(Note: this is, to an extent, a continuation of my previous post on GPS dependency)

Recently, a fellow pilot opined that all aviators should have a GPS receiver in the cockpit. He related the story of a low visibility day where several pilots had a hard time spotting the airport, even when they were nearly on top of it, and concluded that if we all carried a GPS, this would not happen.

The responses were not surprising. By a ratio of about six to one, pilots were in agreement. I, of course, took the road less traveled. And that has made all the difference. Well, not really, but it did provide a great idea for an article.

One pilot even went so far as to state the following:

This holds true for VFR as well. There is absolutely no excuse for any person, monkey, orangutan, or baboon to fly in unfamiliar territory without at least a handheld aviation GPS to keep reference. Some folks don’t feel that they need one, and the rest of us will suffer dearly for it the next time they screw up.

Interesting.

So I’m an aerobatic pilot on my way to a competition. I’m flying an S-1S, a common single seat aircraft that doesn’t even have enough space to store a chart (I fold it up and sit on it), let alone a GPS. The airplane has an airspeed indicator, altimeter, and magnetic compass. No gyros, no electronics save a lightweight Becker com radio.

If there’s absolutely no excuse to fly without a handheld GPS, should I retire from flying, or simply have the aircraft shipped from airport to airport via truck?

As far as getting lost is concerned, part of my job is training people to fly the G1000 equipped DA40 DiamondStar and FlightMax Entegra equipped SR20 and SR22. I cannot tell you how many pilots have literally not known where they were going, despite the electronics. The list of sins is long and varied:

• allowing the autopilot to fly without regard to whether it is following heading, nav source, or simply functioning as a wing leveler
• accepting what the glass panel tells them, not even bothering to check it against the mag compass to ensure it’s reporting common-sense ground track and/or headings
• programing the GPS with erroneous waypoints, not even noticing that the distance between two waypoints is over a thousand miles (for example, the Seal Beach VOR shares an identifier with a navaid in South America).
• busting airspace, as hard as that is to believe
• dialing in wrong frequencies, failing to ident
• failure to crosscheck
• leaving charts in the flight bag, on the back seat, or on the ground

Not to mention having their head inside the cockpit way too much, relying on Skywatch or Mode S downlink for traffic avoidance, and flying the pattern without dedicating appropriate attention to what’s happening outside. If anything makes busting a TFR seem like a picnic, it’s the thought of a mid-air collision.

These electronic instruments can create extremely high workload, or like television, tempt us to zone out while flying. The instances of pilots getting lost may have gone down with the advent of GPS, but make no mistake about it, if the day ever comes when GPS signals are degraded, turned off, jammed, or the constellation somehow fails, you will see chaos unlike anything since 9/11.

I fly the most advanced GA aircraft in existance, as well as planes equipped with nothing but a magnetic compass. So I see both sides of the coin, and I will tell you I feel far safer with the guy in the Extra 300 or Super Decathlon who’s got a chart, compass, watch, and knows how to use them.

This is not about whether GPS is more accurate than pilotage (it is). This is about whether the guy in the front seat is going to be a pilot or a passenger. GPS creates definite risks, it leads to loss of skill, and dependencies can form. People stop doing things like checking for TFRs at all! GPS makes flying seem so simple, but it’s not, and what you don’t know can kill you.

Even leaving all that aside, there are issues of cost (purchase, installation, database updates, training), weight (see my aforementioned aerobatic aircraft as an example), and so on. Requiring GPS makes as much sense as requiring two engines. Sure it’s safer, but when safety becomes that important, we should all stay on the ground and cut our pilot certificates into little pieces.

Finally, there’s the issue of enjoyment. I think it’s a lot more enjoyable to simply look out the window. Why is it that pilots spend all this money to get a birdseye view of the world and then proceed to ignore that view in favor of a computer screen? I got into aviation to get away from staring at a computer screen all day. Not everyone with a GPS stares at it all the time, but the cockpits are becoming more and more electronic. And the more electrons you add, the more this seems to happen.

I have owned GPS recievers, use them daily, and think they’re great. But suggesting that anyone who flies must have a GPS is, in my opinion, totally crazy. If you can’t safely and confidently plan and fly a cross country flight using nothing but the minimum instruments required under 14 CFR 91.205, you lack the skill every ~50 hour student pilot posseses when I send them for a checkride.

