The contest, which typically occurs on grass or dirt areas parallel to paved runways, was to take place alongside Runway 5-23. 

On Friday afternoon the wind picked up. It blew out of the northwest across the STOL Drag course. Qualifying heats were postponed until the next day. 

A number of the competitors then decided to conduct an impromptu “traditional STOL” event, omitting the drag racing component. They would use the grass Runway 31, which was conveniently aligned with the wind. The pilots, organizers, and FAA inspectors who were present held a safety briefing, and the participants were divided into four groups of five or six aircraft to prevent clogging the pattern. The objective of the contest was to see who could come to a full stop in the shortest distance after touching down beyond the target line.

Each group completed two circuits without incident. Two groups had completed a third circuit, and now the third group was landing. The third airplane in that group was a modified Rans S-7, the fourth a Zenith STOL 701—unusual among the participants in having tricycle gear—and the last a Cessna 140. The S-7 landed, came to a stop in less than 100 feet, and taxied away. The 701 was still a fair distance out, and the 140 seemingly rather close behind it and low. 

• READ MORE: A Cautionary Tale About Pilot Freelancing

A STOL Drag representative who was coordinating the pattern operations radioed the 140 pilot: “Lower your nose. You look slow.” The 140 pilot did not acknowledge. Half a minute later, the coordinator again advised the pilot to lower his nose. 

A few seconds later, the 140 yawed to the right, its right wing dropped, and with the awful inevitability of an avalanche or a falling tree, it rolled over into a vertical dive and struck the ground an instant later. A groan went up from the small crowd of onlookers. “Oh, my God, what happened!” one voice exclaimed. What had happened was all too clear—a low-altitude stall-spin that resulted in the pilot’s death.

The 140 pilot, 45, had an estimated 470 hours total time, more than 300 of which were in the 140. He had already qualified for STOL Drag competitions at a previous event.

The wind at the time of the accident was 15 knots gusting to 21. (As with all aviation wind reports, the 15 is the sustained wind and the 21 the maximum observed; no information is provided about lulls or wind speed variations below the sustained value.) The pilot of the 701 said that he had been maintaining about 50 mph (44 knots), as he had on several previous approaches, and that the wind on this approach felt no different than on the others. 

The 701 is equipped with full-span leading-edge slats, which make it practically incapable of unexpectedly stalling. Operating at a likely wing loading of less than 7 pounds per square foot, it could probably fly at around 35 mph. For the 701, an approach speed of 50 mph was conservative. The 140’s wing loading was only slightly higher, but its wing was not optimized for extremely slow flight. The 140’s POH stalling speed at gross weight was highly dependent on power setting, ranging from 45 mph power off to 37 mph, flaps down, with full power.

• READ MORE: Two Fatal Cases of the Simply Inexperienced

An FAA inspector who witnessed the accident reported his observations to a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator. He noted that the 140 generally took longer to get airborne than other airplanes in its group, in part because the pilot, after first lifting the tail, rotated prematurely, so that the tailwheel struck the ground and the airplane continued rolling for some distance before finally becoming airborne. The pilot, he said, would climb steeply at first, but then have to lower the nose to gain speed. He appeared low and close behind the 701 on the last approach.

Earlier videos also showed that, on landing, the 140 rolled farther than other contestants, despite braking to the point of almost nosing over.

On previous circuits the pilot had used flaps, but on his last approach he failed to put the flaps down. The omission could account for the coordinator’s observation that the nose seemed high. Full flaps would have resulted in a more nose-low attitude.

The NTSB blamed the accident on the pilot’s obvious “exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack.” It went on to cite as a contributing factor the “competitive environment, which likely influenced the pilot’s approach speed.” Since there were many knowledgeable observers of both the accident and of several previous takeoffs and landings by the 140, and everything was recorded on video from several angles, the NTSB’s diagnosis could probably have been even more specific and mentioned the failure to use flaps and the premature downwind-to-base turn.

If, by a chance misjudgment, the 140 pilot found himself too close behind the 701, he still had options other than slowing to the lowest possible speed. Since there was no one behind him, he could have gone around or made a 360 on final. The aircraft waiting to take off would have had to stand by a little longer, but only a fool would grumble because another pilot was being wisely cautious.

• READ MORE: Three-Mile Limit: Novice Pilots Succumb to the Perils of Total Darkness

Instead, the 140 pilot chose to maintain his spacing by flying as slow as he could.

The decisive factor in the accident was most probably the failure to use flaps. It was almost certainly inadvertent. He probably forgot to put the flaps down, then believed they were down—because he had them down on the previous circuits—and chose his speeds accordingly. Adding flaps would have brought the stalling speed down 3-4 mph and also obliged him to use a little more power. Actually, it would have been quite a bit more because he was low, and the added power would have given him still more cushion.

The 140 was a goose among swans in this flock of dedicated STOL airplanes that possessed a near-magical ability to take off and land in practically no distance at all. Still, it was OK to be an outlier. The point of the contest was to have fun. You didn’t need to go home with a trophy—not that there even was one for this impromptu event.

But integrating an airplane with somewhat limited capabilities among more capable ones required special attention to speed and spacing. It would be easy to make a mistake. Once the mistake was made, and compounded by the failure to use flaps, all the pilot had left to lean on was luck—or willingness to recognize an error and go around while there was still airspeed and altitude to recover.

Note: This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in the July/August Issue 949 of the FLYING print edition.

The post Nothing Short of a Fatal Mismatch appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

As you will have guessed, since you are reading about this in Aftermath and not in I Learned About Flying From That, the flight did not end well. About 25 minutes after takeoff and shortly after crossing the Arkansas border, the 31-year-old pilot, whose in-command time amounted to 75 hours, lost control of the airplane and went down in a remote woodland. All aboard perished.

