Gear Up at KCVH on July 8, Third Major in 12 years For This Airplane

[donkaye]

I looked up the owner.  It looks like he's based at Watsonville.  I don't know him.  His plane is literally 10 flying minutes from me.  It would have been in his best interest to have contacted me.  After his plane is repaired, he still should.

[MikeOH]

6 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

As a very rich man once said to me. "From little pennies big dollars fall". 

A pithy aphorism, no doubt.

I prefer the application of the Pareto principle.  If the data shows most of the claims with Mooneys are related to runway 'incidents' vs. gear-ups then that's where the focus should be (the vital few).

[GeeBee]

1 minute ago, MikeOH said:

A pithy aphorism, no doubt.

I prefer the application of the Pareto principle.  If the data shows most of the claims with Mooneys are related to runway 'incidents' vs. gear-ups then that's where the focus should be (the vital few).

Focus by who? Training? Sure. Insurance companies don't control the "focus" they only react with pricing.

[MikeOH]

11 minutes ago, donkaye said:

In my opinion better training including bounced landing recovery training and a willingness to get that instruction.  It takes an instructor with lots of Mooney time to be willing to do that type of training.

Now that sounds like an actual solution (not for gear-ups) that might actually reduce insurance premiums via reduction in the bulk of claims (assumes Parker's comments of runway 'incidents' represent where the money is going).  Question is, how to cajole, encourage, force(?) that training upon Mooney pilots?  Otherwise, we get nowhere.

[MikeOH]

2 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

Focus by who? Training? Sure. Insurance companies don't control the "focus" they only react with pricing.

Look, you're one of the guys bemoaning your premiums and blaming pilots of a lesser god...now, you're the first to criticize an actual, tangible, solution?  Yeah, maybe insurance companies should mandate training, or encourage it via premium reduction for type specific training by accredited Mooney CFIs.

[McMooney]

plane doesnt' look all that banged up, hope they get back in the air soon.

[GeeBee]

2 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

Look, you're one of the guys bemoaning your premiums and blaming pilots of a lesser god...now, you're the first to criticize an actual, tangible, solution?  Yeah, maybe insurance companies should mandate training, or encourage it via premium reduction for type specific training by accredited Mooney CFIs.

I would like to see a higher financial bias towards pilots who work hard on proficiency by the insurance companies. As it is now, the discount does not even cover the costs of training. Those who minimally train should have to open an artery and hand over a first born to get coverage. 

[MikeOH]

12 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

I would like to see a higher financial bias towards pilots who work hard on proficiency by the insurance companies. As it is now, the discount does not even cover the costs of training. Those who minimally train should have to open an artery and hand over a first born to get coverage. 

Hmm, if discounts don't even cover costs of training that is concerning; implication is that the pay back really isn't there.  Insurance companies aren't stupid, if they could save money with that strategy I would think they would!

So, your "open an artery and hand over a first born" would be applied to EVERYONE, right?  Even yourself, right? An egalitarian system, if you will.  Or, are you envisioning more of an elitism model where you are off the hook for said training?

[GeeBee]

12 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

So, your "open an artery and hand over a first born" would be applied to EVERYONE, right?  Even yourself, right? An egalitarian system, if you will.  Or, are you envisioning more of an elitism model where you are off the hook for said training?

Absolutely. One of the reasons I attend MPPT every year and I have a BATD simulator in my home.

[MikeOH]

12 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

Absolutely. One of the reasons I attend MPPT every year and I have a BATD simulator in my home.

Which BATD?

[PT20J]

Basic Aviation Training Device. In the FAA parlance, you cannot call it a simulator (unless you are Microsoft which copyrighted "Flight Simulator") unless it has a motion base and replicates the flight characteristics of a particular airplane.

[PT20J]

I think the FAA got it wrong. Instead or requiring that the gear switch have the shape of a wheel, it should have required it to have the shape of a dollar sign.

[MikeOH]

1 hour ago, PT20J said:

Basic Aviation Training Device. In the FAA parlance, you cannot call it a simulator (unless you are Microsoft which copyrighted "Flight Simulator") unless it has a motion base and replicates the flight characteristics of a particular airplane.

Yes. I was asking "WHICH ONE" he has as I'm interested in setting one up.

