Cirrus SR22 Accident Nov. 16, 2008 off Cherbourg

[wsmempson]

What happened to the thread about the Cirrus that went down on Sunday, off Cherbourg??:sad:

[Phil Space]

Looks like they pulled it!

[S-Works]

I suspect it was probably getting a bit heated and was pulled for some cool down time.

[IO540]

If a thread starter deletes the 1st post (his post) the whole thread disappears.

It is sometimes a handy feature; at other times it gets over-used.

[mark sicknote]

I posted recently and there was certainly no heat...

Mods?

Best,

Sicknote:ok:

[triton140]

If a thread starter deletes the 1st post (his post) the whole thread disappears.

My guess would be that the OP (Big Sam) deleted it.

He was clearly a very close friend of the pilot, and I am sure very distressed by the whole thing as I'm sure we can all understand.

[Fuji Abound]

.. .. .. and I had just written this comment, but not posted it.

Without specific reference to this accident, the issues that can bring down a light aircraft can be put simply - weather - ice and turbulence, engine failure and pilot error. There are a couple of odd balls like structural failure, collision, and pilot incapacity but fortunately these are very rare.

In many cases you can rule in or out hazardous weather as being a direct factor (and I don’t include in that category inadvertent flight into IMC, which I would categorise as pilot error). Collisions can always be ruled in or out as usually can structural failure but pilot incapacity is very difficult to eliminate.

There are numerous traps for the unwary during an instrument let down, which is why so many accidents occur during this phase. For similar reasons visual approaches and landings account for a significant number of accidents. Both at some point are inevitably a test of hand flying skills which inevitably can expose any shortcomings.

On route however in the absence of collision, structural failure or adverse weather there aren’t too many suspects that remain.

Engine failure at night and possibly in IMC over the sea is a hazard none of us ever want to encounter. Success without a parachute will depend on solid hand flying skills, and more than a healthy dose of luck. If you have a chute personally I would pull it on every occasion.

There remains the other events that could lead to a loss of control.

Flying at night over the sea even in VMC is the same as flying on instruments as makes no difference. Glass panels highly automate the process and all the time everything is working there is little reason why anything should go wrong as long as you are up to speed with the avionics. However, avionics do go wrong. Most of the SR fleet have Avidyne glass, but a few have the G1000 suite. There are many similarities between the two. Both share in having only one electronic AI and DI. I know of people who have had the AI fail, and I have had the DI fail on more than one occasion. I also know of people who have had the PDF fail - at least with the G1000 in the event of a panel failure the MDF can operate in reversionary mode. The autopilots are reasonably reliable, however similarly they do fail. I know of a number of cases including the dangerous runaway servo. Any of these events can leave the pilot hand flying the aircraft. As we know hand flying any aircraft at night in IMC is demanding. Add into the equation the worry at the backup of your mind that the avionics have packed up for unknown reasons leaving you flying on the standby AI, magnetic compass and ASI and the flying has suddenly become as challenging as we want to make it. In that respect at least there is the real danger of glass cockpits creating a culture of pilots who rely to heavily on the automatics.

I have no idea what caused this accident and there is very little hard evidence to enable informed speculation if that were desirable. I have a quite a few hundred hours on both the G1000 and Avidyne systems and also on Srs so I have a particular interest in what caused both this accident and the other recent EFATO. I hope that we will be able to piece together a better understanding as the facts become available and see what lessons are to be learnt.

[vanHorck]

someone was posting on the earlier thread about engine failures in SR20 and SR22.

Could that person post the statistics here? numbers, conditions, known or expected causes?

Are there statistics available o the deployment of the chutes? numbers, casualties?

Just general curiosity, I fly Piper

thx

[IO540]

It's not hard to find writeups on the Cirrus chute pulls. There have been quite a few but I don't recall any of them were done in an engine failure scenario, or indeed any other situation where a conventional forced landing would have been clearly inadvisable - except the one (widely written up on the internet by the American pilot himself) who had an epileptic seizure and pulled the chute in case it happened again; I believe he was the one case of a descent into water.

In this case, without knowing the radar track (including Mode C returns) it is impossible to speculate as to which of a wide range of causes it might have been. Possibilities include

- An unmonitored descent into the surface. This is easily done and I've done it a few times, though obviously (!!) never disastrously. It can happen when flying manually, when forgetting to look out of the window. One famous airliner did this, with all 3 pilots trying to change a bulb... Or it can be done with the autopilot if one sets up a descent and forgets to ARM the altitude capture...... and with a genuinely dark night it will happen much more easily. This is why one cannot just set up an autopilot to descend to say 2000ft and forget about it. One needs to monitor it. Some autopilots have subtle software bugs which cause them to do odd things.

- An engine failure. In this case you have (at best) about -1000fpm ROD which gives you barely a few seconds from the instant the landing light spot is seen on the water, to hitting the water. This is why I very rarely fly at night.

- Loss of control, Kennedy-style. But I would hope that an SR22 owner would know how to use the autopilot - in a Cirrus, with its spring-loaded sidesticks (I have flown one) the AP is the most useful set of knobs, after the throttle :) and unsuprising "evidence" from the USA suggests that most Cirruses are flown on the AP nearly all the time.

I don't think the Cirrus has an abnormal rate of outright engine failures. In fact the failure rate among these new or newish IO-540/550 engined planes seems to be a lot lower than what is found among the rest of GA. The failure rate among the normal 25-35 year old GA fleet is much higher, ISTM. Some engine failure data is eye-watering e.g. the 10% rate on Malibu Mirages (ref: Aviation Consumer) but that is a tightly cowled engine with real thermal management issues.

[Keygrip]

The original poster deleted the thread - for "personal reasons".

[IO540]

Can the mods rename this thread to something more specific to the subject?

[Fuji Abound]

- An unmonitored descent into the surface.

Unlikely over the sea but very possible over higher terrain.

With both the G1000 and the Avidyne you will get the usual "five hundred" aural warning. Of course you might ignore that as well but it is quite attention grabing especially if you are not expecting it. Unless you have set a very uncomfortable rate of descent plenty of time to realise what you did wrong.

Even over the land the TA will give you a warning in this scenario (although you would not want to rely on it).

- Loss of control, Kennedy-style.

With the Perspective the Level button is an option that has not been available before. It is billed as a get you out of trouble in a spatial disorientation situation.

[IO540]

With both the G1000 and the Avidyne you will get the usual "five hundred" aural warning

I get this on an approach to a known airport but I don't think one gets this as a default. But then I am talking about the Garmin 496 TAWS not the G1000 TAWS - probably identical databases and probably very similar algorithms though.

There is a general terrain proximity warning, plus an 'excessive sink' warning. But I have flown at c. 400ft over the sea, to test the GPWS setup when approaching a 500ft high cliff, and this worked perfectly but I did not get a warning from the sea proximity, only from the cliff coming up. Obviously I made sure there were no boats in the water otherwise one busts the 500ft rule :)

With the Perspective the Level button is ano option that has not been available before.

Yes but I think the pilot may not have been aware of his situation. Also many people who rent, or have recently become owners of, these well equipped planes do not know the avionics thoroughly.

[vanHorck]

Could you please rename your thread in your orgiginal posting to "Cherbourg SR22 down" or something similar?

[Cusco]

I can fully understand the original poster pulling the thread. He was clearly a PPRuNe virgin and must have been quite shocked at the way it , rather predictably, developed.

He must be hurting badly for the loss of his best mate and a PPRuNe 'seeing to' of his simple enquiry was the last thing he needed.

Cusco.

[BRL]

Just renamed it for you to carry on discussing.

As stated the original poster pulled it for personal reasons which is fair enough.

I also like this that was posted then deleted when the poster realised it wasn't us who pulled it, these things make me giggle......

Quote:Looks like they pulled it!

PPRuNe censorship, as always ! But who, exactly, are THEY ?

[Fuji Abound]

I0

No, the 500 warning has nothing to do with the airport, it is simply triggered by the aircraft being 500 feet above SL.

TAWS can be turned off, and, come to that, needs to be installed in the first place. It is therefore possible that neither the 500 foot annuciation or any other is made. With the G1000 set up the warnings are extensive, including "sink rate", and "obstacle, obstacle, pull up, pull up".

I accept your point about the level button except it is such an obvious feature on the aircraft and sufficiently well billed in the advertising material that I would be surprised if many pilots flying this particular aircraft were not aware of the button. However for it to be any use the pilot does need to recognise that he has lost control.

[john ball]

If this was the Cirrus that took off from Biggin at about 4.00pm on Sunday, I was there and watched it go. The rain and mist had just passed through Biggin going south with very clear air coming in from the north behind the front.

[Big_Sam]

I deleted the thread.

It is natural to want to discuss an accident, but the family would not appreciate some of the speculation and comments that were mixed in with it.

I'm glad you have started another thread, as long as you stick to discussing the technical details, and not about the pilot, I will contribute.

I studied aircraft maintenance when I was a student, although did not persue a career in Part 66. As far as I know the aircraft was in excellent condition, it had just had its 50 hour check when I had gone up. If there were any issues the maintenance records will have noted it. That is for the AAIB to investigate.

Thank you,

Sam

[Mistershifter]

I agree Sam. Too many theories and speculation as to what did / did not happen. I hope people will respect this and wait for the full report, after which conclusions can be discussed. Until then it little more than 'educated' gossip.

[IO540]

I studied aircraft maintenance when I was a student, although did not persue a career in Part 66. As far as I know the aircraft was in excellent condition, it had just had its 50 hour check when I had gone up. If there were any issues the maintenance records will have noted it.Maintenance is extremely unlikely to have played any part in this, IMHO. One could fly a new plane like this for a good number of years, with zero maintenance (oil changes maybe) before it would become unsafe in any way.

Mistershifter - I disagree. The problem is that the UK AAIB take a year or more by which time everybody has forgotten about it, and few pilots even know the report has come out. In this case it will prob99 be done by the French (looking at other N-reg accidents in/near their airspace) and they take a lot longer. One Feb 07 report I am interested in shows no sign of any activity.

[Fuji Abound]

I agree with IO on a subject that has been done many times before.

The whole point about a discussion about any accident is that if the discussion prevents just one other pilot finding himself in the same situation it has been worth while.

That said, I do think we should be careful to not be critical or judgemental about the pilot involved in any accident which in itself achieves very little and in any event is rarely based on any hard facts.

In a similiar vein I think it is useful if the discussion focuses on the evidence. Elsewhere people were suggesting that simply because there have been two very recent accidents involving the same aircraft / engine there might be something wrong with the aircraft / engine. This seems to me to be jumping to conclusions that have absolutely no foundation based on the evidence we have. In the same way with any accident you can speculate that almost any of the reasons that can result in an accident were involved, but then you might just as well have a discussion about why aircraft come to grief in general.

For example, in every discussion I read, one of the instrument brigade will say - ah well, it could have been inadvertent flight into IMC, the weather did look a bit iffy you know, and of course the pilot was not qualified .. .. .. Now we all know that unless the weather was CAVOK it is a possibility just like any other, but unless there is solid evidence to support poor weather at the time and we know the pilot was not qualified for the conditions then such speculation seems to me unhelpful to all concerned.

[Lurking123]

The one bit of evidence I find interesting is that two new (less than 100hr) Cirrus have crashed in the last two weeks. Both appear to have suffered loss of power (second aircraft a little contentious but I'm basing that on a report of a mayday call).

[IO540]

I do think we should be careful to not be critical or judgemental about the pilot involved in any accident which in itself achieves very little and in any event is rarely based on any hard facts.Indeed, which is why I don't like postings along the lines of "a pilot with this little experience should not have been there" etc etc etc etc. The experience and competence of GA pilots covers a vast spectrum, from poor to excellent, and correspondingly there is a vast spectrum of currency. The average may be 10-20hrs/year but I know of 200-300hr/year pilots (I am talking about real verified flight time here ;) ). And saying (as someone did in the old thread) that nobody else was flying so why was he? is meaningless because 99% of UK GA does as the CAA Safety Meeting presenter tells them and stays firmly on the ground the moment the cloudbase drops below 2000ft :) And cockpit automation makes a vast difference to pilot workload. Even the final accident report is unlikely to adequately deal with these issues.

I'm basing that on a report of a mayday callI would strongly recommend checking out whether there actually was a mayday call, or indeed a radio call of any sort, suggestive of difficulties.

[Lurking123]

IO540, I was basing that assumption on something I read somewhere else.