A few minutes before the impact, as he was climbing to 9,500 feet msl, the pilot contacted ATC and requested flight following. The weather along his route—which, notably, he had last checked with ForeFlight 17 hours earlier—was generally VFR, with a chance of scattered convective activity. There was, however, one patch of rainy weather just to the left of his course, and the controller advised him to turn right to avoid it.

On the controller’s display, the target of the Cirrus crept eastward just below the edge of the weather. Radar paints rain, however, not cloud. The flight was over a remote area with few ground lights and the harvest moon had not yet risen, but its hidden glow may have faintly defined an eastern horizon. In the inspissated blackness of the night, the pilot, whose instrument experience was limited to what little was required for the private certificate, probably could not tell clear air from cloud.

As the Cirrus reached 9,500 feet, it began to turn to the left toward the area of weather. Perhaps the tasks of trimming and setting the mixture for cruise distracted the pilot from his heading. The controller noticed the change and pointed it out to the pilot, who replied he intended to return to Muskogee. He now began a turn to the right. Rather than reverse course, however, he continued the turn until he was heading northward back into the weather. The controller, who by now sensed trouble, said to the pilot that he showed him on a heading of 340 degrees and asked whether he concurred. The pilot, whose voice until this point had betrayed no sense of unease, replied somewhat incoherently that “the wind caught me, [but now] I’m out of it.”

With a tone of increasing urgency, the controller instructed the pilot to turn left to a heading of 270. The pilot acknowledged the instruction, but he did not comply. Instead, he continued turning to the right. At the same time, he was descending at an increasing rate and was now at 6,000 feet. “I show you losing serious altitude,” the controller said. “Level your wings if able and fly directly southbound…Add power if you can.”

It was already too late. In a turning dive, its speed increasing past 220 knots, the Cirrus continued downward. Moments later, its radar target disappeared.

In its discussion of the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) focused upon the pilot’s preparedness—in the broadest sense—for the flight. A former Marine, he should have been semper paratus—always ready—but his history suggested a headstrong personality with a certain tendency to ignore loose ends as he plunged ahead.

He had failed his first private pilot test on questions related to airplane systems; he passed on a retest the following week. But this little glitch tells us nothing about his airmanship. His instructor reported he responded calmly and reasonably to turbulence, and was “good” at simulated instrument flight. He had enrolled in Cirrus Embark transition training shortly before acquiring the airplane. He completed all of the flight training lessons, but—again, a hint of impatience with tiresome minutiae—may not have completed the online self-study lessons. The flight training was strictly VFR and did not include night or instrument components.

The airplane was extremely well equipped for instrument flying, but it was a 2001 model, and its avionics were, according to the Cirrus Embark instructors, “old technology” and “not easy to use.” In other words, it did not have a glass panel, and its classical instruments, which included a flight director, were sophisticated and possibly confusing to a novice. The airplane was equipped with an autopilot, and the pilot had been trained in at least the elements of its use.

The airplane was also equipped with an airframe parachute, but it was not deployed during the loss of control. In any case, its use is limited to indicated speeds below 133 kias, and it might not have functioned properly in a spiral dive.

• READ MORE: Dissecting a Tragedy in the Third Dimension

An instructor familiar with the pilot and his airplane—whether this was the same instructor as the one whom he called on the night of the fatal flight is not clear—wrote to the NTSB that the pilot had made the night flight to South Carolina at least once before, and he had called her at midnight before departing to come help him fix a flat tire. She declined and urged him to get some sleep and make the trip in the morning.

“I told him he was starting down the ‘accident chain,’” she wrote. “New pilot, new plane, late start, nighttime, bad terrain, etc….To me, he seemed a little overly self-confident in his piloting skills, but he didn’t know enough to know what he didn’t know.”

He fixed the tire himself and made the trip safely that night. Undoubtedly, that success encouraged him to go again.

We have seen over and over how capable pilots, including ones with much more experience than this pilot, fail to perform at their usual level when they encounter weather emergencies. A sudden, unexpected plunge into IMC—which, on a dark night, can happen very easily—opens the door to a Pandora’s box of fear, confusion, and disorientation for which training cannot prepare you.

There are two clear avenues of escape. One is the autopilot. Switch it on, take your hands off the controls, breathe, and count to 20. The fact the pilot did not take this step suggests how paralyzed his mental faculties may have become.

The other is the attitude indicator. It’s a simple mechanical game. Put the toy airplane on the horizon line and align the wings with it. That’s all. It’s so simple. Yet in a crisis, apparently, it’s terribly hard to do. The fact that so many pilots have lost control of their airplanes in IMC should be a warning to every noninstrument-rated pilot to treat clouds—and, above all, clouds in darkness—with extreme respect.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post A Night Flight Leads a Pilot to a Tragic End appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The study looked at flight training risks and innovations from 2000 to 2019 and took note of the number of accidents and their causes.

According to the report, loss of aircraft control comprises 54 percent of the fatal accidents that occur during instructional flight. Most of those are attributed to stall/spin events and happen in the pattern, often during a go-around, when the aircraft is at low altitude, high power, and high angle of attack. Overshooting the base-to-final turn has also been identified as a situation that puts a pilot at risk.

In both instances, a stall/spin event is not recoverable because of low altitude.

“The aviation industry has done an excellent job of stall/spin awareness when overshooting base to final,” said Robert Geske, AOPA Air Safety Institute manager of aviation safety analysis. “Similarly, we should stress stall/spin risk during takeoff, climbout, and go-around, and emphasize energy awareness and management during those flight phases.”

In the past several years there has been increased awareness of risk factors in aviation, and flight training is getting safer, according to Andrew Walton, Liberty University School of Aerospace director of safety.

“Sustained efforts by the FAA, NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board], manufacturers, and the flight training community have resulted in a fatal accident rate that is now roughly half of what it was at the start of the century,” said Walton, “From 2000 to 2004, the fatal accident rate averaged 0.49 per hundred thousand hours and decreased to 0.26 in the last five years of the study. However, there remains plenty of work to do, particularly in mitigating the risk of loss of control in flight.”

