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Thread: Crash in Laos
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Old 28th Oct 2013, 15:20
  #71 (permalink)  
Dan Winterland
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Fragrant Harbour
Posts: 4,787
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Like any spatial disorientation, the somatogravic illusion doesn't respect experience. There are many case involving 10,000 hrs plus pilots. Unfortunately, the somatogravic illusion is hard to identify - largely because so few pilots who succumb live to tell the tale. Very few accident reports identify it - the true figure is probably far higher than the statistics reflect.

In this case, a crash soon after a GA in poor weather/at night bears all the hallmarks of the somatogravic illusion.

There aren't hundreds of crashes per month anywhere, but somatogravic illusion accidents do feature heavily in carrier launches. During one period during the Vietnam war, the USN were losing a pilot a month to it.
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