Aviation Safety

The helicopter was substantially damaged at 1234 Eastern time when it collided with the ground while maneuvering. Visual conditions prevailed. The airline transport pilot and private-pilot passenger were fatally injured. A witness stated the helicopter had been practicing takeoffs and landings. He observed the helicopter at a hover; it then “went up very fast to an altitude of about 200 feet” and made a right turn in a nose-down attitude. The helicopter then rolled to the left and became inverted. The rotor blades stopped and the helicopter continued to roll left until it became right side up and descended in a nose-down, left turn colliding with the ground and catching fire, followed by an explosion.

The helicopter was destroyed when it impacted an Interstate highway at about 2255 Pacific time. The private pilot and sole occupant was killed. Visual conditions prevailed. A witness reported the helicopter was flying unusually low, not much higher than a typical freeway overpass. He observed a bright spark near the helicopter, which then dove toward the freeway, impacting the pavement directly in front of him.

The airplane sustained substantial damage on impact with terrain during an approach for landing at about 1237 Eastern time. The pilot, pilot-rated passenger in the right seat, and two passengers were fatally injured. Visual conditions prevailed. A witness, who was a pilot and FAA inspector, stated the airplane appeared to be flying very slowly, level but descending, with the landing gear extended. The aircraft continued to slow, then stopped flying and stalled. The nose and left wing dropped sharply as the plane entered a counterclockwise spin. It made about 1 to 2 turns, then disappeared below the tree line.

The airplane was substantially damaged at 1400 Eastern time when it crashed into a frozen marsh following a loss of engine power shortly after takeoff. The pilot reported no injuries. Visual conditions prevailed. According to the pilot, after a normal preflight and run-up, the engine lost power shortly after takeoff. He declared an emergency and attempted to turn to the perpendicular runway, but the airplane did not have enough energy or altitude and he landed in the frozen marsh between runways. Examination of the airplane by an FAA inspector found the fuel tanks full, with no contamination.

At about 0715 Central time, the airplane was substantially damaged during a forced landing following a partial loss of engine power. The private pilot and the sole occupant was not injured. Visual conditions prevailed. According to the pilot, while in cruise flight at 7500 feet msl, the airplanes engine lost partial power. The pilot turned on the electric fuel pump, switched fuel tanks, cycled the propeller, adjusted the mixture and throttle settings, and worked through the emergency checklist. When engine power could not be restored, the pilot elected to land in an open field. The pilot was able to exit the airplane unassisted. The recovery crew reported the airplanes left wing contained approximately 28 gallons of liquid consistent with 100LL fuel. The right wing fuel tank had been compromised during the accident.

It happens all the time. We invest in all this fancy hardware and top it off with that new autopilot that does everything for us except close the flightplan. We like using that stuff because its easy, precise and, well, kind of cool. However, reliance on the automation can go too far and actually cause the very trouble were trying to avoid. A good coupled autopilot is a wonderful thing. It frees us from much of the mind-numbing concentration of keeping the airplane right side up to allow us to focus on bigger things like setting up for the approach or even just relaxing a bit at cruise. Add a GPS and you can program everything but your initial departure vectors and the vectors to final. The airplane can fly your entire flight plan while you pay attention to more important things like fuel management or the weather. Or not, and thats one of the problems.

Like most student pilots, I tended to fly with the type of casual lan my primary instructor described, none too deferentially, with the term “death grip.” Then somewhere along the way came my first introduction to that little knurled disk, which is usually just called the trim wheel. Trim? Huh? Whats that? What does it do? How does it work? How is it used? Its nothing miraculous, really. Just think back to your childhood. If you were like me and many other airplane-crazy kids, when you built a balsa wood glider and you started flying it, whats the first thing you adjusted? You adjusted its surfaces balance and deflection so it would fly the way you wanted it to, thats what. Unlike what youre doing today, there was no little man or woman in there jockeying the controls. Instead, the slots in the fuselage within which one could adjust the forward or aft position of the wings and horizontal stabilizer was strictly a hands-off affair. If youre younger, and your glider was made of that new-fangled plastic foam, you might have had the luxury of “bendable” control surfaces. Same idea; different solution.

Its said we learn to make good decisions by experience, and that experience results from making bad decisions. The flaw in this plan is that in flying, bad decisions can have awful consequences. How can we learn to make good flying decisions without exposing ourselves and our passengers to undue risk? What are we as an industry doing wrong, that pilots regularly make such poor decisions about safety of flight? After all, as much as 80 percent of all aircraft mishaps result from a chain of poor decisions on the part of the pilot, with actual mechanical issues being secondary if they indeed are a factor at all. I think whats going on is the whole culture of how we “learn to fly.”

When engineers developed the ILS so many years ago, they simultaneously created one of the most reliable and accurate navaids ever. The basic ILS is in use throughout the world and, with appropriate air- and ground-borne hardware, site prep, training and certification, we can use it to fly down to and land without seeing much at all out the windshield. But those engineers couldnt do everything. They couldnt, for example, eliminate the ever-narrowing of the desired course and descent path as we get closer to the runway. They also couldnt eliminate the need to descend in the first place. In the bargain, were “saddled with” a well-understood and predictable means to transition from straight-and-level flight in the terminal area to sitting upright at the airport bar, with a few moments of needle-chasing thrown in for good measure. Like so many things in life and aviation, there are ways to cheat-err, simplify-the ILS. Many pilots-especially those with a newer instrument rating-may not have grasped them yet.

Air traffic controllers have an unenviable job, at least as far as pilots are concerned. Even though theyre well-paid and do their work inside, theres too much stress, the consequences of being wrong can be too high and they have the FAA for a boss. Trying to fit a 200-knot airplane in behind one doing only 100 knots is just one of the challenges many controllers face daily; for the most part, pilots can be oblivious to whats happening on the other end of the frequency. But pilots sometimes need to be more assertive, especially when ATC asks them to do something with which theyre not comfortable. Part of the problem pilots face when deciding whether to comply with ATC instructions and requests is the controllers presumed ability to write up a violation. Too, the very concept of a “controller” can be intimidating. Finally, most pilots understand the system and their role in it; in turn, theyll often try extremely hard to help out a controller, on the theory theyll get helped out next time.