Perhaps some aviators think that’s okay. I would urge them to reconsider.

It’s been a few weeks since the Jet Blue 292 excitement at LAX. Now that the hoopla’s died down, I can’t help but scratch my head over the way the pilot was regaled as a hero for landing the aircraft successfully with the nosegear turned 90 degrees off center.

A hero? That word is bandied about so much these days that it’s nearly lost all meaning. It reminds me of what happens when you take a word and repeat it over and over. Eventually it stops sounding like a word at all. It devolves into this meaningless collection of sounds, the grammatical equivalent of butter melting in a hot pan.

I don’t know what a hero is, but it wasn’t the guy flying that Airbus. Don’t get me wrong, he did a great job and is to be commended. But a hero? No, sorry. He’s simply a guy who did his job, the one he’s trained and paid to do. No more, no less. You see, these guys don’t spend years training for the day when things go well. They spend all that time preparing for the day they don’t, and when that day arrives it’s only proper to expect that they’ll react properly.

I could teach anyone to fly an airplane. It would take about two minutes. In a week, you could teach anyone to fly even the most sophisticated airliner. That’s the easy part. That’s not why airline pilots (should) make the big money. They get the bucks because when things go to hell up there, you want a guy in the left seat who knows the systems, procedures, and methods for properly diagnosing the problem. He’s trained to triage the aircraft, maintain control, keep it flying, troubleshoot, consult with the maintenance people if necessary, and take the appropriate action. And that’s all our intrepid Jet Blue captain did.

Was it easy? Probably not. I’d imagine there was some stress involved, but he had the full attention and cooperation of a multi-billion dollar air traffic control system, major airline maintenance department, and a professional crew to back him up. In fact, it’s a safe bet that any pilot flying for Jet Blue — or any other airline, for that matter — would have done just as good a job.

In fact, they did do just as good a job. AVweb has photos of the rather minimal damage to Flight 292, and I’ve got some of another Jet Blue aircraft which encountered the same nose gear failure mode at Kennedy International back in 2002:

I’m not attempting to denigrate the performance of Flight 292’s captain. As I said, he did a good job. I watched the landing on CNN and it appeard that the landing was as gentle and accurate as anyone could have asked for. But a hero? If you want to see my idea of an airline pilot hero, try Al Haynes. Even in his case, I’d have to say he put as much effort into landing that DC-10 as pilots whose fate was far uglier.

Some situations are salvageable, some are not. In ever case, though, the pilots put down their coffee and go to work applying all the knowledge and experience they’ve gained over the years to effect the best outcome possible. So if any one of them is a hero, then they all are.

Well, it had to happen. Sooner or later, everyone who flies loses a friend to an accident. I’ve been lucky — since 1998 there hasn’t been a single person I can think of who’s been killed in an aircraft — but that changed recently when an odd mechanical failure claimed the life of Marta Meyer.

I was in Las Vegas when I heard the news. Or should I say, read it. I received an email from IAC entitled “Memorial Service for Marta Meyer” and involuntarily yelled “What??”. That was a strange day. It was the same day that the Jet Blue flight landed at LAX with the nose gear malfunction. It was also the day that a crazy guy intentionally ran down a dozen people with his car right outside my hotel on the Strip. For hours, the Strip was closed to traffic, the fountains at Bellagio were turned off, an the center of Las Vegas was eerily quiet.

Anyway, Marta and I were not what you would call close friends. I didn’t know her extremely well, but she was the first person I ever encountered at an aerobatic competition, and the first one to make an impression on me. I will always remember the way she’d crack jokes at the early morning pilot briefings, making people laugh and helping wake everyone up.

Marta was inspirational. Chief engineer for NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, aircraft builder, A&P-rated mechanic, Unlimited category aerobatic pilot, highly regarded aerobatic judge, and member of the U.S. National Aerobatic Team. She was also one of only two women to have flown in the SR-71 Blackbird. Yet Marta was also down to earth, friendly, always smiling, and never too busy to lend a hand or talk to you. You’d find her out in the box, painting markers, setting up tables, and pitching in just like a first time guy (that would be me) paying his dues.

