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Circle-to-Land Complications

By on May 16, 2013 in Aviation, Mishaps, Safety | 5 comments

If I asked you to ponder the most pucker-inducing aspect of instrument flying, what would come to mind? An icing encounter? Circumventing imbedded thunderstorms? Hand flying that approach to minimums? An instrument failure? Those are all good answers, but for me the one that takes the cake is a low-visibility circle-to-land maneuver to an unfamiliar airport at night. If you’re not an instrument-rated pilot, you might not be familiar with this. The need for circling comes from situations where the weather is poor and the runway most associated with the approach is not suitable for landing. This could be due to unfavorable winds, runway construction, insufficient runway length, or any one of a dozen different reasons. Some approaches are simply not aligned with any runway whatsoever, and in those cases circling is mandatory if you want to put the plane on the ground. In plain...

Judgement: Knowing When to Say When

By on Apr 1, 2013 in Aviation, Mishaps, Safety | 0 comments

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 banked Warrior 481 northward toward the lake to set myself up for a 45° pattern entry. “What are you doing?” Stan...

Should GA Be More Like the Airlines?

By on Jul 4, 2012 in Aviation, Mishaps, Safety | 3 comments

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 investigation and turned it over to the Canadian Transportation Safety Board. So the question remains, should GA be more like the...

Highway vs. Aviation Safety

By on Dec 8, 2011 in Aviation, Safety | 2 comments

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 “the lowest fatality rate ever recorded, with 1.10 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2010″. Since my...

The Checklist

By on Nov 30, 2011 in Aviation, Safety | 0 comments

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 all, especially in simple or familiar aircraft. “Use a flow or mnemonic and let’s get going!”, they’d...