Youtube video - DA42 IFR into Frankfurt in heavy weather

Wel, its easy to criticize on a video luckily there is now a lot of information available and we can learn from it… though the WX radar picture painted in the video is worrying ..Tuesday I flew through some bad weather coming from Hungary basically it was crap weather till Nuremberg. Around Vienna TCU’s . Stormscope didn’t pick up anything. I avoided as much as possible descending traffic in the Vienna sector were all requesting heading changes…however at some point you penetrate the clouds as the avoidance options are not available anymore. I reduce the IAS speed way below Va 134Kts to about 125 kts before entering cloud and with my two hands on the controls all the time to sync in case the A/P disconnects Speed control to reduce airframe stress is crucial..the gust loads should not be underestimated I think. The Bonanza is a strong air-frame but convective weather is difficult .. specially with pax on board. It seems his IAS was fast for that kind of turbulent weather…
ADL is my next investment. Just need to rationalize the additional expense :-). A good Stormscope (mainly understand its function and limitations by experience) and ADL is what you need if you want to increase your dispatch rate.long distance were the convective weather picture might completely be different form the time you departed Its all about.peace of mind… …

Yeah bosco I know, no excuse anymore not to go for ADL :-). Though I don’t full agree with your stormscope statement I think there are some huge differences in the quality of installation of a stormscope mine has the NAV option which reflects the GPS set up and though not a full solution its a sure no fly zone when strikes appear.

ADL would have shown the celll but I guess maybe too late or even smaller also and insignificant….Stormscopes are real time no letancy.?

The ADL120 update rate is every 15 mins, as far as I can find. Is that good enough for tactical CB avoidance once you are inside a TS area?

A stormscope is real time but it doesn’t necessarily depict the bad stuff. Interestingly airliners mostly don’t have any sferics (stormscope) capability even though it would be dirt cheap (relatively) to provide it…

delaying the flight or cancelling it is a perfect option…always

It’s a perfect option only if you dislike flying, and are looking for a reason to not fly

That said, I would never intentionally fly into the sort of wx in that video, because if you are in IMC you could fly into just about anything unless you have radar and know how to use it.

@Vref – those onedrive links won’t last very long… like dropbox links, most of which go dead after days or weeks.

Vref wrote:

Wel, its easy to criticize on a video…

Sure. But it was his own decision to show his remarkable flight to all 7 billion people on this planet by posting it on YouTube. Therefore he must expect to attract some criticism…

I join this conversation late because I have been flying around Germany in the last few days in similar weather (which will stay with us for some more days…) with not much internet access. Also I did not watch the full 30x minutes of it (what has become of the art of video editing? 10 minutes would have been more than enough) by skipping over some of it.

Would I have been sitting next to him in either my function as ME/IR instructor or bizjet training captain, those would have been my main points in the debrief:

Good:
- His R/T, navigation skills and mastery of the aeroplane and systems are really good. With one exception, the weather radar (more of that later).

Not so good:

- Maybe it was in one of the parts that I skipped over, but I didn’t see him reading a single checklist. Landing in Frankfurt gear-up during such a busy time of day will cause 7-figure losses to the airport and the dozens of airliners he will force to divert until the runway is cleared of his wreck. Totally unacceptable for me. But again, maybe I simply missed those bits.

- The closer he gets to the runway, the more his hands fly all over the place. Pressing buttons here and there, whatever. Set yourself a “stabilisation gate”, 500ft above field elevation would be a sensible figure for this kind of aircraft, by which the aircraft has to be fully configured for landing and on speed. From then on, one hand stays on the stick/yoke, the other on the throttle and your eyes on the runway (as the controller tells him, the best part of the video by the way!). And keep your hands and eyes exactly there until you have either left the runway or established positive rate of climb in case of a go-around. And use the yellow lines for taxiing off the runway. Getting stuck in the mud with one wheel while taking a shortcut will also shut down the airport long enough to cause a seven-figure financial damage.

