Having established the cause of this immediate problem, I would suggest that time is now spent determining where the rest of the pilots pen is before another incident occurs.

They will, without your suggestion!…I am sure. I taxied out in a Hunter and looking up saw a nut missing from a bracket….pointed it out and we taxied back in. Aircraft required so many item missing in cockpit checks…culminating in seats out! Under the seat in a Hunter is a huge object magnet…or so it seems!

Every flyer will have lost something in the cockpit at one time. Someone I know has lost pens….it is easily done. The main thing is that people own up if they feel they have lost something. I always do the Brian Hanrahan check too.

FOD is taken very seriously in the Services. I would suggest that people mark all their pens with Dayglo sticky tape (we do!). Many pencils (propelling) have little end caps on them (protecting the eraser), cannot believe these get taken into aircraft.

A final boring story….I flew in a foreign operated Alphajet a few years back, we pulled some negative g and ended up with 8+ items of FOD (dont get hung up on the semantics of the word being damage as it detracts from the message!) in the canopy. Scooped up em, handed them to the groundcrew, who did not seem to care!
Anyway, I will now retreat back to Historic where I belong!!