Aircraft down in Canley Vale
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Gentlemen, I find myself rather embarrassed, because I allowed
my emotions and anger spill over into a post which at the end of the day
was uncalled for.
Mr. Remoak I offer my sincere apologies for my remarks, made in anger, perhaps provoked by an apparent lack of sensitivity on your part, not for my own feelings, but there could very well be members of Andrews family reading these posts, it may not have dawned on everybody but they would be seeking answers as well, I doubt they will find much comfort here.
I still disagree with what you infer and suggest you are making assumptions, based on conjecture leading to conclusions, but that is the nature of rational debate, we agree to disagree.
David
my emotions and anger spill over into a post which at the end of the day
was uncalled for.
Mr. Remoak I offer my sincere apologies for my remarks, made in anger, perhaps provoked by an apparent lack of sensitivity on your part, not for my own feelings, but there could very well be members of Andrews family reading these posts, it may not have dawned on everybody but they would be seeking answers as well, I doubt they will find much comfort here.
I still disagree with what you infer and suggest you are making assumptions, based on conjecture leading to conclusions, but that is the nature of rational debate, we agree to disagree.
David
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Chronic Snoozer
Yes, that's a completely fair point... however nobody who was there or in the vicinity seems to think that was the case. I don't know either way.
See, this is where I fail to understand why so-called professionals simply lash out rather than reading what is written (not meaning davidgrant or GADRVR, just talking generally).
I have been training pilots for over 20 years, mostly in the airline environment, and I have seen lots of them make bad decisions DESPITE all the training I had given them. That is simply because all humans, irrespective of their prior training, occasionally make bad judgement calls or get caught out in their thinking. All trainers (well, the ones with consciences, anyway) want to give their students the best possible equipment to deal with whatever they come across.
In this case, nobody has at any point questioned the quality of the training, least of all me. The final decisions all come down to the pilot in command, and you can only hope he will remember his training and act accordingly. Humans being humans, that isn't always the case. Stress is different outside the training environment, where you know you will always get the engine back if you really need it... so sometimes fear takes over.
The one thing I did learn over all those years of training, is that if I train a guy properly, and he screws up, it absolutely isn't my fault. Whether he chooses, or is able, to use what I taught him or her, is totally his or her choice.
Any professional trainer should know that.
das uber soldat
That is the stupidest comment yet. In what way am I attacking his character? Not that his character has ANYTHING to do with any of this anyway...
What I am saying (if you had bothered to read it) is that the REPORT will tell you nothing, because it will only draw on available facts, of which there are few. So it is incumbent on us, his peers, to try and work out what happened and why - because otherwise, nothing will ever be learned.
conflict alert
You are missing the point. The experienced pilot has far more relevant knowledge to draw on, far more training, probably more mental capacity to deal with emergencies, and will have seen far more in the way of abnormal or emergency situations, bad weather, etc. As the experienced guy is almost certainly an airline pilot, his training will have been deeper and more comprehensive, but probably more importantly, he will have learned that a calm and measured approach is more important than sheer speed of action.
Most GA training is carried out by people who themselves have very low experience, often these instructors have never seen a real emergency themselves and have nothing to pass on other than "dead leg, dead engine".
I know for sure that at 500 hours, I had never seen a serious failure, none of my instructors had either, and all I had to go on was theory, and the hope that I would do the right thing if the time ever came. At 10,000 hours (just recently), I had spent approximately 450 hours over 20 years sitting in simulators practising every conceivable emergency. Am I better equipped now than I was at 500 hours? Absolutely. I know that I would approach any emergency completely differently now, compared to what I would have done at 500 hours (thank God).
It's what civil servants call "institutional memory".
If you could see that the field is fogged in. Simple.
Quote:
However, despite the training you gave him, the end result was tragic and from what I can tell, probably did not need to be.
Is this really a comment that needs to be made so early in the piece? Its directed at an individual and given the circumstances is not what he needs/wants to hear right now. His reaction is understandable.
However, despite the training you gave him, the end result was tragic and from what I can tell, probably did not need to be.
Is this really a comment that needs to be made so early in the piece? Its directed at an individual and given the circumstances is not what he needs/wants to hear right now. His reaction is understandable.
I have been training pilots for over 20 years, mostly in the airline environment, and I have seen lots of them make bad decisions DESPITE all the training I had given them. That is simply because all humans, irrespective of their prior training, occasionally make bad judgement calls or get caught out in their thinking. All trainers (well, the ones with consciences, anyway) want to give their students the best possible equipment to deal with whatever they come across.