Other Accident Causal Factors

Accidents attributed to a loss of control during in-flight maneuvering continue to be a factor.

“The FAA’s decision to improve stall horn awareness by changing the slow flight maneuver in the airman certification standards (ACS) may have something to do with this,” the study suggested. “Instead of teaching the learner to perform slow flight with the stall warning activated the entire time and terminating the maneuver with a full stall, the FAA update has learners recovering at the first indication of stall, with more emphasis on recognizing the factors that lead to a stall and maintaining control during slow flight.”

Midair collisions were found to be the second-leading cause of fatal instructional accidents from 2000 to 2019. According to the study, 70 percent of those occurred outside the airport environment, with the majority happening at an altitude between 1,000 and 2,000 feet.

However, the number of midair collisions decreased, which researchers noted coincides with the introduction of ADS-B into the training fleet.

Controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) was listed as the third-leading cause of fatal instructional accidents, although it was noted there was a slight decrease in the overall number.

“Reduced visibility continues to play a role in most of the CFIT accidents, with 13 of the 19 accidents occurring at night and/or in IMC conditions,” the study said. “CFIT accidents largely occurred during maneuvering, followed by enroute and approach.”

• READ MORE: Aviation Safety Report Offers Blueprint During Flight Instruction

Other revelations from the research were that the majority of CFIT accidents happened at night in visual meteorological conditions, and when they happened in daylight, it was often due to inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions or when the pilot was practicing emergency procedures or a missed approach and lost situational awareness, specifically their proximity to terrain.

Fuel mismanagement remains a causal factor in aviation accidents, although the study seemed to indicate that low-fuel alerting systems in more technically advanced aircraft have helped reduce the instances of fuel exhaustion. However, engine failure due to fuel starvation still occurred and was the result of the pilot’s failure to switch fuel tanks or not having the fuel selector in the detent, which stopped fuel from reaching the engine.

Accidents due to component failure of the engine ranked fifth on the list. According to the study, there were 14 events attributed to this, with seven being blamed on improper maintenance, including a fuel filter installed backward another attributed to a carburetor’s missing cotter pin, and one due to poor magneto installation. Additionally, two engines failed suddenly—one due to an exhaust valve failure and one because of a corroded mixture cable that sheared during flight.

Changes in Training

The study also looked at the changes in flight training that may have affected the reduction in accidents. For example, the FAA updated the airman certification standards that required applicants to demonstrate risk management and aeronautical decision-making skills.

Ultimately, the results of the study will be used as a means to develop strategies to mitigate risk and prevent accidents in the future.

The complete report can be viewed here.

The post Is Flight Training Getting Safer? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was dark when he approached Steamboat Springs. Cleared for the RNAV (GPS)-E approach for Runway 32 at Bob Adams Field (KSBS), he began his descent 20 minutes out, turned eastward at the initial approach fix, HABRO, and then northward at MABKY intersection.

The design of the approach brings you up a valley between high terrain to the east—where a number of peaks rise above 10,000 feet—and 8,250-foot Quarry, aka Emerald Mountain, to the west. The final approach fix (FAF), PEXSA, is aligned with the runway; the 5.4 nm leg from MABKY to PEXSA, however, is oriented at 353 degrees and requires a left turn of 30 degrees onto the 4.6 nm final approach course.

The field elevation at KSBS is 6,882 feet. Category A minimums are nominally 1,300 and 1¼ with a minimum descent altitude of 8,140 feet. The missed approach, begun at the runway threshold, calls for a climbing left turn back to HABRO at 11,300 feet.

The descent profile specifies crossing altitudes of 9,700 feet at the FAF and 8,740 feet at an intermediate fix, WAKOR, 2.4 nm from the FAF. From WAKOR to the threshold is 2.2 nm. Once passing WAKOR, the pilot could step down to the minimum altitude and start looking for the runway.

The Meridian tracked the ground path of the approach with electronic precision. The profile was not so perfect. The airplane crossed the FAF at 9,100 feet, 600 feet below the required altitude. At WAKOR it was 540 feet low and for all practical purposes already at the minimum allowable altitude for the approach.

At WAKOR, rather than continue straight ahead toward the runway, the Meridian began a left turn, similar to the turn required for the missed approach but 2 miles short of the prescribed missed approach point. The ground track of the turn, executed at standard rate, had the same machine-like precision as previous phases of the approach—but not the profile. Rather than immediately climb to 11,300 feet, as the missed approach required, the Meridian continued to descend, reaching 7,850 feet, less than 1,000 feet above the field elevation. It then resumed climbing but not very rapidly. One minute after beginning the left turn at 8,200 feet and on a heading of 164 degrees, it collided with Quarry Mountain. At the time of impact, the landing gear was in the process of being retracted.

When the Meridian arrived in the vicinity of Steamboat, the weather had deteriorated to 1,200 feet overcast and 1 mile visibility—below minimums for the approach. The National Transportation Safety Board limited its finding of probable cause to the statement that the pilot had failed to adhere to the published approach procedure and speculated that he had become aware of the below-minimums conditions only during the approach. Indeed, he would have become aware of the low ceiling by the time he reached WAKOR because he was already practically at the minimum descent altitude there.

He was apparently unprepared for this unexpected development.

The Meridian was equipped with a lot of fancy avionics that recorded every detail of the approach, and the accident docket includes extensive graphic depictions of those records. (These are not included in the published report.) What is striking about them is the contrast between the undeviating steadiness of headings and the large random fluctuations in airspeed, vertical speed, and altitude, which are evidently being controlled by the pilot. During the last two and a half minutes of the flight, the Meridian’s airspeed fluctuated between 89 and 110 knots and its pitch attitude between minus-5 and plus-10 degrees. Approaching WAKOR, its vertical speed was zero. Crossing WAKOR and beginning the left turn, the vertical speed first dipped to 1,500 fpm down, then, 10 seconds later, corrected to 1,300 fpm up. Ten seconds after that, it slumped again to zero before shooting back up to 1,500 fpm, holding that rate momentarily and then dropping again. The impact occurred a few seconds later.