There are few women in aviation, and fewer still in competitive aerobatics, so Marta was something special for many reasons. The community is small enough that her loss is felt all around the world. For my part, when I look at Bob and Marta Meyer, I see the kind of aviator I strive to be. Knowledgeable, experienced, safety-oriented, friendly, and low on ego.

Speaking of safety-oriented, I don’t know exactly what happened on her last flight, but it appears to have had something to do with a failure of the canopy. The IAC web site noted the following:

Marta was practicing for the upcoming US National Aerobatic Championships. After about 5 minutes of practice, including several vertical maneuvers, Marta pulled vertical to do a hammerhead and the canopy departed the aircraft. No further control inputs were noted and the Giles crashed just off the airport property. Speculation is that Marta was rendered unconscious at the canopy departure. The canopy was located and found locked, with the pins also in the locked position. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

The NTSB preliminary accident report, which is available online, says basically the same thing.

I’ve always thought of competition aerobatics as a relatively safe sport, but after my excitement at Paso Robles this summer and this unexpected accident, I’m rethinking that opinion. The airplanes are very tough, and the pilots well trained, but we’re pushing these aircraft hard and mechanical things do break.

My last memory of Marta is from the Delano competition which took place last month. More than one person told me that without the Meyers’ efforts, that contest would never happen. At the awards ceremony on Sunday night, she sort of MC’d the banquet, handing out trophies for Delano and the 2004 California state championship, and having a grand time. Marta finished in first place in Unlimited at Delano, and I recall her posing for a photo with a kiss with Bob. She seemed happy, celebrating a successful contest with friends, savoring a victory, and hamming it up a bit. That’s how I’ll remember her.

I’m not sure there’s anything that can be learned from the accident. But there’s much to be learned from the legacy she leaves behind.

Farewell, Marta, and thanks for the memories.

If you’re an aviator, aviation enthusiast, or are connected in any way with the aerospace community, then this should be of interest to you.

The Federal government is proposing a permanent ban on general aviation flying in the Washington, D.C. area. The crippling Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) would cover approximately 3,000 square miles and set a precedent almost sure to be repeated in other Class B airspace around the country.

AOPA is encouraging pilots to comment on the proposal. As of right now, there have been more than 9,000 comments registered, and I couldn’t find a single one in support of the ADIZ. Indeed, I’ve never seen more than a couple hundred comments on any aviation docket. Even so, with 650,000 airmen certificate holders out there, the response has not been as strong as necessary.

If you’d like to see general aviation continue to exist, be sure to submit your own thoughts to the Feds.

You know, I just got back from the final aerobatic competition of the season here in California, and was reminded once again how precious our aviation system is. Two of the Sunrise team’s competitors came from 5,000 miles away just to fly with us. The reason? There is no such thing as aerobatics in Japan (or most of the rest of the world). It simply does not exist.

General aviation is almost entirely an American enterprise. It’s one of the things that makes us special, and it’d be a shame to see it disappear, to say nothing of the billions of dollars in economic activity which would go with it (the GA world is about the same size as the petroleum industry).

Anyway, the proposal is now at the NPRM stage. An NPRM is a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Basically the government is prohibited from enacting new laws without giving the public a chance to comment. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can do this online.

The comment period closes in 16 days, after which the FAA will read the comments and decide how to act.

Here’s what I wrote:

I am a professional, commercial multi-engine instrument rated pilot with more than 1600 logged hours. I am rated to fly land planes, sea planes, gliders, and more. I fly nearly 500 hours per year, mainly VFR flights around the Los Angeles basin. In addition, I’m an aircraft owner, CFI/CFII/MEI, and active aerobatic competitor on the southwest regional circuit.

To put it another way, my livlihood depends on general aviation VFR flying. It’s what I know, and what I love: teaching students to fly radial engine beasts, tailwheel aircraft, and precision aerobatics. I work for the largest aerobatic flight school in the world, one that has won more trophies and trained more pilots to a higher degree than any other. Without question, we are all under heavy pressure from escalating fuel prices, a tight insurance market, and growing regulatory burdens from the FAA.