[mm_flynn]

IFor example, in every discussion I read, one of the instrument brigade will say - ah well, it could have been inadvertent flight into IMC, the weather did look a bit iffy you know, and of course the pilot was not qualified .. .. .. Now we all know that unless the weather was CAVOK it is a possibility just like any other, but unless there is solid evidence to support poor weather at the time and we know the pilot was not qualified for the conditions then such speculation seems to me unhelpful to all concerned.
Fuji,
It may well have been my post in the previous thread that prompted Sam to delete it (and I respect his decision and I am risking upset again - but...)

Some work I am doing on accident trends shows a distressing level of accidents where something goes modestly wrong on a marginal weather day and the end result is a loss of control accident (which is invariably fatal). I was up in the general area at a similar time and the weather matched the METARs and TAFs posted. To be VFR one was going to be pretty close to the ground and there were a lot of patches of rain/and OVC 008. So I think the TAFs/METARs and observations would support weather conditions that were challenging at least. In addition, from the French reports the wreckage is consistent with a loss of control which may or may not (based on posts here) have been precipitated by an engine failure. Prior to any definitive report from a formal investigation I think it is quite reasonable to generalise this tragic incident into a 'learning' that low level night VFR over the water in marginal weather is a high risk strategy.

[IO540]

I would strongly agree that flying low level (I assume you meant OVC008 not OVC080?) is dodgy and much accident data supports that. At night, much more dodgy.

But do we know what level he was flying at?

He may have been VMC on top. Looking here (http://www.meteo.uni-koeln.de/meteo.php?show=En_We_We) (radiosonde data Europe, Brest station) suggests tops were about 900mb i.e. 3000ft and very clear dry air above that. I have looked at the 16/11/08 1200 and 17/11/08 0000 soundings and both are very similar in this respect. But conditions look mucky below this level, with little in the way of a clear cloudbase.

Much as has been the case for some days now - OVC009-015 or so and mucky down below but cloud tops c. 2000-3000ft and super clear sunshine above that.

I would have gone VMC on top. Illegal unless you find a hole to transit through but a whole lot safer.

[Fuji Abound]

I think it is quite reasonable to generalise this tragic incident into a 'learning' that low level night VFR over the water in marginal weather is a high risk strategy.

I understand your reasoning.

However, as I said earlier, night flying is "risky". Low level night flying is "more risky". Low level night flight in IMC or poor viz is potentially "even more risky".

In other words those observations are I truly believe well rehearsed and understood by most. If they are not, then there is no harm in your starting another thread in order for people to discuss the risks of flying in these conditions and your research might be well used to highlight some accidents in the past where there is clear evidence that it was conditions of this sort that lead to loss of control.

As regards this specific accident so far as we are aware we dont know the pilots qualifications (although I appreciate that it is unlikely he had an instrument rating) but more to the point we dont know what the in flight conditions were like. I have seen another person who says the conditions were very good across the south coast when he actually departed. Moreover the METARS for Jersey would seem to support good conditions in the zone if not necessarily at Cherbourgh where the weather can be very different. We dont know what sort of weather briefing the pilot may have received. You can 'phone the met office in Jersey and they are first class at giving you an up to the minute briefing. In a 22 you will do this sector in a little more than an hour so the forecaster does not have to look that far ahead.

In short at this stage we know very little about whether the met was a factor in this accident, any more it seems to me whether an engine failure was involved. A number of people seem to suggest an engine failure was involved. If they have reliable evidence to suggest this was so then regardless of whether the pilot was flying in conditions for which he was not qualified I dont think an instrument rating is going to be of much help over a dark sea.

My point therefore is that with regards to any specific accident we must first establish some facts about the flight which were "exceptional" and could have contributed to the accident and in this case at the moment we have very few facts and it would seem we certainly dont know that the flight took place in marginal conditions.

The one thing of which we can be certain is the flight was at night. Therefore we must presume the pilot had a night rating. Even so flying at night without any visual references (as would have been the case over the Channel) is demanding.

[Sheilanagig]

In a previous thread it was mentioned by a correspondent that when the likelihood a ditching presents itself in a Cirrus, then the parachute should be deployed as the preferred option.

I cautioned against this, as the descent rate is very high - 1,700 FPM - and the design of the aircraft requires the fixed undercarriage taking the brunt of the vertical impact. Over water or very soft ground this reduction factor will be completely removed.

I also mentioned that at night the silk canopy and associated lines enshrouding the aircraft would be a potentially disastrous addition.

Some people took umbrage so I have cut and pasted here from the POH: The POH obviously does not state what the equivalent height impact will be with the gear reduction factor removed and 1,700 fpm descent!


POH:

Descent rate
is expected to be less than 1700 feet per minute with a lateral speed
equal to the velocity of the surface wind. In addition, surface winds
may continue to drag the aircraft after ground impact.
• Caution •
Ground impact is expected to be equivalent to touchdown
from a height of approximately 13 feet. While the airframe,
seats and landing gear are designed to accommodate this
stress.

[Sheilanagig]

Socal,

Agreed, both options look 'evil' to me, because of the fixed gear.

[Fuji Abound]

Sheilangig

I am not sure what the point is of the quote from the POH. It neither supports nor refutes your assertion.

I am also not sure how you arrive at your assertion?

Are you aware of any tests?

There has only been one case of a landing on water with the chute deployed. It is often cited the pilot suffered some injury to his back - which is true. It is less often cited that he landed under partial power. The application of power probably increased the rate of vertical descent. The photos clearly demonstrate the chute was not a particular problem in so far as his exit from the aircraft was concerned (although as usual a single event does not provide reliable evidence this will alwasy be so). The back injuries did not prevent him snow boarding a few months after so it would seem.

Can you imagine landing on the sea at night? In this case the pilot would have had no visual references at all. All he could have done was position the aircraft into wind (using the wind vector on the MDF) and set the aircraft up for a controlled glide. I have no idea what the swell was like but I recall it had been pretty windy the day before. Having sailed around that area a great many times the currents can be very strong and nasty standing waves I real issue. All in all he would have needed plenty of luck had there been a controlled ditching. I would use the chute every time.

I meant to add in my earlier post that my own incident last year was an engine failure in a twin. For my own reasons I decided not to comment at the time. It was interesting to see how much specualtion occurred and how little of it was accurate. There in lies the danger - people ramble on about all sorts of factors that could be relevant because they can, but often they are very wide of the mark! :)

[Lurking123]

There is a useful paper on water impact. It is called:

Finite element analysis of impacts on water and its application to helicopter water landing and occupant safety H S Randhawa and H M Lankarani

[mm_flynn]

Do you know if the weather was such that a SVFR would have been granted into the Jersey zone? If not, what would the alternates be on the Flight Plan - back to the UK mainland?
From the METARs it would be reasonable to get SVFR into the zone (but with a bkn/ovc layer at 020 - 027) to be legal you would have to be under the clouds on the way in (hence my comment about low level across the channel). However, the TAF suggest there was a 30% chance of temporary conditions below SVFR minma - so a reasonable chance of failing to get in.

In due course we will discover the facts as to the pilot's qualifications/experience, the altitude of the flight, and any communication details. With regard to the MET, all available data shows poor conditions on the route of flight (better in Jersey but with the weather moving in from the North East) at low level but clear above 3000ish ft

[DavidHoul52]

All he could have done was position the aircraft into wind (using the wind vector on the MDF) and set the aircraft up for a controlled glide.


There was a long discussion about ditching quite recently on PPRune and I seem to remember something about descending at minimum sink - which I understand is typically mid way between stalling speed and best gliding speed. Surely this is the best one could do when ditching at night (together with flap to reduce speed further)?

Maybe someone could invent a small lighted bouy that could be thrown out of the aircraft at height and provide a marker? Or a flare?

There is also the possibility of there being no engine failure at all and a pilot becoming disorientated (I assume this is what the previous postings about night and IFR ratings are suggesting?)

[S-Works]

So we are back to the original possibility, inexperienced pilot in a high performance aircraft in marginal conditions becoming disorientated?

[clareprop]

Bigsam,

I made a post exactly about your feelings, addressed to a particular "contributor" and was immediately deleted/censored. I notice he has reposted in the same vein...shallow, insensitive and arrogant.
No doubt, this will be also be deleted but until then, my thoughts are with you, friends and family.

[BackPacker]

So we are back to the original possibility, inexperienced pilot in a high performance aircraft in marginal conditions becoming disorientated?

From the original thread I seem to remember that the guy was a Jersey-based businessman. Do we know how often he had made similar trips? It seems very likely that this trip was by no means his first.

[S-Works]

It seems from previous postings that he only gained a PPL in August this was the reason for my surmising about the lack of experience being a factor coupled to the bad weather.

[S-Works]

Colin - you really dont get it do you ?

I think it is you that does not get it Barcli. I have not cast judgement on the individual in question, I have not disparaged his character or insulted him or his family.

What I have done is taken a cold unemotional look at the circumstances including the level of experience of the pilot, the conditions and the performance of the aircraft and offered a view about the possible cause.

A view you clearly don't like or don't agree with. Fair enough, we are all entitled to our opinion. However I am not pursuing you across the virtual world in some form of mad vendetta because we don't agree, unlike you it seems.

My personal view is that understanding accidents while the circumstances are fresh in our minds may just help others. Something you clearly do not agree with. I am not going to try and change your mind, but I do ask that you respect my right to an opinion just as I am respecting you right to yours.

[S-Works]

careful Socal, you will get your own personal stalker in a minute for having a view like that.
:ok:

[Lurking123]

I'll try and take this discussion on a different (but posslbly equally contentious) tack.

The Cirrus Perspective is an awesome bit of kit. 3-D 'virtual' vision and you can now get the IR TV as an option. Undoubtedly, the experienced pilot can use this kit in very difficult situations. But, and this is a big but, there are many inexperienced pilots out there. IMHO that all these toys can lead in-disciplined or inexperienced pilots into difficult situations. I'm not saying this happened over the Channel a couple of nights back, but is it time that GA and the CAA looked a little more closely at non-complex, complex aircraft?

[Fuji Abound]

.. .. .. but difference training is required (see LASORS) for glass with an appropriate sign off.

Moreover I suspect the insurance company are going to want to see some type specific training. There are a couple of organisations that specifically offer this for the Cirrus - and they do a jolly good job.

I find it hard to believe a pilot would be signed off on the Cirrus unless his instructor felt the "student" could do a reasonable job.

Experience does come with time served. Many an old hand will tell you the current crop of low time ATPLs pushed as quickly as possible through the system are a disaster waiting to happen every time they are asked to operate outside the box.

Without wishing to be repetitous operating over the sea at night is as close to instrument flying as you can get without technically being "on instruments". As makes no difference it is a tough enviroment in which to operate single pilot.

Without doubt the greater the automation the greater the temptation to rely on it. However, the acid test in my view should be - could I fly the whole sector entirely by hand. If you cant the answer is you are too reliant on the automatics.

[IO540]

SoCal

Identifying and getting through such a hole over the sea in darkness may well have been tricky for anybody regardless of experience levels..

I was referring to the "European type of hole in clouds" which always exists in Europe, where a pilot without an IR needs it :)

In the USA you have a much more accessible IR so there are a lot fewer holes in clouds :)

However, this leads us to needing to know about the pilot's experience etc, which we don't know and aren't likely to find out.

Lurking123

is it time that GA and the CAA looked a little more closely at non-complex, complex aircraft?

There is currently no legal basis for "avionics type ratings" under ICAO. In the USA this is dealt with by insurance companies requiring type specific training, and it is getting that way (slowly) in the UK too.

Apart from avionics, there is nothing advanced about a Cirrus - it is just another ~ conventional 300HP piston plane which flies perfectly well with few if any gotchas.

I've had instructors tell me that at 150kt things will happen so fast that I will be totally behind the plane, but this is bollox for enroute flight (where 250kt would be nice, over many especially tedious areas) and for flying IFR ops one needs to know how to fly them anyway...

[S-Works]

I've had instructors tell me that at 150kt things will happen so fast that I will be totally behind the plane

That may be so at your level of experience IO, but take a low hours pilot fresh from the usual school trainers and 150kts feels like warp-speed.

Like anything it takes a fair amount of time to build up the wherewithal to actually get in front of the aircraft. I see the same thing all the time converting people on to the Lance fresh from school warriors, it takes them awhile to get ahead and then only regular flying and experience keeps them ahead.

[Cobalt]

Ummmm I checked out on a 150kt Mooney 10 hours after getting my PPL and flew into an international airport... and I believe you are a big proponent of mentoring and spreading one's wings, Bose. (And neither you nor I include flying at night in IMC without the required ratings in "spreading one's wings" - if that is what happened here).

