Picking Up The Pieces

I spend a lot of my flying in the Idaho backcountry, where there are a lot of challenging but worthwhile airstrips. But it's not a forgiving environment since go-arounds can be problematic and density altitude means pilots may not be accustomed to the reduced performance. After decades in the business, Patrick has a lot of lived experience seeing a wide variety of crashed planes, especially in the backcountry. As a window into answering the eternal question "Why do pilots crash?" I felt his insights would be valuable.

Mike Hart

Thursday, October 03, 2019 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Most aircraft crashes are human-caused, often resulting from a combination of poor decisions influenced by personal or emotional factors, even when mechanical issues are initially present.
Backcountry crashes frequently stem from inexperience, density altitude, and a failure to initiate a go-around when conditions are unfavorable, emphasizing the importance of knowing abort points and not forcing a landing.
Maintaining proficiency through challenging and continuous training is crucial; pilots should seek demanding instructors, practice basic skills without automation, and actively address their weakest flying areas.

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Since he was a youngster helping his father in the family business, Andy Patrick of SP Aircraft out of Boise, Idaho, has retrieved and salvaged aircraft. The workload varies. In a slow year, there may be a half-dozen aircraft to recover. In one particularly busy recent year, there were 24. There’s no real way to predict a given year’s activity.

I spend a lot of my flying in the Idaho backcountry, where there are a lot of challenging but worthwhile airstrips. But it’s not a forgiving environment since go-arounds can be problematic and density altitude means pilots may not be accustomed to the reduced performance. After decades in the business, Patrick has a lot of lived experience seeing a wide variety of crashed planes, especially in the backcountry. As a window into answering the eternal question “Why do pilots crash?” I felt his insights would be valuable.