Something happened to me today that got me thinking... the whistles and bells that fill the panel with the intention of making me more aware of my situation have a dangerous side effect... they remove little bits of the pilot from the equation one by one.

Day in and day out, for hundreds of legs, as I climb or descend to some altitude, a helpful "boop" and a flashing light remind me that there's a thousand feet to go, and out of reflex, even mid-sentence sometimes, say "seven for six" or whatever the case may be. It's a simple device that I never had in the training aircraft I flew, and in those aircraft, I never busted an altitude. So why did I bust an altitude in the most advanced airplane I've flown yet?

Because a sneaky circuit breaker popped and the APA wasn't working. This has no alarms or bells to go along with it, just a little bitty flag on the APA itself that only covers up the last 2 zeros that we never really look at anyway, even if we were setting the APA when it was up. The CA and I were in some conversation about something or other and I glanced across my altimeter to notice that I was through 10,800 and climbing. No big deal, except that our assigned altitude was 10. I clicked the autopilot off, eased the nose down, and the captain explained our situation to ATC. No harm, no foul.

The thing is, I had probably looked at the altimeter a dozen times when it was over 10. "Yup, still climbing" is probably all I really thought. But because I let my guard down and trusted the APA to go "boop" and flash when it was time to pay attention, I'm not sure I ever really stopped and thought about what it should have been saying. I stopped actually flying the airplane.

Obviously this isn't a conscious decision that I made, I never once in the climb thought "I'm going to ignore my altitude." But that's what happened. I felt about 3 inches tall after it happened, and was just thankful that a little embarassment on both of our parts is all that came from this incident.

My dad always told me I'd learn something every day I got in an airplane. I guess some days you learn more than others.