User fees.  TFRs.  High fuel prices.  Increasing regulation.  A tight insurance market.  It seems everywhere we turn these days, there’s a new challenge for general aviation.  And that goes double for the aerobatic community, which by its very nature has additional noise and public relations issues with which to contend.  IAC membership is down.  Here in Southern California, we’re being relegated to ever smaller and more distant chunks of airspace in which to legally do our “thing”.

How depressing!  There are days when I question whether this avocation of ours will survive.  So it was with great pleasure that I accepted an invitation last month to present a seminar on aerobatics at the Socal RV Rendezvous, a regional gathering of homebuilt RVs.  Fifty seven aircraft and more than 100 people showed up.  The event coincided with IAC’s recent push to be more inclusive of recreational aerobatics, and the RV Rendezvous reinforced in my mind the wisdom of that shift.

According to Vans Aircraft, 5,024 RV-series airplanes have been built and flown thus far.  Thousands more are under consruction around the country, and the rate at which they are achieving flight status is increasing rapidly as the build time drops.

Aside from the 350 RV-9/10 models, every one of those 5,024 airplanes is designed for aerobatic flight.  This represents the largest aerobatically capable fleet in the world.  Compare these 5,000 RVs to perhaps the most ubiquitous competition aircraft, the Pitts.  According to Aviat, approximately 700 factory built and 600 homebuilt aircraft are in that fleet worldwide.  The Extra?  I counted 258 of those on the U.S. registry.

I’ve been involved with the RV community since a friend of mine started building his RV-7 in 2001.  I pounded rivets on his plane and had a chance to watch one come together from the ground up.  My general impression is that these aircraft are quite conventional and well designed.

I’ve flown the RV-4, RV-6, RV-7, and RV-8.  I wouldn’t consider them to be especially well suited for competition, primarily because the clean design, flush riveting, and careful fairing of the draggy bits mean the airspeed will build quickly when pointed downhill.  That’s not to say they cannot be flown in competition.  They can, and they have been.  You’d just have to work harder to ensure the airplane’s limitations are not exceeded.

When you get to recreational aerobatics, that’s where the RV shines.  RVs are light in roll but somewhat heavier in pitch.  Reminiscent of a Pitts, though not quite as heavy in the lateral axis.  A true pleasure to fly.  They actually gain altitude throughout most sequences, something you don’t often see in airplanes with 160-200 horsepower.

Speaking of drag, an aerobatic flight in an RV will open your eyes to just how draggy most of our competition airplanes are!  All that horsepower under the cowl of your S-2B or Sukhoi is designed for vertical penetration.  Speed is, to a certain extent, an enemy when you’re competing.  It will carry you through the box too quickly.  The RV was designed for speed because they are used for cross country transportation.  Put that 300 hp engine in an RV and it will go a lot faster than any Extra 300, Edge 540, or Velox.

I’ve flown a wide variety of Sportsman-level maneuvers in RVs, and they perform remarkably well as long as the energy is properly managed.  Spins, aileron rolls, loops, immelmans, cubans, hammerheads, barrel rolls, and the split s are easily done in an RV within a +3.5/-0G range.  This is well within the designer’s stated design limits of +6/-3G (and ultimate load factors +9/-4.5G).  Airspeed limits such as Vne, Vno, and Va are high enough that RVs can fly through these maneuvers without danger of overspeeding the aircraft.  Throttle management, unusual attitude training, and a clear understanding of the RVs slippery aerodynamics are key to safety in these birds.

Unlike certificated airplanes, RVs come in many flavors.  Different engines, props, canopy styles, landing gear configurations, etc.  Much like a Citabria, Stearman, or Cub, most of them do not have inverted fuel or oil systems, so I will modify maneuvers like the half Cuban by rolling upright as soon as the 45 degree inverted point is reached in the loop.  Remember, we’re just talking about recreational aerobatics.  These guys aren’t going to fly competition in their pride and joy.  They just want to be able to safely perform basic figures.

On the topic of safety, my primary goal at the Socal RV Rendezvous was to encourage RV pilots seek out quality instruction before attempting acro in their aircraft.  This is smart advice for any aspiring aerobat, but it’s especially true with the RV for two reasons:  first, the aforementioned sleekness of the airframe.  And second, builders are often out of the air completely for several years while they focus on construction.  Their Phase One flight testing may have been prepared for with recurrent flight training, but very infrequently does that training include aerobatics.  Yet aerobatics must be included in the flight testing if it’s going to be added to the approved maneuvers in the airplane’s operating limitations.

