Emir wrote:
this process in majority of the cases leads to stable and knowledgeable crew in the cockpit.
The airline training environment, at all levels, from ab-initio to annual reviews is 99%, and unsurprisingly, focused on…you guessed right: airline operations. It is thus 75% useless for anything outside the expected (if rare) situations, including the OP. And yes, attitude (personal-, as well as airplane-) is part of it.
Thread drift warning: my main criticism of such airline training environment is not the filtering of personality traits, which is rightly quite important, but the extreme focus on those specific situations as defined in approved syllabi, vs critical thinking. THis leaves pilots, especially on certain types, too much on their own when it comes to the extremely rare situations not trained for. BTW those are the situations I want a human pilot for, for all else AI is fine.
On the positive side, I have found some excellent instructors retired from airlines who are training ab-initio pilots, and who do stress critical thinking beyond the approved syllabus. I wish there were more of those.
Although comments with references abound, and unless I have missed it, no facts have been posted on the type of license or experience level of the pilot.
I don’t have any official data but what I can see from FB profile (doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality) he has flown a lot, many Alps crossings, he knew the route and the region, although it seems everything was VFR.
The FB photo of Herman Köning is a female. I can’t find the pilot profile.
When I do cost sharing flights (not “vols découverte” which are regulated differently) I only do it on the request of the club and I pay pro rata my share. Eg If I normally hire the club aircraft at €150 p/h I pay €50 p/h if there are 3 on board including myself.
The club deals with payment from the passengers. The club is subject to audits by the DGAC to ensure we are within the regulations regarding both cost sharing and vols découverte etc. eg Vols découverte are limited to a small percentage of the clubs annual hours. It was 8% but that may well have changed.
That’s the business end and potential passengers are informed of my experience and that it is my decision whether the flight should go ahead on a particular day or even if a flight would need to be curtailed for whatever reason.
Everything else is down to me as a pilot. My decisions are paramount. So the flight takes place just like any other flight and the decisions I make are the decisions I make based on my own experience as a PPL.
If I had trained as a CPL or ATPL I might make different decisions.
IMO in this case this pilot, on the surface appears to have made some bad decisions or perhaps I should say he made decisions I would not have made, I hope.
The cost sharing per se was legal and would have been ok.
All the flight would most probably have been legally ok, and no one would have bothered if it would not have ended in the tiny snowhole on the side of a mountain.
Now the spot is there and all are investigating. Authority might start to think about the development of this case and what to do in order to have less lives lost. That’s good, in principle.
As this guy stretched several legal regions (paid passengers, weather, payload of the plane, difficult route) to a far end it is exactly where the spot will focus at. And that is the reason why many here are a bit, well, upset, about the case because it might have consequences so that a flight like this could be prevented in the future.
I don’t see any difference in between education (PPL / CPL / IR / ATPL whatever). I never had the perception that a certain license dictated my behaviour, above all in light of risk.
For example, before having started my IR I did not enter clouds intentionally. That’s it. Why risk my life (that I really enjoy) for this, let aside the life of others? There’s always a plan B.
So the situation is not preventable, with no legal amendment whatsoever. So please, if any one of an authority was reading this thread (that is PROB99 happening already at the moment) don’t focus on restrictions. This is not the typical case and the pilot community as a whole is enough of a net to prevent the very most of these cases.
If I had trained as a CPL or ATPL I might make different decisions
I did train as a CPL (FAA, not EASA) and I can’t see how that would make any difference. I know how to fly lazy eights and chandelles, or at least I did once. I don’t think that would help. I once knew how to do crazy mental arithmetic to correct for crosswinds when navigating using NDBs, made less useful now since there aren’t any, nor aircraft equipped with receivers. For sure nobody taught me anything extra about not flying in IMC and icing, over mountain ranges. I think they assumed I could figure that out for myself.
Me the same – FAA CPL/IR originally.