In this case, nobody has at any point questioned the quality of the training, least of all me. The final decisions all come down to the pilot in command, and you can only hope he will remember his training and act accordingly. Humans being humans, that isn't always the case. Stress is different outside the training environment, where you know you will always get the engine back if you really need it... so sometimes fear takes over.
The one thing I did learn over all those years of training, is that if I train a guy properly, and he screws up, it absolutely isn't my fault. Whether he chooses, or is able, to use what I taught him or her, is totally his or her choice.
Any professional trainer should know that.
das uber soldat
You say yourself we'll never know the answer to those questions, yet you persist with it. I think the people here feel more that you're simply making an attack on his character.
What I am saying (if you had bothered to read it) is that the REPORT will tell you nothing, because it will only draw on available facts, of which there are few. So it is incumbent on us, his peers, to try and work out what happened and why - because otherwise, nothing will ever be learned.
conflict alert
You take the 500hr pilot and the 10000hr pilot - put them in the same aircraft type and when confronted with the same emergency, an emergency that neither have ever experienced before, under the same conditions I don't believe one is any more experienced in dealing with that particular emergency than the other, simply because neither have experienced it!!
Most GA training is carried out by people who themselves have very low experience, often these instructors have never seen a real emergency themselves and have nothing to pass on other than "dead leg, dead engine".
I know for sure that at 500 hours, I had never seen a serious failure, none of my instructors had either, and all I had to go on was theory, and the hope that I would do the right thing if the time ever came. At 10,000 hours (just recently), I had spent approximately 450 hours over 20 years sitting in simulators practising every conceivable emergency. Am I better equipped now than I was at 500 hours? Absolutely. I know that I would approach any emergency completely differently now, compared to what I would have done at 500 hours (thank God).
It's what civil servants call "institutional memory".
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remoak,
I have no idea whether you have been around accident investigations other than reading the reports, but you have said the accident report will tell you NOTHING about the accident other than the facts. Well that is what they are there for! You then ask one "simple" question, why did he leave behind a nice long wide runway at Richmond?
It is not a simple question and most definitely not at the moment. The reason for this is we do not have any FACTS to go on. We do not know what other issues the aircraft had other than an inflight shut down. We can't even establish here on this board with a bunch of aviators with 100% certainty what the weather was at YSRI on the ground. I have seen fog myself over Richmond when everything else in the area was clear, yes you can see down through it to the airport but slant vis was zero.
Until you have the FACTS, you cannot even begin to try and enter into the midset of the pilot as to why he went back to YSRI. You ARE asking a mindset question and people are pontificating about a whole bunch of reasons that MAY have added to his decision to return. But until we know the facts these reasons are at best, "guesses".
So to answer your "simple" question you HAVE to wait until the facts are in so we can make a much more refined decision on what the pilots minset may have been. Until we have the rest of these facts you, me and everyone else here are simply guessing and I don’t know about you, but in aviation a “guess” is my absolute last option in any scenario.
You speak so highly of simulators. A simulator allows you to practice scenarios and "what ifs" safely. Invaluable training. But all we are doing here at the moment on this board is building "scenarios". We are simulating what we think MAY have happened, with absolutely no FACTS to refine that simulation, to reduce the circle of probability about what the midset of the pilot may have been.
The human trait of nearly every poster on this board is denial. Denial that they would make the same "mistakes" as Andrew would have made, indeed you yourself have exhibited that trait in your post denying that FACTS will make any difference to what you would do and implying you would land at YRSI, thus you would live where he died. We try and justify this by stating that we are learning, it will save lives, it will make us all better pilots. NO IT WON'T. NOT until we get all the available facts and then we can assimilate the info, and then put ourselves, as closely as possible, in the situation the pilot was in and then we can go through the options and come out with courses of action and then debate those and only then, will real learning occur
The really really simple outcome of this by not waiting for the facts is to say "I/he/she/we would have put the aircraft down at YSRI and walked away". We can even go so far as to make blanket statements and put a course of action in our mind of saying something along the lines of "If I have an engine failure in a twin I will land at the closest suitable surface and not have “get-home-itis” because it will save the boss a few dollars". This is an easy answer, it is again a pilot denying that I/we/she/he could possibly make the same mistake, and trying to come up with a one size fits all response to a situation. It doesn’t work well in aviation (well the Beggs-Mueller might in a Pitts Special but I digress...), nor in any other area of life. There are simply too many variables
We as pilots, owe it to Andrew and more importantly OURSELVES to wait for all the available FACTS to come in and THEN we can talk about what may have been a better course of action given the known circumstances. By doing this we narrow our 20/20 hindsight. Whilst it is nice to think we know what we would do right NOW in response, we don’t actually need to know the answers right now, we can be patient and this has two effects. The obvious one is to allow those FACTS to come in, for reasons I have explained above, the second is to allow time for those who are hurting to grieve, some wounds to close, and who knows, people like his instructor who has posted here, may then be able to weigh in and add some valuable info to the discussion rather than responding as he did.
