Aston Down gliding crash - pilot suicide suspected.

[dsc810]

Accident on 14th June initially reported here
Man dies in glider crash at Aston Down airfield - BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-33130657)

Sounded to me at this point like structural failure.
But in the following days there was curiously zero info released about the pilot, and no sign of any sudden inspections on K8's being required.
All this silence had the hallmarks of 'something being up'.
Well now we are told - here.
Cotswolds glider crash pilot took own life - BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-33283987)
that the pilot left a suicide note according to the police at the opening of the inquest.

A peculiar unfortunate time for this to happen in view of the recent Germanwings crash and the CAA's consultation on medical certifications.
I'm sure the inquest when re-convened in November will reveal whether the pilot was on a AME/GP authorised LAPL or higher medical, a GP certified NPPL type, or a BGA self-certification DVLA licence compliant one.

[xrayalpha]

I hope that your point is not: we need more and tougher medicals.

I trust it is that pilots as a group reflect society as a whole, and we should do everything we can to help those who need help - and try and prevent situations which make people feel at the end of their tether.

One nomination:

Organisations, like the CAA, who as so blooming useless that normal people end up using strong expressions to vent their frustration.

So instead of tackling the inefficiencies and incompetence, the CAA puts a message on the phone saying, in effect: If we have managed to hack you off so much, you - as a normal human - feel like using traditional anglo-saxon at Level 6, we will prosecute you for assault.

[Whopity]

A peculiar unfortunate time for this to happen in view of the recent Germanwings crash and the CAA's consultation on medical certifications.No relevance whatsoever. I recall the CFI of a club in Wales who flew an Apachee into a mountainside; a trainee doctor at Limoges who took up the club Robin and dived it into the ground, some people's preferance to taking a bottle of pills. In the airline incident it highlights how a so called security measure has now probably killed more people than it has saved; that should be the cause for concern.

[dsc810]

No @Whopity - if we find the unfortunate pilot was under medical supervision for some depressive type condition and was continuing to fly then the parallels will be exact.

The locked cockpit door issue of Germanwings is a diversionary side effect to the real issue that the copilot should never have been allowed to fly in the first place. The problem was that those who had the Copilot under medical supervision were not allowed to communicate this to those authorities who would have revoked his licence in a nano-second.

The medial situation in the UK is highly confused now with the varying levels of certification as I listed in my opening post and personally I'm not in favour of the BGA going back to the self-certification of previous times.

My GP for example has no idea that I am have a pilots licence though I hold a AME certified medical.

[S-Works]

My GP does not know me nor do I even know their name. Met the paractice nurse to get my ear syringed but never met the Doc.

He has no idea I am a Commercial pilot.

[xrayalpha]

Back to my point:

On Radio 4 this morning, it was said that Andy Murray is now seeing a pyschiatrist.
Not because he is ill, but because he wants to make the most of what he has.

We must be careful how we look at people who seek help - it may not mean they are "crazy"or "ill". In fact, it may mean we they are more sane than we are.

More paperwork equals more hassle equals more stress - not what we should be encouraging.

[Whopity]

The locked cockpit door issue of Germanwings is a diversionary side effect No, it was one of the holes in the cheese that when aligned cause an undesireable event which could have been avoided because it was predictable from the outset! The new phrase is TEM; this is a pretty big threat and its not been managed; how many explosive decompressions are practiced with one person on the flight deck?

In nearly 50 years of aviation medicals nobody has checked my mental state, I have no idea who my GP is and he probably has no idea who I am. Every now and then someone will deliberately kill themselves in an aeroplane, virtually nothing we do will prevent it so we must ensure that this cannot be a contributary factor in endangering others. I recall an event where a Flight Engineer attacked one of the pilots with an axe; fortunately the door was not locked!

[Flyingmac]

The saddest flight I've ever made was some years ago in Bayern. Perfect conditions for some mountain flying.


I was on frequency when an exchange between a solo pilot and ground station made it clear that the pilot had no intention of deviating from a collision course with a mountain.


I could not see the aircraft, but saw the resulting fireball as he flew full pelt into a sheer rock face.


I still wonder if I could have made a difference by speaking to that pilot.