Having said that, if you are cruising along in a slippery airframe at 170kt and it gets away from you, you can be dead very quickly.

The unfortunate truth might be that we will never know. The airframe appears to be thoroughty destroyed and in water, so whatever went wrong is unlikely to come out, at least anything more insightful than "loss of control"

[S-Works]

Indeed Cobalt, I am a proponent of people spreading wings and gaining experience. I am just reflecting that it takes the average person a bit of time to get ahead of a high performance aircraft and then it needs constant practice to stay ahead. Experienced and current pilots like IO will feel 150kts to be pedestrian and look for more, but for the less experienced this needs to be tempered a little and not let enthusiasm override experience.

[Fuji Abound]

There is currently no legal basis for "avionics type ratings" under ICAO.

That may be so, but LASORS (see section F, SEP type ratings and difference training) is quite specific regarding the additional training required for glass and the responsibilites of the instructor.

In the case of the Cirrus LASORS also has more than something to say about single lever ops.

The FAA I think go about it in a slightly different way. Simply in the States they know you will not get insurance unless you have attended an appropriate course.

I am just reflecting that it takes the average person a bit of time to get ahead of a high performance aircraft and then it needs constant practice to stay ahead.

I know a bit about pilots converting to the Cirrus.

As with all things some get it very quickly, some never quite "get it".

On the whole the difficult bit is not the on route sector, particulaly if the on route sector is a straight line through non complex airspace.

The hard part is handling the aircraft in and around the circuit. The Cirrus is as quick and as slippery as any light single. Its really easy to get high and fast.

The designers have done a good job of keeping the management of the aircraft simple IF the pilot is comfortable with the G1000 or Avidyne displays. If the pilot is not comfortable searching for the information he needs at times of stress is very distracting. Even adapting to the tape displays and the extreme accuracy of the AI can be disconcerting for some. Any instructor accustom to glass is well aware of these issues.

Flying a complex twin is a significantly higher work load but everything is relative.

[Big_Sam]

He was more experienced that you might think.

Despite only getting his plane in the summer, he had around 100 hours on type. He was up for several flights last week alone. He knew that plane inside out, and flew it fluidly.

[Riverboat]

Well done, Big Sam, for pointing that out. The pilot was in the en route phase, and speed in the circuit, etc. was totally irrelevant. He would be using the autopilot, sitting back enjoying the flight. The aircraft would fly to Jersey without his having to do much. When he got descent to 3000ft (which itself indicates that he was probably cruising at FL 040 or 060 outside of CAS and above those clouds at 2200-2700ft which have previously been referred to), all he would do is reselect the altitude on the autopilot, set a rate of descent, and the autopilot would look after the whole issue. The Cirrus autopilot is very good (STEC 55X).

That is what should have been happening. But something different happened. What that is, no one knows, and let us all hope that the French quickly come up with some answers. In particular, all Cirrus pilots will want to know if the engine failed, and if so, why? If it did fail, why didn't he make a mayday call? There is a suggestion that he did, but generally the view is that he didn't. So does this perhaps mean that there was an electrical problem? If the lights suddenly go out, you can be in serious trouble, however experienced you are.

There are all sorts of scary possibilities and really we need to have as many answers as possible as quickly as possible. I certainly do not subscribe to the view that because he was relatively inexperienced (but 100 hours on type sounds experienced to me), the cause is likely to be pilot-induced.

Riverboat

[karl414ac]

I recently started flying a SR22 at Blackpool (EGNH) i an only a low hour PPL (170ish hrs) and find it a huge step from flying the usual flying school spam cans . The cirrus has no redundancy systems for the pitch and roll trim , the fuel delivery system is very unreliable when the engine is hot after landing or a long taxi run due to the inlet manifold and injector nozzles being on top of the cylinders instead of below like on most other aircraft. Having completed a few long trips in the SR22 seeing 180-195knts TAS is not uncommon which is a good 75knts more than anything else i had flown before so situational awareness is kept at the maximum at all times and supported by the 2 garmin 430 and Avidyne Ex500 MFD with TCAS and Wx500 strikefinder which really helps when avoiding weather.
My advice to anyone who intends on flying such a high performance aircraft would be take all the training you can , not just until the instructer confident but when you feel confident with handling the aircraft in any situation that could arise with a 200mph+ aircraft

414AC

[Phil Space]

None of the press reports mention a mayday call which I would expect in the case of an engine problem.The lack of a distress call from the aircraft suggests whatever happened occurred very quickly.

[IanSeager]

When he got descent to 3000ft (which itself indicates that he was probably cruising at FL 040 or 060 outside of CAS and above those clouds at 2200-2700ft which have previously been referred to), all he would do is reselect the altitude on the autopilot, set a rate of descent, and the autopilot would look after the whole issue. The Cirrus autopilot is very good (STEC 55X).

You have some fairly specific altitudes there, where does the information come from?

Ian

[IO540]

My advice to anyone who intends on flying such a high performance aircraft would be take all the training you canI agree 100% however it can be hard to find instructors who are any good with these more complex (I am deliberately not saying "faster" because enroute speed is all but irrelevant - it just makes the magenta line pass by 1.5x quicker) types. I bought a new TB20 nearly 7 years ago and never found an instructor who even knew how the HSI worked, in terms of tracking GPS, approaches, etc. It is a real issue that on the UK scene the hour builders know next to nothing, a lot of the older residents know hardly more, but almost any instructor loves to go up in a nice new plane even if he doesn't actually know how it works. I was fed the biggest load of bull about things like engine management, for example. Some (a few) instructors even run hidden agendas e.g. to try to get your shiny new plane set up on a leaseback to the school; I got one of those quite early on and he did various things to make me p*ssed off with the plane (it was not without some early reliability issues) and stick it on his school's fleet. He also declared that nobody who was an existing or potential customer of his would be allowed to fly with me (what a nice man).

In retrospect, I picked up most of what I needed to know from articles on the internet. The instructor just did my complex signoff, which I obviously needed to be legal. This is not quite how it should work!! But these days things are a lot better - if you buy a Cirrus you can go to TAA and get very good type specific training.

However we don't know whether pilot training had anything whatever to do with this one. As Riverboat says above, the flight should have been completely uneventful and with a very low pilot workload.

Enroute speed is irrelevant. The biggest speed management issue I found when moving from the 100kt spamcans to a 150kt plane was that with a spamcan you fly along, join the circuit, and land, whereas with a 150kt machine you fly along, then you have to slow down before you reach the destination, and one cannot lose 50kt and lose say 5000ft, in say 3nm :) Well one can (it's called a descending orbit) but one looks a right pr*ck doing this kind of stunt in the overhead :) So, one has to think ahead a bit and start descending and slowing down, say 20-40nm before the destination. But this is pretty easy and one soon learns it. It is a very long way from rocket science. Any instructor saying otherwise is doing you a dis-service and probably never flies for real.

[Fuji Abound]

the fuel delivery system is very unreliable when the engine is hot after landing or a long taxi run due to the inlet manifold and injector nozzles being on top of the cylinders instead of below like on most other aircraft.

As a minor point of order unrelated to this accident this is a common issue with many injected engines - starting when hot is actually rarely a problem, but you need to apply the correct technique.

[IO540]

Yes, it is only a fuel injected engine starting issue. Cold starts are fine; usually instant. Hot starts are also fine if you follow the proper procedure. It is the "luke warm" starts which can take a lot more cranking. But as Fuji says this is not relevant to flight.

A Q on the SR22: if you lose the alternator, how long will the backup AI run for? Will it run until the battery goes flat? Is there any scenario where one could lose the glass avionics and also lose the backup AI?

[soay]

The Perspective SR22 has dual alternators, either of which can power the avionics systems. Cirrus didn't want to lose the GFC700 autopilot, if an alternator failed, as happens in Diamonds and Cessna 350/400s.

[IO540]

Cirrus didn't want to lose the GFC700 autopilot, if an alternator failed, as happens in Diamonds and Cessna 350/400s.

The Cessna 400 has two alternators. I flew in one the other day. One is belt driven; the other gear driven. And it has two batteries. A very very good system, with two separate buses and essential avionics powered via diodes from both buses.

On my TB20, the AI is vac pump driven which is great for redundancy - lose ALL electrics, fly with the handheld GPS and the handheld radio. OTOH it is a stupid system because vac pumps DO fail (c. 1000hrs but they vary a lot) and when the vac pump fails I lose the AP because the AP uses the vac AI as the roll/pitch reference :) A better system would have been an electric AI, driven off a miniature alternator fitted in place of the vac pump; these do indeed exist but the KFC225 AP is not certified with any electric AI (other than a weird $25,000 remotely mounted gyro....)

[Vino Collapso]

When he got descent to 3000ft (which itself indicates that he was probably cruising at FL 040 or 060 outside of CAS and above those clouds at 2200-2700ft which have previously been referred to), all he would do is reselect the altitude on the autopilot, set a rate of descent, and the autopilot would look after the whole issue.

That sort of reflects what I have heard 'third hand'. The aircraft was in the cruise at 3,000 ft then elected, or was requested to, descend. Things looked good down to 2,500 ft then it lost all that remaining height very rapidly. One quote was that radar contact was lost 9 seconds later but that doesn't necessarily mean it reached surface level in that time.

[IO540]

What is the approx location of the impact?

The secondary (Mode C) return holds up pretty well, long after the primary return is lost.

[pilotbear]

If the aeroplane is in ALT HOLD or only a shallow VS mode and the engine quits it may stall very quickly.

[Fuji Abound]

Was it a Commander or Mooney in the climb that started picking up ice unbeknown to the pilots - the autopilot gradually wound on more trim in an effort to maintain the climb until of course it eventually tripped out leaving the pilot with an aircraft already at the edge of the stall and with a huge amount of trim wound on.

[IO540]

If the aeroplane is in ALT HOLD or only a shallow VS mode and the engine quits it may stall very quickly.It will stall after some tens of seconds, but in the meantime the instrument panel will look like an xmas tree, and the sudden silence should be extremely obvious.

Also I think the autopilot will (should?) disconnect at some point. I think mine would, upon loss of vacuum (which may not happen if the engine is windmilling) and it certainly would upon a significant unusual attitude. Mind you, by then the AP will have wound the pitch trim an awful long way back so a recovery into some kind of glide speed will need a lot of forward trim.

The pilot would immediately notice something is wrong.

A dramatic autopilot failure could cause this kind of accident, but I don't think I have ever seen an accident report which suggested it. I've had a dozen or so AP failures, including some when I had only a few hours on the type, but none of them were dangerous; just a hassle and an increase in cockpit workload.

Was it a Commander or Mooney in the climb that started picking up ice unbeknown to the pilots - the autopilot gradually wound on more trim in an effort to maintain the climb until of course it eventually tripped out leaving the pilot with an aircraft already at the edge of the stall and with a huge amount of trim wound on.

Sure, that could happen but all recent APs are supposed to report TRIM IN MOTION if trimming continuously for more than about 10 secs. Mind you, if the trim happens gradually then there would not be a warning. But these were not icing conditions.

[strake]

This is an article writen by an American Cirrus owner/instructor. It requires a large cup of coffee and 20 minutes or so but seems to cover most of the issues raised on this thread in a very balanced way.

Cirrus SR20 (and a bit about the SR22) (http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/cirrus-sr20)

[Fuji Abound]

The link isnt quite right, but you can work out where it should lead.

Thinking about the en route sector in a Cirrus I would not agree with the comments in the article about the autopilot - however they are not relevant as the aircraft involved in this accident employed Garmin's digital autopilot which is a completely different animal.

I would however agree that the trim is a little course - albeit again this may have improved on the new model. In particular, it is easy to find the aircraft is out of balance and less easy to accurately correct the trim.

In the event of an autopilot failure in IMC the pilot would need to be alert to taking control and quickly and accurately establishing a stable trim if he is going to feel comfortable hand flying the aircraft.

[pilotbear]

well I tried this a while ago in our SR20 and if you pull the mixture the engine windmills happily the autopilot continues to maintain altitude. The RPM decreases yes and Alt 2 fail light comes on. The electric backup vacuum pump does not come on unless the engine stops.
If you are fairly inexperienced and it happened at night in IMC by the time you realised what has happened you are in a situation you cannot handle. How many of you practice stall recovery in IMC? How much pitch down would you give if at 2000' over the sea in IMC? In that situation you have to read a lot of information very fast, airspeed, bank, pitch, Altitude, VS, engine instruments? then prioritise and use that information.
It would take a lot of concentration and very good IR skills to recover although over the sea you are probably not going to survive anyway.

