Human 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 MoreThe Lusty Horn
The December issue of NASA’s Callback newsletter tells the tale of several dual flights where simulated emergencies turn into real ones. If you’re a pilot and don’t subscribe to Callback, I highly recommend doing so. It’s a monthly publication of the Aviation Safety Reporting System and always an entertaining read. This month happens to cover general aviation incidents, but they also grab reports from airlines, corporate operators, medivac, fractionals, and everyone else in the aviation world. Anyway, as a CFI it’s a bit painful to read this month’s reports knowing that there was an instructor on board who could have intervened to prevent the accident. Part of me thinks “there but for the grace of God go I”, as...
Read MoreHighway vs. Aviation Safety
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the nation’s highways are safer than in years past. Assuming you’re in a car, that is. Apparently if you’re driving a truck or walking, somehow the trend is going in the wrong direction. Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) — The number of people killed on U.S. highways fell for the fifth consecutive year in 2010, marking the longest streak of declines since records began in 1899. Fatalities dropped 2.9 percent to 32,885, the lowest since 1949, the Washington-based National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said today in an e-mailed statement. Deaths of motorcyclists, pedestrians and large-truck occupants increased. A Los Angeles Times article quotes the NHTSA as calling this number...
Read MoreThe Checklist
Ah, the checklist. If Shakespeare was a pilot, he’d have written an ode to it. Once confined to the world of aviation, formal checklist discipline is now common in hospitals, assembly lines, product design, maintenance, and just about any other instance where loss of essential time, money, or bodily function can result from improper procedures or forgotten items. Some pilots can’t imagine flying without one. Like a child wandering the yard without their favorite blanket, they’d quite literally be lost without that laminated piece of paper guiding them through each phase of flight. I’ve seen pilots who seemed to enjoy using the checklist more than the actual flying. Others have a difficult time understanding why a written list is needed at...
Read MoreNew Phraseology During Runway Construction
Clear communication is important in virtually every aspect of life. From business deals to formal schooling to everyday interaction with friends and family, life flows a lot smoother when communication is clear and concise. This holds especially true in aviation. Unfortunately we already have many things going against us in the cockpit when it comes to clear communication with air traffic controllers. The environment is loud, radio transmissions are often stepped on, and standard phraseology is not always utilized. Controllers are sometimes guilty of this last item, but in my experience it’s far more often the pilots who are at fault. I could write for days about that one. Even when standard phraseology is used, communication can remain unclear....
Read MoreThe Emergency You Get
Ever wonder what goes on in the cockpit of an aircraft during an emergency? Yeah, me too — and I’ve had a few of them in my flying career. Emergencies are like snowflakes and fingerprints: no two are exactly the same. Perhaps that’s why even experienced aviators find them as interesting to rehash as the general public. The only constant between them seems to be that they never quite match the experience received during flight training. That shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who flies because there’s no way to simulate every possible scenario, especially when one of the tenets of emergency training is to avoid creating a real one in the process. Yes, simulators are one answer. But they are not a complete or perfect solution since...
Read MoreAn Accident Waiting to Happen. Again.
Air Facts contributor John Zimmerman recently wrote about watching a pilot massively overload an aircraft and then proceed to takeoff from a short runway on a hot day, barely avoiding disaster. He then asks how we should respond when an aviator is witnessed performing a Stupid Pilot Trick. Do we confront them? Call the FAA? Shrug and walk away? What is our responsibility, and when are we morally obligated to get involved? It’s a difficult question to answer, especially for those of us who are not confrontational by nature. It’s something I’ve been struggling with lately, as Zimmerman’s article brought to mind a mind-blowing encounter I had with a Darwin Award candidate while conducing some commercial checkride prep with a student at a...
Read MoreWho’s the Boss?
If you’re mentally yelling “Tony Danza!”, think again my friend. When it comes to aviation, the rules are made by the Federal Aviation Administration. Someone might want to let the L.A. County Board of Supervisors and Congressman Howard Berman in on that fact. The good Mr. Berman has introduced legislation — supported by the Supervisors — which, according to his press release, would “give the FAA the authority to set minimum altitudes and flight paths for helicopter traffic in LA country (sic)”. Low-flying helicopters are becoming a nuisance, and federal authorities should restrict how low they can fly in Los Angeles County, the Board of Supervisors said Tuesday. Citing persistent helicopter noise from flights carrying...
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