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

[1980Mooney]

1 minute ago, Parker_Woodruff said:

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

Wow. So are we paying about $1,000-$1,500+ more for insurance than a Cessna 182 (fixed gear) of equal value?

[LANCECASPER]

Just now, 1980Mooney said:

Wow. So are we paying about $1,000-$1,500+ more for insurance than a Cessna 182 (fixed gear) of equal value?

I’m guessing 182s have their own set of baked in repairs on the premium. A lot of lower time 182 pilots come down hard on the nose wheel and the firewall gets dented. It’s an expensive repair.

[wombat]

@Parker_Woodruff If I understand this right, 1/3 to 1/2 of all payout dollars for Mooney policies are for gear-up landings? 

That is a shocking amount!       Could you offer a policy that excludes gear-up landings for people like @GeeBeeand @1980Mooney?  (Or maybe me?  I might decide to self-insure against gear-up landings if it reduces my premium by 33% to 50%)

[Parker_Woodruff]

53 minutes ago, wombat said:

 

That is a shocking amount!       Could you offer a policy that excludes gear-up landings for people like @GeeBeeand @1980Mooney?  (Or maybe me?  I might decide to self-insure against gear-up landings if it reduces my premium by 33% to 50%)

No insurance company would want to offer this for a couple reasons.  The closest attempt I've seen is a $10,000 gear-related deductible.  And I referred to the portion of the physical damage premium, not the entire premium.

[GeeBee]

2 hours ago, wombat said:

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?  

Simple math. The average policy for a long body like this is circa 4000-5000/yr. A gear up is 100K for this kind of airplane. So it takes 100% of the premiums of 20-25 airplanes just to cover one gear up.  Now add profit margin, overhead and taxes. Now trash me.

(It also makes Parker's 1/3 to 1/2 a very accurate number)

[GeeBee]

Numbers are difficult things to overcome and they don't lie.

[wombat]

34 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

Numbers are difficult things to overcome and they don't lie.

Let's work this out....

 

If the average gear-up costs $100 to pay out, and the average premium is $4k a year, and the average overhead (profit margin, overhead, taxes, etc) for the insurance companies is 50% in order for the gear-up payouts to cost 33% of all payouts from premiums, that means out of every 100 insured Mooneys, we need X gear-ups a year.

 

For each 'premium' of $4k, the insurance company is paying out $2k.  Of that $2k, we are assuming that $0.66k is going towards gear-up payments.  So that means 0.66% of all Mooneys are having a gear-up every year, or 1 out of 150.

Does everyone think this is a reasonable number?  Every year, at least 1 out of every 150 Mooneys lands gear-up?   Personally, I think this is a bit higher than reality.   How many flying Mooneys are there in the US?   How many Mooney gear-ups are there in the US?

These are assumptions that are on the conservative end for both percentage paid out to gear-ups and insurance overhead.   Any choices for those that are otherwise would result in a requirement for a higher percentage of gear-ups per Mooney.  

Although I didn't actually separate the physical damage portion of the premium from the liability portion, which would make the required percentage of Mooneys gear-ups per year lower.   I leave that as an exercise for the student. 

 

@Parker_Woodruff   Can you elaborate on the reasons?   The only reason I'm able to come up with is that there isn't enough volume to be worth it and the variability at those low numbers makes that line of business too unpredictable.    And out of curiosity, are you separating 'gear up' payouts from similar incidents like 'gear failure' payouts?   

 

 

Then ALSO, I'd like to mention that just sitting here complaining about it isn't going to do any of us any good.  Does anyone have ANY ideas for how to make this better?    Prohibit flying Mooneys until you have at least 1000 hours of Mooney time?   Require a type rating?  Specialized training?   Recurrent training?  Additional hardware such as a landing height system or voice alert?  It seems like Mooney gear-ups cost about $666 per plane per year, so any training requirements should cost less than that in order to make financial sense.  Or if we want to add hardware, about $3k cost installed will have a 5 year payback if it's 100% effective in preventing gear-ups.

Edited July 17 by wombat
Added note at the end that even if gear-ups are costing a lot, this doesn't actually help prevent them.

[Hank]

30 minutes ago, wombat said:

Does anyone have ANY ideas for how to make this better?    Prohibit flying Mooneys until you have at least 1000 hours of Mooney time?   Require a type rating?  Specialized training?   Recurrent training?  Additional hardware such as a landing height system or voice alert?

That will work! I'm around 980 Mooney hours, but if I can't fly my Mooney, how do I get those last 20 hours time logged? And how do we ever get any new Mooney pilots?

The brand will be gone in just 2-3 decades, and we can only sell to each other. At least we'd have lots of spare parts, from the planes currently owned by pilots with less than 1000 Mooney hours, who can no longer fly their Mooneys . . . . But boy, would the accident rate and number of gear-ups go way down!!

P.S.--NOTHING involving people, or equipment built, maintained and operated by people, will ever be 100% effective.

"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool."

[Echo]

7 hours 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. 