I hope you read very carefully what I have stated here. To say the accident investigation will add nothing but facts is true, that is their job. For you to say it will add nothing as to the mindset of the pilot is completely wrong and irrelevant anyway. The learning occurs when you have all those facts so then you can play the “what if” game, put yourself in the scenario with those facts and then come out with courses of action you might take based on all available information rather than the sketchy, adhoc guesses and very limited facts we have available right now.
You are asking generic questions and implying simple answers (land at YSRI) and this accident should not be required for us as pilots to do this. Trying to dumb this accident down is not waiting for the facts is not using the circumstances of this accident at all in the learning process. It may as well be a generic situation you ask your students as part of their training. Waiting for the facts focuses the situation and gives the students (us in this case) more information and only then can we possibly hope to second guess what the pilot was thinking, thus answering your original question.
Cheers
CB
I have no idea whether you have been around accident investigations other than reading the reports, but you have said the accident report will tell you NOTHING about the accident other than the facts. Well that is what they are there for! You then ask one "simple" question, why did he leave behind a nice long wide runway at Richmond?
It is not a simple question and most definitely not at the moment. The reason for this is we do not have any FACTS to go on. We do not know what other issues the aircraft had other than an inflight shut down. We can't even establish here on this board with a bunch of aviators with 100% certainty what the weather was at YSRI on the ground. I have seen fog myself over Richmond when everything else in the area was clear, yes you can see down through it to the airport but slant vis was zero.
Until you have the FACTS, you cannot even begin to try and enter into the midset of the pilot as to why he went back to YSRI. You ARE asking a mindset question and people are pontificating about a whole bunch of reasons that MAY have added to his decision to return. But until we know the facts these reasons are at best, "guesses".
So to answer your "simple" question you HAVE to wait until the facts are in so we can make a much more refined decision on what the pilots minset may have been. Until we have the rest of these facts you, me and everyone else here are simply guessing and I don’t know about you, but in aviation a “guess” is my absolute last option in any scenario.
You speak so highly of simulators. A simulator allows you to practice scenarios and "what ifs" safely. Invaluable training. But all we are doing here at the moment on this board is building "scenarios". We are simulating what we think MAY have happened, with absolutely no FACTS to refine that simulation, to reduce the circle of probability about what the midset of the pilot may have been.
The human trait of nearly every poster on this board is denial. Denial that they would make the same "mistakes" as Andrew would have made, indeed you yourself have exhibited that trait in your post denying that FACTS will make any difference to what you would do and implying you would land at YRSI, thus you would live where he died. We try and justify this by stating that we are learning, it will save lives, it will make us all better pilots. NO IT WON'T. NOT until we get all the available facts and then we can assimilate the info, and then put ourselves, as closely as possible, in the situation the pilot was in and then we can go through the options and come out with courses of action and then debate those and only then, will real learning occur
The really really simple outcome of this by not waiting for the facts is to say "I/he/she/we would have put the aircraft down at YSRI and walked away". We can even go so far as to make blanket statements and put a course of action in our mind of saying something along the lines of "If I have an engine failure in a twin I will land at the closest suitable surface and not have “get-home-itis” because it will save the boss a few dollars". This is an easy answer, it is again a pilot denying that I/we/she/he could possibly make the same mistake, and trying to come up with a one size fits all response to a situation. It doesn’t work well in aviation (well the Beggs-Mueller might in a Pitts Special but I digress...), nor in any other area of life. There are simply too many variables
We as pilots, owe it to Andrew and more importantly OURSELVES to wait for all the available FACTS to come in and THEN we can talk about what may have been a better course of action given the known circumstances. By doing this we narrow our 20/20 hindsight. Whilst it is nice to think we know what we would do right NOW in response, we don’t actually need to know the answers right now, we can be patient and this has two effects. The obvious one is to allow those FACTS to come in, for reasons I have explained above, the second is to allow time for those who are hurting to grieve, some wounds to close, and who knows, people like his instructor who has posted here, may then be able to weigh in and add some valuable info to the discussion rather than responding as he did.