On the way home, I couldn’t help but marvel at the strength and energy in the RV community.  We could use a little of that in our local IAC chapter, don’t you think?  There are five thousand of them out there, so let’s start recruiting!  And if you have the opportunity to take an aerobatic flight in an RV, don’t pass it up.  I’ll bet you’d be pleasantly surprised with what those little kit planes are capable of.

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey is fond of reiterating how controller staffing levels are sufficient.  Yet something tells me this guy might disagree with her.

It seems to me that anytime a controller tells a bunch of pilots “you guys really should come up here and see this”, things can’t be going too well.  Viva la JFK!

Many of us in the aviation world have recently come to know the name Robert Miller.  Mr. Miller is an east coast CFI and the author of Over the Airwaves.  OTA’s masthead describes it as ”the bi-weekly journal for the proficient pilot”.

I’ve been reading Over the Airwaves for about a year and find that I agree with Mr. Miller on many points.  He’s obviously dedicated to the issue of flight safety and a proponent of realistic, recurrent training which exceeds the Practical Test Standards and embraces the real-world aspects of flying.

I continue to read OTA and learn a lot from it.  And I should note that his dedication to publishing Over the Airwaves is admirable.  One can’t help but stand in awe of the many hours it must take to put together each issue.  I commend him for venturing beyond the traditional CFI methods of providing information to pilots and hope he continues to publish OTA for a long time.

Having said that, I’ve noticed that OTA seems to spawn from a single raison d’etre, namely that the general aviation fatal accident rate is “worsening at an alarming rate” (OTA Vol. 3, No. 25).  Statistics, tables, and charts are proffered in support of this thesis, and I must admit the case looks compelling.  It begs the question:  have AOPA, the Air Safety Foundation, the FAA, and the NTSB been lying to us?  Are they glossing over the true story on general aviation flight safety?

I decided to look into this issue a little deeper, not to discredit Mr. Miller or his publication — remember, I’m an avid reader of Over the Airwaves - but because for some reason his theory just didn’t feel right.

I began by asking him where he got the raw data to support the claim that “We are marching down seven straight years of worsening GA fatal accident rates”, because the data I see from the Air Safety Foundation and NTSB suggest that the fatal accident rate has been in a long term hold.  In light of the fact that annual GA flight hours are estimated, the NTSB figures showing a rate hovering near 1.3 per 100,000 hours for the past decade indicate that GA fataility rates are not getting worse.  My source:  http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Table10.htm

Bob very kindly replied and referred me to the headline article in Volume 3, Issue 23a of OTA.  This article uses avgas sales to suggest declining flying activity.  He also pointed me to a linear regression analysis at the bottom of Volume 3, Issue 25 which suggests an increasing fatal accident rate:

After reviewing the data, I still suggest that his analysis is quite flawed.  Miller ties avgas burned to hours flown.  To be fair, the NTSB uses the same methodology.  However, the connection between the two cannot be a direct one, because the Department of Energy stats he references would then indicate that flying activity has declined 80% since 1983.  The table shows a drop from 418,000 gallons/day in 1983 to 98,000 gallons/day in 2004.

A more logical explanation is that there are various reasons for the drop in avgas fuel usage:

• Let’s begin with the pilot popuation.  Yes, there are fewer pilots flying today than there were in the 1980s.  I don’t really care how many are in the FAA registry.  Many of them don’t fly anyway, just as they didn’t fly in the 80s.  But the number of active pilots is down, maybe 10% I’d estimate.  Even if it’s higher, there’s no way it would come close to an 80% drop.

• There are fewer piston twins flying today than there were in 1983.  Who is even making piston twins these days?  The Baron, Seminole, and TwinStar sales combined total fewer than 50 airplanes per year.  Cessna is completely out of the piston twin market, and for the most part so is Piper.  No more 300 and 400 series twins, no more Twin Comanches, Apaches, Aztecs, Twin Bonanzas.  You name a piston twin, it’s pretty much been out of production for decades.  And the existing piston twin fleet is being decimated by the inevitable ravages of time, spar ADs, high operating costs, limited parts supplies, and so on.  Fewer twins flying = lower total fuel consumption per hour flown.

• Single engine airplanes are more efficient.  An SR20, SR22, DA20, DA40, Columbia, or other modern airplane gets far better economy than the airplanes of the 80s.  Composite construction and advanced aerodynamics allow these planes to fly with less drag.  Any decent MFD or GPS can show you the real time NMPG efficiency of that airplane.  Especially at lean of peak operation, these planes burn a fraction of the fuel a piston twin does.

