Run the work from a memorized flow, then read the checklist to confirm the work got done. Hands first, paper second, and the order is the whole point. Watch an experienced pilot set up an airplane and you’ll see it: a smooth sweep across the panel, switches and levers touched in the same order every time, and only then does a checklist come out.
What a flow actually is
A flow is a memorized sequence you run by touch and sight in a fixed physical order. Left to right across the panel, or the same loop around the cockpit every time. The actions come out of that practiced pattern, not off a page you’re reading one line at a time. AOPA lays the method out in Flow, then check, and NASA’s human-factors work on cockpit procedure covers it at length in Checklists and Monitoring in the Cockpit (NASA/TM-2010-216396).
Flow and checklist are two tools with two jobs. The flow gets the work done in a natural physical order, without your head buried in paper. The checklist confirms afterward that the work is actually done.
Organize both by phase of flight
Flows get organized by phase of flight: preflight, before-start, before-takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, before-landing, after-landing, shutdown. Each phase gets its own flow and its own matching checklist, which is how NASA/TM-2010-216396 lays it out too. Build the checklist to mirror the flow. Same phases, same order, so the moment you finish the before-takeoff flow the before-takeoff checklist is sitting right there to confirm it.
That symmetry is the practical case for sections over one long undifferentiated list. A checklist cut by phase is shaped like the flight and shaped like your flows, so you never hunt for your place. Every template here is built that way, including the Cessna 172 checklist I fly with.
Memory items are the exception
One category sits outside flow-then-check: memory items. A small number of immediate-action steps, engine fire on the ground being the classic one, get executed from memory before any checklist comes out, because there is no time to read. They’re pulled out of the normal checklist and drilled separately.
Two related terms get muddled here. The FAA’s DOT/FAA/AM-91/7 discusses “killer items” that may be performed as a flow when the need arises. Killer items overlap with memory items without being the same thing:
- Killer items are the most dangerous-to-miss items on a normal checklist: fuel, mixture, flaps, gear, trim. They stay on the checklist, just made prominent.
- Memory items are emergency immediate-action steps drilled out of the checklist, run from memory first and backed up by the written procedure once you have a hand free.
When you build an emergency section, mark the true memory items distinctly. A bordered box with a clear caption does it, so they read as “do this now, from memory” instead of blending into the read-and-verify steps below them.
Why the checklist backs up the flow rather than replacing it
The safety logic is redundancy. Miss a step during the flow, because you got interrupted or distracted or you’re in an unfamiliar airplane, and the checklist read afterward is a second independent chance to catch it.
NASA’s field observations document the failure mode that undoes all of this: skipping the flow and using the checklist as the primary action list, reading each item and doing it right then, read-do style, in a phase that should have been flown from a flow. It’s slower, and it collapses two independent passes into one. Now a distraction mid-checklist causes exactly the miss the second pass existed to catch.
Flying alone makes this matter more
This last part is an argument, not a cited fact. An airline cockpit has two pilots, and the second one is a living backup: one flies the flow, the other reads and challenges the checklist, and each catches the other’s misses. Single-pilot GA has none of that. You are the flow and the check.
So separating the two passes matters more when you fly alone, not less. With nobody there to catch your missed item, “hands do the flow, then eyes confirm with the checklist” is the closest thing you get to a second crewmember. Keep that second pass fast and unambiguous: short sections, phase-of-flight order, killer items you can’t skim past.
Flows and checklists are how you run the procedures in your POH, not a substitute for knowing them. Build the checklist to match how you actually fly, then verify every item against your aircraft’s current POH/AFM.
Common questions
What's the difference between a flow and a checklist?
A flow is the memorized sequence of actions you perform by hand in a fixed physical order. The checklist is the separate, second pass you run afterward to confirm the critical items were actually done. The flow does the work; the checklist verifies it.
Are memory items the same as killer items?
No. Killer items are the most dangerous-to-miss items on a normal checklist and stay on it, just made prominent. Memory items are immediate-action emergency steps drilled out of the checklist entirely and executed from memory first, then backed up by the written procedure.