[mm_flynn]

In the US, there would be a preliminary report and publicly accessible radar traces to answer all of the questions asked - but we are in the UK and this information will be available next year.

Given the weather, there is a lot of uncertainty as to what route the pilot might have flown and at what altitude. However, almost all options would have had him entering Jersey airspace somewhere near (and probably to the South East of) Ortac - i.e. 12 miles off the Cherbourg peninsula. Assuming not on an 'Airways' IFR plan at this point he would need to be at 3000 ft or less (which could be a continuation of a low level flight) or a descent into cloud.

[IO540]

GWC-EGJJ direct is not a route I'd like to do as a low level run because of the proximity of the French nuclear power station prohibited area, but with care one could do it. Also the direct route does not pass 13nm N of Cherbourg, quite, but is close enough.

this information will be available next year.

If the French do it, 2010 maybe...

[Vino Collapso]

I can't see why the routing would be significant to the cause of the accident in this case. It would only serve to prove that the pilot was able to follow the path he intended. The information is not secret in the UK just not normally accessible.

Without reference to its source I can say N0165VFR DCT GWC DCT EGJJ

Now DCT GWC is not possible without transiting Gatwick controlled airspace. The usual form is to track west from BIG, either via OCK or visually towards the town of Guildford, then turn direct GWC.

Personally the route I would take in preference would be BIG-OCK-St Catherines Point-ORTAC and get up as high as possiblle outside CAS.

[IO540]

N0165VFR DCT GWC DCT EGJJ

Thank you for that info. Presumably this is off a VFR flight plan. Unfortunately you can stick a detour to Mongolia on one of these and nobody will care, or even notice, until you go missing.

Personally I would not file a route which busts Gatwick airspace, but this one sure is, so who is to assume the next bit of the filed route was actually flown?

In the extreme, somebody could just fine EGKB DCT EGJJ and fly some "appropriate variation" of it :)

I would have filed e.g.

EGKB OCK MID GWC ORIST (or GARMI if you want to deal with the danger areas) EGJJ

which is a route that can actually be flown. Maybe he actually flew via OCK? Only radar will know.

[Fuji Abound]

I can only assume not many of you go to the CIs.

If I am not going in the airway I always prefer to route from St Catherines Point (many years ago it was CPT) to ORIST - I know quite a few that go that way.

That route keeps you clear to the east of R41 and clear to the west of all the danger areas so there is no need to establish whether or not they are cold. It is also the shortest point to point route between the I of W and the French peninsula.

Just due south of Orist the airspace is French which I suspect is where the accident occurred. Jersey zone from ORIST will often ask you to route towards the peninsula and then pick you up with a vector or own nav.

Flying that route there is no relevant height restriction - far better than bu**ering around beneath the base of R41 in the murk.

Not relevant in this case but if you had engine problems you are well within glide range of the peninsula if you are reasonably high outside the zone with the possibility of Maupertus if required.

The danger area is a complete irrelevance in any aircraft and even more so in the Cirrus being both clearly defined and easy to identify either visually or on the MDF.

In the Cirrus it is only around 20 minutes coast to coast along that route so the best way to keep your time over the water to a minimium.

[Vino Collapso]

In the extreme, somebody could just fine EGKB DCT EGJJ and fly some "appropriate variation" of it

This sort of 'fuzzy' submitted routing is fairly standard from low hours or low experience pilots, and by that I am not pointing any accusing finger at this poor victim, it is equal to many. In reality they know which way they intend to route but are not sure how to put it on the form. Hence the variations you mention.

I am not going to expand any more on the route details but the lack of any airspace 'busts' at Gatwick tend to suggest he successfully tracked around it and had prepared/used the aircraft to help him do so.

[execExpress]

IIRC the "now deleted" thread included a post something like " after some initial confusion about the routing, the aircraft routed via Ockham". This indicates the aircraft flew via Ockham is about all I can deduce from that, i.e. could be the pilot always knew he was routing via OCK just ATC was inially confused (perhaps by filed routing), or that ATC help avoid an infringement - but either (or any other) way all we have from this is that the aircraft routed via OCK.

Another post onthe deleted thread was from a pilot who saw the Cirrus (at least presumed to be the accident a/c) routing overhead Goodwood to the South-West. It is a real pain re-creating "information" from the deleted post but there we are. It seems the aircraft also did route via GWC.

[IanSeager]

Deleted while I check something out.

Sorry

Ian

[IO540]

What was the reg? It did appear in the now-deleted thread. N-something.

[mm_flynn]

Vino
The observation I was trying to make is that a direct route from GWC -EGJJ takes you through French airspace - which is where the aircraft was located.

Please correct me if that is incorrect as I don't have up to date charts.

In the area N of Cherbourg (assuming it is French airspace) - under who's control would you be?? ORTAC and ORIST boarder the CI airspace whereas GARMI boarders French. In terms of control, it is Class G so you are not under anyone's control. I have not seen a comment of '10 miles inside French airspace', I have seen comments of 12-15 miles North of the peninsula - which would be consistent with being near ORIST or ORTAC. In my experience in that area it is a bit variable as to who you will speak with in any given location (it depends more on where you are coming from and going to than which side of the line you are on).

[Fuji Abound]

10 north of Cherbourgh would be entirely consistant with GWC AGANO (on the edge of the zone). I think the three danger areas (mostly EGD036) are all cold after 18-00 other than by NOTAM so more than possible the pilot would have selected a more direct route.

Anywhere just east of ORIST and you are in French airspace until the zone. Practically if you are going into the zone the French arent the least interested in you and Jersey will as I said earlier either give you own nav or a steer into the zone with either a SVFR or IFR clearance.

I think this route at this time of day is entirely reasonable for a pilot who was regularly charting the channel to Jersey, albeit personally I prefer the shorter crossing in a single, albeit I have been the same route in a twin.

[OA32]

So long as you remain clear of R41 you can fly much higher than 3A, to the east up to FL100 clear of the danger area, or to the west up to FL190 clear of the danger area (or through with a clearance). As for the classification of airspace and who you might talk to this can vary from Deauville approach, Jersey Zone or London Info if indeed you choose to do so. A lot of pilots worry about the Prohibited areas, so long as you remain over the sea you miss the one at Cap De La Hague leaving only the one @ Flamanville. If you route via ORIST at 3A you will enter french airspace which is uncontrolled before the Jersey Zone. The CICTA at ORIST starts at FL35.

[will fly for food 06]

Just to confirm as it was lost in the last thread. We heard a Cirrus fly over GWC at around the time people are suggesting. It was heading southwest and although this is a common thing we didnt have a good feeling about the aircraft.The engine sounded perfectly fine at the time. I cannot confirm if this was the Cirrus in question but I can assure you when the low cloud and drizzle came rolling over the south downs most aircraft were on the ground. Goodwood had two weather diversions that afternoon.
From a fellow cirrus pilot.

[IO540]

I may be missing something but I am puzzled as to why the pilot's exact routing is relevant here.

It appears that he was flying VMC on top (which itself is completely logical; any pilot flying anything half decent will try that, whether or not he needs to find that mystical "hole in the cloud" to get up there legally - something I have never done myself of course ;) ) and then went straight down without even a radio call.

If indeed these details are correct, what would this mean? Even a half trained PPL knows what to do on an engine failure - it is drilled into you enough times. I don't think this was what happened. Failures of these big engines (the Malibu case excluded) are very rare.

Pilot incapacitation - with autopilot disconnected - is certainly one possibility which would explain it perfectly. But what is the chance of anybody flying a spaceship like this, at night, manually? The radar track will be an instant giveaway of manual versus autopilot flight; the difference on a recorded GPS track is very obvious no matter how good a pilot one is. But we aren't going to get the radar track for a year or two.

[execExpress]

The routing was of interest to me at least as at the time was trying to understand what frequency the initially reported Mayday might have been on, and whether the aircraft might have been diverting off-route toward Cherbourg at the time of the accident [v being on-route (sic)] which might have also indicated a problem being handled. The french authorities have since confirmed by press conference there was no Mayday (which was where the engine failure message was supposed to have come from) and no indication to Jersey (who it seems had recently issued clearance into the Jersey Zone) of a problem before the accident.

AFAIK It has not been established if the pilot had instrument qualifications or not. If operating on the strength of a night rating the "spaceship" *might* have been being manually flown if trying to maintain VMC at some point.

[execExpress]

More likely a JAA/JAR PPL or whatever eurocrats want to call it and deem it good for across Europe this month.

[execExpress]

It was Riverboats post in this thread (page 3) that first suggested the accident occured after clearance to enter Jersey Zone had been granted, and after a descent had occured.

Jersey Evening Post reported 17/11: "The French coast guard station CROSS at Jobourg in Normandy received a message from Jersey air traffic controllers at 6.23 pm French time yesterday saying that contact with the aircraft had been lost. However, it is understood that there was no mayday from the aircraft. It is known that the pilot received permission from air traffic in the Island to enter the Jersey-controlled airspace near Cherbourg minutes before the aircraft disappeared from screens."

Can only guess at this stage that the clearance was granted when the aircraft was somewhere North-east of the accident site.

[Fuji Abound]

More likely a JAA/JAR PPL or whatever eurocrats want to call it and deem it good for across Europe this month.

Is it a matter for the Eurocrats or the FAA or both?

Do the FAA recognise the United States of Europe as a country?

[mm_flynn]

Is it a matter for the Eurocrats or the FAA or both?

Do the FAA recognise the United States of Europe as a country?I seriously doubt this accident will answer that question. The NTSB will file the report with minimal data and a reference to contact the French or the British (which ever one does the investigation) and that will be the extent of the Fed's involvement (unless the investigating authority asks them to be involved). Neither the CAA nor the DGAC have shown any tendency to stress over a technical issue of this sort (after all the intent wasn't to fly to France). Furthermore, I have yet to see any evidence of an insurer walking away from a claim based on something like this.

[IO540]

The validity of any license or rating in an N-reg is wholly down to the state of registry i.e. the FAA.

This one is an old chestnut of course, FAR 61.3 and the word "issued". I have copies of written replies from different bits of the FAA on the supposed pan-European validity of a JAA PPL, and two of these replies are completely contradictory. I can well imagine somebody getting an affirmative reply (such as some indded have got) and they would be perfectly entitled to rely on it. After all, if you contact any official body and it says such and such is ok then what are you supposed to do?

mm_flynn - I do agree except that

I have yet to see any evidence of an insurer walking away from a claims based on something like this.

is a tougher one, since the non-recipient of the insurance payout is unlikely to advertise the fact. I don't have any real evidence one way or the other except that old case of Graham Hill (invalid CofA; the AAIB report is online) and feedback from my insurer confirming they would probably not pay out if a flight was illegal to start with. But this flight could not have been in that category, IMHO, not least because it never landed in France, so you are probably right.

[IO540]

It is indeed curious that a purchaser of an N-reg did not have an FAA PPL at the time of the purchase. It is an odd way round to do this. I made sure I had the FAA PPL before moving the TB20 from G to N. Of course the whole reason for going to N was to get the FAA IR and it is highly likely this pilot bought an N-reg for the same reason, and perhaps he thought that the inconvenience of having to stick to UK airspace until he gets at least the FAA PPL is not a problem, relative to the significant cost (4 digits min) of buying a G-reg Cirrus and then transferring it to N-reg.

There are instances whereby person x said (or wrote) this and person y said (or wrote) that and when it came to pass- what was enacted into law is what mattered - and the example that I am aware of within the US, the pilot lost.

Does the USA have the concept of 'apparent authority'?

[execExpress]

And a lot of what is enacted doesnt matter in practice. Allegedly it is illegal to walk down Oxford Street without wearing your sword! :-)

There is so much bureaucracy and change in Europe, that trying to integrate with or relate to the FAA system, and tip a hat to ICAO, even the most die-hard bureaucrat may decide life is too short, or a good way to while away the years to pension and then handover to someone else ;-)

The colour of the paperwork is not of interest in establishing what happened - which is what really matters

[kenhughes]

At the risk of a slight thread-drift, what are the benefits, or advantages, of having an N regd aircraft in the UK? Or is it because that particular model isn't yet type-approved in Europe?

