Tuesday, August 26, 2008

What Causes Airplane Accidents!


In a word, "pilots" cause most accidents. Most people think that airplane accidents are mostly caused by mechanical issues. This is just an old wives tale (OWT). More than 75% of all accidents point back to the pilot. Here's something that will surprise many non-pilots. A portion of pilot-induced accidents start before the pilot leaves the ground.


Here's an example, the weather is questionable, maybe fog or thunderstorms, for instance. The pilot decides that the weather will improve. It might, but if it doesn't, then there's the beginning of an accident. Most VFR pilots (visual flight rules) who fly into "instrument" conditions will crash within minutes. Usually they get disoriented and end up in a stall/spin which is usually fatal. Other endings could result in what pilots call CFIT (controlled flight into terrain). That's when you fly into what I call a cumulo-granite cloud (or a mountain hidden in a cloud).


Another great example of pilot-induced accidents is caused by "get home-itis". This accident type also begins on the ground. It's always better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than being in the air wishing you were on the ground. Get Home-itis inflicts a pilot who needs to return home and will do so against his/her own better judgement. It could be bad weather, or a tired pilot, or a slightly sick pilot who just must get home. Live to fly another day and wait til whatever isn't acceptable becomes acceptable.


Then there's accidents that happen after the pilot is in the air. The most disappointing accident is the one where the last words from the pilot were "watch this". It usually means he/she is going to do a maneuver, possibly at low altitude, where the pilot might become distracted from flying the plane, and augers in. This is easily avoidable, as are the examples above.


Here's an example of pilot-induced accidents, that will shock and awe most non-pilots. I refer to this accident as "fuel challenged" accidents. These are caused by the pilot running out of fuel while inflight. Nothing is more useless than fuel not in an airplane. This is an absolutely avoidable accident, don't you think! Sometimes pilots just don't pay attention, and other times they encounter headwinds which extends their flying time, and oops, I'm out of fuel.


Here's another pilot-induced accident that most of the time is fatal. In running out of gas, you may be lucky enough to glide to an airport, a road, or a field. But this type of accident has no wiggle room. It is a stall/spin at low altitude. These usually happen during takeoff or landing. On takeoff, the pilot does not maintain adequate airspeed, and stalls, sometimes ending in a spin which at low altitude is usually fatal. The same thing happens on landings as well. If you stall/spin at low altitude, it's usually fatal. But on landing we are making turns to base and turns to final. Sometimes a pilot may overshoot one of those turns and steepen his/her turn to stay on track. This can also result in a stall/spin since you are already going slow (to land) and fatal because you are at low altitude.


So there are many more types of accidents that include mechanical problems with the engine or a flight control, but they are a minority of the causes. Airplanes don't generally cause accidents, pilots do. So the best remedy is for the pilot to be continually learning about safety in aviation. Like a variation of a Dylan song, "if you aren't continually learning about flying, you're busy dying".