I hope you read very carefully what I have stated here. To say the accident investigation will add nothing but facts is true, that is their job. For you to say it will add nothing as to the mindset of the pilot is completely wrong and irrelevant anyway. The learning occurs when you have all those facts so then you can play the “what if” game, put yourself in the scenario with those facts and then come out with courses of action you might take based on all available information rather than the sketchy, adhoc guesses and very limited facts we have available right now.
You are asking generic questions and implying simple answers (land at YSRI) and this accident should not be required for us as pilots to do this. Trying to dumb this accident down is not waiting for the facts is not using the circumstances of this accident at all in the learning process. It may as well be a generic situation you ask your students as part of their training. Waiting for the facts focuses the situation and gives the students (us in this case) more information and only then can we possibly hope to second guess what the pilot was thinking, thus answering your original question.
Cheers
CB
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conflict alert
I can't speak for anyone else, but for me I would be a lot calmer, a lot more careful to analyse the situation and my options, and I would have a different set of priorities. Bu that's just me. do know that my chances of a successful outcome are a lot better now than they would have been at 500 hours.
Yes I have, in an airline safety officer capacity.
Accident reports use available facts to build a picture of what happened. Quite rightly, they don't speculate as to what a pilot was thinking at the time. Because GA aircraft don't carry DFDRs or CVRs (which quite frankly they should if engaged in RPT), all a report is going to establish is the ambient met conditions, the flight profile (from radar recordings), communications (from ATC recordings) and any mechanical evidence of failure.
It may be possible to work out at least roughly what the pilot was thinking with all the facts in place, but the report won't do that, which is why the pilot community needs to.
The point here is that an understanding of why the outcome was what it was is not going to come from a recitation of facts.
your flying your single around and get an engine fire - what would you do now that you have 10000hrs that you wouldn't have done at 500 or you are going to have to carry out a gear up landing in your light twin - what would you do differently with 10000 hrs under your belt.
I have no idea whether you have been around accident investigations other than reading the reports, but you have said the accident report will tell you NOTHING about the accident other than the facts. Well that is what they are there for!
Accident reports use available facts to build a picture of what happened. Quite rightly, they don't speculate as to what a pilot was thinking at the time. Because GA aircraft don't carry DFDRs or CVRs (which quite frankly they should if engaged in RPT), all a report is going to establish is the ambient met conditions, the flight profile (from radar recordings), communications (from ATC recordings) and any mechanical evidence of failure.
It may be possible to work out at least roughly what the pilot was thinking with all the facts in place, but the report won't do that, which is why the pilot community needs to.
The point here is that an understanding of why the outcome was what it was is not going to come from a recitation of facts.
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Owen Stanley,
Maybe I am thick, but taking one point out of context is not what I was hoping to achieve. No pilot wants to think of himself as making the same mistakes and we all want to learn, but the denial comment - if not taken out of context - is that pilots (and humans in general) will generally take the easiest solution, which is what I firmly believe remoak is doing, by not waiting for the facts. We say to ourselves, we have learnt from this crash - two or three days afterwards - without waiting for the facts to come in. We have not learnt a god damned thing. All we have done is take a extremely limited view and said,"I would have landed at YSRI in similar circumstances" when we don't know as many of those circumstances as we can. We can do this type of learning without having to get it from a crash - in fact we should be doing this type of learning - it is what simulators are for, or desktop questions from intructors. We can only learn from a specific crash if we have all available data, as only then can we hope to have any idea of why the pilot chose his course of action.
By waiting for the facts, we then are able to apply some actual brain power rather than boxing what little we know of this situation and coming up with a one size fits all solution. We can wax lyrical about "cultural factors" here, we all know what they are, job, time, money, peer group pressures etc, but without knowing the facts we will not be able to narrow down the likely ones that apply, then put ourselves as best we can in that situation and try and learn. Just talking about cultural factors can be done anywhere anytime - and it should be - it should not take an accident to focus on those things. To get something out of this specific accident we need to know those that likley applied and the facts help us deduce that. We may be wrong, but we have a better chance of getting closer to the truth than without those facts.
