Mooney_Driver, I’m afraid that your impression of UK pilots and our experience of mountain flying is rather wide of the mark. Our highest mountains are barely half as high as yours but they are mountains nevertheless and when we fly in the Welsh, Scottish, Irish or English valleys we follow similar rules and apply much the same techniques as when we come to play in the Alps.
More specifically, I think it’s wrong to categorise a dead pilot as clueless or inadequately trained without even waiting for him to be buried, let alone for the official accident report. We have no shred of evidence for such a gratuitously hurtful assertion.
RobertL18C wrote:
In the absence of a horizon and seeing lower terrain beyond the pass, which is not possible until you turn NE, the ability to judge whether you will have terrain clearance is quite insidious.
How about looking at a map ? This is simply ridiculous on a gin-clear day. Seriously: you know you have to cross a pass at 8500ft and blithely plod along at 6000ft? Beggars belief.
Assuming (I know, I know, assuming….) he ran Skydemon he must have known where he was. As an aside, does Skydemon have the same featire ForeFlight has, i.e. an AGL display?
Gigicret wrote:
In Switzerland CAVOk means
- horizontal visibility + 10km
- no clouds below the MSA (Minimum Sector Altitude)
- no CB or TCU
- no significant meteorological phenomenonFor Sion LSGS the MSA is at 16’000ft
For Samedan LSZS 10’000ft
It is also a local thing in the vicinity of an airport. A lot can happen weather vise in 25 NM in the mountains. You have to look at the big picture of the weather situation.
172driver wrote:
Skydemon have the same featire ForeFlight has, i.e. an AGL display?
Skydemon could be wrong. It could have shown the wrong altitude, ie higher than he actually was, thus no warning bells were ringing (on Skydemon or otherwise). A pad is no navigation device, nor is it primary flight instruments. It is simply what it is, and installed software doesn’t change that.
There was a similar accident here in Norway a couple of years back. A guy pulverized his Aquila in a mountain in excellent weather. No clue of what actually happened. The head buried in a pad trying to figure out why it doesn’t quite make sense is one theory as good as any other.
I find it hard to believe that pilot simply flew into terrain he was able to see. Hope we can all learn when the accident report is out.
Ibra wrote:
You don’t need the Alps to learn how to fly above FL100, subject to airspace that can be done everywhere, also who wants that as part of an Arrow checkout? or PPL syllabus?
Flying at 10’000ft and flying in the mountains at 10’000ft are 2 very different things!
At the passage of a pass there can be very different winds and weather on both sides, you must always keep the possibility to turn back
Antonio wrote:
Timothy wrote:
and carefully marked up every twist and turn in SkyDemon.While this is a very good planning exercise and should help increase your situational awareness, there is no substitute for real-world looking out of the window when mountain flying.This is the opposite of IFR where you need to disregard your impressions and go with the instruments.
If your careful plan is not looking good out of the window, surely you would climb further or turn around or something before it is too late?
We have all made mistakes in planning, have we not?
This is such a weird interpretation of what I said that I must comment.
My plan was to ensure that when I got there I was confident of exactly which valley I was to turn up.
I have not done much mountain flying, but I have done a lot of fjord flying and I know that it’s very easy to get to a multiway junction and have a moment’s hesitation as to whether, for example, to take the 30° or the 60° turn. As one could end in narrow dead end in which you can’t turn or climb, it is important to know, and to know quickly, as a long hesitation can result in not having enough time to commit.
I have seen low hours pilots do the same thing with motorways and end up heading in the wrong direction, sometimes infringing airspace as a result. That is the problem with navigating by pilotage rather than against a plan.
That is why I plotted it in great detail on SD, so I had no doubt at each point what I was looking at and which pass to take.
The thought of keeping one’s head inside while the a/p follows SD is, of course, ridiculous.
There is no way for an autopilot to follow the Skydemon track. SD runs on a tablet, with no possible connection.
What is the elevation of the crash site? The FR24 track is clearly of no use for this purpose.
I am really surprised there is so little in-depth operational knowledge of the Piper Arrow IV here, a rather common aircraft…
One last time: I didn’t say the aircraft is not capable of climbing reasonably well above 6000 feet DA (see my post above!). I said that it is easy to mismanage in terms of performance.
As for power settings, the manual prescibes “25/25” for normal climbs, and full throttle / full RPM only for “max performance climbs”. All flight schools I know therefore routinely teach 25/25, probably because
And I have seen many pilots who then don’t understand that they later have to advance the thottle again as they climb above a few thousand feet. Or they forget it, being overwhelmed by other things to do or see. Likewise, the prop has to go back all they way forward during climb in order to get that last bit of power out of the engine.
As for weights, the IVs have long range tanks. With those full, they only have about 230 kgs of useful load remaining. So, assuming he took off with full fuel (likely, since they planned flight was rather long and fuel tends to be a problem in Italy), with the wife the kid, and, presumably, a lot of gear for their holiday, he likely was very close to MTOW.
But the most important aspect for climb rate is airspeed. Vy is 87KIAS (often rounded off to 90 KIAS by flight schools/flight instructors in their SOPs). Example local copy
Of course, Vy effectively reduces as you climb. It’s more like 75-80 at the higher altitudes. If you continue to maintain 90KIAS, that will make all the difference between climbing and not climbing. Interestingly, the POH for the Arrow IV does neither indicate a Vy for, say, 10000 feet MSL (as the Cessna manuals do), nor does it have a graph for Vy at different altitudes (as other manuals do). But it sure requires reducing airspeed in order to get max climb rate, just as any other aircraft.
In fact, the POH even recommends a “cruise climb speed” of 104(!) KIAS. Some flight schools instead simply suggest 100KIAS for climb. That will also give you no climb at all above about 6000 feet.
These are all factors that might have contributed. But the primary factor very likely was a cock-up in his flightplanning, regarding planned/required altitudes, and/or a mistake in his flight tactics (started climbing way too late).
Engine management at altitude in a NA aircraft requires attention. It can be counter-intuitive, for example when you have to lean to gain power. The Lycoming 0-360 manual (I know, different from accident plane) warns about this above 5500 feet. Someone used to low altitudes could get confused quickly. Also, in cases of underperformance, it’s not clear whether it’s you or the engine itself. Planes WILL underperform if mishandled. Just saying….
Given the good weather conditions, my first question is, what was the mountain flying experience of the pilot? It’s also possible something was wrong with the plane.
Very sad. I hope they are all in a better place.
