I never used an autopilot until my FAA IR test!
ALL my flight instruction was under the hood ‘hand flying’; until the time came to take my Check Ride.
I had flown for ½ hour when the Examiner proclaimed: “You’ve clearly shown you can fly on Instruments by hand. Now show me that you know how all these extra pieces of equipment work!”
It is clear from the videos that both the student and the CFI didn’t master either.
Extraordinary. . . and very sad.
Peter_G wrote:
: “You’ve clearly shown you can fly on Instruments by hand. Now show me that you know how all these extra pieces of equipment work!”
And then if you never have used them before, fat chance you actually get to perform on them how they are supposed to be used?
I recall my last IR check before I dropped out of flying end of the 1990ties, the examiner told me that he thought that in single pilot IFR automatisation should be used to the fullest possible extent and that I did not use it enough for his taste and grilled me on it’s properties for a while, then I was asked to demonstrate a fully coupled approach. My answer was that during training and retraining the FIs discouraged AP flying because they want to see us perform by hand so I had expected to do the Checkflight in the same way. He acknowledged that this was a problem and that clearly, handflying was of paramount importance, but felt that being able to use the AP properly was as important. He would fail applicants who did not know how their AP worked even if they were up to standard by hand.
Personally I feel there is a LOT of lack in instruction when it comes to using automated systems. I also am inclined to agree with those who say they disagree with “blanket ratings” which in practice allows you to take out any airplane you wish for a spin without proper type training and introduction. Particularly todays integrated cockpits as well as just about any and all IFR planes with AP need a proper training environment where anyone who wishes to fly a particular airplane needs to be made familiar with all the particular installation requires. We do that on the Mooney with everyone who wishes to fly it, regardless how many hours and what background they have and we have had to turn down people who were either unable or unwilling to learn.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Personally I feel there is a LOT of lack in instruction when it comes to using automated systems. I also am inclined to agree with those who say they disagree with “blanket ratings” which in practice allows you to take out any airplane you wish for a spin without proper type training and introduction. Particularly todays integrated cockpits as well as just about any and all IFR planes with AP need a proper training environment where anyone who wishes to fly a particular airplane needs to be made familiar with all the particular installation requires. We do that on the Mooney with everyone who wishes to fly it, regardless how many hours and what background they have and we have had to turn down people who were either unable or unwilling to learn.
I agree with your approach to letting out your aircraft, but not that this should be regulated. Licence regulations are complicated enough. Adding anything more to the mix will just discourage people from flying. In this case, she was owner of the aircraft. There will always be pilots who set other priorities than safety and risk management. Regulation will not change that.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
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.
I´ve only watched a fraction of what the girl published. Let´s not mix up what´s legal, including privileges and responsibilities, with competence. Like everybody else the girl would have passed an LST or PC and as such been legal to exercise what comes with the PPL. Lot´s of pilots are able to perform “up to standard” during a License Proficiency Check (part-FCL (EASA/UK)), only to walk out the door and do irresponsible operations the rest of the validity period. Her competency (to some extend displayed on YT) is a disgrace – but so are those of many others at her level (and above for that matter), they just don´t upload them for public display.
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).
It´s an single engine airplane with an autopilot (AP) installed (equipment). In EASA it would be an ELP2, it´s not complex airplane as per se. It´s the US of A, but the assumption is that she would have received differences training for the Beechcraft Bonanza or done her LST on the BE.
As for the equipment installed (including the AP) she clearly lacked familiarization and required level of self study/knowledge (as did the (C)FIs).
Nothing stops you from flying an aircraft with equipment that you are not familiar with for as long as this equipment in not required for the type of operation (isolated/integrated) and you don´t use it. But she did!
She seems to have hired (C)FIs to assist with familiarization of the AP, and navigation capabilities of the atomization, but these (C)FIs on “display/YT” lacked the knowledge themselves let alone the capabilities of teaching it. A display of poor judgment.
Peter_G wrote:
ALL my flight instruction was under the hood ‘hand flying’; until the time came to take my Check Ride.
