Judgement: Knowing When to Say When
Will Rogers once said, “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” Of course, he died in a plane crash, so you’ll have to excuse him for begging the question. Speaking of good judgement, Chris, a New York-based private pilot, recently related a story about an instructor who steered him wrong on a WINGS proficiency flight. Changing frequencies quickly revealed that light aircraft were swarming around Oswego like flies. All of them were using runway 33 and landing with a direct crosswind. I weighed the options quietly. I could certainly handle a ten knot crosswind and thought that it would be good practice. I decided to enter the pattern for runway 33 along with everyone else so as to not disrupt traffic. I...
Read MoreConstant Speed Propeller Maintenance
Over the years, I’ve noticed that pilots tend to give insufficient attention to two critical airframe elements: tires and props. I’ve already covered tires, so today let’s look at the perils of improper maintenance on a constant-speed propeller. On January 23, 2003 at about 4:20 p.m., Rob Cable — the grandson of Cable Airport founder Dewey Cable — took off from that airfield to perform a post-annual test flight in his twin-engine Beech 95 Travel Air. Six minutes later he was killed when the Beechcraft crashed in Rancho Cucamonga. This accident was big news in the Southern California flying community. Cable Airport bills itself as “the world’s largest family-owned public-use airport” and anyone who’s been there...
Read MoreGulfstream G650 Accident Report
It’s been a year and a half since the tragic crash of Gulfstream Aerospace Corp’s G650 test aircraft at Roswell claimed four lives. Ironically, the aircraft recently received its FAA type certificate at almost the exact same time that the National Transportation Safety Board issued their final report on the accident. I’ve been following the online NTSB docket for months — in fact, I’ve read the entire thing. It comprises thousands of pages of interviews, telemetry, analysis, company records, flight test cards, and transcripts. If you’ve got the time and are enough of an airplane nerd to stay awake while reading it, the accident docket provides a fascinating and detailed look into how a modern test flight program is conducted....
Read MoreVisual Descent Point Hazards
Visual Descent Points are a relatively new phenomenon in the instrument flying world. Much like GPS approaches and integrated glass panels, they were a rarity when I was working on my instrument rating in the mid-late 90′s. But time marches on, and the dreaded NDB procedures and vacuum systems have been replaced with what is best summarized as “newer technology”. However, unless you’re flying a Category III-B approach, at some point prior to landing the pilot must still make the transition to flying visually. That’s where the Visual Descent Point (VDP) comes in. It’s described this way in the Pilot/Controller Glossary: VISUAL DESCENT POINT- A defined point on the final approach course of a non-precision straight‐in approach...
Read MoreShould GA Be More Like the Airlines?
When it comes to regulation, training, currency, and experience requirements, should Part 91 general aviation become more like the airlines in order to achieve a better safety record? That question was prompted by Scott Spangler’s article, Safety May Be the Death of General Aviation. Upon reading the title, I figured it was just a provocative title. Alas, he was responding to a speech given by the NTSB Chairman, who noted that the organization recently lost one of it’s own in a general aviation accident. That crash, a mid-air collision, is an interesting story all on it’s own. The pilots of both airplanes were federal employees (one at the FAA and the other at the NTSB), so the United States government has recused itself from the accident...
Read MoreAircraft Tire Pressure
Every aviator has their soapbox issues, and when it comes to maintenance, my top two are constant-speed propellers and aircraft tires. I may touch on the former in a future article, but for now let’s focus on the latter. Tires are one of the most vitally important — yet frequently ignored — parts of an aircraft. It’s easy to see why: they’re relatively simple elements which work day in and day out without problem, and as such are taken for granted. In addition, some of the typical pilot’s attitude toward tires is transferred from the way they treat their automotive counterparts. Be honest, how often do you inspect your car’s tires? When was the last time you checked the pressure on all four wheels? I’m about as anal...
Read MoreHuman Factors
Whether you love flying or hate it, you must admit the stories which emanate from the aviation industry often make for fascinating reading. From the ever-shrinking fortunes of domestic aircraft production to the Miracle on the Hudson, there’s always something intriguing in the news. The big story over the past week has, of course, been the drama aboard JetBlue flight 191 while enroute from New York to Las Vegas. The captain, Clayton Osbon, apparently experienced some sort of mental breakdown during the flight and had to be physically restrained by passengers after unusual behavior and disturbing comments were made to fellow members of the flight crew. It has provided welcome fodder for some publications on what was an otherwise slow news week. Esquire went...
Read MoreAviation Myths, Part 3
[For the rest of the series, see Part 1 or Part 2] Myth #11: Aerobatics are dangerous. Aerobatic flight has played a prominent part in many fatal accident reports. Sadly, that has given acro a bad name. A more thoughtful analysis, however, clearly shows that many — perhaps most — of those crashes are due to intentional low-altitude maneuvering. When aerobatic flying is pursued in a prudent, intelligent manner with sufficient altitude, the risks are far outweighed by the benefits. Many fatalities come from the world of air shows. Air show flying can be extraordinarily dangerous because there’s virtually no structure or limit on what a pilot is permitted to do. As long as pilots don’t direct the energy of the aircraft toward spectators, a...
Read MoreVmc Rollover
Last month a Beech Queen Air experienced a low-altitude failure of the left engine shortly after takeoff. The aircraft crashed into a densely populated area of Parañaque City in the Philippines and resulted in 14 fatalities. The Queen Air was a precursor to the King Air 90 — essentially a large cabin-class twin with supercharged reciprocating engines. I’ve logged more than 2,000 hours of flight time in a military derivative of the King Air known as the U-21A, so the accident certainly piqued my interest. During my years flying that aircraft, quite a bit of time was spent talking, thinking, training, and otherwise preparing for just the kind of scenario encountered by the pilots in this accident: a sudden engine failure while low on altitude and...
Read MoreAir France Flight 447 Analysis
Popular Mechanics recently posted a relatively solid analysis of the 2009 Air France flight 447 accident. It has the rare virtue of being a good read for professional aviators and non-pilots alike. The article indicates that the pilots — and there were what, three or four of them involved on the flight deck? — were seemingly unaware that the aircraft was aerodynamically stalled. It sounds impossible for a crew with ten thousand hours of flight experience to be so oblivious, but almost the exact same thing happened in the Colgan Air 3407 accident. The aircraft was stalled, the captain didn’t understand what was going on, and he physically held the plane in a deep stall all the way into the ground. However, in this case, perhaps the problem...
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