[execExpress]

Yes, I have read often about the FAA enforcement culture in the U.S. Removing privileges from pilots where necessary is one thing. Enforcing "when we the US wrote country (how many years ago?) we meant country and we still mean country, and if you (France) tell us as far as your aviation goes your regulatory organisation is EASA we're here to tell you that doesnt fit our definition so we dont accept what is applicable in your airspace is applicable in your airspace" would be quite another. Why anyone in FAA would be motivated to ever take such a tack I don't know. If they simply wanted to assert 'rules is rules'. well, France might not be the best place to go do that.:-)

[execExpress]

Ken - The inability, over may years, to cut through bureaucracy and create (or 'sell') a european IR more suited and more attainable for "GA" (v Airline) ops has driven significant demand for the FAA IR and in-turn N-registered aircraft - which works well for that important segment of the GA eco-system (if the 1000's of N-reg operating across Europe are anything to go by).

[execExpress]

Socal - unfair - you miss my point entirely. Not trying to have anything both ways or take the piss. (BTW I have a FAA licence too. I only dream Europe/ICAO would adopt and rebadge FAA lock stock and barrel - how many systems does the world need?).

My point put simply is -would a european-wide accepted licence issued by the body that regulates europe satisfy the requirement of the far you quote - which as you rightly assert should be respected.

Probably it would - unless someone wants to get really, really hung up on the literal meaning of the word country in the context of Europe. After all what is the requirement about - ensuring that if an N-reg is flown in non-US airspace without a US licence that the folks whose airspace the aircraft is flying in are happy with the flying qualifications that the pilot does have. If they are happy then the FAA are happy too, eh? Requirement met. Like you say, a lot more 'can do' pragmatic than many public sector organisations.

[execExpress]

The US works with Europe as one big happy family in many other spheres of course.

In this case Europe would perhaps feel that its licence is its licence and does the job it needs to do - document the qualificiations of the pilots it is issued to. Personally I cant see the US having a problem with accepting that - and I guess nobody will never ever know! :-) We have probably spent more words and time on this discussion than it is of interest to the authorities themselves to prioritise or clarify - if they think it needs clarifying from their point of view.

If one day I see in or on the news a US-EU spat over the definition of country with regards to the acceptability or applicability of JAR licences in Europe I'll let you know and buy you a beer. Until then, life is too short. :-)

[execExpress]

You got id, proof of age, medical certification and liablity waiver in place for that then?:) Once they are done with the flyers the drinkers are next :oh: Goodnight.

[kenhughes]

Thanks, guys. Now I understand. :ok:

[IO540]

The FAA does a much stricter level of enforcement in the USA than any European authority does over here, but they can afford to because the US IR is far more accessible than the European IR.

In the USA, you have the old PPL CPL ATPL pipeline, and the hallmark of a 'professional pilot' is the ATPL (as it should be; you need an ATPL to be a Captain). The IR is just another qualification which anybody can do at their old PPL school, with the same instructor usually, with the same crowd... and no professional status is attached to it.

In Europe, flying got split into private and professional. Private got consigned to the "VFR" dustbin and the totally mysterious possibility of a private IR got glossed over. Professional cadets start off with the IR however (well possibly the CPL but that is a VFR-only bit which anybody can get), the ATPL is something anybody with a CPL/IR can just pick up after logging 1500hrs TT and 500 multi-crew RHS hours, and professional pilot status thus got linked to the IR because it is the only reasonably hard bit of ab initio airline pilot training, and all the regulators then worked on making the IR really gold plated.

EASA is currently in a state of flux but their present status is to not accept any foreign licenses at all, in any way whatsoever, as a credit towards anything at all, and achieve recognition of foreign stuff via reciprocal treaties instead. Whether they will succeed in this high-risk confrontational (esp. with the USA) strategy remains to be seen.

what are the benefits, or advantages, of having an N regd aircraft in the UK? Or is it because that particular model isn't yet type-approved in Europe?As SoCal said, it is usually the FAA IR, because to get worldwide IFR privileges you need the IR country of issue match the aircraft country of registry.

There are some maintenance advantages particularly in the area of minor modifications but these would not apply to a new plane like this. There is no significant difference on routine maintenance costs between an N-reg and a G-reg, both being privately operated (I've done both so I know).

The SR22 is EASA approved, so I cannot imagine why wnybody would buy an N-reg one today unless definitely planning to go for the FAA IR.

Any old fizzy cold lager for me please :)

[silverknapper]

IO540

I find your attitude a touch insulting to anyone who has embarked upon the route of gaining either a CPL or IR.
well possibly the CPL but that is a VFR-only bit which anybody can get
Have you got one? If not and it's so easy then why not? If you have then you must realise you are denegrating what was a lot of work to achieve.
the ATPL is something anybody with a CPL/IR can just pick up after logging 1500hrs TT and 500 multi-crew RHS hours
Again I refer to above. You don't have a JAA IR due to the degree of difficulty involved in gaining one, therefore i guess you haven't just 'picked up' an ATPL yet. Once you have then you may be in a position to discuss the ease with which one can be acquired.

[IO540]

I have an ICAO CPL/IR which is good enough for me, and took me long enough to do.

My comments were on the European v. US political scene.

I have not done a JAA IR because it would be of no use in my N-reg plane. If I have to do it then I will.

The JAA ATPL is unreachable to any private pilot because of the multi crew time requirement, but is easily reachable to somebody with a CPL/IR who has got a RHS commercial job. There is no additional checkride, whereas in FAA-land there is an additional checkride for the ATPL.

Etc.

[youngskywalker]

Not quite, there is an ATPL skills test required after one has gained the 500 multi crew hours. I believe this is normally done in the sim with the TRE.

[Fuji Abound]

I was thinking about this debate over FAA registered aircraft and licenses.

Please follow my logic and correct as appropriate.

1. The pilot is JAA qualified and the aircraft is on the N reg,

2. We agree he can fly in UK airspace because the "country" of issue of his license and the airspace are the same,

3. However, the UK is not a country, but made up of a number of countries in the usual sense - Scotland, England, Wales, Norther Ireland,

4. If the UK does not strictly fit the definition of "country" does the EC fit the definition to an any greater or lesser extent?

5. The CIs are a Principality. In term of the FAR's use of country are they a country in their own right, are they part of the country of the United Kingdom, how do they fit with the term used? Why do we assume the flight in CIs airspace is any different than in French airspace? Moreover, I understand the CI zone is French airspace at all times BUT jurisdiction is passed to the CIs when the zone is open. Does the jurisdiction of the airspace alter the position?

I agree it is a pedantic point not least because the FAA in any event would be unable to exercise any enforcement action other than to withdraw the license.

I think someone mentioned earlier it was not a matter for the "owner" of the airspace. I dont believe that is correct. A French registered car can be driven on our roads in the UK. However if the drivers license is not valid for any reason including the license not being recognised by the UK the driver is operating the car illegally. Whether or not the car is entitled to be on our roads is academic.

[Vino Collapso]

We have now travelled some distance 'off thread' and to be honest have left me confused.

Are we proving that there is no such thing as a 'common' European licence despite the Eurocrats efforts to make it so?

European countries have spent much of history at war with each other and I do not see things changing with EASA/JAR etc. Each country will pull for its own benefit and lodge its own differences from the 'standard'.

Add in a registration and licence outside of Europe and everything descends into a farce of grey areas.

I do not see that any state, European or otherwise, will get involved in the legalities of this particular accident. No third party is invloved waiting for legal clarity before jumping in for compensation.

This poor guy who had been trained to fly, had a licence issued by someone and flying an aircraft registered somewhere has come to an un-timely end and we are all debating the legalities of flying just inside French airspace, or not.

How about a separate thread, or better still a separate room, where you can all go and bang your heads together in an attempt to unify the regulatory authorities of the planet.

This subject is so old I am sure that God had an FAA/IR as a flag of convenience.

[dublinpilot]

Do the FAR's have a definition of "country" anywhere?

[172driver]

Not sure about the FARs (although a quick online check should reveal), but there is a list of 'countries' as defined by the UN. Should be on their website somewhere.

With the advent of EASA, this, however, may well become a real topic in the future.

[Fuji Abound]

This is just my observation on this so don't flame me!!!!

I would hope that I dont usually! Sorry if I have in the past.

I think that is a well reasoned argument.

Clearly how the FAA define "country" could be important.

I agree this discusion is some way removed from the thread but, as someone said elsewhere, accidents raise issues that might be relevant to many of us, and with the increase in flag of convenience aircraft this is certainly one such example.

[IO540]

Are we proving that there is no such thing as a 'common' European licence despite the Eurocrats efforts to make it so?There is a common European license (JAA) but this does not meet the wording (as written) of FAR 61.3 which uses the words "issued" and "country". Europe is not a "country" by any stretch of the imagination.

JAA works by mutual validation of licenses issued by member "states" (the intellectuals in Brussels avoid the word "country" because it suggests national sovereignty which as far as they are concerned gave rise to WW1 WW2 etc and it stinks :) ) and that is not the same as license issuance.

This is one of a number of sleeping dogs in aviation law, which TMK has never been tested. The Americans have written their aviation regs primarily for their airspace, and to comply with ICAO obligations, not recognising the fact that Brussels has the power to tell member "states" to do as they are told...

[mm_flynn]

Personal opinion,

The various political subdivisions of Europe (like France, Germany, etc.) act like countries and expect, in general, to be treated like sovereign states on the international front (i.e. they have seats at the UN and individual representation in most international areas in addition to their trading block representation). The various countries in the United Kingdom do not.

With regard to aviation, it is crystal clear that each country does to a greater or lessor extent its own thing - this may well change in the near future but it hasn't yet. On the other hand, the countries of the UK very clearly do not do their own thing in aviation.

I see no real evidence to support the argument that Europe is a country in any useful sense of the word. However, unless France or the UK complain (and in the case of this accident it beggars belief that they would) The FAA has no reason to address the question - With regard to this particular issue, I can not imagine any case where the FAA would care of the local country is happy. (Other than the remote possibility of an FAA ramp check in the foreign country)

[S-Works]

But EASA is a single authority not a mutual co-operation like JAA and we are under EASA now with what I believe a single ANO in development. It is therefore my understanding that we do indeed have a common European licensing authority and therefore a common European licence?

[BackPacker]

But EASA is a single authority not a mutual co-operation like JAA and we are under EASA now with what I believe a single ANO in development. It is therefore my understanding that we do indeed have a common European licensing authority and therefore a common European licence?

My understanding too. However, for practical purposes I think you will find, at least for the near future, that the CAA in Gatwick will keep issuing the licenses, instead of EASA in Brussels.

Anyway, I think we're splitting hairs here. I think you'll find that if this ever becomes an issue, someone at the FAA will come up with an interpretation of the legal word "country" in the context of that FAA regulation, to also apply to an authority that supersedes the authority of that "country". Especially since the "country" involved willingly gave up its authority in the matter to this higher authority.

[Fuji Abound]

Anyway, I think we're splitting hairs here. I think you'll find that if this ever becomes an issue, someone at the FAA will come up with an interpretation of the legal word "country" in the context of that FAA regulation, to also apply to an authority that supersedes the authority of that "country". Especially since the "country" involved willingly gave up its authority in the matter to this higher authority.

I know Backpacker, you are Sir Humphrey Appleton in real life. :)

[Fuji Abound]

In so far as country is concerned you might want to consider:

The word country does not necessarily connote political independence, so it may, according to context, be used to refer both to the United Kingdom and to England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Thus, for example, the British Prime Minister's website refers to "countries within a country", stating "The United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."

Although the term 'constituent countries' is sometimes used by official government bodies in the UK, more frequently, they are simply referred to as countries; thus the 2001 British Census asked residents of the UK their "country of birth" with tick box options of: Wales; Scotland; Northern Ireland; England; Republic of Ireland and Elsewhere; and the Office for National Statistics states authoritatively in its glossary that "In the context of the UK, each of the four main subdivisions (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) is referred to as a country".

The British Embassy in the United States uses the word 'countries' on its website, rather than constituent countries: "The United Kingdom is made up of the countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland."

and

The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are not part of the United Kingdom and are not represented in the United Kingdom Parliament as they are direct dependencies of the British Crown.

on that basis the CIs are not part of the constitutent country of the UK, nor possibly is the UK a country based on our own interpretation, but an assembly of countries. Since the license embodies an assembly of countries perhaps a precedent has already been set, or perhaps the Americans are still confused about the world order outside their own four walls.

I wonder how the Netherlands might fare in this?

I am persuading my self that as soon as a collection of coutries (in the normal sense of the word) agree to act in unison on a licensing matter they have become "countries within a country" for that purpose in that they are acting collectively as one country and would be treated as such by the FAA because it is clearly their intention to accept joint collective responsibility.

In that rspect since the CI and Isle of Man both subrogate their licensing authority to our assemblage of contracting countries they constitute the same licensing country as does all the EASA member states. If, on the other hand, the CIs were to opt out of EASA, or any other member country for that matter, then your EASA license would not entitle you to fly in their airspace under another countries flag.

