Ignorance is Bliss

As soon as you earn your license and start taking non-pilot passengers up with you, you learn pretty quickly that your behaviour in the cockpit greatly influences their perception of the flight, particularily their safety. If pilots in a commercial airliner run into a problem, even if its a moderately serious one, they are able to work through and deal with without being under the scrutinous eyes of nervous passengers. Something could go wrong, and if they're able to either ignore it or fix it, nobody will be the wiser. In private airplanes however, the passengers can see everything that goes on in the cockpit, so we don't have that luxury. However we still have the responsibility and desire to maintain the confidence of our passengers, and demonstrate to them that flying is indeed as safe as we say it is. Especially if we want those passenger to fly with us again.

This presents a little bit of dilema for small airplane pilots, and can require a certain amount of good judgement to maintain the confidence of your passengers without comprimising their safety. It does become a little easier if you're operating single pilot however, which, fortunately, the vast majority of the time we are. The exception being if a fellow pilot is riding along left seat and you use him as a sort of simulated copilot (two sets of hands and heads are always better then one). In this case its always better to openly point out and discuss everything going on, so both persons have full situational awareness, and two knowledgeable brains can help work through the problem. Operating single pilot if you notice a small problem you can note it mentally and take the necessary actions or just monitor it silently as needed. The truth is small problems happen fairly often, but they usually don't cause reason to panic. Radios can act up, spark plugs can foul, carburetors can start to ice up. Usually its just a matter of taking the proper steps to fix or side-step the problem so it doesn't become a factor or monitoring it as needed to make sure things don't get worse. If they do we want to already be on top of them. But many passengers, especially nervous ones, if they notice that something isn't quite right, even if its a little something, can become far more concerned then need be. In those situations its difficult if not impossible to set them at ease simply by explaining the situation, (providing we can spare the time and attention at the moment do so) so I find for the most part its best to just try and not let them in on the problem, as long as their safety isn't jepardized by their ignorance. In this case its important to keep a confident appearance and at least appear that everything is fine and you're under control. If things worsen and the passengers have a need to know what's going on so they can react accordingly, that is an entirely different situation. But 99% of the time it never comes to that, so why worry them?

We'll use carburetor icing as an example. While fairly rare, it can and has happened to me. While not serious in the least if the correct actions are taken, it is not a normal part of the flight. I was taking a passenger up in the Cessna 150 once, and I could tell she was a little nervous. It was a little bit of a moist hazy day, and I pulled the carb heat out to check for icing. Sure enough, the engine started running just a little rough. Unfortunately I couldn't hide the change in engine sound from her and she visible jumped. I was a little concerned about the icing, at least until the carb heat could clear it out, but I didn't show it, and simply confidently explained that I pulled the carb heat out, which would cause the engine to lose a little bit of power do to the hot air. I neglected the part about possibly having an engine failure if I let the ice build up any more. She didn't need to know about that. In a couple minutes the ice cleared up, and everything went along as if nothing happened.

I guess its a matter of the cliche's "Knowledge is power" and "Ignorance is bliss". Non-pilot passengers often don't have the knowledge or experience to to fully understand whats going on, so as harsh as it sounds its best they don't know at all. Of course there are always exceptions. There are the passengers who have confidence in your abilities and the airplane and understand that minor glitches happen, and even if they don't fully understand everything, they do understand that most the time its no big deal because we always leave ourselves alternative options to take. In those cases providing you are able to take the time and give a commentary on whats going on, it can serve as an interesting learning experience, and can serve to boost their confidence even more. The trick is its important to know who those people are.