• Now, consider lean-of-peak operation.  Advanced engine monitoring and fuel metering for GA has led to greater use of fuel efficient operating techniques.  We care about fuel burn now because fuel is expensive.  Even without an engine monitor, nobody goes flying around with the red knob all the way in for hours on end.  In my Pitts, I can burn anywhere between 11 and 26 gph.  Considering that I only have 23 gallons of fuel on board when I takeoff, that’s not irrelevant data.

• But the biggest factor in the decline of avgas since the early 80s is the nearly 100% decline in piston twin usage by commercial operators since 1983.  The commercial operators used to fly piston airliners for freight delivery, and GA piston twins for smaller stuff.  Corporate operators used to fly executives around in piston twins, whereas nowadays nearly all those folks have moved up to turbine twins and/or jets.  The corporate/commercial operators flew a huge chunk of the total piston hours in the early 80s.  Over time, they moved to turbine equipment and therefore bought less and less avgas.

• Look at the DOE statistics for jet fuel usage.  They show a 65% increase in jet fuel consumption over the same period that avgas dropped by 80%. During that same period, the total U.S. civil fleet has remained consistent in numbers, ~200,000 aircraft on the registry.

OTA’s fatal accident rate per million gallons of avgas consumed analysis is also flawed, because the GA accident rate includes all sorts of general aviation airplanes, and as previously noted, a great portion of GA flight hours are now being accumulated in aircraft with turbine rather than piston engines.

In regards to Mr. Miller’s linear regression table at http://overtheairwaves.com/vol3-215.gif, it is also deceptive.  It uses too few data points to be statistically relevant.  Increase the data to include numbers going back to 1983, as he did with avgas, and it would show a different picture, namely a) a long term decline in accident rates, and b) that the chart’s vertical axis only represents 0.14/100,000.  Zoom in far enough and you can make anything look bad just by virtue of the chart’s scale.

Even given the data as Mr. Miller presents it, there exists a variance between a fatal accident rate of 1.25 and 1.32 per 100,000 hours flown.  Think about that.  For every 100,000 hours flown, the accident rate went from 1.25 to 1.32.  That’s an increase of 0.07 accidents per 100,000 hours.  To put it another way, it’s an increase of 5%, which to be honest is probably less than the margin of error when you consider that the hours flown are merely an estimate.

OTA describes this as “worsening at an alarming rate”.  Am I crazy for disagreeing?

As I said before, my analysis is not designed to slight Mr. Miller or his publication.  I simply suggest that he is trying to have it both ways with the statistics.  He claims that the NTSB’s “hours flown” esimates are way off because of the decline in avgas usage, yet uses those same NTSB numbers for his regression analysis.

These are just one guy’s thoughts on the matter.  But from where I sit, the accident rate is holding steady over the past few years, and remains in a long term decline.

Selling crazy on the internet is nothing new, but for some reason it’s really getting under my skin as it regards the Legacy/Gol accident. I got into it the other day on an internet forum with someone who was sure the bizjet crew had to be at fault, yet couldn’t explain why.

Can anyone out there explain to me why the Legacy crew was under house arrest for two months? Whatever the suspected cause of the accident, the detainment was a violation of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) 1963 Tokyo Convention, something to which every ICAO signatory subscribes.

As far as I can tell, the crux of the detainment stems from the fact that “the pilots did not stick to their flight plan”. To those who are not aviators, that probably sounds like an undeniable indicator of wrongdoing. But anyone who operates under or is knowledgeable about Instrument Flight Rules will tell you that a filed flight plan means nothing. In most places, pilots virtually never make a flight exactly as it appears on a flight plan. ATC is always giving re-routes, differerent altitudes, vectors, and doing other things to account for traffic conflicts, weather, and so on.

What matters is not what was filed, but what they were assigned in their clearance. And they were assigned the same altitude as the Gol 737. ATC instructed both planes to maintain same altitude and they complied with that clearance as required by regulations. Neither one knew that the other aircraft was at the same altitude. The only party with that information is air traffic control. They have the radar screens, the flight data strips, the “big picture”. They are the ones that issue routes to fly and altitudes to maintain, and therefore it seems to me that Brazilian ATC is the most likely culprit here.

Wherever you go on this planet, ATC’s primary job is to separate IFR traffic from other IFR traffic. Regulations require pilots to maintain a visual scan for other airplanes when flying in visual conditions, regardless of the flight rules under which they are operating. However, if one seeks to place blame on the Legacy crew for failure to see-and-avoid, then an equal share must fall on the Boeing’s flight crew.

