pjsny78s

[bnicolette]

Fellow Mooniacs and Mooneyspace “family”

This may be inappropriate but I can’t stop thinking about this and I’m going to use this public forum with my Mooney friends to air my thoughts.  After all, I’ve spent the last year on this forum and have gotten to know a lot of you, well your personalities anyhow.  This site really is a pseudo family to some degree and I know we all enjoy reading all the posts for knowledge, entertainment, whatever.  It is pretty great that on a given topic we can probably guess how some of the other members are going to respond.  I mean we have some great posters and I enjoy reading all of them.  We have our earnest folks, professional views, professors, trouble makers, comedians, etc..  It is just a great mix and I personally enjoy all of you.  Yep even you “allsmiles” (you better get your butt to Cape May today by the way).  It’s just awesome!!!  I can almost picture all of us in some big auditorium and everybody is getting their turn at the podium.

 

We all first heard of Patrick when he first came on Mooneyspace with his infamous post about a bad experience he had with a certain MSC.  A lot of people jumped on him for relaying an experience and throwing that MSC under the bus.  But he rebounded from that and contributed in a positive way ever since.  You could tell from just about every post he made what a humble, likable individual this was.  He was a major part of our Mooneyspace family.  He did a lot of flying that most of us only dream of doing with our beloved airplanes.  He had to have been a competent pilot as there is NO way that he went all the places he did without incident from just “dumb luck”.  None of us are above making the one mistake that will get us hurt, although hopefully we always stack the deck in our favor and hope for the best.

 

I really got to know Patrick over the last six months and we became good friends.  As we all know he wanted to become a professional pilot.  My first face to face meeting with him was at Lancaster, PA for one of our NJMP fly-ins.  We immediately hit it off and because I was currently doing what he wanted to do in aviation, we never had a shortage of conversation topics.  He was extremely inquisitive about everything and loved learning anything that was going to get him closer to his goal of professional piloting.  I had to smile when he told me I was his new “best friend” and he wanted his first flight in the commercial world of aviation to be with me.  Patrick was a “simple” guy and wanted nothing more than friendship out of everybody he met.  The first time he was at our home we all went out to dinner and I think Patrick interacted with my kids more than me or my wife.  My kids didn’t want him to leave and were begging him to spend the night so they could hang out with him the next day.  If my kids grow up to be half as polite and respectful of other people as Patrick was, I will be a proud papa.  When I told my oldest (8) what had happened to Patrick he broke down in tears.  His first words were, I hope he was a Christian so I can see him again in heaven.

 

I think I did Patrick a huge disservice by not being more critical of some of the things he did with his airplane.  But nothing he did was beyond the limitations of his Mooney, their just things that I would not personally do.  I used to joke with him about flying over the rockies at night, blasting off in nasty wx, etc....., and I can’t help but think I should have spread more warnings about that stuff instead of for lack of a better word “validating” what he was doing by joking about it!  Patrick put me on a “pedestal” and I should have been a better mentor.  The night that my boys wanted him to stay the night, it was raining incredibly hard.  It was not convective but nonetheless, nasty weather.  It was also late at night.  I pleaded with Patrick to just sleep on the couch and go home the next day but he would not do it.  So I don’t know that even if I would have laid down more caution that it would have changed anything.  He loved to fly that airplane and trusted it with I think almost no reservations.

 

I am having so much trouble with this because:

Patrick texted me Wednesday afternoon.  I included pictures of our conversation.  I don’t own a crystal ball but I’m still having trouble getting past the fact that if I would have let them come over that night they wouldn’t have been at that other airport.

 

I hope I wasn’t out of line with this post.  I just wanted to share some thoughts with the Mooneyspace “regulars”.  We’ll all miss you pjsny78.

 

[aviatoreb]

Thank you for sharing Brett.  Please don't beat yourself up and know that you may not have been able to change the future and this is not your fault even a little bit.

