Let’s start over - Mooney caravan incident

[Yetti]

On 7/21/2021 at 10:17 PM, Becca said:

Not entirely trying to resurrect this thread - but someone mentioned there was going to be a forum at Osh on lessons learned from the midair.  Can someone tell me what the title of it is so I can find it in the program?  Thanks!

As relayed to me by Navy Cmdr.

Rule 1 of formation flying "Don't hit the lead"

Rule number two.  Refer to Rule number one.

[ragedracer1977]

On 7/21/2021 at 10:17 PM, Becca said:

Not entirely trying to resurrect this thread - but someone mentioned there was going to be a forum at Osh on lessons learned from the midair.  Can someone tell me what the title of it is so I can find it in the program?  Thanks!

14:30-15:45 - Ruminations of a Midair Survivor by Larry "Joker" Brennan at EAA Forum Stage 11 - Deltahawk Engines

Monday July 26

[carusoam]

2 hours ago, ragedracer1977 said:

14:30-15:45 - Ruminations of a Midair Survivor by Larry "Joker" Brennan at EAA Forum Stage 11 - Deltahawk Engines

Monday July 26

Seeing if @N9201A is around…

-a-

[Becca]

So I went to the presentation and have some ruminations on the ruminations ..

I learned a few tidbits:

1. There wasn’t a lot of specifics about what happened.  It was really, as titled, a lot of “rumination” regarding the Swiss cheese model of accident analysis.  But certainly included a lot of ruminations about potential organizational contributions to the midair.  These included things ranging from keeping sponsors happy to rapid growth to geographic spread of participants.  
2. There is video the midair! Have I missed this posted somewhere on the internet before?  Apparently it is being shown at Mooney caravan clinics.  I wished it was clearer and wonder if NTSB enhanced it at all would love to see it.  (My observations - only watching video twice so I would defer to people who really analyzed it - is it was a very slow relative motion event, thus it didn’t change my mind about having a hard time believing unexpected wake turbulence was a principal cause of how the trailing pilot ended up in front of his lead.)
3. The ppt briefing given pre flight (either printed or verbal, I could not tell which) was missing the page about blind calls.
4. It was not mentioned in the presentation at all (something that seemed like a weird thing to omit), so I asked an open ended question in front of the audience about the accident reports suggesting that neither pilot knew they had a midair before landing and seeing the damage.  The presenter (who was the lead pilot who’s wing was damaged) and his copilot had the opportunity to fully explain themselves to the floor. The response to my question:  it was a low relative velocity event, so he did not feel the impact.  He pointed to the midair that recently happened in Centennial Colorado as an example of not noticing either - possibly even suggesting this is just normal for a midair not to notice.  (I think he must have had a mistaken impression that Swearingen pilot in that accident, given his cool calm badassery taxiing off the runway, didn’t notice that he had been in a midair.  But I am pretty sure everything I read his he did notice something happened even if he didn’t have line of site on the colliding aircraft, and declared an emergency immediately after it happened, it’s just that he didn’t realize how badly he was damaged.  And of course the other Cirrus pilot noticed because he pulled his chute.). 

After - in the interests of friendly dialog and accompanied by friends who participate in the caravan - I attempted to introduce myself to the presenter.   Unfortunately, the conversation went south fast.  Apparently, he has the mistaken impression that I am just a lifelong caravan critic that will never be happy with how this was handled.  You can go back through my 10 years of MS posts, but before 2019 I frequently expressed interest in doing the caravan. My concerns with going were always personal logistical/timing ones, something Byron and I had hoped to one day overcome those and do the caravan with everyone.  We have many friends that do the caravan and think it’s an important way of bringing the community together.  We join the post caravan BBQ nearly every year In the N40 and have enjoyed the good times.

Anyway, I expressed my concern that I learned some new facts here at the presentation that I hadn’t heard elsewhere.  I got the caravan usual old response: you don’t participate in the caravan, if you had come to clinics we would have told you.  Then I got accused of spreading rumors on the internet contrary to these secret facts I don’t have access to without coming to the clinics.  Basically it was the same circular reasoning we see play out here on MS for the last 2 years. 

