Wow! Wish he'd traded airplanes with me before he made this flight.

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief ... 385&akey=1

Gump

I remember that horrible crash. I'm not usually in that much of a hurry to get home from a vacation.

WX didn't sound that bad, especially an airplane that capable. He was just overwhelmed when he shouldn't have been. And with family aboard, what a nightmare their last few moments.

Gump

Pretty hot machine for a 800 hr pilot with 35 in that make and model. Probably could have afforded to have some pro guidance for a few more hours. Sad.

GumpAir wrote:WX didn't sound that bad, especially an airplane that capable. He was just overwhelmed when he shouldn't have been. And with family aboard, what a nightmare their last few moments.

Gump

Yup.. the pilot /father, had WAY more money then sense.......

The son went out the back of the fuselage at about 21,000 feet, fell for several minutes, probably alive the whole time, and landed a few miles from the wreckage...... One hell of a way to die....

NTSB did report on the cause. Failure to maintain control in IMC, and lack of experience.

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief ... 4234&key=1

SA Maule wrote:The ntsb just like all other investigative boards will always take the course of least resistance, that means blame the pilot, because it is easy. The pilot is dead he can't give his version of events, there might have been a structural failure, a component failure, his AP might have packed up, the servos might have tripped, the glass cockpit might have gone dead, we will never know. The only thing that is absolutely sure is that the manufacturers will never admit liability in any shape or form

Oh yeah...... Time to open up another bag of popcorn and recline the LazyBoy

Have been the subject of some ntsb discovery processes. They are more thorough than FSDO and not as quick to blame the pilot.
The PC12 is built very strong... and yes, easy to fly. In VMC conditions. The lack of IFR time and experience with the autopilot was a dangerous combination. I have taught countless owners of high dollar airplanes... that are too busy to read the manuals that come with things like autopilots, FMS/GPS. One of the simplest activities I suggest always... is get a ground power unit and sit in the hangar with it.
Run through all the modes, switches.... flight plans etc. Alone or with a CFI looking over your shoulder. No gas burned... just time invested.
Getting task saturated in IMC is easy... when motion is involved as well.
Less time spent watching monday night football.... and more time delving into the particulars of your avionics... will keep you alive.
Just reading an attitude indicator and holding wings level should be possible for any IFR rated pilot. Sadly, we see it is not in cases like this tragedy. RIP to the family who just went on vacation...

Sad is right, and unfortunately an all too frequent occurance.

Low time instrument pilots who never were truly proficient except to pass a check ride, and even higher time guys who were dependent on auto-pilots to keep themselves upright, have only a slight advantage over non-IFR pilots once they enter IMC and have to hand fly.

Add an inop autopilot and a high performance airplane, and you'll end up like this poor guy. 300+ KTS and in a spiral till parts start shedding.

This is why when I was working up north in our "pretend VFR" conditions daily, I made a firm point of flying at least one IFR trip a week completely partial panel. With all the equipment failures we had from gyros and extreme cold, being able to keep wings upright, especially in white-out conditions, saved my bacon more times than I can count.

Task saturation will kill you dead, unless you practice to proficiency and keep your brain freed up for the important stuff.

Gump

SA Maule, first it was "wait for NTSB before we speculate". NTSB weighed in and now you "speculate" that NTSB short-cut the process and somehow it's the manufacturer's fault? Wow, you got there quick. Are you one who specializes in product liability lawsuits?

SA Maule wrote:...800 hrs are plenty for that plane, it is not complex at all, 35 on type plus he went through proper ground school..

With all due respect, I have serious issues with this statement.

During my furlough from the majors, I flew a PC-12 for 6 months or so - not nearly enough to even consider myself 'very good', but certainly enough to be proficient (we flew it out of a 2100' strip). I've also spent nearly seven years training others in the TBM-700/850/900. I'm a relatively high time airline guy, a vast majority of which is turbine time. I'm a true airplane nut and have flown everything I can get my hands on. Even so, at the six month mark in the PC-12 I was just getting to the point where I felt like I was getting it figured out. Not VFR level comfortable, but truly IFR, single pilot proficient. I still wasn't very good by my standards, but at least I was getting proficient. It takes time - I don't care how good someone is.

Yes the PC-12 is a very easy airplane to fly, but to suggest that someone with 800TT, almost no turbine time and 35 hours in type is 'plenty for that plane' is absurd. This isn't a VFR Maule or 180, it's a 270KT, 31,000', pressurized, known-ice, IFR single pilot turbine powered airplane. In my experience, it's a several hundred hour learning curve before most feel truly proficient in *any* new-to-them turbine aircraft. My interactions with well over a hundred turbine aircraft owners confirms this. I know it certainly was for me, and I have a lot of time in similar and better performing airplanes.

The accident rate also confirms this - in the TBM world, over 60% of the accidents occurred in the first 150 hours. A full 75% of the accidents occurred in the first two years of ownership (63% in year one alone). Of all of the hull losses in that fleet only *two* had any mechanical anomaly at all (neither should have been fatal). The rest were 100% pilot induced.

