J down in Oklahoma

[OR75]

Another sad event. with 3 fatalities.

 

Investigation will likely show that again it was preventable

 

 

http://www.asias.faa.gov/pls/apex/f?p=100:96:::::P96_ENTRY_DATE,P96_MAKE_NAME,P96_FATAL_FLG:08-APR-13,MOONEY

[FloridaMan]

http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_news/k-state-confirms-development-director-chris-gruber-aboard-plane-that-crashed-in-collinsville

 

That's the second crash in a year's time involving someone affiliated with Kansas State University. The Pilatus PC12 that went down in FL last year also was somehow affiliated. 

[KSMooniac]

Damn.

[mulro767]

"A piece of the plane was found about a mile from the crash site."  I'll be very interested to hear more about this.  

[Nathan Peterson]

Another sad day for General Aviation.

[PTK]

Another one?! This is unreal!

[romair]

apparently F model...but damn whats up with so many crashes!

[DaV8or]

apparently F model...but damn whats up with so many crashes!

 

You mean Mooney crashes, or piston GA crashes? If it's piston GA crashes, they happen just about one a day on average. Many just don't get a lot of media attention.

[DaV8or]

apparently F model...but damn whats up with so many crashes!

 

There are two reports on that link. The first is a M20F gear up in North Carolina and the other you have to scroll down and it's a J with 3 fatalities in Oklahoma.

[romair]

Mooneys...just off the top of my head recently - the one over Yosemite (not sure if they found the guy yet), the one in Angelfire (that was indeed just plain dumb), the one in Ohio (guy mentioned about having had a drink that day), the recent forced landing that left the pilot's mother dead, now this one, several gear up landings...have to admit, does not bolster confidence for a young pilot. these are all very recent crashes.

This is in light of me having found my "dual" magneto dangling in the accessory case probably a flight away from me becoming another statistic.

[DaV8or]

...have to admit, does not bolster confidence for a young pilot. these are all very recent crashes.

This is in light of me having found my "dual" magneto dangling in the accessory case probably a flight away from me becoming another statistic.

 

Doesn't help the confidence of us older pilots either. Flying is a higher risk than most of the other things in everyday life. Do what you can to minimize that risk. The first step is realizing that accidents can happen to anyone on any flight and try to plan accordingly.

 

The second half of reducing risk is what you recently learned, you need to be involved in your own plane's maintenance and inspect it again and again yourself. I don't care if Maxwell, Dugosh, LASAR, or the ghost of Al Mooney himself just finished working on your plane, you need to inspect the work yourself before flying it. I always ask that the cowl, or panels be left off for my inspection and it has saved me. Also find a shop or A&P that will allow owner assisted annuals and do it if you can. Demystify your plane and become intimate with it. It really helps I think.

 

I am a conservative and very cautious flyer. So far it has served me well.

[fantom]

How many of these accidents would have been avoided with new glass, yet another GPS, or a new paint job.

How about investing in regular, high quality, challenging, training. Maybe a BFR every quarter. Or an hour of dual with a good CFI every month. Not very glamorous, but along with hands on maintenance and dumping the can't happen to me ego, would reduce accidents dramatically.

IMHO really timid pilots usually have cause to worry.

[Marauder]

How many of these accidents would have been avoided with new glass, yet another GPS, or a new paint job.

How about investing in regular, high quality, challenging, training. Maybe a BFR every quarter. Or an hour of dual with a good CFI every month. Not very glamorous, but along with hands on maintenance and dumping the can't happen to me ego, would reduce accidents dramatically.

IMHO really timid pilots usually have cause to worry.

 

Right after I bought my Mooney I spent a fair amount of time looking at accident reports for Mooneys and in particular my Mooney type. I came to the conclusion that if I spent the money to maintain the airplane, maintain me and did nothing stupid, the risks were manageable. Move forward 3 years, I experienced a mechanical failure, in IMC and the reality of the risks became apparent. I HAD maintained the plane, I WAS doing recurrent training on a regular basis and I HADN'T done anything stupid -- it just happened.

 

I was fortunate that the failure wasn't catastrophic and I had MVFR below the deck. Landing/crashing a plane in north central PA in IMC was not going to have a favorable outcome.