Regulations aside, the see-and-avoid argument is a tough one to comply with in a place where airplanes can converge at up to 1,200 mph. That’s one mile every three seconds. This is one of the reasons airliners and business jets have Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems. TCAS systems not only alert the crew to traffic conflicts, but will actually communicate with TCAS systems in other aircraft and coordinate collision avoidance. This is known as a “resolution advisory”. One airplane’s TCAS will command the flight crew to climb, and the other aircraft’s crew will be ordered to descend.

As far as I know, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Legacy’s transponder was physically turned off by the pilots, or that the crew was doing anything improper or unusual. Mainstream media has reporting that the Legacy crew performed aerobatics, intentionally disabled their transponder, and refused to acknowledge ATC transmissions, but each of those claims later turned out to be unsubstantiated.

The one question mark is why the TCAS systems didn’t alert the flight crews to the impending conflict. The Legacy was brand new, having just rolled out of the factory shortly before the flight. Is it possible there was an avionics problem? An antenna issue? A blown circuit breaker or other fault? It’s possible. But whatever the cause, it seems likely that Brazil’s air traffic control system contributed mightily to this accident, something Brazil has been loathe to admit.

If you want to read an account of Brazilian air traffic control from someone who’s been there, here’s what a 38,000 hour pilot and former 747 captain had to say about flying in that neck of the woods:

I am not even slightly surprised that two aircraft collided while under “control” of Brazilian ATC, but I am very surprised we don’t see more such mid-airs. I flew in Central and South America, including Brazil, in the late ’50s, mostly cargo and ferry flights. In 1994, while working for JAL, I began flying three trips a month between Los Angeles and Sao Paulo until my “first retirement” in 2001. Not much had changed in the intervening four decades.

Communications are still horrible to non-existent. HF is still being used routinely, even when VHF is available. It is somewhat anachronistic to be flying near enough to Porto Velho to see the lights of the city, and still have to talk to them on HF. Call them on the VHF frequency and they may answer, but they will often ask to switch to HF for the position report, or for the next call. There is no question they prefer using HF, but I still don’t understand why. As far as I know, all ATC services are provided by the military, and by rather low-paid and poorly trained personnel. The results of that are inevitable, and many times I’ve flown through an ATC sector without being able to raise anyone, HF or VHF. If someone does respond, it is sometimes obvious they’ve just awakened. There are several sectors (Porto Velho being one) where any transmission from the ground is overwhelmed by loud music in the same room as the mike, and it sounds like the controller is across the room, yelling in the general direction of the mike. Party time, I guess, or maybe just trying to stay awake.

Even when the radio works, all communications are in Portuguese, unless no one on the aircraft can speak it. Then English will be used, but it’s very hard to understand. Of course, any transmission in English that is not absolutely standard and very common will not be understood on the ground at all, leading to “Say again?” or, worse, they will ignore further calls of any kind. The vast majority of flights over Brazil are flown by crews who do not speak either Portuguese or English as a native language, so it is the Tower of Babel all over again. It is dangerous, but heck, the same thing happens in France, Quebec, Russia and many other countries, too. We are very fortunate in the good-old United States, where we can push a button and talk to someone in English. Most of the time, anyway.

There is essentially no radar coverage in South America, except around large cities. Where there is radar, they don’t use it en route, because aircraft will soon be out of coverage again, so they are forced to fall back on timed separation at all times, and the old-fashion position reports (which most American pilots have never done). To be fair, arrivals and departures are sometimes vectored in the terminal area at low altitude.

In seven years of my operating on that route, there were five incidents where other aircraft were definitely in “my airspace” by any standards. This is made worse by those countries who consider a national airline a matter of pride, and whose crews take short-cuts. In one of those, I watched a Lan Chile aircraft cross our track a mile or two ahead, at our altitude, close enough to identify the logo at night. Both Lan Chile and ATC denied it, for the aircraft was supposed to be crossing at a VOR about 60 miles behind us. They were giving phony position reports (in Spanish), and simply taking a big shortcut. I felt it prudent to climb a few hundred feet to avoid a huge bump from the wake. File a report, and it would never see the light of day. I did anyway, and never heard a thing.

In my opinion, it would be much safer to do away with ATC entirely in areas like this. In trying to “control” aircraft with the equipment they have, and the “skill” they demonstrate, they create danger. I’d feel much more comfortable going with random routes and altitudes and using TCAS for my own separation.

This is, without a doubt, the coolest WordPress theme ever. If I wasn’t so concerned that most readers of this site aren’t familiar with the command line interface, I’d be using it right now:

As a pilot, it’s my job to consider everything that might go wrong on a flight and have a plan of action for dealing with it. But I can honestly say I’ve never thought about this scenario:

British Airways has issued an apology to a first class passenger on a flight from Delhi to London last week who woke up to find himself next to a dead body.