The pilot’s logbook, which recorded 580 hours total time with 43 hours of simulated instruments and 45 hours of actual, contained four instances of this same GPS approach in the month preceding the accident. In some of those log entries, no actual instrument time was recorded, and at least two of them ended with a low approach but no landing. In some, if not all, of those approaches, the pilot was evidently practicing in VMC. Plots of two of those approaches, one a month earlier and the other a week earlier, display the same precision in ground track as the one that led to the accident, so it appears that he was relying on his autopilot for horizontal navigation.

• READ MORE: When VFR Turns into IFR

Being based at KSBS and having repeatedly flown the approach in good weather, the pilot would have been aware that the terrain below him never rose above 7,000 feet. He might therefore have believed, consciously or unconsciously, that as long as he didn’t get much below 8,000 feet, he wasn’t going to collide with anything. That idea could have factored into his starting the missed approach 2 miles short of the runway. Or perhaps he simply forgot about Quarry Mountain. Or, possibly, he made the decision to miss at WAKOR and began the turn without even reflecting that an important element of any missed approach is the location at which it starts.

His unsteady control of airspeed and pitch attitude, and his failure to retract the landing gear until a full minute after beginning the miss, suggest a pilot unaccustomed to balked approaches and now struggling with a novel situation. Anticipating VFR conditions, he had not filed an alternate and would now have to make a new plan and execute it in the air.

The difference between simulated instrument flying and the real thing—compounded, in this case, by darkness—is difficult for novice instrument pilots to imagine. It is not just a matter of the complexity of the required actions. It is the effect that anxiety, uncertainty, or surprise may have on your own capabilities. What looks like a dry script on a piece of paper can become a gripping drama—comedy or tragedy—when the human protagonist steps onto the stage.

This column first appeared in the September 2023/Issue 941 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Dissecting a Tragedy in the Third Dimension appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I was a kid hanging out in the old Lunken Airport control tower the first time I saw one…and it was pretty spectacular. It was the mid-’60s, and a derelict B-25 was heading for the airport with a cabin full of reptiles. Really! Some “wild kingdom” exhibition opening downtown was evidently in financial distress and badly needed to attract a good, paying audience.

The pilot called far enough out and told the tower about his cargo. Problem was he’d had to shut one engine down and needed priority to land. By now the press got wind. As he neared the airport, he radioed that he couldn’t get the gear down and elected to land in the grass. The copilot (I’m not making this up) bailed out just north of the airport, and the B-25 skidded to a halt in the grass. It was wintertime and firemen had to unload and incapacitate a bunch of snakes and alligators. The papers had a heyday. I don’t remember if the show made any money.

That was my first but certainly not last experience with gear-up landings and what put it on my front burner is the latest. A friend with a beautiful A36 loans it to a couple guys—one is a pilot for a large corporation who’s probably among the best airplane drivers I know and a pretty good mechanic to boot. I don’t know the other guy, but he recently put the beautiful Beech in on its belly at Lunken. There were claims that “the electrical system was behaving strangely” and, fearing a fire, he landed with no gear, damaging the prop, engine, flaps, and belly skin.

• READ MORE: How Well Do You Know Aircraft Landing Gear?

You can almost bet that any pilot involved in a gear-up landing does two things: They put the gear switch or handle in the “down” position before any rescue arrives and usually have an explanation about why it failed to be down and locked. Almost never did they just plain forget.

If there’s any doubt, you do a tower or airport flyby. Even if it appears to be down, you leave the area and use the emergency gear extension procedure(s) in the pilot’s operating handbook. That’s what happened in a Bonanza with no gear lights I was flying a few years ago. I flew by, went out and cranked it down, and then asked for the equipment on the runway (Why not?). I landed without using any brakes and let it roll out.

The other time was at night with an alternator failure in a retractable gear Cessna Cardinal, totally out of “juice.” I pumped the gear down and could see it, but there were no lights, so I circled the field, hoping for a green light from the tower, but there was nothing. Finally, after watching a corporate guy clear the runway, I landed and, again, stayed off the brakes, letting it roll onto a large, adjacent ramp. When I called the tower on the phone they said, “You did what?” And I responded, “If you guys can’t see any better than that, I’m going to fly my Cub at night.”

These days, there are several aids to total electrical system failures. A handheld transceiver works or, lacking that, keep the telephone numbers of the FBOs, control towers, and approach control you commonly use. I did that a few years ago coming back from Oshkosh, when the generator failed. The landing gear in my Cessna 180 is welded down, so that wasn’t an issue, but at least I could call the tower on my cellphone.

As you might imagine, I’m not always that heroic. As an FAA inspector who did lots of Twin Beech check rides, I rented one of our Part 135 operators’ Beech 18s for proficiency flying with quite possibly the world’s coolest and best Twin Beech driver, Kevin Uppstrom, in the right seat. As we lifted off Runway 18 at Connersville, Indiana (KCEV), Uppstrom simulated a left engine failure by retarding a throttle. I chanted and did the “max power, flaps approach, positive rate, gear up, identify, verify and (simulate) feather.” It was beautiful and, smugly, as we rounded the pattern onto final for a landing, I said, “C’mon, Kev. Admit it. Nobody could handle it better.” He said, “Yeah, so far a great job. Do you plan to put the gear down before we land?”

