loco wrote:
Disabling one engine and starting descent 1 hour before ETA to save fuel. Some fantasy from the pilot.
Wow! He must have read stories about Lockheed P3C and BAe Nimrods patrolling at low altitude on two engines…but that is an entirely different scenario.
I wonder about the thought process that led to such damaging actions…
Antonio wrote:
I wonder about the thought process that led to such damaging actions…
Poor planning, got himself into a bad spot then poor aircraft knowledge meant under pressure he tried something stupid to salvage it.
What was the bad spot?
Peter wrote:
What was the bad spot?
He flew to a remote aerodrome without minimising his fuel burn, with weather that made an approach unlikely to be successful and then failed to declare an emergency when his fuel state was certain to result in an off airport landing on way to his alternate.
More specifically he was overhead Narsarsuaq unable to land and without enough fuel to get to Sondrestom.
I’d say one of the bad spots was halfway over Nowhere, Greenland flying to an airport hundreds of miles away knowing he’ll run out of fuel before reaching it. He was desperate for sure.
It’s always easy to be smarter afterwards. I’d be genuinely interested to learn more about this pilot, his experience, the preflight planning, why he elected to fly to BGSF (maybe he was against BGBW in the first place but was „forced“ to use it), why no charts for the two other airfields, why no arctic survival kit, was there a liferaft (he wanted to ditch…in the North Atlantic, without an arctic survival kit?), why was he alone and not supported by a second pilot etc… very interesting!
Snoopy wrote:
It’s always easy to be smarter afterwards.
Yes…I told the story before: I consider myself smart and I can clearly see the guys mistakes, but when I was faced with a potential fuel emergency over the Atlantic, it took me no fewer than 15 mins of very through and deliberate thought process to decide I did not want to divert to neither of two locations with very poor wx and continue on to the further destination with a potential for running out of fuel if the suspected fuel leak was true (it ended up not being so). The risk weighing seems obvious now but I could have rather easily made the wrong decision and put myself in a situation where I would have landed with a very gusty 40kt tailwind or below approach minimums , both rather risky conditions. The pressure to change plans and do something about the situation was very high, and it took a lot of mental effort to resist it.
Perhaps he felt he had to do something and could not resist. Calculations show if he had continued at high altitude on both engines he may well have made it.
Yes, but if you are going to fly in that part of the world (and I have done it more than 20 times now) you must take a different approach from that you use flying around Europe.
The basic point is you don’t leave Iceland until you know you can definitely land in Narsarsuaq. People flying across the North Atlantic without the right approach to weather is just not excusable. They are putting themselves and others at terrible risk.
It is worth noting that the weather at his destination was well above minimum, but he mismanaged the descent and wasn’t anywhere near the ceiling (let a lone the MDA) when he reached the missed approach point.
I have the P180 operating handbook and although the P180 is not a great long range aircraft at its designed speed with only 420gal capacity, it can achieve pretty impressive long range legs if you’re willing to give up some speed. Most are obviously not willing to do that, because ultimately, you didn’t buy a P180 to go slow. As an example, at FL350, ISA, you’re burning 215lbs/hr/side doing 301KTAS at maximum range settings. That’s a no-reserve range of 1900nm, if you ignore climb. So in real life, let’s say you burn 100gal/hr first hour in climb, and subtract 45 min fuel reserve, that’s still a respectable 1350nm. At FL410, FF drops to 209lbs/hr/side and TAS increases to 315, so even more (if you can get up there – you need to be light).
Seems like this guy should have pulled power levers back earlier and stayed high and he probably would have made it.