The biggest factor I see in these “totally puzzling crashes” is that the pilot seemed to simply not know how to “get wx”. Yet this has been possible, and in common knowledge for those on the right GA social media, since probably 2005. Different sites in the old days; some pretty weird.
And those of us who have been in this game for a bit should fully understand this! Nobody, absolutely nobody, is teaching this. How many schools or instructors have ever heard of windy.com? Or meteox.com, sat24, etc?
In Europe, you can get a PPL, CPL, IR, and know absolutely nothing about this.
In Switzerland they seem to do a bit more for VFR pilots because many do “mountain flying” (which is canyon flying, using the GAFOR map AFAICT). They still get plenty of fatal crashes but no doubt far fewer than if you sent a load of non-CH pilots into the Alps.
We are taught that most fatal air accidents are the result of a series of bad decisions.
This guy obviously made at least1 bad decision too many. We can all speculate at the wrong decisions and we can debate rge legalities until the cows come home.
But this accident might just as well have happened if he carried out this flight alone.
Or then again perhaps not. Whilst arguing the legality or otherwise of this flight I think we need to ask ourselves are we learning something that should help us to avoid a similar end.
I posted earlier of a REX of a flight which happened on the edge of the Alps at a similar time. The pilot admits some bad decisions. Fortunately with a different outcome.
@Peter may wish to transfer this to another thread. I just thought it had some relevance here.
Description of the event:
Return flight from Puy-en-Velay on top to FL095. In front of me (southern sector) a milky layer seems to merge with the cloud mass that I am flying over. I decide to go down into what seems to me to be a thinner cover revealing the dark color of the ground. I told myself that if I was wrong I would turn around going back up to find the VMC conditions. But as soon as I enter the cloud mass (which is not thin) I find myself struggling to stabilize my vario. I refer to the maquette + ball, the vario and the altimeter but I do not use the horizon although present on board so I do not have attitude control. I have the impression of being caught in the aerology of the cloud and of being subjected to ascending/descending currents and I see the vario take strong values oscillating between +1000 and -2000 at full stop. I am losing altitude. I am in contact with Provence Info. I have already returned to IMC. Faced with my inability to stabilize my altitude, I announced a “loss of control”. Provence gives me complete freedom to evolve in the vertical and horizontal plane and communicates to me the safety altitude: 4200 feet. Thanks to the turn co ordinator I keep the wings flat. I don’t stall but I feel like I’m climbing when in descent and I decide to relax on the yoke. The engine noise seems to confirm my feelings. I see my speed – too high – and I reduce it to 2000 rpm. This reduces vertical oscillations. I lost around 3000 feet (FL075/FL045). At about 4500 feet I start to see the ground. I announce. Provence Info offers me guidance towards Carpentras (closer) or Avignon which has a field weather forecast with a ceiling of 2400 feet. I opt for Avignon. The flight is much less bumpy, I manage to control my attitude and my altitude. Provence communicates p me the safety altitudes: 3000 then 2000 feet. I’m going down on plan. 3 Nm from the field I can see the installations and I am transferred to Avignon. I found the VMC conditions in the Avignon CTR. I integrate and I settle down. I refuel. I leave via transit 1700 feet into Salon, under the layer. The end of the flight went smoothly and I landed in Aix.
Comment from the declarant:
At the base of bad decisions, in particular an optimism regarding the evolution of the weather made me undertake and continue this flight.
I had followed a blind flight awareness course (flight without visibility VSV) ¹with my instructor as well as two IFR initiations in the last 2 years. Despite this I did not use the artificial horizon, perhaps due to lack of practice. And if I had remembered the importance of keeping the wings horizontal, not having thought of using it deprived me of the only attitude control tool which would have allowed me to have a smooth action on the handle and to overreact less in relation to what seemed to me to be convective movements.
significant.
The pressure of the “destination goal” seems to have played a conscious or unconscious role.