[IO540]

The real Q is not concerned with prosecution (i.e. a ramp check). It is insurance. Are there known cases where an insurer did not pay out because somebody was flying an N-reg in say Germany, on a UK issued JAA PPL?

Enough people on pilot forums boast of things they don't have and haven't done, but few people would advertise the fact they they didn't get a payout, so maybe we will never know...

In the past I have put this kind of Q to my insurer but their reply tends to be that you have to be legal... they don't like to rule on these things.

[Fuji Abound]

I am not sure insurance is the real question.

The insurance companies are no more or less above the law. Whilst practically they may be the only party to take an issue such as this because it might not suite them to pay out their right of refusal will be determined by the answer to this question which ulitmately can only be determined by the Courts.

How that might work is difficult to imagine.

The FAA have jurstidiction over the pilot but they have no jurstidiction in our sovreign nation (I refuse to use the word country). The action would therefore presumably have to be brought in the States, however whatever the outcome of that action, our Sovreign nation may take the alternative view in our Courts! :confused:

I suppose the real issue might be that it could prove so expensive to find out the answer if the insurance company refused to pay out you would not have the means to do so.

[BackPacker]

I wonder how the Netherlands might fare in this?

The Netherlands is a country allright. One single country.

It used to be a republic, the "Republiek der Nederlanden" or "Republic of the Netherlands" - "neder" being a formal word for "low", in this case relating to the low level above the sea. So "The Netherlands" is sort of an Anglication of "Nederlands" but would actually mean "low countries".

But a few hundred years ago it became a single country, and a kingdom even.

[mm_flynn]

The FAA have jurstidiction over the pilot but they have no jurstidiction in our sovreign nation (I refuse to use the word country).Unfortunately they do. That is the whole reason for requiring the aircraft to be owned by a US citizen (be it real person, body corporate, or trust). If the Feds choose to prosecute (which as I have said I can't believe would happen without the prompting of the local Authority - EASA as compared to the UK or the French ;) ) they will drag the US citizen in front of a US court and apply US law - the local courts will have zero input.

[Fuji Abound]

Unfortunately they do. That is the whole reason for requiring the aircraft to be owned by a US citizen (be it real person, body corporate, or trust). If the Feds choose to prosecute (which as I have said I can't believe would happen without the prompting of the local Authority - EASA as compared to the UK or the French ) they will drag the US citizen in front of a US court and apply US law - the local courts will have zero input.

I think you are confusing the owner of the aircraft and the pilot.

I doubt you can prosecute the owner because the non owner pilot is "unqualified" to be flying the aircraft. More often than not the pilot is not an American citizen.

Recent cases would suggest it is the authorities of the jurisdiction in which the incident occurs that will bring the action against the crew.

(I appreciate the owner and the pilot may be the same, but unusual in cases of flag of convenience aircraft, even if the ultimate owner and the pilot are the same).

It also raises the question of what duty of care the trust has. It will be the trust in cases such as this that will insure the hull. The trust will be "obliged" to ensure only the named pilots or QFI are in command of the aircraft but too what extent do they have an obligation to ensure those pilots are qualified to be in command?

[IO540]

I am sure somebody will deliver the reference but under ICAO both countries are obliged to pursue the alleged offender.

It's not like a motoring offence where you can leave the country where you did it, and get away with it (short of killing somebody, etc).

I do know a bit about this, having busted a French power station TRA a few years ago - before they featured in the ais.org.uk notam data. The DGAC got the CAA to go after me. Nothing happened in the end; perhaps because the French data showed that I was at the time receiving a radar service and the French were obviously totally happy with the bust at the time, without saying a word....

I do think the real risk is insurance.

[Fuji Abound]

The DGAC got the CAA to go after me.

Exactly my point, and exactly what will happen on every occasion unless you are detained in the county in which the incident occurred - and even then unless loss of life is involved you are likely to be repatriated.

It is very difficult for anu jurisdiction to prosecute you once you have left the jurisdiction!

I do think the real risk is insurance.

Not if you have died.

[IO540]

Well OK but then you have the Graham Hill situation where the injured parties (or, if dead, their estates) go after the pilot, who has in the meantime been held up for negligence, because this tactic (which is completely standard in the business) establishes his passenger liability, and then his estate gets raided.

Anybody who is not a total loner needs to be concerned about this scenario, which is why it is best to be legal - at least on stuff which is actually detectable/enforceable i.e. the documents.

Flying VFR in IMC (enroute) will never be detectable, but flying with duff paperwork is really dumb.

Unfortunately we have these grey areas...

- JAA license for an N-reg around Europe?

- FAA PPL good for night flight in UK airspace?

and a few other forum regulars :)

[mm_flynn]

I do know a bit about this, having busted a French power station TRA a few years ago - before they featured in the ais.org.uk notam data. The DGAC got the CAA to go after me.
I am assuming now with the end of European States it is a much more efficient process where the European Agency just takes enforcement action and the CAA and DGAC are no longer relevant as they and the former sovereign nations are just vestigial organisations ;)

[Fuji Abound]

Well OK but then you have the Graham Hill situation where the injured parties (or, if dead, their estates) go after the pilot, who has in the meantime been held up for negligence

Yes, but as I said earlier all very well when the pilot is a national of the same jurisdiction in which the accident occurred otherwise not so simple.

Imagine bringing an action against a pilot involved in an incident in France, when the pilot is a resident of the UK but was flying a flag of convenience aircraft on a foreign licence.

Good luck.

[IO540]

Imagine bringing an action against a pilot involved in an incident in France, when the pilot is a resident of the UK but was flying a flag of convenience aircraft on a foreign licence.

Depends on how much is at stake. With any half decent house being worth £1M these days :) Also the passengers are highly likely to be resident in the same country as the pilot.

I also don't think the aircraft reg would be a problem. The insurers seem to make no distinction.

[Fuji Abound]

The passengers aren’t relevant.

If the accident is in France, the action would need to be brought in France. If guilt were proven the assets would have to be sequestrated in the UK, through the UK courts relying on an overseas judgement, never mind proving perhaps the pilot had operated illegally under the FARs which would involve a US court.

£1 million is no where near close enough. A week in the High Court with pre hearing fees and refreshers is half that and you have only just got started.

Consider for one moment the cost of the Al-Fahid inquest.

No Brief will ever guarantee you success - there are no guarantees ever in this business. You will have to fund the action. Legal aid is neither the answer or the panacea it si made out to be.

Without insurance you had better be very wealthy or very brave.

which takes us full circle to aviation, if you want to make a fortune at litigation, start with an even bigger one.

[Riverboat]

What has all this got to do with "Cirrus issues"?

[Fuji Abound]

Socal thank you for recalling this thread and bringing us up to date.

It would seem very sadly a probable case of loss of control in imc by a pilot with all too few hours in a high performance aircraft.

We can only speculate there was another problem the investigators were unable to identify as the ap was clearly doing a good job immediately before the accident. The g1000 retains a great deal of information about the flight; we can only assume this could not be recovered.

Imc at night is as tough as it gets. Something as simple as the ap failing could have resulted in rapid disorientation. We are none the wiser as to whether the chute was pulled but on the balance of probability it would seem it was not.

A sad day for all.

In relation to another thread it would seem the pilot was operating on a uk licence and i am guessing (have not checked exact position) was in french airspace shortly to be within the ci zone on a svfr clearance. We dont know for certain he was or ever had been in imc.

[IO540]

Sounds like they only found some little bits of the pilot...

I wonder if it was an autopilot failure. I've had those. There is/was a bug in my AP (KFC225) which would suddenly select +2000fpm. If it selected -2000fpm you would go down pretty fast - Vne at least.

A dark night over the sea is as good as IMC.

I bet the insurance didn't pay out on this one, because even the investigators knew about 61.3 not having been complied with.

[wsmempson]

I remember the evening of this accident very well, as I was due in France that evening, flying from Denham to Cherbourg. At that point I had 550hrs PIC, 100 of which were IMC or night, and felt pretty omnivorous about my choice of weather conditions.

The reason that the incident sticks in my mind is that I very clearly remember looking at the TAF's and thinking "Nah - I'll sit this one out". The trouble with the airfield around the Cherbourg peninsula and the Channel Islands is that if one field gets socked in, you can find that they're all socked in, which can leave the nearest divert as Bournemouth or Southampton. If you get into trouble, it's quite a long way to go to get back on terra-firma.

Alderney is the only place in the world that I have been to where you can get 40 knot driving fog.

Of course, I'm hugely sorry for the pilot and his family and from my perspective, this is very much a case "there, but for the grace of god, go I".

[IO540]

The wx is not that bad in this case.

The final track looks like hand flying, not autopilot flight which is a perfectly straight track.

My feeling is that the pilot was hand flying the whole time shown (why?) and lost it at the last moment.

Why was he flying manually, in the hardest of conditions? Did the aircraft have a history of AP failures? It's not unusual, but is often not advertised in situations like (a) still in warranty or (b) trying to sell the plane.

[john ball]

WX not bad in this case !!!

I was in the terminal building at Biggin when the aircraft took off on 21.

The weather had been very bad with low cloud, strong wind and rain.
We had wanted to fly but had given up and gone to the terminal for a cup of tea instead.

This weather was clearing from the north and going south, it went from terrible to very clear quite quickly.

So, I was very surprised to see the aircraft taking off some 30 minutes after it cleared ( dark and stars, not much wind) and going SOUTH.

I can clearly remember commenting to my friend with me at the time.

[IO540]

WX not bad in this case !!!

Yes; mucky weather, but with e.g. OVC007 this is not itself a reason for a crash.

Sorry if I have missed this but was this pilot non instrument capable? If so, he would have been in IMC much of the time.

[wsmempson]

The pilot had 75 hrs total time, a night rating and no IMC or instrument rating.

[IO540]

Looks like a dumb departure then, but why not use the autopilot?

[172driver]

Looks like a dumb departure then, but why not use the autopilot?

Well, according to the BEA report he did (they conclude that from the straight line of flight). It also states that the memory module of the G1000 was not recovered.

[IO540]

It doesn't look anywhere near that straight to me. It looks like somebody is holding a heading manually, plus or minus 10 degrees. An AP will hold it to 1 degree or so.

Unless the radar is crap, the track should be a perfect straight line.

I can post some AP-flight tracks, but not immediately. They are absolutely perfectly straight.

[172driver]

Have to say looking at the graphic I was a bit surprised by that as well, but it's in the report.

[421C]

There is a tidier translation available as a PDF on the PPL/IR site here: PPL/IR Europe - Fatal Accident Report Cirrus SR22 N224AG (http://www.pplir.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=546)

No significant changes to the Google version except un-mangling some of the translation hiccups

I agree that the depicted radar track is not obviously an autopilot flown one. I would have guess the opposite - but I don't know how SSR tracks can be affected over these kind of distances and intervals.

brgds
421C

[Fuji Abound]

Unless the autopilot wasnt working i cant believe he was hand flying.

Cirrus pilots are encouraged to use the ap when ever possible. I enjoy hand flying and the cirrus is a delight to hand fly but at night it makes sense to use the ap on a leg across the channel.

Even if he wasnt i would expect the ap to be engaged for a descent into imc if this is what happened.

We are never going to know what happened in those last few minutes but the transcript does not suggest a pilot who was working a problem at any time before the accident.

Is the green button standard on this version, i think it might be. If it was either it didnt work or was not used.

[IO540]

No way is that an autopilot track unless, as I say, there was something wrong with the radar.

I've seen radar replays of autopilot-driven planes and they are totally straight.

IMHO, if I was flying erratically like that when IFR in CAS, somebody would call me up and ask if everything is OK.

It does happen occassionally, too. My autopilot does not do intercepts very cleverly and while there is a way to do them perfectly, usually I am not too concerned because it will converge pretty quickly. ATC then see a momentary track which for say 20 seconds is say 30 degrees off the DCT they gave me. The actual lateral deviation from the perfect track might be a few hundred yards but they see it allright, on the projected line, and sometimes they question it.

In fact I recall Jersey doing exactly that...

If there is strong turbulence, the resulting enroute track is still very straight because while you may get roll excursions of say 30 degrees (enough to really scare passengers) the AP will still hold the average heading very well. That is, so long as the AP doesn't decide enough is enough and disconnect...

One problem is that the French are not very bothered about GA crashes. They took over 3 years to produce a report on N2195B. But at least they don't have digs at N-regs like the AAIB does. Another one is that unless you fish out the wreckage (which few people do unless your name is Kennedy) and get some recorded data, any report is going to be massively speculative.

