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Piper Malibu PA46 N757NY down in Goose Bay

It is interesting, the more I read accident reports, the more I find either the actions of the pilot (and crew) were utterly bizarre, irrational and stupid (probably of course with the beneift of hindsight), or, complicated. There usually isnt much in between. The complex ones would often have caught the best of us out, and the stupid ones sometimes dont seem to coincide either with the depth of experience that you might expect from the pilots. Beyond that, there are the poor sods who get into a situation due to inexperience with which they simply never had the skill set to cope, so the outcome is down to good luck and a following wind.

Fuji_Abound wrote:

It is interesting, the more I read accident reports, the more I find either the actions of the pilot (and crew) were utterly bizarre, irrational and stupid (probably of course with the beneift of hindsight), or, complicated. There usually isnt much in between. The complex ones would often have caught the best of us out, and the stupid ones sometimes dont seem to coincide either with the depth of experience that you might expect from the pilots. Beyond that, there are the poor sods who get into a situation due to inexperience with which they simply never had the skill set to cope, so the outcome is down to good luck and a following wind.

Yep, most often a mistake which often would not have certainly endangered the aircraft but some luck goes wrong way and it ends tragically. I agree that pilot experience tends to have little to do with it in that we all make mistakes – sometimes (albeit rarely) they have tragic consequences.

EGTK Oxford

Fuji_Abound wrote:

It is interesting, the more I read accident reports, the more I find either the actions of the pilot (and crew) were utterly bizarre, irrational and stupid (probably of course with the beneift of hindsight), or, complicated

I think it is the other way around an accident report tend to be the simplest explanation of the accident, so for most pilots involved they will just look plain stupid (you will hear this zillions of time from random pilots describing their full understanding of the AF447 stall, I bet most of us would have crashed unless you can fly an A320 without its system in a single crew mode, maybe any GA pilot can do this? )

That does not mean pilots/investigators were able to get that conclusion easily given the sheer complexity of the factors involved (it took investigators 6months with all elements to get a conclusion with many wrong steps), you can judge this by the amounts of posts/hypothesis people in this forum have after we hear any news of an accident, most of them are based on templates from our previous accidents or personal experiences.

So experience is a cruel teacher and should not be relied upon unless you are faced with identical/similar situations
Other than that you may rely on your basic instincts (that smells fishy? that looks ok?) and most importantly your luck

JasonC wrote:

“how about we fly to Greenland like this?”

Depends if you have done it many successful times before like that? or you just failed to notice? or you notice but want a bet?

Last Edited by Ibra at 09 May 23:19
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Ibra wrote:

Depends if you have done it many successful times before like that? or you just failed to notice? or you notice but want a bet?

What on earth does that mean? Flown to Greenland and gear down many times? Failed to notice your gear was down? Or you noticed but thought what the heck I will go anyway?

Last Edited by JasonC at 09 May 23:46
EGTK Oxford

Ibra wrote:

unless you can fly an A320 without its system in a single crew mode, maybe any GA pilot can do this? )

Lets see. It is pitch black night.

You are flying in your GA plane in normal power and attitude and your stall warning comes on. What will you do?

Your are flying in normal power and attitude and your airspeed indicator all of a sudden goes past Vne. What will you do?

For some reason you have managed to pull the nose up 20°, the stall warning goes and your indicated airspeed is still above Vne. What will you do?

Those were very much simplified the questions such as the crew of AF447 failed to answer. They had one pitot fail them for a couple of seconds triggering some warnings and putting them in a degraded flight control mode (which is pretty similar to the mode we all fly our planes, namely direct control over the flightcontrols) which had no protections anymore. They pulled the nose up, stalled the airplane and never noticed that they were in a stall, could not understand why the plane was descending like crazy until they hit the sea. Several minutes it did not occurr to 3 highly trained pilots to put the nose down and fly power and attitude.

Yea, quite possibly a well trained IFR GA pilot might have done better here. In fact, this accident was a HUGE wake up call as to the erosion of basic flying skill.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Mooney.. it was also a big wake up to a phenomenon called „startle“.

always learning
LO__, Austria

JasonC wrote:

What on earth does that mean? Flown to Greenland and gear down many times? Failed to notice your gear was down? Or you noticed but thought what the heck I will go anyway?

You are making it look very obvious that way, you can’t be that sure while flying
I can’t see the gear from cockpit by eyes all I have is speed/climb performance, a gear lever and a gear indicator

I don’t think this explanation is the cause (looks complicated to me, sorry Timothy) but it is not the first time a pilot failed to raise/lower his gear or flaps

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Several minutes it did not occurr to 3 highly trained pilots to put the nose down and fly power and attitude.

You would not do that in a stall if Mach = 1 on the ASI?

On basic flying skills: my understanding reducing power and centralizing controls (preferably on neutral trims or just slightly forward trim positions) should get you away from loss of control in most GA aircraft as long as you have some spare height to sort things out but I am not sure how much of that “basic still” is applicable to an airliner? definitely not the case when automation on wrong sensors inputs (e.g. MCAS, flight envelope protection…)

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Mooney_Driver wrote:

In fact, this accident was a HUGE wake up call as to the erosion of basic flying skill.

Also:
you have two same instruments telling different stories: which one do you believe?
the stall warning alarm has been continuously on for the last 10 minutes: are you in a stall?
These are not flying skills, it’s AGK knowledge (subparts systems and instruments).

Ibra wrote:

reducing power

I would not use this as a general rule, it certainly won’t do you any good in or near a stall.

ESMK, Sweden

Arne wrote:

it certainly won’t do you any good in or near a stall.

It does, as long as you have height, you would go power off in both spins and spiral dives which tends to be permanent maneuvers
Other than that how likely you can keep a symmetric stall for that long, especially with no reliable inputs in the first place?

I think it is far more simpler than that, without power on clean configuration/MTOW/DA an aircraft will spin/dive at exactly two aft/fwd stick positions (I think it is a universal truth ), how wide that band you can test for yourself?

Pulling beyond that specific point, you can put as much power as you want, the stall warmer will just keep singing and you are going into a spin sooner or later, the use power to get out of spins/dives has to do with minimal height loss rather than the recovery…

If not convinced try it next time for real or in the sim with ASI input only – or even without-, if not sure which way you are turning just introduce your own small turn…

A bit off topic, but personally I just pull back slightly from full power, pitch nose slightly forward and centralize ailerons and put full power back anytime I have a random doubt (works for lot of stuff including botched takeoffs)

Last Edited by Ibra at 10 May 14:15
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Ibra wrote:

Arne wrote:
it certainly won’t do you any good in or near a stall.
It does, as long as you have height
most involuntary stalls (the problematic ones) happen at pattern or at or below intermediate segment altitude, so this condition is very hypothetical.
(few of us will ever have to deal with the coffin corner so I excluded it)
Last Edited by Arne at 10 May 16:16
ESMK, Sweden
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