To be blunt, the stakes are enormous. The world’s only viable general aviation system is at risk. This ADIZ proposal could not have come at a worse time, to say nothing of the fact that it has no redeeming characteristics. Indeed, it provides a false sense of security that achieves an unwanted end by making the skies less safe. Law abiding pilots are saddled with needless restrictions, while those who would do us harm are going to ignore the rules by definition.

The restrictions are needless because GA aircraft pose no threat. They are slow and light weight, meaning they carry very little kinetic energy. They carry little fuel and have limited payload and center of gravity envelopes. Less stealthy than a common car, far more difficult to operate, and infinitely more likely to be noticed as soon as the hangar door is broached.

Security comes from a tight knit GA community, not from fences and flight restrictions. We watch over each others aircraft, we know the sounds, sights, and N-numbers of aircraft using our local airports. We can spot a fraud farther away than anyone in the government, because our airports are “home” to us. We know our neighbors, their habits, their aircraft, and are more likely to investigate anything suspicious. THAT is security.

The Washington, D.C., ADIZ is unworkable. The burdens on controllers are far too high, the security benefits are a mirage, and it must NOT be made permanent. If the capital is to be protected, it should be done by limiting the airliners, not the GA aircraft. Airliners travel at nearly the speed of sound, carry huge fuel loads, and weigh hundreds of times more than a typical GA single engine airplane. If there is a terrorist threat from the skies, that is where it comes from.

There is nothing a terrorist can do with a general aviation aircraft that they cannot do cheaper, faster, easier, and with less chance of detection by using a car or truck. Terrorists want to create massive carnage, not break a few windows. GA is of no use for that.

No, the FAA must implement safer, more efficient and rational security procedures for the airspace in the Washington, D.C., area. Lighter aircraft, flying at slower speeds, should not be subject to the current ADIZ requirements for filing a flight plan, obtaining a unique transponder code and maintaining two-way communications with Air Traffic Control.

The proposed rule is also flawed because the evaluation of the economic and operational impacts on pilots and aviation businesses and an analysis of alternatives are insufficient. No general aviation aircraft has ever been used in a terrorist attack. And the government has determined that not a single ADIZ violation was terrorist-related.

In conclusion, this proposal has generated an unprecedented groundswell of criticism. No one armed with the facts supports it. If our government truly is of, by, and for the people, then hollow political “feel good” measures like this one must fall by the wayside.

If there’s one thing aviation will never run out of, it’s ‘old sayings’ (it will also never run out of abbreviations, but that’s another story). “The best way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start out with a large one”. Or how about “Takeoffs are optional; landings are mandatory”. These aphorisms are bandied about in emails and pilot lounges around the world. Most of them get old. Quickly.

But there is one that I don’t think you can hear too often. It tells us that “the superior pilot is the one who uses his superior judgement to avoid situations where he might need his superior skill.” In other words, leave the Top Gun attitude on the ground and you’ll have gone a long way toward ensuring you don’t end up like Goose.

I love this saying because it reminds us that by a ratio of nearly 9-to-1, accidents are caused by poor pilot judgement rather than mechanical failure. (source: AOPA Air Safety Foundation’s annual Nall Report)

Think about that for a second. It means that when a pilot is involved in an accident, the odds are that he caused it. Not by lack of stick and rudder ability, mind you, but rather by using poor judgement in the cockpit. Examples include VFR flight into IMC weather, failure to abort a poor approach, descending below minimums, buzzing, low level aerobatics, and the all time favorite: running out of fuel.

These lapses of judgement are what kill people in the skies. With the intense discipline, screening, and first class training our military pilots recieve, you’d think this sort of thing would be limited to the civilian world. But it ain’t necessarily so. The web is replete with stories about military pilots who voluntarily put themselves behind the eight ball, and one of them was on the front page of today’s Los Angeles Times.

SAN LUIS OBISPO — At a quarter past noon on Jan. 21, a U.S. Navy F-18 Super Hornet jet fighter flown by a combat-tested pilot named Richard Webb appeared over the Edna Valley and streaked toward San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport.

On its first pass, the Super Hornet screamed along at more than 650 miles an hour, just 96 feet above the main runway. Soon it circled back, touched down on the tarmac for an instant, then went into a steep climb, afterburner roaring, and disappeared in the skies.

