation bias with a combination of reliance on GPS. If you had simply twisted in the VOR radio and followed the green CDI I think it would have eliminated the concern. Just my two cents. Thanks for the great video!

I've watched your progression over the past couple years. You are a very good pilot. Don't beat yourself up too much. You made a mistake. It could have been deadly, but it wasn't. It's an error I can guarantee you won't make again. I'd would gladly fly with you anytime.

This is a great example of the current research that shows no one really is a multitasker and how quickly the human mind can lose track of even critical things. Once the gps got funny on you your attention was on that and you lost some situational awareness and stopped making real time decisions on how best to fly the plane with a broken gps. Everyone talks about not getting behind the airplane but seeing in real time how that actually happens is fascinating and very good lesson for anyone doing anything critical, even driving a car. This is also a great example of why 2 pilot operations, particularly in IMC, are almost always safer. Two instrument rated pilots familiar with the planes particular avionics would have meant two sets of eyes to check everything before even taking off and someone to troubleshoot the GPS while the other's full attention was on flying the plane, maintaining the correct climb rate, and watching where the terrain was in relation to the airplane. Thanks for sharing this. Lots of important and multilayered lessons can be learned from this.

Solo IFR pilot, don’t hesitate to immediately request Vectors from Departure when you have a navigation/auto pilot issue in IMC! Fiddling with avionics while single handing a departure procedure in IMC is extremely risky. Especially one that is providing protection for terrain and not just airspace. And your checklist should always include cross checking each leg of your departure, en route, arrival and even approach if you’re fairly certain which arrival you will fly. Cross check each leg currently loaded into your Nav with your copy of the procedures on your iPad. If you follow the same procedure every time and that procedure includes confirming the runway in the Nav with the runway on the plate, this mistake should never happen. But I know everyone can just blank out when looking directly at an inconsistency. So mistakes will happen, hence the importance of immediately calling ATC and getting a safe heading and altitude. Then fix the mistake.

Thanks for sharing this. The NAV track on takeoff for the departure must have been missing. I learned from your video how important it is to check this. Also, I'd prefer a backup which makes it easier to intercept the radial if GPS fails. The pointer is not easy enough.

As a 121 Pilot, we commonly brief contingencies, as a recommendation I would use this experience to change some habits. 1. Never troubleshoot when you are already task saturated (Hand flying a IDP single pilot) when you have a good back up to the gps. The gps was merely an overlay for the already established VOR DP. 2. Prepare as if the gps was going to fail and brief yourself on it before pushing the throttles up. As you stated you missed your climb gradient not due to poor performance but were distracted. Whats the biggest threat? The terrain or improperly loaded procedure? I’m glad you shared this with everyone! We have a bad habit as of late to overly rely on GPS because of its ease of use and unfortunately other skills have deteriorated because of it. I urge those still in training to practice w/o the fancy gps if for nothing else in case it can and will fail you, wether it be from improper loading or equipment failure.

Thanks for sharing! What an easy mistake to make with such dire consequences. Glad it worked out for you.

Thanks for sharing. These breakdowns are great for all of us to learn from.

At Widget Airlines, our final briefing at the end of the runway is "runway position, departure, first fix, heading, altitude, airspeed". As the pilot flying is making this briefing, they are physically pointing at the fms indications and mode control panel selections... The pilot monitoring is verifying all this while listening. Believe me, this Will catche this exact mistake of having the wrong runway loaded (typically caysed by a runway change during taxi that we just get busy and omit loading)

Always be ready to switch the CDI to the VOR. First thing I noticed was your gps CDI was full scale behind you when you said you thought the GPS was acting up. In all the jets I fly we have raw data living in the background, ready to use when things like this happen.

Sometimes you can't beat good old fashioned instruments. Glad y'all are safe

Dude, you are one of my heroes. It is because of your videos I got back in the saddle after Covid and am currently pursuing all of my ratings and am going to a 141 school 5 days a week. It’s comforting to know that someone like you can present the experience of general aviation from so many angles and admit fault and fear in ways that others on this platform don’t. Thank you for humanizing the experience. I hope to meet and fly with you one day. You’re a real one. May we all never stop learning. Cheers.