[gregwatts]

Quote: aviatoreb

Thank you for sharing Brett. Please don't beat yourself up and know that you may not have been able to change the future and this is not your fault even a little bit.

[jnisley]

 

Thanks Brett for sharing this post, last August my instructor/friend Dale Stearns and his IFR student were killed in a night IFR training session, flying for me hasn't been the same since. (Dale was my instructor from introductory flight to IFR checkride and beyond)

We can beat ourselves up over the "should haves" and "what ifs" but learning from these happenings are what we need to focus on.

 

[KSMooniac]

Thanks for your post, Brett.  I've only met a couple of Mooneyspacers in person so far, but I know I would enjoy the company of any and all, and after reading all of the stories about Patrick I feel like I missed out on knowing him!  It sounds like he was a passionate aviator with his sights set high, and it is such a tragedy that this happened to him.

Sooner or later in flying we all have to struggle with a go/no-go decision and weigh all of the factors before choosing what to do.  Hearing some of the 2nd-hand tales about him flying all over in all kinds of weather makes me want to speculate, but I won't.  I still think about a "go" decision I made one night returning from my very first Angel Flight mission when I got stuck on the back side of a line of storms that stretched through 3 states.  I got to about 50 miles from home, but that line was between me and home, so I landed short and enjoyed a leisurely dinner while waiting for the situation to improve.  It was a Sunday night, and of course I needed to work on Monday, so that was in the back of my mind.  I watched the radar in the FBO and when the heavy stuff finally started to break apart, I thought I would be able to get through, so I went ahead and filed and launched, at night, into moderate IMC with several storms in the area.  I got into the clouds about 1200 AGL and got thrown around quite a bit, and had a big lightning show lighting up the sky above me.  I had XM and could see the gaps in the storms, but 2 minutes of that treatment was enough to make me turn around and go back.   I ended up hitching a ride with the tower controller to a hotel, and he was nice enough to run by Walmart so I could get contact lens supplies and a tooth brush.  I made the right decision on my 2nd try, and learned a lot that night.  Now I never plan to do IMC at night as a general rule, and especially if there is active weather.  I'm not a pro, and never have to go, and I have to keep reminding myself that.  I have a very capable plane, I do my homework, and like to think I have good judgment...which gets better and more conservative as I get more experience.

I've read many places that we never have the time to make all of the mistakes ourselves, so we need to learn what we can from each accident like this and use it to develop our own skills and judgment.  I will anxiously await the survivor's story and NTSB report on this one.  It does hit very close to home.

[FloridaMan]

I flew last week on a Mooney owned by a retired 747 captain who has over 30,000 hours of multi time. Two things stood out from flying with him. The first is how good he was at the controls. I have never flown with anyone who flew the way he did. He flew a tight pattern and entered downwind abeam the end of the runway at 171kts and landed on the numbers. The plane does not have speed brakes. The second was how conservative he was in making decisions. There was weather moving in. He opted no-go until it was long past and he flew slow to give it space on our way to our destination. I was thinking that I may not have waited so long to have gone. His advice was, "If there's every any doubt, don't go." 

[jezzie]

One of my best friends who obtained his PPL with me and of which we have shared many enjoyable hours flying and talking aviation and subsequently went on to become a Captain on 757's has imparted many words of wisdom. This one has been the most memorable,

"IT IS BETTER TO HAVE TURNED BACK AS A RESULT OF A GOOD DECISION THAN TO HAVE GOTTEN THROUGH WITH LUCK"

[aviatoreb]

Quote: jnisley

Thanks Brett for sharing this post, last August my instructor/friend Dale Stearns and his IFR student were killed in a night IFR training session, flying for me hasn't been the same since. (Dale was my instructor from introductory flight to IFR checkride and beyond)

We can beat ourselves up over the "should haves" and "what ifs" but learning from these happenings are what we need to focus on.