[GeeBee]

6 hours ago, MikeOH said:

Yes. I was asking "WHICH ONE" he has as I'm interested in setting one up.

I have the Redbird TD2-G. It faithfully simulates a G1000 flight deck. I have the three screen option.

https://simulators.redbirdflight.com/products/td2

[GeeBee]

10 hours ago, Aviationist said:

if it isn’t your airplane there is no logical reason for you to care, comment, or influence the owners habits or ownership abilities. It affects you in no way whatsoever, and nothing you have said so far is accurate. 

Except I am in the same airspace and operating on the same airports. How do I know when I am taxing back on the parallel that the guy landing is going to keep his airplane under control? A modicum of expectation of competence. Look at those two accidents in Durango. Both RLOC by the same pilot at the same airport with the same airplane.  How many times does it have to happen before you become concerned? Once you have been bore sighted while waiting for takeoff by another aircraft out of control because of poor piloting, you start to understand proficiency of others affects you in every way. While we are not innocents, innocents are in the same airspace as well in the form of airliners with paying passengers and charters.

 

[toto]

7 hours ago, MikeOH said:

Yes. I was asking "WHICH ONE" he has as I'm interested in setting one up.

I’ve been watching these for a long time too. I rent a TD2 at a local flight school for $25/hour but I would love to have a BATD at home. Just can’t bring myself to spend 8+ grand on one

 

[Parker_Woodruff]

15 hours ago, 1980Mooney said:

You make it sound like all airplane insurance policies are painted with the same brush.  Retracts, fixed gear, fast, slow, piston, turboprop, jet - makes no difference.  Everything is in the same risk pool and tied to payouts on 737Max and bizjet crash/writeoffs.

 

And I guess the cost of gear-up repair is a big nothing burger to the insurance companies. - what do you reckon an Acclaim gear-up costs knowdays? - 90,000?  $100,000 more?

When discussing a $5,000 policy back in 2020:

I haven't seen the bills for many longbody gear ups.  But I've seen a lot for 4-cylinder Mooneys.  It's about $55,000 to $72,000 for a "clean" gear up on a 4 cylinder these days.

It used to be that a 4-cylinder Mooney insured for $100,000 was pretty safe from being declared a total loss.  A plane insured for $100,000 isn't so safe from that these days...

I bet your $90K estimate on a longbody gear up is pretty close.

 

[201Mooniac]

2 hours ago, GeeBee said:

I have the Redbird TD2-G. It faithfully simulates a G1000 flight deck. I have the three screen option.

https://simulators.redbirdflight.com/products/td2

I use the same one and it is great for practicing IFR procedures.  I always pre-fly the instrument approachs to whatever airport I'm heading to next.  Since I really only use it for IFR practice, I went with the single screen option as I can never see anything until the runway pops up anyway.  The three screens does certainly look nice though.

[GeeBee]

1 hour ago, Aviationist said:

in this example this gear up aircraft is registered in CA and yours is based in GA. This event happened in Colorado and your last flight was between VA and GA.  
 

what airspace and airport exactly have you shared with this airplane or owner to compel you to use that as an argument to be so involved in someone else’s misfortune?

Or in fact does this have nothing to do with you and you are grasping for straws?

you look very active in the basic med topic, if you can’t pass a medical why should you be allowed to fly to the same airports and in the same airspace I’m allowed to?

I know of some padded rooms that will probably suit you very well, where nothing bad could ever happen to you.   It sounds like that is the best action plan for you. 
 

get over yourself. I’m sure you make, and have made plenty of mistakes yourself. 

What makes you think I cannot pass a "medical"? I assure you I could clear a First Class, but Basic med is cheaper, faster, has a longer duration and meets my operational needs.  Seems to be an ad hominem attack with no relationship to the question at hand in this thread. I don't know what I did to you, but you really seem bent on calling me names and throwing insults (padded room?) and otherwise demeaning me (in your eyes). If you know me, you know that does not work, just drags down this board. Sad you cannot debate without insults or impugnation.

[Parker_Woodruff]

1 hour ago, Aviationist said:

Parker,

what percentage would you say this particular incident has increased my insurance premium?