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Flying to Oshkosh & Back


We decided to take our Mooney to Oshkosh this year. Since I was a little boy, I had wanted to go to Oshkosh. So we departed Paso Robles, CA on what turned out to be our greatest flying adventure in our lives. But before we left we made our most important decision. We would make this a 2 week journey out and back with Oshkosh sandwiched in the middle. Our first stop was only an hour away in Tehachapi, CA to get cheap gas and meet up with Mitch and Jolie who flew a Mooney as well and are great friends. Our first stop together would be Cedar City, UT and a visit to Cedar Breaks and Bryce Canyon. It was clear to us that inviting Mitch & Jolie would be a highlight of this trip. We flew in loose formation and talked on the radio the whole way. The best exchange was when Mitch asked "I wonder what the poor folks are doing today?" and Linda replied, "Driving". We rode horses in Bryce Canyon and had a lot of laughs. After a few days it was onto Yellowstone with a fuel stop in Alpine WY. This has to be the most picturesque airport in the west. We got "cheap" gas and got our 3rd high density altitude departure in as many departures. We climbed over the lake and everything was smooth, but we had to turn right and climb over a huge range. Just as we were climbing over it, we got hit with a huge air pocket which rearranged all of our baggage and internal organs. Then it was smooth again. Two days of fun at Yellowstone, lots of hiking, and visits to the Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole. These are some of the most beautiful areas in the USA. Mitch & Jolie had to leave to see family in Indiana, so Linda and I went on alone. We stopped in at Custer Country, SD for fuel. Ralph, the airport manager, changed that into an overnight by arranging a car and a hotel. We toured Custer State Park, the Black Hills, Rushmore, and Crazy Horse. What a great unplanned adventure, thanks to Ralph. Then onto Algona, IA. Why Algona, you might ask? Well, the picture of the airport looked like a "Field of Dreams" surrounded in every direction by corn fields. Linda wanted to land at this place, so we did. Such wonderful criteria for our next stop. Well we got there and had no car or hotel, but in Iowa that's not a problem. The airport hooked us up with a free courtesy car and a hotel down the street as well as restaurant recommendations. I would return the car at "0-dark-thirty am" the next day and asked the airport manager where to hide the keys. He said, "Phil, you are in Iowa. Just leave the car unlocked with the keys in the ignition." Well Linda says, "I guess we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!". Then onto Oshkosh, skirting a row of thunderstorms with our trusty new Garmin 496 GPS equipped with XM Weather to guide us through safely. We hooked up with dozens of friends at Oshkosh and explored the whole place. It is a wonderland for pilots!
After 4 days, we departed west, but planned to go south and west to explore more of this great country of ours. We flew on top of low clouds most of the way to York, NE. You guessed it, they had low fuel prices from AIRNAV.COM. In landing at York, we had to find a hole in the clouds to descend. Linda found a nice long and narrow hole and we descended gracefully. Turns out Nebraska folks are just as friendly as Iowa folks and gave us a car and a restaurant, and off we went. After fueling up, we departed for Mooreland, OK (yup, cheapest fuel west of the Mississippi). And Linda was racking up new states she had never visited (she would get 10 new states before we got home). Well, we thought there was nothing in Mooreland, but we were wrong again. Darrel, the airport manager, met us with a wave as we landed and taxied up to the pumps. Darrel has to be the greatest airport manager we have ever met. He was single-handedly bringing the airport back to life. He drove us all over Mooreland looking for a hotel room, but there were no rooms in Mooreland that day, so he drove us 20 miles back to the airport, fueled us up, and we departed for Amarillo, TX. We figured a city that size had to have rooms.
Amarillo had rooms and a shuttle to the hotel. Good Mexican food, and a half hour in the hot spa and our weary flying bones were ready for bed-time. In the morning we departed for Santa Fe, NM. What a beautiful flight over the high country of New Mexico. Mitch & Jolie have a slightly faster airplane than ours and Jolie did a 360-degree turn and ended up behind us. She never caught up with us after that, so we had a few more laughs. Santa Fe is fantastic. Mitch & Jolie went to Bandelier (native ruins), and we spent the day shopping and drinking in Santa Fe. We met up for dinner, and finished another great day, one of our few planned days.
It was exciting and sad to get up for the final time at 0-dark-thirty the next morning. We were headed home. We had to get up at such an early time to avoid the hot desert which causes lots of turbulence and uncomfortable flying. We got none. The high country and desert is always beautiful from low altitudes and this day was no exception. We had an overcast for part of the way which kept us cool. We flew over Meteor Crater in Arizona which is magnificent from the air, and then followed the interstate almost all the way to Lake Havasu. It was still early in the morning and already 102-degrees there. We were greeted by name by Jeff at D2 Aero who remembered us from a year previous when we had a fly-in there. We felt like family. But we had to go since we had a few hundred more miles of Mojave Desert to cover and it was already hot hot hot. Despite the heat, we had a smooth flight to Paso Robles. As we were landing, we lost our alternator. What a great place to have something break on such a long journey. It turned out to be a broken ground terminal on the alternator and was fixed in 10 minutes.
What a great adventure we had. The best part was the new friends we met and old friends that shared our adventure with us. And yeah, the scenery was wonderful and the flying great, but it's the people that made it special for us. Thanks to Mitch & Jolie, Ralph, Darrel, and Jeff, and too many other people we met on the way to/from Oshkosh.