- Weather radar: Please Mr. YouTube pilot, get someone to show you how to use a weather radar. I know this is not taught during training (because trainers are usually not equipped with one and training flights are not done in weather which requires one either). And it really cannot be learned from reading books of blogposts. It is an art which needs to be taught on the job. One of the reasons why many hours/years of flying in the right hand seat are required before being given the command in a commercial all-weather flying operation.
The radar in that video is set up in a way which shows a screen full of nasty stuff. Yet the pilot flies right through every bit of it. What’s the point of having a weather radar then? I think it was set-up in a less than optimal way because the actual weather is not as bad as it looks on the screen. Because had it been really as bad, then this little plane would have been torn to pieces.

- Decision making. I have not seen his flight preparation nor the weather charts and forecasts. But if those conditions were actually forecast, then flying into a place like EDDF in a little puddle jumper like this is not a very smart move. Traffic density is such that not every request for a heading change around storm cells can be granted by ATC (as can be seen in the video). When his first request to avoid a cell was denied he would still have had plenty of options for a diversion elsewhere. It looks as if the cloud base and cloud coverage would even have permitted a VFR diversion into a place lilke Egelsbach. Yet he accepted to fly through something his (however setup) weather radar showed him as being potentially dangerous. And from then on he continued regardless of what his radar picture shows. In the commercial world, this kind of decision making would buy him at least one more year in the right hand seat.

Don’t want to sound smart here, but again, showing one’s achievements to the whole world attracts criticism. The video is a good example of what is (just) possible with a light plane, but it could have been different if one of the blobs on his radar screen had in reality been a fully developed thunderstorm with lightning, ice and hail and up- and downdrafts in excess of 5000 ft/min. Lots of stuff to be learned here.

@Vref – those onedrive links won’t last very long… like dropbox links, most of which go dead after days or weeks.

Yeah well removed ..sorry I am not youtubing it…:-)
I liked the cleaning part. The defroster on my 50 year old bird works better :-).

Vref wrote: Wel, its easy to criticize on a video…
Sure. But it was his own decision to show his remarkable flight to all 7 billion people on this planet by posting it on YouTube. Therefore he must expect to attract some criticism…

Well OK I have to admit this was a hi-profile video showing off …..on the other hand quite educative. Going to FRA would be the last thing on my bucket list though :-)

@ bosco do you have the ADL140?

I’m not an IFR pilot, I never fly though weather like that, and I’m not experienced in IFR procedures. But while looking at it, some things jumped out at me (like the giving of every type of speed apart from IAS). But I quickly realised, as others have said, that it’s very easy to criticise while sitting calmly on my sofa. When you’re under pressure and in an unfamiliar environment, you will make little mistakes like that.

I think people are being too hard on him for asking about the exit points. I would have done the same as him there, if I had any doubt about where to exit, and I had the time to ask. He broke out of cloud just below 5K feet. Runway was straight ahead, and he was on auto pilot. The stress was over. He had loads of time to think about it. He put the gear down at 2k feet. He had in his mind where he was exiting….note he asked about if it was to take the first right exit, without having to look much at the taxi chart (so he had that in his head already) and only asked when engaged in other ATC comms.

As for a stabilised approach, apart from putting the gear down, and a few final checks, I didn’t see him do a lot below 4k feet. Certainly an awful lot less that would normally be done when joining a VFR circuit at 1000ft.

On a separate matter, I always hate to see a “follow me car”. It’s like ATC saying “We don’t trust you to find your way on the taxi routes! We trust the airlines, but you’re not one of the big boys and we don’t trust you!”

dublinpilot wrote:

I would have done the same as him there,…

No, you wouldn’t Before flying to Frankfurt IFR, you (I think I know you well enough for that!) would have read the 10-1 (REF / Airport Briefing) pages of your Jeppesen Manual. The taxi procedures are described in those pages as well as the preferred runway exits for different kinds of aircraft.

dublinpilot wrote:

I always hate to see a “follow me car”. It’s like ATC saying “We don’t trust you to find your way on the taxi routes!"…

Not in Frankfurt. The south apron, where mainly cargo and maintenance, but also GA are handled, has been a building site for as long as I can remember. You will always be picked up and parked by a marshaller in a follow-me car there, no matter how often you visit.

dublinpilot wrote:

When you’re under pressure and in an unfamiliar environment, you will make little mistakes like that.

What strikes me as odd, is that he did not do anything to improve the situation. It’s like he was flying on rails. Maybe the situation wasn’t so bad as it looks? But flying straight into thunderstorms doesn’t look good.