Basically none.  Gear ups are baked in to the rates already.  Unless there is a macro trend of gear ups per policy written, the the primary things affecting Mooneys will be repair costs, insurance market capacity, and the insurance company's operating expenses.

[Parker_Woodruff]

Unless the airframe is really exotic, insurance underwriters aren't making decisions based on one accident.

That same mentality leads to what most people here decry when discussing pilot age.  They all want to be the exception to underwriting's hesitancy at ages 70, 75, 80 (whatever the number and the circumstances).  But underwriters typically aren't going to make exceptions to the rule.

But you get in early (before age 70) and if they see ongoing flight of enough hours per year, they'll many times keep insuring that pilot because the want-to-be exception didn't just show up at their doorstep.  They starting making a good case for themselves 5 or 10 years before needing to be the exception.

 

[1980Mooney]

15 minutes ago, Parker_Woodruff said:

Basically none.  Gear ups are baked in to the rates already.  Unless there is a macro trend of gear ups per policy written, the the primary things affecting Mooneys will be repair costs, insurance market capacity, and the insurance company's operating expenses.

Perhaps the better question is:

- How much is “baked in” for Mooney incidents in the landing phase?  What percentage is our insurance higher because of the higher incidence of landing phase claims (I.e gear-ups, gear collapses, bounces that cause prop strike, porpoises that collapse the nose gear, excess speed/poor energy management due slippery wing cause runway excursions and overshoot, excess speed causing pilot to get behind the curve causing any of the above)

- A good comparison would be the cost of exactly the same coverage for

* $200,000 M20J vs $200,000 Cessna 182 fixed gear

* $275,000 M20K vs $275,000 Cessna Turbo 182 fixed gear

 

[wombat]

I'm with @Aviationist and @MikeOH on this topic, @GeeBee.   

What you are doing is not promoting safety in a meaningful way.   What you are doing is shaming other pilots for their mistakes and blaming your financial problems on them.   Come up with a plan that will result in a net gain for Mooney pilots.  Or maybe you should switch to an airframe that doesn't have this issue.

There have been other aircraft (and types of aircraft) that are notably hard to fly safely to the point that insurance companies and/or the FAA decided to take action to encourage and/or require additional training in order to make them 'safe enough' to insure or fly at all.  Examples:  MU2, R22, M46, and tailwheel airplanes.   And you might as well throw Cirrus into the mix too although for Cirrus the manufacturer is the one that decided that additional training was worthwhile.

 

How much additional training affects the risk of gear-up accidents is of course a major factor, but measuring that is a challenge.  For example the self-selection for additional training is also selecting the population that might be less prone to gear-up incidents to begin with.      People who choose to wear bike helmets have lower accident rates, even though bike helmets clearly do not prevent accidents.  

 

If 100% of Mooney pilots were to adopt anti-gear-up training every year, even if we assume this made the fleet have a lower gear-up rate, the net value might be negative, as the cost of the training could be larger than the reduction of cost of gear-up repairs/payouts.

 

@Parker_Woodruff We understand that the gear-up payouts are already integrated into premiums.   But how much of the premiums are used for gear-up payouts? This would include both repairs and hull value payouts. If we devised some training and a measurement that showed that our training reduced the probability of a gear-up by 100% (it's ridiculous, I know, but for the sake of the discussion it's easier if this training were perfectly effective), how much of a discount could someone get by participating and therefore eliminating the risk of a gear-up landing?  

[1980Mooney]

17 minutes ago, Aviationist said:

Interesting. That would mean that @GeeBee is wrong about ANOTHER bit of data. 
 

it would seem here that this thread was based completely on misinformation and an unhealthy obsession with other people’s property and ownership. 
 

But it’s MY comments that bring the board down…

I think @GeeBee’s comment and title of this topic highlight the epidemic of Mooney landing phase claims. This sad plane simply illustrates the tip of the iceberg. You yourself said “There is no requirement for a gear up to be reported to the FAA.” which proves the true rate of incidences and claims are higher than those reported in the FAA ASIAS (which no one wants to acknowledge or discuss). 

[Parker_Woodruff]

17 minutes ago, wombat said:

@Parker_Woodruff We understand that the gear-up payouts are already integrated into premiums.   But how much of the premiums are used for gear-up payouts? 

Just guessing...1/3 of the hull premium?  Maybe half?