 

What troubles me is that I constantly run into pilots with a cavalier attitude towards flying. You know the type, haven't flown all winter, blow air in the tires, jump start the plane and off they go for a 200 mile trip.

[mulro767]

How many of these accidents would have been avoided with new glass, yet another GPS, or a new paint job.

 

 

Please tell me how a new paint job or another GPS will help me avoid an accident?  I don't get that.

 

****Disregard, I reread your post and agree.  Spend money elsewhere.  Like training.

[jetdriven]

Pound for pound, training is the best bang for the buck, safety wise, going. Some 90% of accidents are pilot error. The airplane was capable of the operation but the pilot wasn't.  No amount of gizmos will overcome that. Cirrus pilots are still trying to understand that.

 

Your envelope should be nearly as big as the envelope of the airplane. Yet time and time again, I give BFR's to pilots who bank 15 degrees in the pattern and fly a 1 mile wide downwind, come in 20 knots over book speed, land halfway down the runway, with half flaps, then burn down the brakes and tires to stop before the end of a 6000 foot runway.  Before they run out of fuel, of course, because it burns 10 GPH, so they call it 15, and never land with less than 2 hours reserve although they switched tanks on final and no clue which tank has 8 gallons and which has 16, Necessitating 3 landing on an XC instead of one.

 

Because it "feels right".

 

All in the name of 'Conservative".   I challenge you folks to understand what that really means.

[OR75]

to be honest Byron, i don't understand what you really mean.

over time, most pilots i came across are capable of operating an aircraft more or less efficiently and that's fine. some of them are harder on the hardware than others and bend metal and that's fine because the consequences are minor. it is only metal. i am not one of those who call my plane "she".

the " on the ground decision making" part is what worries me.

[bumper]

OR75 said:
the " on the ground decision making" part is what worries me.       

 

  

Me too.

 

About 6 years ago, I remarked to the wife that it sure was a nice night to be on the ground, pitch black, embedded thunderstorms, low freezing level, freezing rain - - just nasty. In front of the fireplace was nice though. Next day I heard about a Cirrus pilot that iced up and augered in near SugarBowl trying to get from Reno to the Bay Area - - AOPA did a training film on that one.

[PTK]

As I have said on another thread, I believe that we have to change the status quo of pilot training. I propose we eliminate the VFR vs IFR distinction and train ALL pilots for the instrument rating. This will go a long way in improving safety. Not saying that instrument rated pilots don't make bad decisions but approx 60% of vfr accidents are stall/spin loss of control.

http://www.swaviator.com/html/issueSO02/Hangar91002.html

[Super Dave]

As I have said on another thread, I believe that we have to change the status quo of pilot training. I propose we eliminate the VFR vs IFR distinction and train ALL pilots for the instrument rating. This will go a long way in improving safety. Not saying that instrument rated pilots don't make bad decisions but approx 60% of vfr accidents are stall/spin loss of control.

http://www.swaviator.com/html/issueSO02/Hangar91002.html

I don't understand your point. First of all, the study uses data that is 14 to 19 years old. Secondly, looking at fatalities in pilot populations without considering something like hours flown per fatality or miles flown per fatality makes it difficult to draw any useful conclusions. Lastly, the study you cited actually reports a HIGHER fatality rate for instrument rated pilots both overall and in VMC.

[bumper]

I respectfully disagree. Not saying the PPL is adequate as is, there's room for imporvement no doubt. For one I'd include spin training again. But if you want to thin the herd and keep more people from from earning a pilot's license, requiring full-on instrument training as part of the PPL would certainly raise the price of admission.

 

I have an instrument training, though I'm not current. For me instrument was by far the most difficult rating to get, lots of study, work, and not all that intuitive (some of that may be a basic lack of apptitude for instrument flight on my part). Much more work than the PPL and glider rating both of which I really enjoyed, especially the glider rating.  

 

I agree the instrument rating makes one a better pilot. Earning it, more than the other ratings, gave me a huge sense of accomplishment.  