I guess my funniest gear story involves a rather important CEO of a Cincinnati machine tool company who had a penchant for unique airplanes. He’d owned a single-place Mooney Mite with manually retractable landing gear. But he’d forgotten to use the awkward Johnson bar to extend it before landing. That was before I knew him. By now he was on the cusp of a divorce and rather taken with me (I was nearly seduced by his recently acquired Grumman Widgeon). I was at the hangar after the Mite had been extracted (gear up) from the runway and deposited in his large multi-airplane hangar.

Way before my FAA days, I still knew inspector John O’Rourke, who was walking around the broken bird, pipe in his mouth and clipboard in hand. Mr. CEO was explaining he had no idea why the gear hadn’t extended—he’d certainly put it down before landing. Then the back door of the hangar opened, and the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. CEO came in, surveyed the scene and, in her distinctive upper class, Down East Maine accent said, “Well, I see you’ve done it again.”

I’m not making light of landing an airplane with the gear not securely down and locked. It’s a dreadful experience, but pilots and passengers are rarely hurt. Hopefully, you have hull insurance and knowledgeable people extracting the airplane from the runway without further damage. There’s usually a long wait for overhauled or new engines, props, and repair to other airplane damage. The main problem is ego…and that’s a biggie.

I’ve always loved the memory of a big guy named Ed Creelman, an excellent pilot who flew a Beech 18 for a local paper company. I was nearby as he sat in the Sky Galley restaurant when somebody asked, “Hey, Ed. What happened to your airplane?” Without hesitation, in his signature gruff voice, he answered: “I forgot to put the f—ing gear down.”

He was (and is) my hero.

This column first appeared in the September 2023/Issue 941 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Gear-Up Landings: There Are Pilots Who Have and Those Who May Have To appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The catastrophe was recorded by a number of surveillance cameras, some located not far from the point of impact. Video showed the airplane airborne, initially drifting left, then yawing left to an extreme sideslip angle before rapidly rolling into an inverted dive. The sequence took just a few seconds. Once the left wing had dropped, the low altitude made recovery impossible.

The crew had not reported any trouble to the tower. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators reconstructed the event by analyzing surveillance videos and the sound spectrum of the engines captured as background noise by the cockpit voice recorder, as well as extracting data from the airplane’s ADS-B and terrain awareness warning systems. They concluded the critical left engine had spooled down for some reason, and the pilot had reacted by pressing on the left rudder pedal rather than the right. Only the combination of asymmetric thrust with added rudder, the NTSB found, could bring the airplane to the extreme yaw angle observed in the videos, as asymmetric thrust alone would not have been sufficient.

The only communications between the two pilots recorded during the accident sequence were an exclamation of “What in the world?” by the pilot flying and the copilot’s statement, three and a half seconds later, that “You just lost your left engine.” (The King Air is a single-pilot airplane. The copilot frequently flew with the pilot to gain experience, but was not permitted to touch the controls when passengers were aboard.)

The NTSB suspected the spooldown of the left engine might have been caused by a faulty friction setting on the left power lever, which could have allowed it to creep backward during the takeoff roll. This is a known susceptibility of King Airs; the power levers are spring-loaded toward idle, each has its own friction knob, and they rely on positive friction to keep them from drifting. The power quadrant was too badly damaged in the post-crash fire to allow investigators to tell anything about the position of the left power lever or the friction settings. Uncommanded power rollbacks on the PT6-series engines can have other causes, however, which would not necessarily be detectable in a severely burned wreckage, and so the attribution to the friction setting remained speculative.

The quadrant frictions are a checklist item, but the CVR recording disclosed no pre-takeoff briefing and none of the expected checklist or V-speed callouts. According to other pilots who had flown with him, the pilot, 71, a 16,450-hour ATP, was “not strong on using checklists” and “just jumped in the airplane and went.” He was, on the other hand, “super strong” on knowledge of the airplane, in which he had logged 1,100 hours. According to the pilot who administered his most recent proficiency check, he had performed well on the simulated engine failure on takeoff. The check ride took place in the airplane, however, not in a simulator, and so as a safety precaution the engine cut, which had been briefed in advance, did not occur until the airplane was safely airborne and climbing. A successful performance under such controlled circumstances did not guarantee success in exigent ones.

The NTSB’s reconstruction of the takeoff showed the pilot had rotated at 102 kias, slightly below the V1 (go/abort) speed of 106 kias and 8 knots below the calculated rotation speed of 110 knots. The airplane was fully airborne at 106 kias and was at around 110 kias when the power began to roll back. The airplane drifted left, reaching a maximum altitude of 100 feet. Three seconds later, it was at 70 feet and the airspeed was 85 knots. One second later, it plunged through the hangar roof.

The standard procedure for loss of an engine in the King Air 350 is to establish a positive rate of climb with a pitch angle of 10 degrees, retract the landing gear, and feather the propeller on the inoperative engine while maintaining V2 (minimum safe climb speed with an engine out) to 400 feet agl. Above 400 feet, the airplane is allowed to accelerate, the flaps are retracted, and the climb continues at 125 kias.

None of this happened, however, because the pilot, in spite of his lifetime of flying experience and countless successful proficiency checks, stepped on the wrong rudder pedal.

• READ MORE: Objection Overruled

There was a time when the NTSB often cited fatigue as a contributing factor in accidents, but at some point it must have become obvious that plenty of well-rested pilots crashed too, so unless a pilot literally fell asleep at the wheel, fatigue could never be proved to have been a link in a causal chain. In this case, the pilot had a history of severe sleep apnea. To the extent that the FAA was aware of it, the agency had taken no action, although in principle the condition could have been disqualifying. The NTSB turned its back on this opportunity to invoke fatigue. “No evidence,” the agency wrote, “indicates that the pilot’s medical conditions or their treatment were factors in the accident.”