It's common knowledge that Cirruses are flown mostly on autopilot, and having flown in them I can see why: the spring-loaded sidestick has poor ergonomics and uses muscles which are typically not exercised in normal life.

This pilot may have been practicing instrument flight, which is fine, though I would personally not be doing that in IMC, night, and probably some turbulence. Or he may have had an AP failure, or perhaps he didn't know how to engage the AP. To get more background one would need to ask people who knew him and knew the plane.

Or he had some other avionics failure, perhaps a PFD going blank, and did not transition to the backup gauges fast enough.

the transcript does not suggest a pilot who was working a problem at any time before the accident.Indeed, but one cannot tell anything from the words about the stress levels, etc.

I was talking to somebody recently who told me of an ATC tape recording of a fatal crash. Apparently, a lot of pilots hold the PTT button down when they know they are going to die, so ATC get to hear the whole lot, and in this case you could hear his family screaming in the background. The transcript (which I read) revealed nothing of the sort.

Was this a Garmin or Avidyne Cirrus?

[Kerling-Approsh KG]

IO540,

Your contributions to this thread do you no credit whatsoever.

It worries me that you hold forth with such conviction and certainty when your expertise is so lacking.

[TWR]

In my humble opinion, this could be an AP-track.
If he was flying on HDG select or in GPSS-mode, I'd expect
a smooth straight line. But suppose he was tracking a VOR in plain NAV mode
then this sort of "zig-zag" is to be expected.

[Fuji Abound]

Can i put to rest cirrus hand flying myth. I have hundreds of cirrus hours and hand fly a lot. Of course like any aircraft trim the side stick properly but it is comfortable and easy to hand fly for hours. In fact i find it more comfortable than a yoke or centre stick.

I think the myth stems from pilots feeling the cirrus is a hp aircraft requiring the pilot to deploy his time doing better things than driving. There is an element of truth and for a low time pilot there is no doubt the aircraft can get ahead of you particularly if you are twiddling all those knobs in imc.

The pilot would seem to know how to use the autopilot; the report says those that knew him also knew it was his custom to engage the autopilot.

I understand the aircraft was recovered.

Why Cirrus - Cirrus Perspective (http://www.whycirrus.com/advancements/Cirrus-perspective-cockpit.aspx)
The report says it was a perspective cirrus so the panel was garmin g1000 not avidyne. I am guessing it may have had the digital ap and may have had the green rescue button.

I have no idea whether the track does or doesnt fit with the ap being engaged but the investigators believe it does fit with ap use.

[IO540]

Your contributions to this thread do you no credit whatsoever.

It worries me that you hold forth with such conviction and certainty when your expertise is so lacking.Can you be more specific? I am always willing to learn.

I have no idea whether the track does or doesnt fit with the ap being engaged but the investigators believe it does fit with ap use. I wonder why they think that. This (http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/egnt/egnt-map.jpg) is an example of a flight done totally on autopilot, except the obvious bits near the southern end. Admittedly this is from a GPS track and it is not a radar plot, but it looks totally different to the SR22 track.

But suppose he was tracking a VOR in plain NAV mode
then this sort of "zig-zag" is to be expected. I would disagree. An AP always flies a heading. Even when it is tracking some poor-signal VOR, it still flies a heading. One would not normally see such short-term heading variations, IME.

I've flown behind the Garmin GFC700 autopilot and it is very good.

I also doubt a pilot would be tracking a VOR when he can track a GPS. I have never tracked a VOR with an AP, except when playing with it. It also breaks down a bit when you get overhead the VOR; the signal disappears and the AP has to carry on with the last heading, and then it hopes to pick it up again on the other side, and usually you get a bit of a kink.

[Wallace and Grommit]

I was talking to somebody recently who told me of an ATC tape recording of a fatal crash. Apparently, a lot of pilots hold the PTT button down when they know they are going to die, so ATC get to hear the whole lot, and in this case you could hear his family screaming in the background. The transcript (which I read) revealed nothing of the sort.

Yes they do, and I have listened to more than a few. But it rarely sheds light on why the accident occurs, just confirms the time of impact. The sounds live with you. Also you can get an uncommanded short open transmission at the moment of impact due to disruption of the electronics.

I spent a few years out of private flying. When I stopped the King KNS80 Rnav was the new boy on the block. When I returned something called a GNS430 had become the system of choice. My first thought was that this device needs configuring before you get airborne. There was loads of scope to fiddle in flight, head in cockpit, attention distracted from the primary function of controlling the aircraft. You could also screw settings up big time if the wrong button pushes were made.

A low hour PPL in a high tech machine trying to re-configure the electronics of a high tech device could easily lose the picture.

[IO540]

2 hours diff training for an SR22, assuming going from a spamcan, would be astonishing, if this is true.

[Kerling-Approsh KG]

IO540,

I really don't have time for this or wish to enter into debate, but...

Why would two hours training be astonishing? What do the regulations require?

What is your experience in radar track analysis?

No, an autopilot doesn't fly a heading. You clearly have no appreciation of how autopilots work (they fly asymptotic curves tending towards the determined track according to complex algorythms).

What makes the autopilot you mention 'very good'. Are you qualified to make this statement, or is it your observation?

Rebating controllers commenting on track keeping, are you a controller? Do you know what track jitter is?

Your words on pilots' final transmissions are particularly worthy of criticism: Pure sensationalist nonsense, without any foundation in fact at all.

And how are you qualified to say that OVC007 is not reason for a crash?

You're embarrassing yourself here. My advice is to bug out and stick to what you know, whatever that is...

[IO540]

No, an autopilot doesn't fly a headingI will ignore most of your pompous rant, Mr "KG". But the above is actually how an AP works. It holds a heading, which is then continually adjusted according to the HSI deviation bar error (taking the simple non-GPSS NAV case, with a GPS or VOR source).

The basic "heading" is taken from the course pointer setting (if a mechanical HSI; the pilot turns the CP to the new track at each WP), or from an EHSI CP setting which is automatically slewed to the current GPS track at each WP.

A GA AP doesn't fly asymptotic curves :) :) :)

You can get more intelligent behaviour with GPSS, whereby the GPS directly controls the AP, bypassing the HSI. This can give you accurate fly-by WP behaviour. The GFC700 should have this in all G1000 installations.

He clearly had little regard for following the regulations as the report shows he busted so many.

Well, sure, but busting regs doesn't automatically get you killed. I still wonder why the investigators reckon he was flying on the AP when it seems obvious he was flying by hand (and not doing too great a job, especially at the very end).

I don't take the position that anybody busting regs deserves to simply die. If one could find out what was really going on, one might take something home from it.

[madlandrover]

Why would two hours training be astonishing? What do the regulations require?

No particular comment on the accident from me, but having spent nearly a year doing Cirrus conversions I would also be surprised at someone being let loose after only 2 hours training on the SR22 - it is a serious high performance single and while generally docile can have some surprises if pilots don't know what to expect. 2 hours circuits would be about right for a newish PPL... We generally found that current FIs would take 1.7-2 hours to train to a reasonable standard, most CPL holders were safe after 4-5, PPL holders were (by insurance) a minimum 6 hours which was generally fair, raised later on to 10 hours by insurance requirements.

Training on a modern glass cockpit aircraft is not purely about the handling of the aircraft, there is also mandatory differences training on the glass cockpit aspects. In a G1000 equipped aircraft people can get in and just look at it to have some basic familiarity but I would not regard that as safe to fly the machine solo, it should instead be a complete training solution to allow the prospective pilot to have reasonable familiarity with a) the instrument fit b) the capability c) failure options. The best way to do this in a Cirrus/other decent machine is to include some in-depth cross country flying in the training, with the focus on how to best use the automatic aids and avionics to free up spare capacity. They're great aircraft for distance flying when correctly used, but things can happen awfully quickly if the unexpected happens when single pilot IFR. Yes, even the humble SR20 can approach 200kt groundspeeds on a decent breezy day at altitude...

[Cows getting bigger]

Whilst the A/P Hdg hold argument is most fascinating......... :eek:

Anyway, time-on-type and differences training. Reading the report it seems to me that our chap completed his PPL then immediately went over to his new Cirrus. As one who trains pilots on G1000 aircraft, I would be a little intrigued if someone with so little apparent experience managed to get signed-off for glass panel (a differences training stipulation) in only 2 hours. That said, he could have previously trained on another G1000 type and therefore there may not have been any need for differences training. Regardless, he subsequently managed to 'survive' 23 hours of G1000 time and it would be reasonable to expect that, by the end of this time, he should have figured what most of the buttons did.

I believe all "Perspectives" have the magic blue button.

[Kerling-Approsh KG]

IO540,

No ranting here. Just facts and intelligent consideration of them. A shame you are so defensive about it, and yet so bull-headed about your own input to this dubious debate.

I don't intend to waste any more time here... You're the bloke in the pub I walk away from.

[yawningdog]

My hunch would be that he became distracted and intimidated by the controller's message to stay clear of Cherbourg restricted area. Whilst in descent he may have decided to disengage the AP to make a manual turn to the right to avoid the area. Feasibly quicker & easier to do this for a few moments rather than mess up a GPS flightplan by altering the AP to HDG. Perhaps coming from a high speed AP controlled descent into a manual turn could have induced disorientation and panic.

For the sake of arguement, the radar picture looks like the work of an AP, at least I couldn't fly that straight manually!

[Fuji Abound]

Yd

A good point but transitioning from gpss to heading is easy; press the heading button on the g1000 and heading on the ap assuming not gfc700 equipted and you are in heading mode with bug steer available at the twist of a knob.

The procedure does not disrupt the fp, you can either use the bug to steer back onto the magenta line when you are ready, or pull up the fp and use the d function to repaint the magenta line direct to the next wp in the fp. You can even resume gpss but it is not as elegant as using the bug to get back on track because of the greater bank angles the ap will generate.

There are times when the turn time is not as quick as you might wish in this mode. Lets say you are in the descent or for that matter s and l cruise, anxious to avoid imc for whatever reason and cloud is looming large but with attractive gaps. Maybe you think fine i can stay visual but disengage the ap to give yourself the required manoueverability; of course the danger is high rates and bank angles can ensue as you attempt to stay with the hole and then you find you cant avoid entering imc. Aiming at gaps can be a risky business unless you know what you are about but also like mermaids very attractive to a sailor that is missing home.

[mm_flynn]

Having read the report now and digested the added facts I suspect the most likely story is that the pilot either decided on a manual descent or mis-programmed when setting the altitude preselect and then faffed about fixing the issue and ended up disconnecting the autopilot. From that point it appears a standard loss of control.

My logic is
1 - 'Sam' who appeared to know the pilot personally (earlier in this thread) said he normally flew on autopilot, the BEA makes this statement
2 - Radar tracks do sometimes have the kind of small discontinuities seen in the bulk of the track (look at the G-EYES radar track)
3 - At the bottom of the track the aircraft clearly comes off the autopilot, with a nearly 30 degree turn to the left, then back on heading, then what looks like a 45 degree turn to the right, followed by the loss of control.

This last event happens just when the aircraft should be levelling at 3000 ft, probably just after transitioning to IMC. If one was planning on having the autopilot fly you to your destination, any unexpected manual intervention would be high stress.


As an aside, this accident report does clear up one of the issues that was hotly debated in 2008 - Do the French consider themselves to be part of the Country EASA/JAA? And of course they do not and have affirmed their understanding of 61.3.

[IO540]

You're the bloke in the pub I walk away from.

I'll save you the trouble: I almost never go to pubs :) Not having to do that is one of the luxuries of having a girlfriend. Not to mention one of the luxuries of the lifestyle choices which comes with middle age ;)

A good point but transitioning from gpss to heading is easy; press the heading button on the g1000 and heading on the ap assuming not gfc700 equipted and you are in heading mode with bug steer available at the twist of a knob.

Indeed, but if he really had just 2 hrs conversion training for the SR22, it isn't terribly likely that he was all that familiar with the G1000 buttons.

Sadly, while "anybody" can get a PPL in a C152, there is a certain % of PPL holders who will never get their heads around the more advanced avionics. This may sound offensive to some but so be it. I take myself back to 2002 when I bought the TB20 with, hey, wait for it, an HSI, and could not find a single instructor who knew how it worked. I downloaded a load of manuals off the internet and went up to 5000ft over Kent, put the AP on, and gradually worked out what it did. A G1000 has another level of functionality. No extra capability as such (unless you count LPV which doesn't yet exist in Europe) but a whole lot more buttons and menus and submenus.