 

I read the report in your link. And through it I was a bit suspicious of the numbers . . . for one thing, there are more VFR pilots than IFR, so that should skew the numbers. Sure 'nuff, toward the end they account for that in the following paragraph . . . and guess what, the IFR pilots seem to have a slightly worse record in fatals per 100,000 hours than do VFR pilots in most areas *except* stall spin related accidents. Quote:

 

"In total (both VMC and IMC accidents), there were 67 and 58 fatal accidents involving VFR-rated and IFR-rated pilots respectively. However, in general aviation, VFR-rated pilots (258,749) outnumber their IFR-rated peers (171,309) (source: AOPA, www.aopa.org/whatsnew/stats/). Correcting for this increased presence of VFR-rated pilots, we calculated 26 fatal accidents per 100,000 VFR-rated and 34 fatal accidents per 100,000 IFR-rated pilots. The slightly higher rate for the IFR-trained pilots did not represent skewing of the data under the more strenuous demands of IMC, since a similar trend was evident under VMC conditions (16 and 21 fatal accidents per 100,000 VFR- and IFR-rated pilots respectively). Likewise, increased exposure of IFR-rated pilots, who generally have higher flight times than their VFR-rated counterparts, is unlikely to be the cause of the increased accident rate for the former group. Thus, for pilots with 200-1000 logged hours, the fatality rate was 9 VFR-rated pilots and 10 IFR-rated pilots per 100,000 pilots with the corresponding rating. Taken together, our findings, albeit with these aircraft, would suggest that while IFR-rated pilots do indeed have a greater control of the aircraft, this rating does not confer a lower fatal accident rate."

 

As an aside, I accidentally spun my Mooney during my PPL training. My instructor wanted to hear the stall warning horn on steady during MCA flight and asked for a 30 degree bank left turn (later I found the stall horn vane was misadjusted too close to stall). I was not coordinated and the ship went over the top, nose straight down at 3,000 feet over San Pablo bay (I swear a saw a death's head in the brown water below). I yelled, "Take the plane!", Pete did, and after about 3 turns we finally stopped rotating and gingerly pulled out of a very high speed dive. I'm guessing we lost the better part of 2000 feet.Scared the holy crap out of me. So scared I didn't want to fly my own plane, so asked for spin training right then. Rented a Cessna and sorted things out. There's a real good reason spins are prohibited in the Mooney. Lesson learned, it's most important to keep the ball centered approaching a Mooney stall. These 3 things together, low, slow, and uncoordinated will often be fatal.

 

.

[bumper]

Worth watching . . .

 

[DaV8or]

As an aside, I accidentally spun my Mooney during my PPL training. My instructor wanted to hear the stall warning horn on steady during MCA flight and asked for a 30 degree bank left turn (later I found the stall horn vane was misadjusted too close to stall). I was not coordinated and the ship went over the top, nose straight down at 3,000 feet over San Pablo bay (I swear a saw a death's head in the brown water below). I yelled, "Take the plane!", Pete did, and after about 3 turns we finally stopped rotating and gingerly pulled out of a very high speed dive. I'm guessing we lost the better part of 2000 feet.Scared the holy crap out of me. So scared I didn't want to fly my own plane, so asked for spin training right then. Rented a Cessna and sorted things out. There's a real good reason spins are prohibited in the Mooney. Lesson learned, it's most important to keep the ball centered approaching a Mooney stall.

 

So, basically you learned that if you had accidentally entered a spin in the traffic pattern, or traffic pattern altitude, the altitude where most stall/spin fatalities occur, you would be dead even with your Cessna spin training. Trust me, when someone accidentally enters a stall and then a spin, they are not looking to see that the ball is constantly centered. The fact that the test pilot for Mooney that had 25,000 hours and his name in most of our airframes logbook died in a stall/spin at pattern altitude tells me that all the spin training in the world isn't going to save us.

 

I know it's super wrong to agree with the FAA because they are part of big government and government does everything wrong, but I have to agree with their assessment. Spin training is wrong for the PPL. It kills students and instructors and it was proven to not really save anybody back in the good ol' days. A better idea might be to do what the military does- AOA indicators and instruction on how to use them.

 

How in the world did this thread creep this far? Was the original crash in this thread caused by a stall/spin? I guess I missed it.

[Super Dave]

How in the world did this thread creep this far?

At least this thread hasn't crept to politics... Oh, never mind....

[FloridaMan]

nevermind. I won't assist in further derailment. 

 

[jlunseth]

I agree on training.  I think it is important to constantly not simply maintain skills, but to improve.  I although think it is important. if you do regular dual training, to mix it up, do it with more than one instructor and in more than one setting.