Standing Notes
These are the ones that came back every year in one form or another.
Keep a torch in the flight bag
Small, bright, with fresh batteries. Cargo aprons at outstations are lit for vehicles rather than for people, and a walkaround in the dark with a phone screen is not a walkaround.
Photograph nothing airside
It is prohibited in many jurisdictions, it is a security matter in almost all of them, and it is the most common way a visiting crewmember creates a serious problem for themselves. This is a hard rule on this site and it applies to the pretty sunrise as much as to anything else.
Empty the bag of food before landing
Biosecurity in some regions is strict and penalties are real. Making it a habit rather than a decision is the only way it survives a tiring rotation. See Down Under.
Check medication rules before you carry it
Several common prescription and over-the-counter medicines are controlled substances in regular freight destinations. Verify with the destination's own health authority, and carry the prescription. See Middle East.
Write the hotel address down
On paper, in the local language, from the front desk. Phones die, roaming fails, and the taxi driver at 0300 is not going to work it out from a mispronounced name.
Boots from October
Winter ramp injuries are overwhelmingly simple falls. See East Coast.
Know where the paperwork lives
Notification to captain, dangerous goods documentation, the load sheet. Knowing exactly where they are is a two-second thing on a calm day and a very different thing when someone reports a smell from the main deck.
Worth a Bookmark
The publications crews on this site kept recommending to each other, all free:
- FAA Safety Briefing — short, readable, aimed at working pilots.
- NASA ASRS CALLBACK — monthly, built entirely from de-identified crew reports. The single best thing to read on a layover.
- SKYbrary — the reference library for any specific hazard.
- NTSB reports and the equivalent national investigators — for the sequence, not the verdict.
- IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations — for what is legitimately in the hold and how it is supposed to be presented.
The Small Kindnesses
Not safety, exactly, but the notes that made the section worth reading. Bring the handling agent coffee at an outstation in winter. Learn the loadmaster's name. Tell the next crew about the room with the broken curtain. Answer the new first officer's question properly the first time, because in this corner of aviation there is often nobody else for them to ask.
Longer pieces are on Safety Briefs; the reporting question is on Event Logs.