Maybe you missed that in my post.
remoak,
Mate that is completely wrong. The point is that without all the available facts you cannot hope to ever coming close to understanding why the outcome was what it was. Not waiting for the facts, it may as well be just another dreamed up scenario by your instructor stating something along the lines of "your are XXnm from an large aerodrome and YYnm from your takeoff point/base. You lose an engine at ZZZZ height, what do you do?" You have just reduced this accident to nothing more than a desktop scenario instructors dream up everyday. To learn from this accident we need all the facts we can, that can then be added into the above scenario to lead you to an idea of what the pilot may be thinking (as you say the real crux of the issue) so then you can LEARN from it. Without facts, we can just sit here and play what ifs all day, but it will be irrelevant to this specific accident.
Cheers
CB
Maybe I am thick, but taking one point out of context is not what I was hoping to achieve. No pilot wants to think of himself as making the same mistakes and we all want to learn, but the denial comment - if not taken out of context - is that pilots (and humans in general) will generally take the easiest solution, which is what I firmly believe remoak is doing, by not waiting for the facts. We say to ourselves, we have learnt from this crash - two or three days afterwards - without waiting for the facts to come in. We have not learnt a god damned thing. All we have done is take a extremely limited view and said,"I would have landed at YSRI in similar circumstances" when we don't know as many of those circumstances as we can. We can do this type of learning without having to get it from a crash - in fact we should be doing this type of learning - it is what simulators are for, or desktop questions from intructors. We can only learn from a specific crash if we have all available data, as only then can we hope to have any idea of why the pilot chose his course of action.
By waiting for the facts, we then are able to apply some actual brain power rather than boxing what little we know of this situation and coming up with a one size fits all solution. We can wax lyrical about "cultural factors" here, we all know what they are, job, time, money, peer group pressures etc, but without knowing the facts we will not be able to narrow down the likely ones that apply, then put ourselves as best we can in that situation and try and learn. Just talking about cultural factors can be done anywhere anytime - and it should be - it should not take an accident to focus on those things. To get something out of this specific accident we need to know those that likley applied and the facts help us deduce that. We may be wrong, but we have a better chance of getting closer to the truth than without those facts.
Maybe you missed that in my post.
remoak,
The point here is that an understanding of why the outcome was what it was is not going to come from a recitation of facts.
Cheers
CB
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Nitpicker
correct on the first. Original post was a nonsense and of absolutely no relevance submitted because I was reading a number of nonsensical and irrelevant comments to do with this thread subject. As you can see I have deleted my earlier posts. and by the way I don't play flight sim or x plane or whatever the hell you called it - CPL with several thousand hours and I do believe there is nothing like experience
sometimes things aren't what there seen to be.
correct on the first. Original post was a nonsense and of absolutely no relevance submitted because I was reading a number of nonsensical and irrelevant comments to do with this thread subject. As you can see I have deleted my earlier posts. and by the way I don't play flight sim or x plane or whatever the hell you called it - CPL with several thousand hours and I do believe there is nothing like experience
sometimes things aren't what there seen to be.
Yes I have, in an airline safety officer capacity.
This does not make you an accident investigator. Airline safety departments operate very differently to agencies such as the ATSB. The ATSB reports do include analysis of the event based on the facts that they have obtained during the investigation. That analysis is only included in the final report and not any interim reports.
This does not make you an accident investigator. Airline safety departments operate very differently to agencies such as the ATSB. The ATSB reports do include analysis of the event based on the facts that they have obtained during the investigation. That analysis is only included in the final report and not any interim reports.
most are interested, mainly in the cultural factors that may have influenced Andrew's decision to overfly RI for BK, assuming that RI wasn't fogged in
As I understand it, 7000' at 22 nm from YSBK down to 1500' with 12 nm still to run.
I suspect there is a lesson to be learned there!
Dr
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ForkTailedDrKiller,
Why would you give up altitude before a safe landing was possible?
If he quite rightly thought he had it sorted with everything done, pax briefed, checklists complete, Aircraft performing well etc.I know if everything was absolutely peachy, the misbehaving donk was secured , I might do the same.
I might revert to my standard overflying-jet-avoidance profile into Bankstown.
If he had a valid reason to believe he had a pan pan and nothing more, then he may have made the correct decision at that time.
My point is, there could be more to this than appears.
As Remoak has asked, why did he overfly Richmond? Good question, but unfortunately, we don't really know.
We may never know.
Why would you give up altitude before a safe landing was possible?