The cabin crew had used an unoccupied seat in his row for the body of an elderly woman who had died in the crowded economy section about three hours after takeoff.

Paul Trinder, 54, told the Mirror and Sun tabloids that he woke at 30,000 feet to discover the flight crew strapping the body into the seat near him.

“I woke to see the cabin crew manoeuvring what looked like a sack of potatoes into the seat. Slowly, through the darkness, I realized it was a body,” the businessman told the paper.

“The corpse was strapped into the seat, but because of turbulence it kept slipping down onto the floor … It was horrific. The body had to be wedged in place with lots of pillows.”

It seems the flight crew could have done a better job handling this situation. British Airways alienated a guy who flies their airline 200,000 first class miles per year. On the other hand, I can’t think of any way of dealing with this tragedy without upsetting someone, especially when the aircraft is fairly full. An aircraft — even an airliner — is only so large.

I was shocked to read that BA experiences this ten times per year. Chalk it up as another reason to fly general aviation.

My alma mater, Concordia University, won an amazing basketball game in quadruple overtime last night to advance to the NAIA national championship game. Go Eagles!

Levi Luster scored the go-ahead bucket with a minute left in the fourth overtime, and Concordia ousted top-seeded and previously unbeaten Robert Morris 124-119 on Monday night in the semifinals of the NAIA tournament.

Keith Lawrence, whose off-balance 3-pointer at the buzzer forced the fourth overtime, made a pair of free throws with 19 seconds left that gave Concordia a 122-119 lead in the second-longest game in the 70-year history of this small-college championship.

CUI has been on a tear the past few years. We won the national championship in 2003 and made it to the finals in ‘04. Not exactly the NCAA, but it’s exciting nonetheless.

Through pure happenstance, it seems some of the best aviation photographers out there are friends of mine. Dean Siracusa, fellow pilot, photog, and proprietor of Transtock.com was at LAX yesterday and snapped these fine pictures of the superjumbo Airbus A380 making it’s first landing in the United States:

 
Photos (c) Dean Siracusa, transtock.com

 
Photos (c) Dean Siracusa, transtock.com

Photo (c) Dean Siracusa, transtock.com

Well, not really. As it turns out, this airplane was the second A380 to land in the U.S. It was supposed to be a simultaneous arrival with another aircraft touching down at JFK, but the timing was a little off and this aircraft landed shortly after the one in New York. A minor annoyance, but one that undoubtedly doesn’t sit well with the folks at Los Angeles World Airports. In fact, a quick check of Wikipedia and other online sources indicates that they view it as a JFK-first landing.

The original agreement between LAX and Airbus was that Los Angeles would be the first landing point for the A380. In exchange, the airport would spend about $120 million on improvements and build a new gate large enough to accommodate the A380 so Airbus could perform tests while it was in town. At some point — well after LAX had committed serious money to the new gate — Airbus reneged on the deal and decided to land in New York instead. It was another black eye for a company that really didn’t need one.

I’m not sure yesterday’s ceremonial arrival has repaired those bad feelings. LAX is spending billions in upgrades, some of which are designed specifically for the A380. For example, the southern-most runway has been closed for an entire year while construction crews completely remove it and build a new one just 55 feet further south. The reason? The A380’s wingspan is 50′ greater than the 747. It’s a big bet on an airplane that may not be as successful as the aforementioned Boeing product. But if Los Angeles wants to remain competitive, they’ve got to spend money to make money.

As it stands now, there are no orders for the freighter version of the A380, and only ~155 orders for the passenger version. The A380 has been saddled with wiring problems, weight issues (how very American), and long delays. The airplane is certainly impressive; in single class configuration in can carry as many as 853 passengers. The thing is, I’m not aware of any airline interested in using that configuration. Launch customer Singapore Airlines settled on a three-class 485 seat configuration and Quantas a 500 seat arrangement. With those numbers, the advantage over the 747 is far lower than it initially appeared.

Dean put it best:

They created it at a time when airlines are attempting to end the hub and spoke system somewhat. When going overseas you used to always have to go through places like LAX or JFK no matter where you lived in the country. Now places like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City have international flights using smaller, more efficient aircraft like the 767 or upcoming Dreamliner, the 787.

Still, it’s an impressive airplane. It’s hard to get a sense of how large the airplane is from the photos because there’s nothing to compare it to. The LA Times has some pictures which give a sense of relative size.

Very impressive. Even more so because of the multi-national conglomeration which overcame the inefficiencies of administrative overhead and diverse geography to build the thing in the first place. If Boeing or McDonnell Douglas had those hurdles to overcome, we’d still be flying piston airliners.