Wow, what an amazing debrief. Showing mistakes on RU-vid is difficult but, as an IFR pilot, the opportunity to learn from your experience is invaluable. I’m preparing for a CFII checkride and I saved this to my flight folder to show future students. Thank you for sharing!

thanks for sharing makes the skies a safer place

That's really brave and courageous of you to publish this video.... and EXTREMELY valuable for all other pilots over there, myself included. By doing that you may have saved one or more lives.... we would never know how many, but this video ringing in the head of a pilot preparing for an IFR departure and being extra careful based on your experience is definitely going to make a difference (for safer) in someone's life

I’m glad it is you investigating a near miss and not the NTSB investigating a crash ❤

Your sponsor for this video should have been a towel company because I need to wipe the sweat from my palms! Thank you for uploading and allowing other pilots to learn from this.

No ones perfect my man. Mistakes will always be a thing. You’ve impressed all of us by admitting and learning from your mistake. And we’re all glad this isn’t a headline and accident being picked apart by someone else

Another great video, that situation would certainly rattle me as well! Sharing things like this help us all get better, and make the NAS safer. Thanks very much for the terrific content!

Chilling & fortunate in the end. I noticed your climb rate (6min 19sec) was around 360 f/min. It all happens so fast. Always good in those few seconds to ask for help. A vector from ATC helps. Thanks for sharing. Great quality productions and genuine. Cheers.

Great to see pilots like this being humble enough to share teachable moments! Thanks for sharing

thanks for sharing, really great to see you go over the whole course of events and work out exactly what the issue was. Love your work!

Excellent video. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the honest debriefing and the video, but don‘t forget what‘s more important: file a safety report to the FAA to help improve safety

From my understanding of this; The take-home message should be not to rely-on and be distracted by unnecessary/useless information and technology. If it’s a VOR departure, then that should be the primary source of navigation. You have GPS, but that should be used to build SA and nothing more (unless it’s a GPS approach/departure). If the GPS/display doesn’t look right, which it wasn’t in your case (as a line disappeared off of it?), then disregard it, and focus on the instrument that’s giving you the correct information, which in this case you pointed out - the bearing indicator with the VOR tuned and identified 👌🏼 ‘GPS’ was mentioned multiple times throughout this video but ‘VOR’ only once or twice. The words GPS don’t appear on the chart. As part of your briefing you could include what information you’ll be using to fly the departure, what you expect to see in terms of bearing pointers and distances, and how you’ll fly it. You picked-up on the fact you were distracted by the N part of FNC/ANC nicely; flying the aircraft is a priority, and if the autopilot isn’t doing what you expect, take it out. This is just my takeaway. All round, excellent work and very good of you to go to the effort to look back and analyse the situation. Great video.

Thanks for being willing to share, nice work, glad you are safe!

Even the best of the best can always learn something! Thanks for sharing and glad the flight was good after the issue.

Kudos for making this video and going through it so throughly!

Awesome video and great job on recognizing the problem.

Very courageous and humble to hang this out there for everyone to learn from. Thanks for sharing and allowing others to learn.

Great debrief! Love that you shared your mistakes for others to learn👌🏼

Mad respect for having the courage to share this. Very instructive! Stay safe! ❤

Hats off and thank you!

I’ve been watching accident case studies in these IFR scenarios. Glad you made it out and taught the rest of us

Awesome video! Hard lesson but great outcome.

Thanks for sharing your experience and the details! it's great you had such a neat setup to review what happened and learn from it. I really appreciate you sharing this, and as you stated, it's hard to admit when one is wrong and even harder to share it publicly.

Great job on the diagnosis, glad you are still here with us.

Insane! Great work keeping calm and keeping everyone safe!

Wow! I'm glad your fine. Thanks for sharing...

