Dundee Baron G-RICK Crash - May 2015 Accident Report

Peter wrote:

there is no enroute clearance (and there cannot be any anyway, in G, despite pretentions in some other countries)

You are misunderstanding how it works in other countries. Of course an enroute clearance is not valid in class G – no one have ever made such a pretention. The difference compared to the UK is that in other countries entering class G will not invalidate an enroute clearance for controlled airspace you will enter later on.

The 530 can do exactly the same the G1000 does – and he HAD that equipment. So why in the world is that “irrelevant”?

It is pretty clear that he did not use the installed GPS ad intended (did not use PROC), nor the classic aids. We will never know why.

The aircraft in question had a 530W and the pilot was using it at least to some degree. So the 530W is highly relevant to this discussion.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that poor understanding (or sloppy operation) of the 530W is the primary cause here and exactly what we should be discussing.

The G1000 and 530W are effectively the same in terms of how they are used for procedures so references to G1000 earlier in the thread are also relevant. The only real difference being the HSI display, if the 530W was connected to a conventional HSI it may not have been set to the correct inbound course as it wouldn’t autoslew, but I don’t think that is “relevant” here :). So most likely the same accident would have occurred if the aircraft was G1000 equipped rather than 530 equipped.

Despite training and a raised awareness of the risk, even experienced airline pilots can
mistake GPS information with information from ground-based navigational aids. Pilots
flying an approach in VMC and inadvertently navigating to the wrong position using GPS
however, will have sight of the ground before reaching their minima and will be able to
recover the situation without endangering the aircraft. Many of these situations probably
go unreported and it is likely, therefore, that while GPS-equipped aircraft continue to fly
procedures involving offset beacons, errors of this kind will continue.

Great debate, but one thing puzzles me. It did at the time, and the report confirms. He knew Dundee, he knew the aeroplane, he knew the procedure. Obviously there was an error in the actual capture and navigation in relation to the GS, DME, information, and the operation and functions of the 530 unit.. But the 530W would give a moving map display. Anyone familiar with Dundee is aware of the hills to the North of the GS. The 530 would visually show this. The position on the map therefore, would give the clearest visual clue that something was amiss. a couple of miles south, lies the river, with lowland. The cloudbase was 800 feet, He could actually have let down in the valley. My view of this particular accident was that the pilot may just have been overloaded, IMC/gusty wind/transition from VFR to IMC, change of plan, all of the holes lining up. This is where the true lesson lies I feel.

That said, this is an interesting commentary on the potential pitfalls of the utilisation of GPS.

As others have said: He had probably entered the Navaid frequencies manually – but it looks like he did not call up the Approach through the PROC(EDURE) key. That would have given him a GPS overlay of the whole approach, and he could have flown that manually or coupled, with little chance to miss it …

He had it all, but obviously didn’t use it.

BTW: that the autopilot was not working – was one additional factor. In Germany this flight without a qualified copilot (I would argue that the passenger can not be seen as a “copilot”) would have been illegal without an autopilot without ALT HLD.

@Peter
Look at page 25: “This accident can be categorised as Controlled Flight into Terrain (CFIT).”

poor understanding (or sloppy operation) of the 530W is the primary cause here and exactly what we should be discussing.

I agree, but this is IME normal.

Another factor here in Europe is that many “overlays” are only partial, especially sids and stars, and more especially stuff with DME arcs, so most pilots prefer to “get involved” and (while using the autopilot) prefer to fly stuff manually. That also sidesteps a load of “WTF is it doing now” gotchas.

Same with frequency loading. I have never flown with anybody who uses that. I have that feature too but it is too clumsy, and most frequencies are not in the database anyway.

Flyer59 wrote:

In Germany this flight without a qualified copilot (I would argue that the passenger can not be seen as a “copilot”)

His passenger held a PPL and therefore a radiotelephony license which would, even by the old German rules, qualify him as a second pilot. So an autopilot would not have been required.

mmgreve wrote:

Unless I’m mistaking, he was not “officially” flying VFR, he was officially flying VFR in IMC and had asked for the ILS. As discussed many times, this is unique for the UK, but I can’t assume that he would set out without the plate when he knows that he might need to do an instrument landing (after all, he did the turns and decent at the right DMEs…just using the wrong fix)

I am aware of these UK rules. Even without these rlues in place, I have performed several similar flights in Germany and France in the past. Setting off for a VFR flight and asking for an instrument approach at the destination because the weather had turned too bad for a visual approach. With no charts, just relying on the GNS430 (which pre-selects the ILS frequency when an ILS approach is selected). Totally stupid with hindsight because without knowing the minimum and the missed approach procedure this is a gamble to some degree. But I certainly would not have flown a non-precision approach without a chart.
Regarding doing the turns at the right points: These points are part of the procedure displayed by his GNS530. Following them laterally was not difficult.