If he quite rightly thought he had it sorted with everything done, pax briefed, checklists complete, Aircraft performing well etc.I know if everything was absolutely peachy, the misbehaving donk was secured , I might do the same.
I might revert to my standard overflying-jet-avoidance profile into Bankstown.
If he had a valid reason to believe he had a pan pan and nothing more, then he may have made the correct decision at that time.
My point is, there could be more to this than appears.
As Remoak has asked, why did he overfly Richmond? Good question, but unfortunately, we don't really know.
We may never know.
So let me get this straight, a Fellow Aviator loses his life in a tragic accident and all you can do is "wind us up"
What is it with some people.
Shame shame shame ( to quote D. Hinch )
What is it with some people.
Shame shame shame ( to quote D. Hinch )
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I know if everything was absolutely peachy, the misbehaving donk was secured , I might do the same.
If you experience an engine failure, you don't really have any way of knowing that everything is absolutely peachy do you?
It's not until you are back on the ground that you will get to know if the problem was specific to that engine, or a broader problem that may affect the operation of your remaining engine.
In this instance we start with altitude, multiple options for landing, and a remaining engine that is believed to be operating normally.....all good things to have on our side - was the decision to give some of those things away the right reaction?
The answer to the question on why AW chose to overfly SRI has a limited set of answers, doesn't it?:-
1. He was confident he could make it back to Bankstown without further issues.
2. He believed that there was something that would be problematic with an attempt to land at Richmond.
It's clear from some of the recent responses that we are divided on whether or not we would reach the same conclusion - some good posts from pilots that have been in similar situations that explain a little about how they reached the same conclusion, and some cautionary advice from those that are more risk adverse and believe in taking the first available landing opportunity.
Whilst his exact reasoning will never be known, and the ATSB will do their thing in compiling what evidence remains of the root cause and responses to it in order to document this incident, there is some useful learning in examining how/if we would reach the same conclusions in future.
Some of the questions that this poses for me are:-
1. What can I do to better manage the increased risk of subsequent failures, after an in-flight engine shutdown (or indeed other critical failure)?
2. What can I do better to gain confidence that the initial failure is now contained, and the aircraft will operate predictably for the remainder of the flight?
3. Can I obtain more positive validation of the performance available after a failure, prior to committing to a higher risk maneuver, like an approach or low level flight over a populated area?
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Owen Stanley,
I have learnt bugger all from this thread about this particular accident with respect to the pilots particular decision making process. Reason being we do not have the facts so we cannot make any reasonable assumptions and thus reasonable deductions about why he decided to pass on YSRI - as stated previously we can't even confirm the weather! I have learnt a number of things about flying twins and looked at my decision making, but NONE of that has come from specifics related to this accident that could not have been "learnt" from doing a bunch of "what if" scenario's. This is my whole point that you seem to have failed to grasp.
Let me put it this way. Most learned people here agree that you could almost glide a PA-31 from 7000ft from his initial position back to Bankstown, and on one good engine it would not have been an issue. Most seem to agree that YSRI might have been a possibility that might have resulted in a different outcome. But for whatever reason the pilot did not chose that. Therefore there is something, some fact/s, that we are all missing that altered what on the surface seems like a fairly straight forward assymetric approach into Bankstown. But guess what, we DO NOT yet know why the aircraft did not make it, why it couldn't seemingly maintain height on one engine and why he descended (by choice or otherwise) to 1500ft at 12nm. Having hard FACTS - for example that indeed there was an undiagnosed problem with the second engine (mechanical, fuel, icing or something else) that only became noticeable once he tried to level off and increase power on it - then allows us to put ourselves in his shoes as much as we could and ONLY then can we have a proper educated discussion and cause learning to occur about this particular incident. Until we know these FACTS then everything else, human factors, cultural issues etc, cannot be put into the context of this accident.
Obviously I am too thick to learn anything from this other than generic lessons that could be taught by any competent instructor on the ground around a briefing table with coffee mug in hand. As I said - and I will stick my thick skull out in saying this - we may well have learnt something or a number of things, but they are not a result of this incident, they are a result of a number of people here guessing what happened and as such they do not help us understand the pilot's mindset, as we still do not know what drove him down the path he took. It may very well turn out most of us would have done exactly what he did, or none of us, in the same scenario. Once this has been identified then we can take those facts, add them to the pilots actions and decide for ourselves if something similar in the future happens to us we can do X instead of Y.
Will now crawl back into my thick head space and await some more facts to arise so that hopefully I can take more out of this tragic incident than simple lessons that can be learnt by even us dyslexic pilots.