I had flown for ½ hour when the Examiner proclaimed: “You’ve clearly shown you can fly on Instruments by hand. Now show me that you know how all these extra pieces of equipment work!”
The examiner has the privilege and freedom to choose what he wants to student to display, when he has satisfied himself that your level of proficiency meets the mandatory standards, such as manual instrument flying skills. To reduce workload, by eg. automatic flying, and having the student display other areas of concern eg. decision making, navigation skills, you get a more rounded display of competencies – thus a more qualified “picture” of the student. Not all airplanes used for IR skills tests have an autopilot installation.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
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.
Sometimes reading the manual makes things even worse!! ;-) But, yeah it´s hard to avoid sometimes. You got the sequence right – I don´t think she did.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I recall my last IR check before I dropped out of flying end of the 1990ties, the examiner told me that he thought that in single pilot IFR automatisation should be used to the fullest possible extent and that I did not use it enough for his taste and grilled me on it’s properties for a while, then I was asked to demonstrate a fully coupled approach. My answer was that during training and retraining the FIs discouraged AP flying because they want to see us perform by hand so I had expected to do the Checkflight in the same way. He acknowledged that this was a problem and that clearly, handflying was of paramount importance, but felt that being able to use the AP properly was as important. He would fail applicants who did not know how their AP worked even if they were up to standard by hand.
At every IR PC my examiner insists that I use the AP. I maybe hand fly for 10 minutes…
First, this and her other videos are partially real pain to watch. After about 400 hours in flight being lost so frequently and so much does take some serious wrong mental path.
Second and quite positive, I appreciate her openness to post and uncover herself in such embarrassing transparency. As ‘accident to happen’ this is, it will give us input for discussion and will help some to avoid deadly mistakes.
In my first impression, she was not consequent enough to deal with her shortcomings. She knew about her under par skills and tried to fix it with several FI, so in principle fine. But, she decided to try to figure out herself at some point (lack of fundings for expensive further training sessions maybe? Anybody with more insight might comment on that). What I do not understand – at that stage of your flying career, you usually have a bunch of pilot friends providing unfiltered feedback and the very good friends are always the once telling you what not to do. Where were they, or did she have part of her ego killing her in the end?
MichaLSA wrote:
(lack of fundings for expensive further training sessions maybe? Anybody with more insight might comment on that)
I may be missing something here, but I understand this was her own aircraft. It may have been gifted, but anyone with enough money to buy and operate this Bonanza must have enough money to pay the required training, whatever that might be. Perhaps also part of questioning her priorities.
Things like this always existed it was just not visible …Since the tube channel exist, a lot of people desire to feed there own ego and play there own Truman show so everyone can watch. In this case the end of that (boring) show was ended with a very tragic and sad event. To me strange, that no one went to here and told her " lady stop posting and please take some serious instruction".
chflyer wrote:
Perhaps also part of questioning her priorities.
Hard to say afterwards. I often find “New Money” people keen on showing something “Old Money” would never do?
Vref wrote:
To me strange, that no one went to here and told her " lady stop posting and please take some serious instruction".
From the several YT comments, also of people maybe closer, I’d suspect they did. Sadly, she may have listened, but not fully understood?
Sad, sad, so let’s move on and learn from others mistakes to improve ours ;-).
I don’t know about this person exactly, but there are some personality types who will reject anyone giving them what they would perceive as negative feedback. And in many cases, they will find ‘followers’ anyway and these will only reinforce their view of things never contradicting them (since they would then disappear, I mean get removed from the inner circle, or in some case of brutal dictator, worse…). If that pilot had such type of personality, then it is likely that several instructors gave her the feedback she deserved (you need to work more on this and that, put more effort into learning this system or even maybe you are not really fit to be a pilot) only to be replied back “you’re fired!”. I guess it is always possible to find some instructors needing the hours or the money or whatever other reasons, and they will not dare to give any feedback that this personality type would see as negative to avoid being sacked.
Again, I’ve only read this thread so I’m not saying that is what happened here (I don’t have the will to watch any of her video), but just pointing that it could be a possibility…