I would have expected the NTSB’s finding of “probable cause” to be something like “…the pilot’s inappropriate reaction to a loss of power in the left engine, which resulted in loss of control.” Instead, it blamed “the pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control,” which seems rather vague and generic. Among the contributing factors, “failure to conduct the airplane manufacturer’s emergency procedure” is a little misleading, since he did begin to execute the procedure but bungled it. The agency added his “failure…to follow the manufacturer’s checklists during all phases of operation,” even though the only link between checklists and the crash was the hypothetical faulty friction setting for which there was no material evidence. Two King Air pilots with whom I discussed the accident were skeptical of the friction theory because they said matching torques on two PT6s during takeoff involves enough fiddling with the power levers that it would be impossible for the pilot to be unaware of a sloppy-feeling lever.

I suspect the NTSB wanted to blame the accident on the pilot not being a by-the-book kind of person. None of his associates the NTSB interviewed suggested he was reckless or incompetent—quite the opposite. The problem with pinning the accident on a personality trait of the pilot is that the mistake of stepping on the wrong rudder pedal is not connected in any obvious way to that. It seems more like one of those random human mistakes we all sometimes make—but hope we will never make at a critical moment.

Note: This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in the August 2023/Issue 940 print edition of FLYING.

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Having flown a 777 for nine years and having responsibly contributed to the media frenzy as an aviation analyst, the story resonates on a personal level. Perhaps that’s why I take issue with the Netflix three-part docuseries MH 370: The Plane That Disappeared. But more than my own angst, it is a disservice to the families and friends that lost loved ones to focus on theories that defy the facts for the purpose of generating a profit. Spoiler alert: Among other topics, this column summarizes the three conspiracy theories presented.

Much of the series’ production revolves around aviation journalist Jeff Wise. While contributing with Wise, on and off air during the media coverage of MH 370, I found him to be affable, articulate, and well-read.

That said, it boggles my mind, considering the irony of his last name, why he would jeopardize his integrity by touting conspiracy theories despite data from credible sources. Initially, the Malaysian government and other aviation experts involved in the search were overwhelmed. Poor communication and a lack of definitive information served to create an atmosphere of skepticism and anger among MH 370 family members. Without concrete answers, the grieving process remained in limbo.

Searches were initially conducted in the South China Sea near the area of the waypoint intersection, where communication with MH 370 was last reported by the crew and civilian radar appeared to have momentarily tracked the airplane after it abruptly turned back toward Malaysia. The first game-changer came with the knowledge that the Malaysian military may have tracked MH 370 on a bizarre northwest heading over the Malaysian peninsula. As the search transitioned from hours to days, a British satellite company, Inmarsat, revealed the significant communication characteristics of the equipment on board the 777.

Apparently, despite the absence of radio communication and an active transponder code, the airplane had been acknowledging reception of a discrete satellite signal, colloquially called a “handshake.” In a startling revelation, this information indicated the airplane had continued to remain airborne long after its last known position. Inmarsat applied additional analysis, backchanneling the great circle satellite arcs of the handshakes utilizing mathematics and geometry. On that basis, it was determined MH 370 continued toward the vast south Indian Ocean. The analysis included various estimated flight times, distances, and altitudes to determine possible points of fuel exhaustion. The calculated search area was almost the size of Australia but refined after more data was baked in, inclusive of ocean currents.

• READ MORE: Malaysian Government Releases Report on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Despite an international effort and two extensive search expeditions, the final resting place of MH 370 has never been found. Approximately 20 fragments of what is suspected to be the airplane has been discovered off the coast of Africa, with the most notable piece being a flaperon that washed onto the beach of Réunion Island.

So, irrespective of data-based information and the input of respected subject matter experts, conspiracy theories abound. Widebody jumbo jets don’t just disappear. With the assistance of Wise, the Netflix docuseries presents three of those theories. Note their scant plausibility.

The most popular is that the well-respected and liked Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah is responsible for a mass-murder suicide. Rumors of discontent with the Malaysian government found their way into the media. Shah’s sophisticated and geeky desktop flight simulator was suspect, especially when it was alleged the FBI discovered a track similar to the calculated route of MH 370. That said, a portion of this track may actually have just been the movement of the simulator’s computer cursor.

Wise proposed a scenario whereupon just as the flight approached the last reporting point, entering Vietnamese airspace, Shah requested his copilot “go into the cabin and get me something,” under the guise that he is plotting a nefarious act. I can’t speak for Malaysian culture, but the majority of pilots make such a request to a flight attendant via the intercom rather than the other pilot.

Anyhow, the copilot finds himself locked out while Shah manually opens the pressurization outflow valve with the overhead switch. Oxygen masks drop for the passengers, while Shah dons his crew mask. The passengers and remaining crew eventually become asphyxiated because of the limited time their masks generated oxygen. The “evil” captain continues flying for at least another six hours and then dives the airplane into the ocean. Crew oxygen supply lasts longer than for the passengers, but it’s very limited, certainly not six hours’ worth. So, the airplane would have to be repressurized. I’ve never deliberately depressurized an airplane, but I can’t imagine it’s a fast process unless you’re ready for major eardrum pain.

The second theory involves two passengers with Russian backgrounds. Wise speculated these operatives gained access to the electronics equipment bay. One disabled communication and obtained navigational and operational control of the airplane through a laptop, while the other distracted crew and passengers. Motive? To distract the world from Russia’s invasion of Crimea in Ukraine. Access to the electronics equipment bay is through the floor of the first-class galley, nearest the forward entry door. The cabin crew would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to miss the activity. And how does one land a 777 from beneath the cabin floor?

The final and third theory was authored by French journalist Florence de Changy, who speculated that because the cargo manifest included 2.5 tons of electronics bound for China, the U.S. made the decision to shoot down MH 370. The basis for the theory? Two Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft were operating in the vicinity. And an amateur sleuth analyzed satellite photos of what was claimed to be a debris field in the waters of the South China Sea that corroborated this.