Edited to add,
Miraz has articulated those very generic questions that we can ask ourselves. As part of good training, these sorts of questions should have already been asked and you should already know the answers. Obviously training varies as per what Owen Stanley has said with his own training, so the learning that can occur from asking these questions is most pertinent. My whole point is that we cannot deduce AW's decision making with respect to these questions until we get some more facts. So whilst we can generically come up with our own answers, in order to put ourselves in AW's shoes we need more facts. That is all.
Cheers
CB
Mate, if you can't learn something from this thread prior to the 'facts' coming out you are thick.
Let me put it this way. Most learned people here agree that you could almost glide a PA-31 from 7000ft from his initial position back to Bankstown, and on one good engine it would not have been an issue. Most seem to agree that YSRI might have been a possibility that might have resulted in a different outcome. But for whatever reason the pilot did not chose that. Therefore there is something, some fact/s, that we are all missing that altered what on the surface seems like a fairly straight forward assymetric approach into Bankstown. But guess what, we DO NOT yet know why the aircraft did not make it, why it couldn't seemingly maintain height on one engine and why he descended (by choice or otherwise) to 1500ft at 12nm. Having hard FACTS - for example that indeed there was an undiagnosed problem with the second engine (mechanical, fuel, icing or something else) that only became noticeable once he tried to level off and increase power on it - then allows us to put ourselves in his shoes as much as we could and ONLY then can we have a proper educated discussion and cause learning to occur about this particular incident. Until we know these FACTS then everything else, human factors, cultural issues etc, cannot be put into the context of this accident.
Obviously I am too thick to learn anything from this other than generic lessons that could be taught by any competent instructor on the ground around a briefing table with coffee mug in hand. As I said - and I will stick my thick skull out in saying this - we may well have learnt something or a number of things, but they are not a result of this incident, they are a result of a number of people here guessing what happened and as such they do not help us understand the pilot's mindset, as we still do not know what drove him down the path he took. It may very well turn out most of us would have done exactly what he did, or none of us, in the same scenario. Once this has been identified then we can take those facts, add them to the pilots actions and decide for ourselves if something similar in the future happens to us we can do X instead of Y.
Will now crawl back into my thick head space and await some more facts to arise so that hopefully I can take more out of this tragic incident than simple lessons that can be learnt by even us dyslexic pilots.
Edited to add,
Miraz has articulated those very generic questions that we can ask ourselves. As part of good training, these sorts of questions should have already been asked and you should already know the answers. Obviously training varies as per what Owen Stanley has said with his own training, so the learning that can occur from asking these questions is most pertinent. My whole point is that we cannot deduce AW's decision making with respect to these questions until we get some more facts. So whilst we can generically come up with our own answers, in order to put ourselves in AW's shoes we need more facts. That is all.
Cheers
CB
Last edited by Cloud Basher; 20th Jun 2010 at 09:52.
Just remember, climb cruise or descent on one engine in a twin, maintain blue line!
Fly high enough that blue line will give you your cruise.
Try to climb at blue line, if it's not climbing see above.
If you can't maintain altitude hold the blue line speed for your descent, see above!
After thinking about this situation for a few days now, I believe that Willow would have assessed his altitude, based on the fact that he was high for Bankstown considering a normal descent, coupled with the fact he had no reason to assume it wouldn't perform on one engine and with home base being at Bankstown, it was the best choice at the time. He would have been well aware of the prob 30 at Richmond and with obvious cloud/fog patches below, so considering his options he chose Bankstown.
I'm pretty sure with all the variables above I would have done the same thing.
You had the expression of a wise man always looking up for the answer (the many wrinkles on your forehead confirmed it
) I hope now you're only ever going to need to look down, and too damn right.
From his sister on FB for those that don't know:
Would be good to see the gang there.
Fly high enough that blue line will give you your cruise.
Try to climb at blue line, if it's not climbing see above.
If you can't maintain altitude hold the blue line speed for your descent, see above!
After thinking about this situation for a few days now, I believe that Willow would have assessed his altitude, based on the fact that he was high for Bankstown considering a normal descent, coupled with the fact he had no reason to assume it wouldn't perform on one engine and with home base being at Bankstown, it was the best choice at the time. He would have been well aware of the prob 30 at Richmond and with obvious cloud/fog patches below, so considering his options he chose Bankstown.
I'm pretty sure with all the variables above I would have done the same thing.