Trying to get back from the emotional defensiveness to the conversation, I said well I have a few specific questions and in answer to the questions I learned the following:

• the tail pilot did have the clinic training prior to participating in the caravan despite rumors to the contrary (this was double confirmed by two other caravan participants that were more friendly after the conversation.).
• the NTSB either did or didn’t interview both pilots I couldn’t really tell (it was presented more in the form of challenging question to explain how little I knew “do you even know if the NTSB talked to us?” “No, I’m curious did they?” “See you don’t even know that! How can you possibly have an informed opinion?!”)
• The Accident pilot insists with some passion that he did not feel the accident nor did he notice the damage to the wing until after he landed.  Unfortunately he was not open to the suggestion that it’s odd or surprising that he didn’t notice - basically any question on this subject at all amounted to me calling him a liar and that I lacked the basic necessary understanding of a low momentum collision between two light aircraft traveling at a similar velocity if I even contemplated the problem.  (As an aside, I have two engineering degrees, and worked on a certain spacecraft investigation that was crippled by its own internal organizational declarations about the energy involved in collision with foam that required an external independent evaluation before coming to grips with what happened).  
• He stated he didn’t notice the wing damage until landing because after the near midair, he was joining up on the wing of another pilot, and his eyes were focused on that plane the whole time and so he never looked out his window at the damaged wing.  He stated if he knew he had a compromised airplane he would definitely have landed, so there’s no way he would have continued on if he knew his wing was like this.
• My personal observations in reflecting on this story: Get-there-itis and adrenaline do all sorts of things to aeronautical decision making and memory that don’t make sense in retrospect. 
• Unfortunately the ruminations didn’t include any thoughts about “how caravan flying can make you so tunnel visioned on following your lead pilot that you and your copilot don’t notice your wing has been bashed in either when it happens or for the next 10-30? minutes of flight to Oshkosh, and that’s a dangerous situational awareness problem too,” so we couldn’t really continue this conversation in any meaningful way after that.  

The presenter was very very adamant I come back online and relay what I learned.  It seems a little odd me sharing my impressions of what he said, instead of him doing so here in his own words.  Frankly, if the presenter or the caravan wants to share information, they know how to post in MooneySpace (and the caravan even has its own web page!).  In fact, all these things have apparently been shared at caravan clinics, so any of the dozens of pilots who participated in those could chime in too (do they make you swear on a secret handshake not to comment or something?).  The solution if you are concerned with internet rumors?  Reply with something that dispels the rumor not just “that’s not what happened but you’ll have to trust me unless you spend your weekend at our formation clinic...”

Personally I think the “only caravan people are entitled to the details” is a poor PR strategy to attract new participants to the caravan, and until they fix their organizational culture to value transparency and invite independent evaluation of incidents (rather than keeping it all in-house), I think they still have a potential safety problem that will come knocking on their door one day.

The other thing I have been wondering since I left the forum - if one takes this narrative at face value and the pilots thought a near midair happened, combined with a pilot losing sight of his lead without making the appropriate blind calls... what should you do next?  I mean this is all definitely arm chair quarterbacking now - we all can look back and wish we had done something differently - but I don’t think forming up and continuing in formation after that is necessarily the right thing to do.  You now have a known safety problem with your formation.  Perhaps breaking off, debriefing, and taking stock of your situation would be better.  Curious, what’s the caravan near miss procedure?  I guess I have to go to a clinic to find out...

Edited July 28, 2021 by Becca

[Yetti]

First Rule of Fight Club

[Yetti]

[Yetti]

It makes you want to kind of get a wing section and see how many lbs of force it takes to bend the leading edge like that.

[Hank]

12 minutes ago, Yetti said:

It makes you want to kind of get a wing section and see how many lbs of force it takes to bend the leading edge like that.

Please don't use mine!!

[carusoam]

14 hours ago, Yetti said:

It makes you want to kind of get a wing section and see how many lbs of force it takes to bend the leading edge like that.

We could ask Alan…. He has bashed up too many wings….

The aluminum is pretty thin, and it’s shape gives it its strength…

You can push on it with your hands as suggested by the POH for the M20R…

It also suggests pushing on the prop, near the hub as well…. 

 

There is a lot at stake…

There is plenty of effort by dozens of pilots to run a safe Caravan formation flying event…

They spend a good part of the year getting ready for it… training for it… communicating about it… improving it… and sharing it…

 

Because there is a lot at stake… a business doing this activity would be replete with safety advisers and lawyers and a cash flow to support it…

 

What are we expecting to come out if this metal tragedy…?

1) A review of what happened…

2) A list of changes of improvements to avoid this circumstance…

3) dissemination of the information and training for the the new formators…

 

 

What happens when we find everything was done correctly and ordinary human beings are not deemed worthy of formation flying?

What gets axed next…?

 

My take on formation flying…

Flying in VFR conditions…

Paying attention to your wingman…

Not letting up for a half hour…

It is very similar to scanning instruments in IMC without an AP…

High work load, continuous, from beginning to end… adding speed and power to a precise level…

 

There was enough weather issues going on at the time that all kinds of reasoning for being out of position certainly can apply…

To know what happened…

Somebody would have to report it… or have caught a video of it… or both.