Please don't propgate the myth that just because an airplane is seemingly easy to fly, one can skip over or take for granted the several hundred hours of time it takes to become profient in it. There are a lot of dead pilots, several of whom I knew, that would still be here had they truly understood this.

Amen.

SA Maule, as a retired airline guy, if a pilot can't trim up an airplane and fly on instruments including unfolding and reading a chart while flying for a couple of hours without an autopilot they should not go into the clouds. To rely on a glass cockpit or an autopilot or even a simple vacuum gyro which may fail without the ability continue to insure the safe outcome of the flight though an alternate means, in this case pilot skills developed though training and experience is unsafe. Not being able to do this shows a dependance on technology rather than understanding of the level of responsibility when acting as PIC. As for an engine fire being the cause of a crash, in a multiengine aircraft something as simple an engine fire which does not burn through the wing, a primary control system, or result in the explosion of a fuel tank resulting in either of those, if properly identified and secured is nothing more than an engine failure and for a properly trained and competent pilot should be no more than an inconvenience. I know that there are reduced levels of proficiency required for private pilots but would you really want your family members to ride with a PIC who could not do either of these task. Being PIC is a privilege paid for with training and experience and with it brings an equally great level of responsibility to ensure the safety of those who intrust their safety to you.

Tim

SA Maule wrote:Case in point. Tower report to pilot he has an engine fire, pilot shut down the wrong engine, plane crash with total loss of life. Board finds cause of crash pilot error........ When All was said and done finding is set aside, cause of accident was engine fire..... Pilot shutting down wrong engine was contributory.and not the cause. Someone has to be the voice for the pilot who cannot talk for himself

If the pilot had shut down the engine that was on fire instead of his only good engine, might not have been an accident? If that was the case it seams like the pilot was responsible.

^^^ I agree with you 100% Terry.

I never told you guys what happens after you "Just Buy a Maule"

Big difference in lawyer logic vs pilot logic.

What's the old truism....

If ATC fucks up, the pilot dies.
If the mechanic fucks up, the pilot dies.
And, if the pilot fucks up, the pilot dies.

Can't hand fly if needed in IMC, the pilot has no one to blame but himself, and he alone (and his pax) pays the ultimate price.

Shut down the wrong engine because of a mechanic induced fire, same thing. Sue the shit out of the mechanic once safely on the ground, but the pilot is 100% responsible to get there to do the suing. No one else is gonna climb on up there to help him.

Gump

SA Maule wrote:And if there were no geese in the sky capt sullenberger wouldn't have had to dump his Boeing in the Hudson, an accident is NEVER a single event, it is the sum of a string of events, and to simply put everything down to pilot error, lack of experience or some other blame attributed to the pilot is short sighted.
Everything made by man will eventually fail

I agree that eveything made by man will eventually fail. But I disagree with everything else you've said in this thread. Sure its never a single event, but when major events, like shutting down the wrong engine, are the cause of the pilot, us other pilots need to see that and be willing to learn from those events. When I slid my plane through a fence, was it my fault or the fact that there was snow on the short grass strip I was on? Sure I could blame it on the snow but that wouldn't teach anybody anything. It was my fault. I admit it. If a controller tells me to shut down my right engine because its on fire and I shut down the left engine, its my fault, not the right engines fault.

SA Maule wrote:And if there were no geese in the sky capt sullenberger wouldn't have had to dump his Boeing in the Hudson, an accident is NEVER a single event, it is the sum of a string of events, and to simply put everything down to pilot error, lack of experience or some other blame attributed to the pilot is short sighted.
Everything made by man will eventually fail

Sullenberger, if that's how you spell it, was flying an Airbus….Fly by Wire wizardry with fly by wire engines… code for "we don't need a pilot".
If he was "Wheeling" a Boeing, he probably would have landed back at Le Garbage or Kennedy.

237

The pilot may not have started the chain of events which resulted in the crash but he could have prevented it by shutting down the correct engine and returning for an uneventful landing. Instead the pilot shut down the wrong engine aggravating the situation. The PIC is task with intervening to correct a unsafe situation and insure the safe, successful completion of the flight. The judge or jury may have been convinced the airplane crashed because of the fire, but the pilots peers, pilots standing around in hallways drinking coffee still believe, and rightly so, that the airplane crashed because the pilot shut down the wrong engine. As far as autopilots failing and glass panels going black, if a pilot does not feel they can safely make the flight with out the autopilot they should not begin a flight assuming it will keep operating. If he can not control the airplane on the standby instruments how can he insure the safe completion of the flight if the glass panel fails during the flight. Again with the privilege of being PIC comes the responsibility of saying I am not qualified to make this flight. Being PIC requires stepping up and taking personal responsibility for your choices, it is not to be taken lightly. I told guys I flew with, the PIC can delegate authority, not responsibility.

Tim