To operate an autopilot correctly, or even usefully, you need to understand where it gets its inputs from and what exactly it does in which mode. The GFC700 (at least in the TBM850 G1000 installation in which I have flown with it) has always-on GPSS so you enter a WP and press DCT and the CP auto-slews and the plane will go to the WP regardless of which way you are pointing, which is a lot simpler than more traditional AP installations where the CP interaction is required. But in this case, as suggested above, he may have wanted to go to a HDG mode and may have messed up.

Another possibility is that he stalled when he levelled off. If you do a descent at say -1000fpm (can anybody work out the ROD in that final long track?) your MP may well be too low for level flight when you finally level off. I tend to avoid descents below 18" MP for this reason if descending on AP.

Back to the G1000, there is a lot of functionality and it should have a mandatory classroom, which you can fail. But this has no support in the ICAO pilot paperwork structure, would play havoc with already painfully slow GA modernisation because many pilots would avoid doing business with a school which has decided to modernise, and we should never wish for extra regulation in this already grotesquely over-regulated game.

As an aside, this accident report does clear up one of the issues that was hotly debated in 2008 - Do the French consider themselves to be part of the Country EASA/JAA? And of course they do not and have affirmed their understanding of 61.3.

That one was cleared up earlier by the State of Registry (FAA chief counsel office) rulings which somebody found on the FAA website last year.

To me, there was never any doubt that a PPL issued in the UK was not issued in France :)

I wonder if the French writer actually knew about the FAA ruling. I bet he didn't (very few people do) but his opinion happens to be right.

[stevelup]

He may have done his training on G1000 equipped aircraft?

[bookworm]

Whether he was or was not using his AP is irrelevant as he should not have been where he was in the first instance - notably (1) in IMC (2) after dark (3) in France.

Issues (2) and (3) are really not significant as regulatory points. The report makes it clear that the only thing missing on (2) was that the physical piece of paper hadn't dropped through the door, and point (3) is a subtlety (almost certainly an unintended one) of FAR 61.3 the the vast majority of pilots and regulators neither know nor care about. French airspace is not more demanding than UK airspace. I'd be willing to wager that if it were not for the regular armchair-lawyer debates on Pprune and Flyer, and in particular post #36 in this thread, the BEA might not even be aware of the issue.

What is significant is that a pilot with no additional instrument training beyond the token amount in the PPL seemingly thought nothing of undertaking a night flight on top of a layer (albeit a fairly benign layer) of SC, knowing that at some point he would need to descend through it to land at his destination. This isn't the same as flying an ILS to minima on a dark and stormy night with a howling crosswind, but it does take a level of instrument competence. Is that, perhaps, another indication that Europe makes it too onerous to obtain the skills and privileges to do so legally?

[IO540]

When I returned something called a GNS430 had become the system of choice. My first thought was that this device needs configuring before you get airborne. There was loads of scope to fiddle in flight, head in cockpit, attention distracted from the primary function of controlling the aircraft. You could also screw settings up big time if the wrong button pushes were made.

A low hour PPL in a high tech machine trying to re-configure the electronics of a high tech device could easily lose the picture.I think it is widely accepted that these avionics are indeed configured pre-flight.

On a few occassions, e.g. following ground delays but having filed a Eurocontrol IFR flight plan, one departs without loading up the entire route of say 20 waypoints, and then one loads up the waypoints when enroute, on the autopilot. Usually one would still ground-load the initial waypoints especially if e.g. flying a STAR departure, so one can see which way one is supposed to go after getting airborne :)

Whether this is obvious to a new PPL as it should be obvious to some old-timer, is a different matter. The PPL training business doesn't really teach cockpit procedures and GPS is rarely touched on. I think a lot of people discover this stuff as they go along.

But in this case the pilot should have had ground school on the G1000.

Is that, perhaps, another indication that Europe makes it too onerous to obtain the skills and privileges to do so legally? Well, yes, obviously, but there are vast establishment interests which have always worked to keep the IR hard to get and they are still there today.

In the meantime we have EASA trying to ground the vast majority of IFR capable pilots, by screwing the IFR/N-reg community into getting the JAA IR with its mad 7-exam ground school. That crude anti-US move is really going to help safety :ugh: IMHO, a lot of these pilots will not do the Euro IR but will just fly VFR in IMC. but at least they know how...

BTW it has been suggested on another forum that this pilot may have had more diff training hours than it may appear because some training may have been logged as P1.

[robin]

What is significant is that a pilot with no additional instrument training beyond the token amount in the PPL seemingly thought nothing of undertaking a night flight on top of a layer (albeit a fairly benign layer) of SC, knowing that at some point he would need to descend through it to land at his destination.

What is missing from this discussion is what the pilot's PPL experience was from those who carried it out.

It is quite possible the pilot was a natural with all the skils needed to convert to a Cirrus in 2 hours and come to terms with the glass cockpit and instrument flight.

On the other hand this could be another (of many) example of dynamic business folk taking their working styles into aviation.

[Fuji Abound]

Bookie

A good post. We are obsessed with regulatory issues; as has been said before the aircraft doesnt care what letter is on the side or what card is in the pilot's wallet. What we should care about is why we are forced to jump through more hoops than at Crufts instead of insisting on a joined up regulatory framework within Europe than enables pilots to concentrate on gaining the best training for the job in hand.

I first flew a Cirrus with already a lot of hours on glass and even more hours of flying time. I did two flights with a check pilot. It is a dangerous game second guessing what time a pilot needs but for a low hours pilot there is no doubt Cirrus's own recommendations should be closely followed. For any pilot accustom to flying at typical GA speeds the aircraft will get away from you quickly.

We will never know the exact sequence of events that ended with this tragedy. Some reasonably obvious possibilities have been mentioned. It serves as a another reminder that operating in marginal weather without instrument training can be a risky business even if this wasnt the whole explanation for this accident.

[bookworm]

Add that to flight in IMC and the odds starts to accumulate towards a certain mindset..

Fair point. I still think, however, that there's clear blue water between the technicalities, and deciding to fly in IMC, not just without the proper piece of paper, but, apparently, without any training to do so.

[maxred]

Exactly. Happened to me recently when I went to pick an aircraft up. There had been a delay in getting the CofA. I had confirmation e mail that it had been signed, that it had been posted, but I did not have the original signed hard copy. To check pre flight, I called the issuer, who reminded me that the cert had to be in my hand, and on board the aircraft to be legal.I booked into a hotel, and waited until the original was with me. I then collected the aircraft. Reason-if it all went pear shaped the insurers would not pay out, and secondly, it was not legal.

This guy really should not have undertaken that flight. His experience level was very low, the aircraft was challenging, even in daylight VFR, and he had no ratings.

At night, IMC, over water:eek:

[dont overfil]

I know you are all sky gods on here and maybe I'm thick but looking back 20 odd years what would I have done in this situation?
I would probably have crashed!
D.O.

[Fuji Abound]

Yes, but maybe he thought he could do it vfr.

The metar suggests it was scattered and broken; what did the tafs suggest. The weather was clearing from the north and would have been weakening south bound.

Optomistic there is no doubt but perhaps as i said earlier he was sliding a hole when he lost control. However was it pitch black by the time he arrived and if so was there a moon? If it was pitch black even if vmc was maintained did he realise descending over a black sea is very different to the night training work he did over the land.

Night vfr over the sea, no moon, patchy cloud and to all intensive purposes it is imc and an instrument flight the whole way with the risk of an upset if you try and transition to flying visually even for a pilot on the money.

Do

Just seen your post and an interesting observation. Actually i think if you really understand the systems AND nothing goes wrong with them the cirrus is sufficiently good that you could make the flight in imc with no instrument flight training. I have put the ap in at a few hundred feeg, flown a route, changed the route in flight, set up for a vectored ils and taken the ap out at dh touching nothing other than the power lever the whole way. There are two enormous caveats and you need to be 100% on the systems and the aircraft performance. Dont try it - ever.

[IO540]

I know you are all sky gods on here and maybe I'm thick but looking back 20 odd years what would I have done in this situation?
I would probably have crashed!

It will depend on how "clever" you are.

In the countries which don't have an "IMCR", flying "VFR" in IMC is a national pastime; the difference is that most of the pilots don't know how to because there is no legal way they can get the training. They rely on cockpit automation.

It's a lot easier to learn cockpit automation (if you are of a technical mind) than it is to learn hand flying in IMC while doing the radio and everything else.

So a lot of things are possible if you are a clever player.

Having heard some background on the pilot, I suspect this chap wasn't exactly a "clever enough player" for this aircraft...

But it still doesn't add up, why there is the erratic track followed by a very sudden plummet, with no radio comms. Does the data indicate the speeds?

[yawningdog]

A very sad assumption to add to this topic is, IF the BRS was not activated, one could assume that the young chap felt he could sort it out rather than face the consequences. I don't believe he was the owner of this very expensive aircraft. Given the circumstances of the illegal flight, insurance would not have paid up. His parents would have happily taken the financial loss for the love of their son, of course they are now faced with both losses.

This is not just about loss of control in IMC, as with most crashes, it contains a multitude of factors; including non-aviation related influences.

If you have BRS, at least have a set rule as to when you will use it.

[Katamarino]

The report says that he was the owner. Not bad, at age 25.

[IO540]

My info is that he was given the dosh by his parents.

I wonder if we can get input from a real radar ATCO on whether they routinely see such radar tracks from high-end piston GA, in particular SR22s.

None of the ones in radar replays look anything like that, unless somebody is just bimbling.

I would put money on there having been some sort of avionics failure and he was hand flying, possibly on the backup instruments. I am sure that most pilots would not declare any kind of distress if that happened.

[OA32]

I have just read the most recent pages and can say the following.Firstly, he was a nice guy and did own the aircraft, he did his training at Jersey Aero Club and none of his PPL training would have been in a glass cockpit, the club aircraft are all gauges with 2 having Garmin 430's which students frequently have finger trouble with. He had flown up to watch England play at Twickenham the day before and had offered a lift back to 2 of his friends who fortunately declined and flew back commercially.

For those of you wondering about the radar, SSR only tracks can appear to weave regardless of a/c type and aren't as reliable as primary returns, this is the reason that 5 mile spacing is required for SSR only radar separation as opposed to 3 miles for primary radar. As such it cannot be relied upon as an indication of the plane being hand flown as opposed to autopiloted. Also the Avranches radar is some 60 miles away from the accident site which will also affect the recorded track, the same can be said of primary radar for different reasons.

[Fuji Abound]

Indeed there is a bit more too this than would be wise to publish here so it is entirely right and proper the discussion should relate to what we can learn from this event rather than discussion about the personal element and with every respect to the gentlemen concerned.

[IO540]

Well, "personal elements" are relevant if they can help explain what happened.

Lots of very experienced pilots have embarked on obviously illegal or "impossible in the wx" flights, on what turned out to be their final flight.

I now think the plane was indeed on autopilot because the vertical profile is too good for hand flying. I could not hand fly such a constant VS, commencing immediately when the descent starts, if you paid me for it.

Which then leads to the obvious question: why did he plummet?

- autopilot failure (I've had more than a dozen and some can be hard to spot (http://www.zen74158.zen.co.uk/videos/KFC225-failure-12-04-2004-smallest.mpg))
- some avionics failure
- finger trouble, causing the autopilot to drop out
- turbulence, causing the autopilot to drop out
- structural failure (somebody worked out his GS at ~ 200kt)

No pilot transmissions appear in the report (which does not mean he did not make any and merely means nothing could be transcribed into text) so whatever happened kept him busy.

[mm_flynn]

For those of you wondering about the radar, SSR only tracks can appear to weave regardless of a/c type and aren't as reliable as primary returns, this is the reason that 5 mile spacing is required for SSR only radar separation as opposed to 3 miles for primary radar. As such it cannot be relied upon as an indication of the plane being hand flown as opposed to autopiloted.
OA32,
The bulk of the radar track has these very small deviations (it looks like about 0.05 miles each way - which is entirely consistent with your comment). However, in the final 30-40 seconds there is an initial large heading to the South (it looks like a course change of c.30 degrees and maintained for about 20 seconds.)

It seems a reasonable assumption that the autopilot was turned off at this point (or was operating in an unanticipated way). From watching people fly G1000 aircraft, it would be plausible the descent was mis programmed and the pilot disengaged the autopilot when he realised this.

[Fuji Abound]

- structural failure (somebody worked out his GS at ~ 200kt)

Of course the gs would be irrelevant but unless the as was well in excess of that there is no chance of a structural failure (well i suppose other than some unknown manufacturing defect). This speed is not exceptional for a cirrus.