I have booted for way less of a personal attack. What a pri$& r u

[GeeBee]

Training and especially training in checklist discipline.

26 years ago we had a problem. Our 737s would set their stab trim on the before push checklist, then if they had to de-ice they set the trim full nose down to prevent fluid build up. The problem was there was no re-check of the stab trim except on the "Post de-icing checklist" which was not a mandatory checklist. We knew we had a problem because I stopped two aircraft initiating roll with the stab trim full down and observed another abort takeoff while I was landing.  Our FOQA data showed about 12 a month. I suggested a final trim check on the before take off checklist. Boeing reps and the Chief Line Check pilot said it was un-necessary and would cause a pricey change in the manuals, checklists and training. They also pointed out the take-off warning horn would catch the problem. I pointed out that the warning horn has been known to fail (DAL 1141 at DFW) where the micro switch, just like on the Mooney throttle for the gear, failed to sound the horn. Result was 14 dead. Finally that if the warning horn sounded for an undesirable aircraft state, that was the sound of failure of airmanship.

Train to use the checklist every landing, and create a desired state call at 500'. Mine is "gear down, flaps down, speed brakes down on path, on speed. If there are distractions such as another airplane cuts in front of you or mechanical issue, Go-around, do not try to salvage the situation. Reset, then run the routine. 

[EricJ]

1 hour ago, GeeBee said:

Numbers are difficult things to overcome and they don't lie.

Routinely misinterpreted by people, though.

[Echo]

If you forget gear when a voice in your headset is saying check gear!  Check Gear!  You may want to stop flying retractable gear aircraft 

[Echo]

4 hours ago, wombat said:

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?  

Training does NOT eliminate human element. 

[wombat]

@Echo I agree that no amount of training will 'fix' this 100%.  It can help, but not totally fix.   Regarding your comment about the voice in your headset....  Mostly I agree with you, but back to the human factor, I've seen a lot of women able to ignore their children saying "hey mom... mom...  MOM!!!!   MMMOOOMMMM!!!!" and not even notice it was going on.     People will be people, no matter how hard we try to stop that from being the case.     But I've been considering getting a voice-based gear warning system.  My plane beeps so much anyway I can easily imagine myself hearing more beeping and ignoring it.

 

@GeeBee You are suggesting what basically amounts to more training, but following a different/better procedure than most people follow.   Personally I use GUMPS (Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Prop) but find that's actually missing the cowl flaps, which I'd like to have open at that point.    It's more of a challenge when switching between multiple aircraft types.  Some things apply to some aircraft and not others and I personally find it difficult to repeatedly follow a procedure that doesn't apply most of the time.   Most of my landings these days are still in fixed gear aircraft and it's hard to keep pointing at the gear lever that doesn't exist and say 'gear down'.   The same with cowl flaps and with prop controls on fixed-pitch prop planes.  

[MikeOH]

7 hours ago, Parker_Woodruff said:

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

@Parker_Woodruff

Based on one of your earlier posts I am curious if your 1/3 to 1/2 estimate is ONLY for gear-ups or includes various runway 'incidents'; i.e., does it include all runway loss of control incidents/accidents.  I'm trying to separate out costs of gear-ups vs. RLOCs.  My opinion is that the causes for gear-ups are NOT the same as other RLOC accidents.  Point being the solution(s) to improve each may well be different.

[EricJ]

33 minutes ago, wombat said:

@GeeBee You are suggesting what basically amounts to more training, but following a different/better procedure than most people follow.   Personally I use GUMPS (Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Prop) but find that's actually missing the cowl flaps, which I'd like to have open at that point.    It's more of a challenge when switching between multiple aircraft types.  Some things apply to some aircraft and not others and I personally find it difficult to repeatedly follow a procedure that doesn't apply most of the time.   Most of my landings these days are still in fixed gear aircraft and it's hard to keep pointing at the gear lever that doesn't exist and say 'gear down'.   The same with cowl flaps and with prop controls on fixed-pitch prop planes.  

I've never liked GUMPS because I always want to put "gear" where the 'g' is, and that screws it all up, unless you do the Gear, Undercarriage, Make sure the gear is down, Probably should check the gear again...etc., version.

So now I used PUFFS,  Power, Undercarriage, Fuel, Flaps, Seatbelts.

Power includes everything for power settings, prop forward if ready, throttle and mixture where you want them, any turbo controls where you want them, etc.

Undercarriage is the gear check.

Fuel - best tank, pump set, etc.

Flaps - I include both approach wing flaps and cowl flaps here.

Seatbelts, can include switches if you want, etc.

I just find the flow better and I don't jam my mental gears on 'G' doesn't stand for Gear, plus it has an F for flaps, which can include cowl flaps like you suggest.    I agree that that needs to be in there, which is one of the reasons I like this better.

[MikeOH]

3 hours ago, Echo said:

Training does NOT eliminate human element. 

But it is completely silly to think training does NOT help; as opposed to shaming which is pretty damn ineffective.

