I know what it is like to ditch as I ditched once in Bergen in May 2017. Our B3 helicopter plunged into freezing water but lucky a rescue boat happened to be nearby and saw the crash. We were picked up with 5 minutes. My heart had already stopped by then and immediate CPR was applied thereby saving my life
Wow, 5 minutes…glad you made it. I think I’ll buy a full immersion suit for any water crossings.
I happened to be crossing the channel at the time and saw the other group of pilots at LFAT terminal. Obviously they were not aware of the crash at the time. My pilot friend went to IMC inadvertently. He pitched up and lost airspeed but the plane then came out of IMC condition. Flying into cloud can be very non forgiving.
This was on the same day of the Pa28 disappearance? The thread title can be changed to „missing“ instead of ditching.
Agreed, that was a leading cause in the following accident:
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/140489
In that accident, the pilot was using an in-panel weather overlay, which he thought was updating every few minutes. That updating message was just about the datalink and not reflecting the data as he dodged around TCU, which he was convinced he was avoiding (as he could see it clearly on his overlay, albeit 20 mins out of date) and this conflicted with the US controllers avoiding vectors.
With G-EGVA, it looks as if they were IMC and ended up in the convective clouds that other users have posted about resulting in spatial disorientation/structural damage. It’s a shame the ADS-B data is quite spurious at certain points.
Condolances to their loved ones.
Not downplaying the risks or advising to penetrate TCU/CB in Norther Europe but if one is caught in same cloud while IMC there is no reason to die inside? you start turning away, as long as one controls his aircraft (medium speed & power), keep their heads calm while exiting laterally the aircraft will not get split into pieces: the surface temp/dew were very low at 6C/1C, cloud tops were very low barely at FL120 and cloud base was at +3kft with no lightning strikes recorded in that area
This weather patch was very localized in time & space, I doubt much of it will show on ATC radars (unless it start load of precipitation) or WX datalinks (cell line was very shallow) or WX stormscope (there was no lightning strik recorded)
If it was something bigger it would have been obvious in forcasts and likely to have shown in TAF/METAR and would have been very visible while the aircraft was in VMC
Note that there were two other PA28 aircraft that “have punched through” that morning by deviating laterally & descending…whatever it was, this was not something that IR pilot expected and likely was in the wrong time & position when it happened
The use of WX radar & WX datalinks (live or delayed) for weather penetration in the inside while barely clocking 100kts speeds in SEP (typical penetration speed) is the ultimate prize of stupidity, 10nm cells tend to grow and die in less than 5min and the aircraft is too slow to cope, let alone ADL, Avgas is way better and cheaper, you keep the s**t to one side, you can bite the corner if looking for action or shortcut !
N31008 wrote:
I know what it is like to ditch as I ditched once in Bergen in May 2017. Our B3 helicopter plunged into freezing water but lucky a rescue boat happened to be nearby and saw the crash. We were picked up with 5 minutes. My heart had already stopped by then and immediate CPR was applied thereby saving my life
Glad to hear of your safe rescue. Ironically the fact the your heart stopped presumably due to hypothermia was on the other hand responsible for your positive outcome. The reduction in oxygen demand due to hypothermia saves your organs, most importantly the brain, from suffering critical damage due to loss of circulation. In rescue medicine we always had great success in reviving cold cardiac arrests as long as no serious other trauma was involved. There even was a project called “SARRAH” (search and rescue and rewarming of acute hypothermia) involving our hospital with the goal of systematically rewarming e.g. people who suffered hypothermia in ship accidents.
Additionally a (good) survival suit apart from keeping you afloat highly increases your chances of staying warm enough to survive. Even water temps around 20°C that might make you feel comfortable at first are sufficient to take you into hypothermia based on the usually long time you have to spend in the water before being rescued.
you start turning away, as long as one controls his aircraft (medium speed & power), keep their heads calm while exiting laterally the aircraft will not get split into pieces
I was taught (and would apply): straight ahead, small control inputs to minimise the load on the wings; reduce speed to Va (drop the gear to do so if need be/if you have one). Don’t care about maintaining altitude or heading.
Don’t you avoid or exit a vertical cloud laterally? obviously, one need to know the front of TCU/CB from his back as upwind/downwind don’t offer the same kind of rides…
Yes I agree tight altitude, tracks and heading falls under ‘forget about it’
Peter wrote:
Well, Putin is separate from the Russian Communist Party, too
That comment makes no sense to me.
