Beech 35 C33 N5891J Dec 2023

Peter wrote:

Guys – it is obvious why that channel was so popular

Seriously? No, I don’t understand people’s attraction to these kind of channels. How bored can you be to watch some chick (or guy) fly a standard SEP from A to B? Life’s short and there must be better ways to enjoy it.

Now the whole case is interesting, and my reason being here…
I’ve now watched a few of the vids relating to the accident, and probably like most of us was surprised. But what surprised me most is one of the FI as in the vid below… FF to 1:41 and then 17:04…

Thanks for those explanations @Peter. There obviously is a world out there of which I have only little clue

Some of the vid’s comments nicely describes my thoughts:
The first part with the CFI made it PAINFULLY obvious that neither one of them understood the airplane and had no business trying to do instrument instruction until they knew how to actually operate the airplane. Just watching her fly (or attempt to fly) made me want to scream, but that CFI didn’t have the wherewithal to recognize her inability to even control and stay ahead of the aircraft and properly pull the plug on what they were doing and maybe help her establish some personal limitations to adhere to before getting back into instrument training. She was as lost as last year’s easter egg in that airplane, sadly. Yes, this is a failure on her part, but an even bigger training failure on the CFI’s part. So sad.

and another one:
“I guess he saw we were too low or something..” What the hell was that statement from this CFI? Seriously? What do you mean “you guess” On instrument approaches you are not allowed to bust a minimum altitude by even 50 feet, and you were nearly 1000 feet too low, and you didn’t catch that? And then surprised when ATC did catch it, and corrected it? Students are a reflection of their instructors and she was only flying the way she was tought.

Yeager wrote:

“..this pilot got this far”.. ??
What do mean by that? She did her PPL license and was free to roam around like everybody else! Or is it something else. One could certainly question if her performance where within the limits to pass a license skills test – but then again, maybe on the day she did.

She may have passed a skill test at some stage on some easy airplane like a 150 or so. But what since then? She’s had instruction, plenty of it apparently, including on the Debonair and none of those FIs ever spoke up? And nobody within the whole world of the FAA ever saw any of her videos and decided to step in?

I don’t think that anyone here in Europe would get away with posting his or her incapability this openly for too long before the relevant CAA would jump in and take action. And particularly in the US, where the case of the idiot who crashed his plane for YT clicks got quite a bit attention, would I expect the FAA to have a very close look at some of the youtubers around.

It is obvious that she was an accident waiting to happen. And hopefully some of the FI’s who took this woman’s money despite the obvious fact that she was a danger to herself and the public will be looked at carefully for not stepping in and putting a stop to this before it became too late.

This poor woman and her father have provoked pages and pages of comments on the US forums. We don’t have anything but a preliminary NTSB, hopefully when the final report is submitted, and which will have on board video evidence, we can make some measured judgments as to what actually went wrong: training history, pilot aptitude, autopilot mismanagement/malfunction, control malfunction, airplane maintenance, other?

This is a nearly 60 year old complex airframe with a quirky autopilot, and a pilot who doesn’t appear to have had proficient instruction in the airplane, based on videos of instructional flights (since taken off YT).

Peter wrote:

The 1st thing I noticed is the pilot’s chewing gum. It speaks volumes about attitude.

I can assure you that you can chew gum at almost any attitude. High negative G-loads might be difficult, though.

RobertL18C wrote:

This is a nearly 60 year old complex airframe with a quirky autopilot, and a pilot who doesn’t appear to have had proficient instruction in the airplane, based on videos of instructional flights (since taken off YT).

The Debonair is also one of the most stable airplanes I’ve ever had the pleasure to fly.

And any AP which does odd stuff has an OFF Switch, which should be used the second you feel that it does not do what you expect it, even though 99% out of 100 it is because the pilot put something wrong in first. I’ve had a lot of fun trying out “old” “quirky” “unusable” AP’s in my years and found ALL of them perfectly usable as long as one bothered to read the manual THOROUGHLY, understand what the thing is actually supposed to do in what mode and then go play with it rather than the other way around. Along this, I found that quite a few FI’s do not have the knowledge to teach some of the more “exotic” AP’s around, jumping from airframe to airframe as they do. While most know how to use a KFC200 to most extent, preciously few really understand a Piper Alticontrol III or similar relics. Which, in capable hands, are very capable autopilots in most cases.

RobertL18C wrote:

This poor woman and her father have provoked pages and pages of comments on the US forums.

I think the most negative comments are not necessarily based on the accident flight itself but rather on the bunch of videos she had posted before which indeed showed her as less than optimally capable for what she was trying to do. There was ample examples on her channel which provoked the comments. I’ve only seen one video shortly after the crash and it was indeed appalling.

Clearly the instruction she has had, the BFR’s she passed and the people who gave them will have to expect some scrutiny by the NTSB as well as the FAA. And so they should.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Clearly the instruction she has had, the BFR’s she passed and the people who gave them will have to expect some scrutiny by the NTSB as well as the FAA. And so they should.

I don’t have the time or the inclination to watch endless videos of her flying around, but it’s possible that she passed her checkride and BFRs in a much simpler airplane. I have seen pilots who were perfectly fine in a fixed gear simple airplane get totally out of their depth and waaaaayyy behind the airplane in something complex and fast, like a C210. Even instructors.

172driver wrote:

I don’t have the time or the inclination to watch endless videos of her flying around, but it’s possible that she passed her checkride and BFRs in a much simpler airplane. I have seen pilots who were perfectly fine in a fixed gear simple airplane get totally out of their depth and waaaaayyy behind the airplane in something complex and fast, like a C210. Even instructors.

I passed my check ride in a P28A and then joined a flying club with an Arrow, thought: it’s got a blue lever, a gear handle – how hard can it be? I think it took me until at least the 4th or 5th circuit until I was able to complete all the downwind checks to the satisfaction of the Instructor without significantly exiting the traffic pattern…. that was when I knew what ‘being behind the plane’ meant, my “bomber circuits” weren’t intentional either….

I’m so glad that I have the instructors that I am flying with!

I can’t believe what these instructors showed in the video sequences. I just watched what @Dan pointed out, because I am taking lessons and what is related to this makes me curious. But this is just a shame.

In fact if you as FI give lessons on an airplane that you are not familiar with, this can only work if the pilot is proficient enough to have a solid understanding to enable the instructor to proceed with it. If you note that it’s not present you either have to make yourself proficient on that plane or cancel training.

Now I appreciate even more what I am given by my instructors.