Hey thanks for sharing that. I like that you're not too proud to share your mistakes.

Best video I've seen on RU-vid! excellent learnings and WOW what incredible editing! Top work!

Kudos for calmly dealing with the situation and bonus points for having the courage to share the situation. It’s easy to see how easy it was to miss the departure runway on the displayed procedure. Glad it all worked out!

Had a vacuum failure in hard imc one time. 600-800ft clouds with tops far far above. Everything was going well until I intercepted the final approach course. I slowed down and dropped my gear and started sinking like a rock. I thought I had enough back pressure and was not about to keep pulling. I decided to just add a whole lot of power that I should've been in there the moment the gear dropped. I was 300 feet low at the FAF. I really didn't like that, but the area I was in was an area I'd been around my entire life and I knew if I just climbed back up to the glide slope I'd be fine. Got back on glide path and landed safely. I've felt high stress throughout college when needing to buckle down for a test that has a major impact on my graduation, but never stress like this. At the time I felt stressed but was just thinking about holding altitude and heading. After the flight was over, I noticed as I was walking to the FBO that I was short of breath and breathing heavy. The stress of being in a situation where you're practice, knowledge, and skill is the only thing keeping you alive is a different kind of stress that I had never felt. I'm glad I can fly steam gauges very well, but after that, I HEAVILY prefer glass for IFR.

I really appreciate your honesty and lack of arrogance compared to some other pilots who post.

Sorry to hear that mate, thankfully you are fine now. Thank you for sharing!

Thank God you made it! Thx for the video. Cool stuff, captain.

Great vid!! we learn from our mistakes. Keep it up!

Thank you for sharing this experience! I’ll going through instrument training right now and it definitely helps with learning from others

I am glad you shared this. It is so easy to overlook something.

I appreciate your vulnerability in sharing this. I have noted and learned from your experience, and I will check and double check my FP's entered for accuracy with your story in mind. Thank you so much!!!❤

Thanks for sharing your mistakes. It’s definitely taught me something. Fly safe!

200+ lbs of party supplies, love it! And the snowboard too 🏂

Wow, thank you for sharing this. I'm glad it turned out ok.

Excellent video. Thank you for taking the time -- and making the effort -- to share.

Thank you for the honest review!

Good stuff. One of the ways we teach mil pilots learning FMS based departures is to verify the load, then brief the load. Maybe could've caught it? As in: load the departure, verify the departure, then brief ATIS/performance/departure...top down -> left to right, whatever applies to your FMS. In this case "Top Down" brief would've started with the runway loaded in the FMS; this tends to eliminate confirmation bias because it occurs after the FMS is loaded and almost in a different "phase". Thanks for the peek into GA flying!

So great that you share this. It has to be tough but the rest of us can really benefit and learn from it. Thanks so much 👍🏼

Awesome, thanks for posting, helps me stay current!

Nice Job. I truly appreciate you sharing this info. Great learning lesson.

Everyone can make a mistake. Takes a man to help educate others on it. I just lost our boss in the mid air at Reno. All the best from your local chipotle !

Thank you for this useful learning moment! Definitely something to think about if and when I decide to go for my instrument rating.

Thank you for sharing this excellent learning opportunity! Always appreciate your content.

I learn the most from other's failures. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks for posting this! Good on you for wanting to blast out lessons learned and owning the mistakes. We ALL make them!! Keep it up!!

Always a good idea to have the VOR tuned and identified and the course to intercept already set as a backup. I'm sure that if you hadn't broken out of the tops right away you'd have made a 180 back to lower terrain in response to ATC's query, then you could have intercepted the actual VOR radial and turned back around to continue your flight. In your case my first reaction to the GPWS alert would have been to shove the prop and throttle full forward if not already there, and pitch up to Vx - THEN figure out what's going on. A few times over the years as an airline captain, I encountered a glitch in the FMS (always me hitting the wrong button at a bad time) and had to immediately contact approach and ask for vectors to the next fix while reprogramming. That's always an option.