for all those interested in a safe accelerate-stop calculation for the Locher airfield – be advised that the last 100m of the grass runway could be designed as a so-called arrestor bed, that should bring the PC12 to a halt out of the remaining 40kts or so when aborting without great damage to the plane and fatal risk to the occupants (before going into the trees).
I don’t think my passengers are able to make a conscious choice for what’s best for them.
If I were to give a choice, it’s on logistics (hey, we can do the flight, but there is a chance we have to land 50km away and not have a hotel or rental car. Are you OK with that?), but I don’t think they’d be able to correctly assess actual risks (even the pilot is probably not that good at doing so, otherwise we wouldn’t have many accidents).
If I felt I needed to ask the passengers about A and B, where there would be a safety consideration, then I would just not ask and tell them we have to go for that one because it’s safer. Their perception of risk would be too dependent on how you explain, and I am sure how impartial I would try to explain, they probably wouldn’t really get it and make an emotional decition. Get-there-it-is is probably even stronger in the passengers (I found so).
So far I have always been the one having to tell “no” to passengers, and hope to keep it so.
The expression of teaching granny to suck eggs is one of those abstruse phrases which the British enjoy to concoct, so apologies if the following basic physics falls into this category.
The precision engineered PC12 has around 3 million joules to dissipate in the event of aborting and running out of a decent stop way.
Jacko’ s perfectly suitable off piste Maule has only around 220,000 joules.
Hopefully we can all process this in our risk assessment of operating out of a steep gradient grass strip with no stopway.
@Noe, perhaps not to that degree of detail regarding weather avoidance, but by the time you’ve finished your safety briefing and demonstrated emergency use of life jacket, five-point and secondary harnesses, PLB, radio, parachute, etc., even your dimmest guests should have twigged that they’re not flying Emirates. 
In the case of a Maule on 31" Bushwheels or a CAP 10, I sense that folk know as soon as we walk into the hangar that this isn’t a Ryanair bus-ride.
I try to dissuade them fairly enough that they shouldn’t get scared by life jackets by the time they get to the plane ;)
Robert, don’t try to kid Mrs J that a shiny PC12 has only 12 times more joules than my much-maligned Maule.
She made up her mind about small aeroplanes a long time ago, and even three million jewells aren’t going to tempt her…
Jacko, Mrs R is a devotee of British Airways, American at a pinch, so can sympathise.
I used to have a fancier ’plane, but then realised if its mainly going to be a personal hack for short VFR trips, a 66 year old SC would do the trick.
what_next wrote:
But I don’t boast with them here or on YouTube.
Makes me itch to post this video of a pretty standard circuit from our “playground” not too far from my home field:
On takeoff, you always have to aim for the trees. Landing is always towards the valley, takeoff the other way. But this is a piston single, no turbine. Risky, so you shouldn’t “boast” about it? Or interesting to see and share? Some call it “boasting”, others “sharing your passion for flying”, I would say. Agreed, we didn’t have a load of girls in the back seat, but we have also already taken someone who was doing her mechanics student’s internship at our club there as a passenger. Was that totally irresponsible?
I don’t see a problem with your video, Rwy20
What about mine, flying over the Alps above cloud?
There is a difference, however, to the PC12 one.
What is so different here as compared to landing the PC12 at Courchevel on a winter day with only a narrow strip free of snow, no go around and only a few hundred meter to land. It is a commit to land as well and when I am there (at Courchevel), I see them coming in all the time. OK, it is paved, but there have been a lot of accidents happening over the last 30 years at LFLJ and people still take the risk and take the family flying there. In essence, it is the same think. We don’t all perceive and think the same about risk.