Aside from the conspiracy required for such a diabolical plot, the theory ignores the fact that pieces of MH 370 were found on the beaches of African islands far from the South China Sea. Additionally, AWACS aircraft direct fighter jets toward an aggressor and do not engage themselves. So, where did the fighters depart from?

This docuseries would have received higher marks had the conspiracy theories been analytically disputed on air. But if you enjoy good quality cinematography, well-edited B-roll, and melodrama, then by all means tune in for about two hours. If you want credible answers to this inconceivable 21st century mystery, you’ll probably have to wait until the actual wreckage is found.

My apologies to 239 families.

This column first appeared in the July 2023/Issue 939 print edition of FLYING.

The post MH 370: The One That Disappeared appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In June 2000, near the Yukon River in the state’s southwestern corner, a Cessna 337 crashed shortly after takeoff, killing one such pilot.

The airstrip near the remote town of Marshall then consisted of 1,940 feet of hard gravel surface, 30 feet wide, 90 feet above sea level. The wind was calm, the sky clear, the landscape illuminated by the late-evening twilight of the Alaskan midsummer.

There was one witness, not of the crash itself, but of the events that preceded it. The starter motor on the rear engine had failed. The pilot’s companion offered to fly him somewhere to get a replacement, but the pilot, who had logged 600 hours in the 337 and said that he had done single-engine takeoffs in it before, was determined to take off using just the front engine. The pilot and his companion paced out a distance on the runway, and the pilot said that if he was not airborne by that point, he would abort the takeoff.

His companion then watched from beside the runway as the Cessna accelerated. Its nosewheel was lifting off as it passed the abort point. The airplane climbed to about 50 feet, the wings rocked slightly, and it then disappeared behind a low hill. Satisfied that the pilot was safely on his way, the other man left the airport. An hour later, he learned that the pilot had not arrived.

The airplane and the pilot’s body were later recovered from a small lake not far from the runway. The landing gear was retracted, the flaps set at the 1/3 position.

The 337 was equipped with a Robertson STOL kit. The handbook for the conversion recommends a special maximum-performance takeoff procedure. It is to set 2/3 flaps, lift the nose at 44 kias, climb at 56 kias to clear obstacles, then accelerate to 87 kias before reducing the flaps to 1/3 and retracting the gear. Blue-line—that is, single engine best rate of climb—speed is 87 kias at gross weight, and is the same for the Robertson conversion and the stock 337.

The airplane was relatively light. The National Transportation Safety Board calculated that it weighed 3,462 pounds, but that included an implausible allowance of 108 pounds for oil, evidently the result of confusing quarts with gallons. The likely actual takeoff weight would have been below 3,400 pounds.

The Cessna manual gives single-engine rates of climb, at a weight of 4,000 pounds, of 425 fpm with the front engine out and 340 fpm with the rear engine out. (When the rear propeller is not operating, there is excess drag due to separated flow on the relatively blunt rear cowling. The Robertson kit includes some aerodynamic mods to reduce that drag.) Cessna’s rate of climb figures apply at the blue line speed and assume a feathered prop on the dead engine. The propeller of the accident airplane was not feathered, however, because in order for a propeller to feather, it must be windmilling, and it’s pretty certain that the airplane never got to windmilling speed.

The single-engine rate of climb diminishes rapidly at lower than blue-line airspeeds. If the airplane climbs 340 fpm at 87 kias, it will climb only 200 fpm at 60. That is why one is well advised to accelerate promptly to the blue-line speed when taking off in any multiengine airplane.

Neither Robertson nor Cessna published any data or recommendations concerning single-engine takeoffs; in fact, the FAA eventually forbade them. POH guidance for engine-out emergencies assumes that the engine failure occurs after the airplane becomes airborne. The Cessna manual, however, does provide this admonitory note:

“The landing gear should not be retracted until all immediate obstacles are cleared, regardless of which engine is out… Airplane drag with the landing gear doors opened and the gear partially extended is greater than the drag with the gear fully extended.”

The manual cites a 240-fpm reduction in blue-line climb rate with the gear in transit and a dead rear engine. It does not specify what the penalty for a stopped, unfeathered propeller would be. But it is very probable that with the gear in transit, a stationary unfeathered prop, and a low airspeed, the vertical speed would be reduced to zero or less.

We don’t know at what indicated speed the pilot rotated, only that he lifted the nosewheel at the agreed abort point. Presumably he then became airborne. By establishing an abort point on the runway, however, the pilot had, in effect, set up the conditions for a short-field takeoff. Such a takeoff implied a low rotation speed and possibly quite a lot of flaps.

With only half the expected power available, however, the short-field strategy was not ideal. A higher rotation speed and a cleaner configuration would have been preferable. An airplane airborne out of ground effect at low speed accelerates with difficulty. Obviously, the problem is far worse when half the installed power is missing. The way to avoid that situation is to delay rotation until you have plenty of speed and to use little or no flaps, because flaps add drag. At sea level, a 3,400-pound airplane with a 210-hp engine and a constant-speed prop can comfortably get airborne without flaps in 1,900 feet; there was no need to use the special capabilities conferred by the Robertson conversion. In fact, it would have been better to delay rotating until almost the end of the runway.

The NTSB concluded that the accident had been the result of an inadvertent stall, citing as well the “improper retraction of the landing gear” and the pilot’s “overconfidence in the airplane’s ability.” It seems likely that a stall occurred, since, if the airplane had merely failed to climb, the pilot might have ditched it under control in the lake and very possibly survived. (The pilot seemingly did survive the impact, although with serious injuries; the official cause of death was drowning.)

In my opinion, the pilot’s confidence in the airplane was not misplaced. Very probably, it could have made the takeoff successfully if only the pilot had used the full length of the runway and then delayed retracting the landing gear until he reached the blue-line speed. The terrain ahead was low and flat; any rate of climb at all would have been sufficient. By setting an abort point, as if the main concern were the possibility that the front engine would fail, the pilot had inadvertently stacked the deck against himself.