A real danger took place during this flight, linked to the decision to leave, and the management of the flight and the choices made during the flight.
Summary of the action plan:
Corrective actions :
Re-evaluation of skills in preparing for a flight, and re-training in VSV and decision-making
Preventive actions :
Dissemination of this dangerous experience, for example, to all pilots
Antonio wrote:
The airline training environment, at all levels, from ab-initio to annual reviews is 99%, and unsurprisingly, focused on…you guessed right: airline operations. It is thus 75% useless for anything outside the expected (if rare) situations, including the OP. And yes, attitude (personal-, as well as airplane-) is part of it.
The reference to AB-initio flight training, rendering its potential more or less useless, unless it´s further fostered in an airline environment, does not make sense. As a matter of fact, the only license that is not issued as part of (most) AB-initio flight training courses is the private pilot license, which obviously is the most useless of any license (serious licenses 
) when it comes to, in my opinion, flying with any paying “passengers” and most certainly in the subject case.
The AB-initio or integrated ATPL training courses are training the student to exactly the same level as a modular route CPL student, with exactly the same examination for the issuance of the CPL. As a matter of fact there are advantages, as well as disadvantage, with the integrated course. Continuity and consistency is usually much better during these courses and the end result should be more robust, benefitting form a structured and consistent training environment and (hopefully!) optimized learning curve. This course can easily be used and adapted to all types of commercial operations (and private!) outside the “protected” airline operations. I don´t see any reason why they in any form should disqualify for anything as such.
Now, I would probably agree, that the aspiring commercial pilot with the aim of flying GA type of operations may benefit from “growing up” in the modular world, where you hang around the hangars, wipe the floor, paint the hangar, go fly a little here and there and meet people, “working” your way “up”. Likely this is a more enjoyable and somewhat “rewarding” route. You still end up with the same licenses, but you´ve learned other “stuff” along the route.
Peter wrote:
The FB photo of Herman Köning is a female. I can’t find the pilot profile.
If you view his FB profile and click on the photo (of the female) you should be able to scroll to other photos, which presumably is of the subject pilot (RIP).
Emir wrote:
I don’t have any official data but what I can see from FB profile (doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality) he has flown a lot, many Alps crossings, he knew the route and the region, although it seems everything was VFR.
A quick, possibly not updated Linkedin search, reveals “private pilot” in his profile.
UdoR wrote:
So the situation is not preventable, with no legal amendment whatsoever. So please, if any one of an authority was reading this thread (that is PROB99 happening already at the moment) don’t focus on restrictions. This is not the typical case and the pilot community as a whole is enough of a net to prevent the very most of these cases.
I would say focus on anything and everything and possibly conclude that restrictive regulations is not the right direction, but it should also be considered
UdoR wrote:
All the flight would most probably have been legally ok, and no one would have bothered if it would not have ended in the tiny snowhole on the side of a mountain.
That´s right, which is obviously why accidents, such as the subject, is as good as any time to investigate these types of flights, in this case an advertised flight carrying paying passengers (I don´t subscribe to this not being a commercial transaction). Preferably it shouldn´t take accidents – but historically this is how it is in aviation.
I believe all programmes today have a teaching objective of TEM, whether schools pay lip service to this or not may be worth considering by the regulators who audit the schools.
In addition Integrated Schools have a philosophy of inculcating SOPs, in effect ensuring the students are good candidates to get through their TR/LFOT when they join the airlines.
The TEM comes into force during the flight briefing by the student, which at CPL/IR standard should be at a professional standard. In addition there will be SOPs Training Manuals, Operations Manuals with stated conditions and minima for dispatch. In further addition, most integrated schools will have Risk Assessment Tools to score the flight.
The integrated schools do wash out students with poor airmanship.
The FAA has a more scenario based philosophy with more varied testing of ADM during the practical tests, while EASA/UK tend to be highly choreographed. Hopefully one day Europe will align.