 

What is at stake…

Is it public information?

Some of this could be personal?

 

 

Becca, It has to be challenging to be so aware of the laws of physics, and aviation, and investigations… yet not be able to help…

 

It was interesting to spend time with as many of the 100 people in the caravan… that year… as possible…

What I found interesting…. Many like to fly with the same people as wing men….

It requires a certain amount of trust… to be just a little bit more comfortable with each other…

 

I never handled any of the controls during the flight… my pilot was busy every second of it keeping in position.  I tried to lighten some of the load by supplying a frequency or turning a knob…

My job was to watch our third wingman…. As a noob… which didn’t go as smoothly as I thought it would…. There was plenty of relative motion going on… and drift in 3D…. And muscle tension, from looking over a shoulder for that long…

 

It was a great demonstration of what committed Mooney pilots can achieve… the whole program was put together in a very professional format… it felt like corporate training covering all the details…

It came from another source to begin with and has been adapted over the years…. As some formators belong to various local groups…

 

We have probably seen as much as we are ever going to see…

Sounds like the tragedy is… they collectively still don’t know what happened…. There might be one person that knows… but… if he didn’t realize what was going on… how is he going to remember what happened…?

The tragedy of being human…

We are fortunate we didn’t lose anyone…

The rule about not hitting lead… is pretty serious.

Do whatever it takes to follow that rule…

There are several other rules to help meet the first rule…

 

Formation flying is like CRM on steroids… not much different than ordinary flying… just more of it, coming at you at a higher rate…

Eyes out of the cockpit at all times… scanning things inside the cockpit is possible but very limited…

 

I’m looking forward to watching this incident get smaller in the rear view mirror…

It is important to remember it…

But it is also important to not dwell on it…

 

When it comes to aviation accidents… I’d really like to know what caused Mark’s engine to quit…

I don’t think we’ll get an answer to that one… either…

Or did I forget?  It’s been so long…

PP thoughts only, not an accident investigator…

best regards,

-a-

[chriscalandro]

Again, I’ll point to the reason why we are on and needed a second thread. The original appears to be gone, but if it wasn’t, that would tell you everything you needed to know about this situation. 
 

having been a relatively new Mooney owner at the time I was interested in learning formation skills and maybe joining the fly in. This was a major irreversible turn off and a additional hash mark on realizing how absolutely ridiculous some people in this group are. 

[Yetti]

Why have an place to discuss Accidents and Safety if we are not going to discuss Accidents and Safety?

[ragedracer1977]

I was at the forum at OSH.  

I thought the incident was described as well as could be. No one intended to have a midair. The mistake was wing getting in front of lead.  Shit happens.  The discussion was never intended to be a break down of the incident, but rather to address the things that led up to it, and what can be done better to prevent it.

I think there was a purposefully confrontational nature presented by the poster above.  You can't call someone a liar and expect not to get pushback. You also admittedly are biased. You said you were anti caravan and were not interested in changing your mind. 

As a somewhat experienced formation flyer in multiple airframes, I can 100% believe neither pilot knew there had been a collision.  I know your partner thinks hitting an eagle at 300 knots is equivalent to hitting a rudder at 3 knots, but it isn't.  

Not only was I at the forum, but I was in the flight where the collision took place. A few elements ahead. One thing I can tell you is that it was bumpy. Very bumpy. I was flying wing on the right side of my lead. Not only did I never see the ground, I never saw my daughter sitting in the right seat. My eyes were on my lead 100% of the time.  My right wing could have fallen off, and as long as the plane was flying normally, I never would have noticed. 

I thought the presentation was well done, addressed issues that may have led up to it, and ways to do it better. 

Formation flying is riskier than flying alone. Flying is riskier than driving. Driving is riskier than walking.  We all have a level of risk we're willing to accept.  Those of us that fly formation have accepted that risk, just as you have accepted the risk of flying instead of driving.

 

[ragedracer1977]

Perhaps Larry can add this to his presentation.  

Are you aware that the thunderbirds had a mid air collision during a show, hard enough to knock parts off, and didn't even know it? 

Are they lying too?

https://www.f-16.net/f-16-news-article1440.html

[carusoam]

Nice details Brice.

I invited Larry to stop by if able…

Best regards,

-a-

[thinwing]

On 5/18/2021 at 9:45 AM, MooneyMitch said:

And once again, the infamous ASS U ME, raises it head! 

this