This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or to reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in the June 2023/Issue 938 edition of FLYING magazine.

The post A Skymaster Taking Off on One Engine? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

About the Report

The data in the digital report is updated on a rolling, 30-day cycle, providing the most current snapshot of general aviation safety performance. The report is always about a year or two behind as it relies on the completion of investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and their probable cause. It can take a year or more for the NTSB to conclude investigations.

According to the report, now in its 33rd year of release, there has been an increase in total accidents. In 2020 there were 1,050, compared to 1,124 in 2021. Breaking down the information  further showed there was a decrease in the total  accidents that took place during landings. However, the number of these events that resulted in fatalities increased slightly.

This was not the only disappointing statistic, noted Robert Geske, AOPA Air Safety Institute manager of aviation safety analysis. Geske cited the increase in the noncommercial helicopter accident rate, which rose following two years of decline.

“We are also disappointed to see the lethality rate for weather accidents remain steady at an average of eight per year despite continual efforts to address this area,” Geske said.

Mechanical accidents saw an increase overall but a decrease in fatalities.

Using the Report to Improve Safety

To get the most out of the report, pilots, especially instructors, can review the data to determine what areas of flight are prone to accidents and focus on improving performance. For example, the knowledge that most accidents happen during landing might inspire the pilot to spend more time on their landing proficiency.

• READ MORE: Aviation Safety Report Offers Blueprint During Flight Instruction

Access the report here.

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Aviation software and safety technology firm Skyryse this week announced it completed the world’s first fully automated autorotation procedure for an emergency landing—a feat certified by Guinness World Records. The flight took place on July 22 with a Skyryse-equipped Robinson R66 single-engine helicopter.

“Every year, more than 400 people lose their lives in general aviation accidents just in the United States alone,” said Mark Groden, founder and CEO of Skyryse. “Fully automated autorotation is just one example of how our technology will bring a commercial grade of safety and beyond to general aviation.”

Skyryse said it has completed “dozens” of automated autorotations. But until a few months ago, none were completely human-free. That changed in July, when the Skyrise-equipped R66 descended gently from altitude to the ground at the company’s Los Angeles-area flight test and performance facility. The helicopter’s two pilots simply sat back and watched.

Skyryse says its goal is to save lives when the engine cuts by bringing commercial-level safety to GA. The company’s autorotation technology is one of many safety features included in its universal cockpit (formerly called FlightOS) that will come standard on all Skyryse technology-equipped aircraft.

According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), noncommercial helicopter accidents have held relatively steady over the past decade at around 80 to 100 per year. While more common than other aviation accidents, that figure is still relatively low. Perhaps the most high-profile case is the tragic death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven other passengers aboard a Sikorsky S-76B that went down near Los Angeles in 2020.

But per the AOPA, 76 of the 87 noncommercial helicopter accidents in the U.S. in 2021—about 87 percent—were pilot-related. Maneuvering and rotorcraft aerodynamics were cited as the cause for nearly half of them.

Though July’s autorotation used a helicopter, Skyryse said its system could be equipped on any aircraft. The startup claims it has the first and only solution that works with the pilot to manage complex emergency procedures, such as engine failure, using a “reimagined” human-machine interface. The two leading causes of GA accidents between 2012 and 2021 according to the National Transportation Safety Board? Powerplant failure and loss of control in flight.

How Automated Autorotation Works

In the rare case of an emergency engine failure, Skyryse wants to take the pressure off the pilot’s plate.

In a manual autorotation, there are typically four steps. The first and most pivotal is the entry, which includes three maneuvers that must be performed in quick succession: down collective, aft cyclic, and pedal input. If the engine fails, a pilot has only about two seconds to get the collective down—otherwise, drag can cause the blade to stall, removing lift entirely.

“If you did nothing, the rotor would stop, and the aircraft would fall out of the sky like a rock,” said Skyryse test pilot Jason Trask.

Next is the glide phase, during which the pilot needs to maintain air speed, trim, and rpm, making constant, tiny adjustments. Then comes the flare, where the pilot pulls the aft cyclic to slow the aircraft down, leveling it as it approaches the ground. 

And finally, there’s the landing: a pullup on the collective and the application of pedal inputs to keep the aircraft in trim, both at the same time. It’s an oft-practiced procedure in rotorcraft training because of the necessity to get it right.

With its built-in-house, redundant flight controls and suite of sensors, the Skyryse system can recognize power failures as they happen. This kicks off a series of automated procedures: lowering pitch, aligning the nose, maintaining level flight, completing the flare maneuver, and landing at the pilot’s desired location. Throughout all of this, the pilot will press a single button.

As of June, Skyryrse has been running a daily flight test campaign with its retrofitted R66, which follows testing with a piston-powered Robinson R44 since 2018. The turbine-powered R66 is the design the company plans to use to achieve an FAA supplemental type certification for its universal cockpit.

In February, Skyryse’s system reached 100 percent means of compliance with the FAA, which the company said marked a significant advance in its certification. Ground and flight testing represent the next major hurdles.

In March, Skyryse said it plans to sell a retrofitted R66 as the first single-pilot, fly-by-wire, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft with IFR certification and capabilities. In its view—and that of many competitors in the space—IFR will be essential for keeping urban air mobility (UAM) aircraft in the air. The firm said Thursday that it expects to unveil the first production helicopter equipped with its tech early next year.

And last month, Skyryse announced the delivery of the first Airbus H130 helicopter from partner Air Methods. It will be integrated with Skyryse tech as part of a 2022 partnership to retrofit 400 rotorcraft and fixed-wing aircraft. Air Methods’ fleet also includes single-engine helicopters such as the Airbus H125 and Eurocopter EC130 and AS350, as well as fixed-wing designs such as the Pilatus PC-12.

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