Can’t you give a straight answer for once? Is it or is it not the AAIB that decides on the (non)retrieval of aircraft wreckage? AFAIU, the AAIB is not subsidiary to the CAA.
Snoopy wrote:
You probably know this but do yourself a favor and don’t avoid based on satellite weather radar images, too much downlink delay.
Snoopy wrote:
I’m pretty sure @pilotrobbie was vmc during avoiding anyway, and I think it’s great to see the new IR brought to good use flying.
I haven’t got big enough sacks to fly IMC with embedded TS/CB/TCU in the forecast. Hopefully, it’ll stay that way, making sure any confidence booster isn’t a statistic. If there’s a big enough gap, between cells like there was for me and I could Mk 1 eyeball them as I did then that’s good enough for me.
I brushed the side of one of the tops of the CB I avoided on the way out of the UK FIR, had to route almost near DEVAL before making the right turn where it was very clear and pretty much CAVOK.
The tops of the weather were FL100 or so, but I am not sure if they had collapsed slightly from the morning. The sat radar run showed them a bit beefier earlier on.
Once I descended into the French FIR you could see they were dark walls down to the sea. Small things, but probably not something you’d want to inadvertently enter unless you had a jet or something with de-icing.
Can’t you give a straight answer for once?
I don’t get personal, because nobody else should either, but maybe Sweden has 100.000% corporate and governmental transparency, in which case I am very happy for you, and long may it last 
(The way things are going, Sweden may have to join NATO, ASAP, to assist in that objective 
).
AFAIU, the AAIB is not subsidiary to the CAA.
Not officially, but it is very much the same people. I don’t think this is true today, but until recently the AAIB job adverts stated that an ATPL is needed, and that they (the AAIB) will enable you to keep it current. Now, ask yourself, why would they want that, especially a continually valid one? What kind of mental gymnastics state that a valid ATPL is needed to work stuff out from wreckage? It is a wholly elitist attitude, and together with recruiting only ATPLs who are not flying a jet and not yet old enough to be retired (65), their staff profile is going to be awfully slanted. They may as well demand that everyone is ex RAF ATC. And how the hell do you keep an ATPL current without an airline job? Without a “nod and a wink” LPC.
It is already well known, obviously only anecdotally though, that the AAIB, and every other accident investigation agency everywhere else, will “take into account” an “approach” from an aggressive lawyer acting for the victim(s). And from their govt, where national interest is involved (Concorde, anyone?). Some reports are very obviously watered-down, some are BS, and some don’t come out for years. And the CAA is much closer to the AAIB than any lawyer.
So, yeah, of course the CAA will phone up the AAIB and ask them to leave the wreckage down there. It had to be that, otherwise common sense tells us that retrieving it would have been quite a valuable lesson in maintenance practices. Oh, no, we can’t implicate yet another maintenance company which under the EASA Part M system pays annual fees to the CAA
Welcome to reality.
That absolutely massive report on the Shoreham Hunter crash, when it was obvious within about 10 seconds of the crash that the pilot not only broke the rules for the minimum altitude for maneuver entry but also was way too slow to pull it off, was obviously requested by the CAA, to leave no stone unturned. And the quarry still got away
I don’t think the AAIB does bad work, and they do a lot better than certain other agencies on the mainland who work on the principle “hey, flying is dangerous, this will happen, and no way will be implicate anybody over here”, but they are open to pressure.
I haven’t got big enough sacks to fly IMC with embedded TS/CB/TCU in the forecast.
In a DA40, that’s very sensible. With Golze ADL you could make a more educated decision, but it is still risky, structurally, not to mention icing. Your “IFR” really wants to be VMC on top as much as possible, plus transiting through thin layers. A bit like my TB20 was, pre-full-TKS, although I also occassionally did thick IMC if it was cold enough – until this.
Unfortunately, in the UK, AAIB reports are now admissable in evidence in court (they aren’t supposed to be – in most countries, the official accident reports are inadmissable to prevent pressure on accident investigators to find in one way or another that might help a prosecution or plaintiff, in other words, to guarantee the independence of the investigation). I didn’t think AAIB reports were admissible but when I looked, I found a court case in 2014 where the family of a passenger killed in a botched aerobatic manoeuvre sued the pilot (who survived) and managed to use the AAIB report to show he was negligent – the pilot appealed on the grounds that the AAIB report should not be used in evidence, but the appeal upheld that the AAIB report was admissible.
I believe that MAIB (maritime) reports are still inadmissable though.