[GeeBee]

The easiest way to bring down RLOC is to be stabilized, configured, on speed, on path. Which is part of my 500' call. There is a reason why airlines require the same at 1000' otherwise, go around.

[Echo]

1 hour ago, Aviationist said:

You are also certainly in the category of people in this group who have questionable mental stability. 
 

That’s not an attack or an insult, it’s a well qualified and documented observation. 

Compliment coming from you

[wombat]

4 hours ago, Hank said:

That will work! I'm around 980 Mooney hours, but if I can't fly my Mooney, how do I get those last 20 hours time logged? And how do we ever get any new Mooney pilots?

The brand will be gone in just 2-3 decades, and we can only sell to each other. At least we'd have lots of spare parts, from the planes currently owned by pilots with less than 1000 Mooney hours, who can no longer fly their Mooneys . . . . But boy, would the accident rate and number of gear-ups go way down!!

P.S.--NOTHING involving people, or equipment built, maintained and operated by people, will ever be 100% effective.

"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool."

If we really wanted to do that sort of thing, I'd say the first 1000 hours of Mooney time have to be with a pilot that already has 1000 hours or more of Mooney time.    Pretty lucrative for those of us that already have that!  Oh wait, I've only got about 500 hours of Mooney time!!!  NOOooooo!!!!

[wombat]

29 minutes ago, EricJ said:

I've never liked GUMPS because I always want to put "gear" where the 'g' is, and that screws it all up, unless you do the Gear, Undercarriage, Make sure the gear is down, Probably should check the gear again...etc., version.

So now I used PUFFS,  Power, Undercarriage, Fuel, Flaps, Seatbelts.

I got stuck on "Gear" being part of GUMPS for a while, but after a while it became natural for the G to stand for Gas.

Personally I don't think I need a 'seatbelts' item because I put my seatbelt (and shoulder harness, if the aircraft is equipped) on before starting the engine, and leave it on the whole flight(*)

Should we as a Mooney community or as part of the 'Light GA' pilot community standardize on something do you think?  Or should we have a couple of options (GUMPS, PUFFS, GUMPS-S, etc) to choose from?

 

I'd like to have a printed list for each plane I fly regularly that matches both the aircraft and my personal inclination.  But maybe each aircraft should have a pre-landing checklist printed somewhere that is easy to reference?  I think my Mooney has one, but I never use it.

 

(*) Using a gatorade bottle for in-flight relief sometimes requires some shimmying and work.

[EricJ]

56 minutes ago, wombat said:

Should we as a Mooney community or as part of the 'Light GA' pilot community standardize on something do you think?  Or should we have a couple of options (GUMPS, PUFFS, GUMPS-S, etc) to choose from?

I think everybody should find what works best for them and do that.   It's not practical to think that any one method will be optimal for everybody.   

 

[wombat]

1 hour ago, EricJ said:

I think everybody should find what works best for them and do that.   It's not practical to think that any one method will be optimal for everybody.   

 

I think that's where we are now.   But it's causing enough gear-ups that it's a financial burden on some of us.   Or at least enough of one that it's worth complaining about. 

Do you think we should do anything different from what we do now, or should we just accept this rate of gear-up accidents as part of the cost of flying with the level of freedom we have?

[MikeOH]

32 minutes ago, wombat said:

I think that's where we are now.   But it's causing enough gear-ups that it's a financial burden on some of us.   Or at least enough of one that it's worth complaining about. 

Do you think we should do anything different from what we do now, or should we just accept this rate of gear-up accidents as part of the cost of flying with the level of freedom we have?

Is where we are now really due to a difference in which pre-landing checklist is being used?  I guess I'm not sure the issue is GUMPS, or PUFF, or whatever.  That is, I doubt standardizing is going to fix the problem.

I don't want to admit defeat and flat out agree that 'it is what it is', but it sure seems that way,  unfortunately.

I don't know if Mooneys are more prone to gear-ups than other retracts.  If so, I'd sure want to understand what is so different that would explain it.  IMO, the gear-up phenomenon is unique in aircraft incidents...there is some psychology at work that is fundamentally different than other accident chains.  It isn't really even a 'chain' of events; more of a memory failure.

 Personally, I have five points in my approach to an airport environment where I go through my 'gear-down and locked' verification process.  I do this because I've accepted that I may forget or be distracted at different places in an unpredictable fashion each and every time I enter the airport area.  By having multiple checkpoints I hope to alleviate a gear-up. Occasionally I've missed one, or more, but NOT all of them...

[EricJ]

31 minutes ago, wombat said:

I think that's where we are now.   But it's causing enough gear-ups that it's a financial burden on some of us.   Or at least enough of one that it's worth complaining about. 

Do you think we should do anything different from what we do now, or should we just accept this rate of gear-up accidents as part of the cost of flying with the level of freedom we have?

As long as there are humans in the loop, there will be failures.  Increased automation helps in many cases, like the automated reminders, etc., but everybody gets to manage their own risks.