I had to read that last paragraph about half a dozen times before my mind would register what it said. Six hundred fifty miles an hour at 96 feet. Over a Class D airport. Then he pulls up into a vertical climb, adding ‘aerobatics in controlled airspace’ to a long litany of Part 91 violations. Speed restrictions. Careless and reckless operation. You name it. And those are just the civilian regs. I’m sure the list of military violations is even longer.

Oh, and did I mention that the pilot had a total of 14 hours in the Hornet when he pulled this stunt?

Top Gun may have been fiction, but apparently someone forgot to tell this guy. The worst part of this story doesn’t even have to do with the low pass. As I’ve repeatedly said, everyone has lapses of judgement. But Mr. Webb later defended himself by claiming that “No respected fighter pilot worth his salt can look me in the eye and tell me they’ve never done the exact same thing.”

Oh really? I would love to see the list of active pilots who’ve made unauthorized, near supersonic passes over a civilian airport before performing an vertical upline right over the field. They may have done it fifty years ago when the airports were less crowded and the airplanes less capable. But the fact is, Mr. Webb learned nothing from his experience. His defense: everyone does it.

In regard to his unauthorized flyby, Webb wrote, “No respected fighter pilot worth his salt can look me in the eye and tell me they’ve never done the exact same thing.”

Webb concluded that he was “not apologetic for what I did, and if given the chance, I’d do the same thing again…. It’s just incredibly hard to admit fault, and accept such disproportionate punishment, to an action that probably helped recruit many young kids in town that day…. I feel ashamed to have my close friends die to protect your freedom to complain about how we do our job.”

Well get used to it, pal. We’re the ones paying for the plane, the fuel, the maintenance, your salary, and the airports and airspace you abused. This isn’t about how Webb does his job. It’s about removing a pilot who demonstrates extraordinarily poor judgement before he kills someone.

The actual fly-by probably presented little if any danger. Mr. Webb obviously has the requisite stick-and-rudder skills, but his lack of good judgement trumps it every day of the week. His refusal to acknowledge that the high speed pass was a bad idea or that he’d do anything differently if given the chance indicate that the judgement problem goes way beyond this single incident.

Prognosis: anti-authority attitude and poor decision-making skills. He does not belong in the cockpit.

Poor decision making is something every pilot must guard against. Complacency, boredom, and ego get in the way. By way of a civilian corollary, IAC’s Sport Aerobatics magazine recently detailed the story of a promising young pilot who ran afoul of numerous regulations when she performed aerobatic maneuvers over a church as part of a wedding celebration. This violated rules against aerobatics over populated areas, in controlled airspace, and below 1500 feet above ground. The difference is that she publicly acknowledged her lapse in judgement, accepted a hefty sanction from the FAA, and has shown every sign of learning from this incident.

Prognosis: pilot learned from her errors and is likely to show far better judgement in the future.

I believe flying is fairly safe. Unlike many other activities, however, it is extremely intolerant of carelessness.

Why is it that so many pilots seem to neglect to remove the control lock before takeoff? I just don’t get it. This is the one thing that’s 100% guaranteed to kill you in an aircraft.

Take, for example, this DeHavilland DH4 Caribou. In 1992, this aircraft was being used as a testbed for the Pratt & Whitney PT-6 turboprop conversion. The pilots failed to remove the control lock before a flight, with predictable results.

It is supposed to be physically impossible to advance the throttles with the lock on. But this aircraft was being modified and was operating in the restricted category. The throttle quadrant was not properly rigged to accommodate the throttle levers for the turbine engines. Three people were on board; two test pilots and an engineer.

These sorts of accidents are especially noteworthy when you consider that it took more than just a lazy preflight. The pilot(s) also had to ignore the control check, fail to see the lock installed, and neglect to put in any sort of crosswind correction during taxi. They’d also have to exhibit a general lack of checklist discipline. In fact, they’d have to basically not touch the controls at all until rotation.

For those of you who are not pilots, the control lock is usually painted red, very visible, and located in the cockpit right in front of the pilot.

(hat tip: John Pappas at Dreamflight)