Last year a private jet crashed at Hanscom Field just outside of Boston. 7 people were killed.
The NTSB has released preliminary findings of the cause of the crash. Here is a link to the article that appeared in the Boston Globe.
The pilots of a Gulfstream IV jet that crashed last May at Hanscom Field, killing them and five others on board, skipped a pre-flight checklist and ignored a cockpit warning light, realizing too late that takeoff would be impossible. The pilots routinely failed to perform standard checks, records show.
The report goes on…
De Vries, 44, had over 11,000 hours of flight time. The 61-year-old McDowell, from Georgetown, Del., had over 18,000, including nearly 3,000 in a G-IV. They had flown that morning from Wilmington, Del., to Atlantic City to pick up passengers, then on to Hanscom, located in Bedford.
These were not rookie pilots. If pilots skip the checklist often enough a tragedy will befall them sooner or later.
Is this what could happens if we become too familiar with our tasks as anesthesiologists?
One of the things that frightens me most in the operating room is the possibility of operating on the wrong patient or the wrong site. Our Universal Protocol (checklist) is an attempt to prevent that and other bad things from happening.
Trauma Anesthesia 
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