[aviatoreb]

Patrick's plane is still posted for sale on controller.  I wonder if someone should contact them to have it taken down, and how we (I) could do that.

[Cruiser]

Brett,

You are a great guy, I hope we get to meet someday soon. But you need to turn this around and ask yourself how would you feel if they had come to your place and then the same thing happened?

We will all have to wait on the NTSB to get a cause for this accident. Most likely the location had nothing to do with it.

We all take risks, some greater than others.

We all have skills, some better than others.

We all use judgement, some wiser than others.

We all love to fly, some more than others.

Blue skies, Patrick.

[Parker_Woodruff]

Quote: aviatoreb

Patrick's plane is still posted for sale on controller.  I wonder if someone should contact them to have it taken down, and how we (I) could do that.

[rbridges]

Could someone post or send me a PM about what happened?  I didn't know anything happened until clicking on this thread.

 

nevermind.  I found the other thread.  That's terrible.

[bnicolette]

Anybody that would like to send their condolences to Patrick's Mother/Family may do so at:

Mrs. Sheridan

15 Tennessee Avenue

Long Beach, NY  11561

 

[aviatoreb]

Quote: Bnicolette

Anybody that would like to send their condolences to Patrick's Mother/Family may do so at:

Mrs. Sheridan

15 Tennessee Avenue

Long Beach, NY  11561

 

 

[MooneyMitch]

Will do.  Thank you.

[John Pleisse]

Nice read Brett.....

Judgement can always exceed ability, but rarely the opposite.

 

[Cris]

Brett and all- there was no "one" reason for this tragedy. It is a chain of events known as an accident chain. It could have been ingrained in the decision making process or a mechanical issue. At some point we will know. If this were the military there would be a safety stand down and review. It was not solely due to one moment on one dark night. Had Patrick elected not to launch perhaps a differant outcome would have ensued but it might have simply taken place on the next flight. Nothing that you would have done could have changed this outcome. There were two other decision makers in that aircraft. Presumable it was a shared responsiblity.  

Patrick was living his dream. He had set his sights on a professional career as a pilot. To accomplish that objective Patrick enrolled in an Aviation college in his 30's, purchased a complex A/C 95' M20J and flew as much as he could in all types of sceanarios. Once when I asked him why he flew all over the US as he did in sometimes marginal conditions he said it was what would get him to his objective. As is often stated "good judgement comes from bad decisions" especially aviation judgement. I'm hear to say that I have experienced terrible iceing conditions and work hard to avoid any such conditions. I have landed in 40 knot head winds and 25 knot cross winds and not had an incident but almost... As a result I now land at a differant airport with more favorable runways. I have even landed with minimum fuel load at night in an A/C rental that I thought had 60 gal tanks but really only had 48 gal. I now check the POH every time. I have lived thru the bad decisions. Maybe I was lucky. My point is that flying is not inherently dangerous but it is terrible unforgiving. Those that have reinforced bad decisions with favorable results often continue to push the envelope with disaster as an end product. Do I think that happened to Patrick? I really do not know but I think not. Patrick was conscious of the responsiblity he had to others. He was also due to become a graduate of a respected aviation college program which by definition taught safety first. He had two other pilots on board who must have had some input into the decision making process. My vote is mechanical at least in part. I know from another on this Board who shared with me the fact that Patrick's J did not have the same T/O & climb performance as this members M20J. They actually flew together in each others A/C to compare on the same day and conditions. Now it remains to be seen if Patrick did anything with that information. This lack of performance could be a prop governor or a bad tach giving errouneos readings. I'm sure that will come out during the NTSB review. Patrick was a good guy but not very knowledgeable about the mechanics of his A/C from my discussions with him. He basically went to the AP with a blank check book. That might also have entered into this tragedy. After all if you say keep me safe to the AP and I'll pay whatever. You expect value for your maintenance dollar. Typically this will come down to pilot error, mechanical error or a combination thereof but I for one will wait and see. Patrick we will keep you in our prayers.