You had the expression of a wise man always looking up for the answer (the many wrinkles on your forehead confirmed it
) I hope now you're only ever going to need to look down, and too damn right. From his sister on FB for those that don't know:
The funeral of Mr Andrew Wilson will leave St Michael's Catholic Church, Church Street Traralgon on THURSDAY June 24th 2010, after prayers commencing at 1PM for the Gippsland Memorial park monumental lawn Cemetery Traralgon.
Pilots are respectively invited to wear their uniform, or suit with Pilot Wings.
In lieu of flowers, donations to the Royal Flying Doctors Services would be appreciated. Envelopes are available at the service.
Pilots are respectively invited to wear their uniform, or suit with Pilot Wings.
In lieu of flowers, donations to the Royal Flying Doctors Services would be appreciated. Envelopes are available at the service.
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Cloud Basher
Yes I do agree with you, all I am saying is that the facts - by themselves - are not going to answer the important questions. They need to be interpreted, and the report won't do that. It will go into immense detail on why the engine failed, what metallurgical phenomenon led to the failure and how it propagated, or the chemical makeup of the fuel, or whatever. All good stuff, but none of it is going to tell you why two people died.
lookleft
You know what the difference is between an airline FSO and an accident investigator? Four weeks. That's it. The Accident Investigator course at Cranfield is six weeks, the one they run for FSO's is two weeks (or it was when I did it).
You don't have to be an accident investigator to come to a conclusion about these things. Often, accident investigators get it spectacularly wrong (ie Whyalla). If that is the standard of air accident investigations in Australia, I'll stick to my own intuition, thanks.
Mate that is completely wrong. The point is that without all the available facts you cannot hope to ever coming close to understanding why the outcome was what it was.
lookleft
This does not make you an accident investigator.
You don't have to be an accident investigator to come to a conclusion about these things. Often, accident investigators get it spectacularly wrong (ie Whyalla). If that is the standard of air accident investigations in Australia, I'll stick to my own intuition, thanks.
Remoak sorry to burst your bubble but just as CPL theory doesn't make you a pilot a 6 week course doesn't make you an accident investigator. Its actual hands on experience that makes the difference. Most FSOs as you like to call them are incident investigators mostly investigating from the flight ops perspective. I still think the ATSB will have a better handle on all the factors involved in this accident rather than a "peer" review of the facts via this or any other pilot forum.
Its the rumour part of PPRUNE that makes this a less than credible source of fact in any accident.
Its the rumour part of PPRUNE that makes this a less than credible source of fact in any accident.
Often, accident investigators get it spectacularly wrong (ie Whyalla). If that is the standard of air accident investigations in Australia, I'll stick to my own intuition, thanks.
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Lookleft
... and yet it is the only qualification required to BE one. No, it doesn't really make you a proper investigator... but that doesn't necessarily mean that a new Cranfield graduate won't be investigating this one.
Really? Explain Whyalla then...
The Whyalla Airlines Accident
sorry to burst your bubble but just as CPL theory doesn't make you a pilot a 6 week course doesn't make you an accident investigator
I still think the ATSB will have a better handle on all the factors involved in this accident rather than a "peer" review of the facts via this or any other pilot forum.
The Whyalla Airlines Accident
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Hello everyone long time reader first time commenter...I wonder how many people on here have actually been in this type of problem in flight? I used to instruct in YSBK a few years ago and I found one major thing about different people learning to fly. You have a lot of smart and talented keen young blokes thinking theyare the gun and allthat but I found that doesnt matter how good they think they are when it comes to the crunch a majority of them were not ready for commercial flight not because of how they flew because lets face it alotof them were very very good at aircraft controll, but im talking about the maturity of them. I had a student there from GFPT all the way to CPL and I could of sworn he was teh best student I ever had but one day we were coming back from cesspool and we got a fuel issue in a 172 were half over the ranges and not many places to land. The RPM dropped alittle at first so i did the mag check switched fuel etc etc but it could not be helped and then all of a sudden it just went to idle. Anyways long story short I got the fuel issue sorted after a few minutes but what i rememberd about this whole event is that my best student that knew the emergency proceedure 100% perfect just froze and gave no assistance at all.Now when we got back to YSBK he told me that when that happend he pretty much forgot everything because the problem waz real and he wasnt prepared for that realism!! I told him I was very glad he was honest with me and to be honest i learnt alot that day. I learnt that a real emergency can never be prepared for and your actions depend on you and how you manage stress yourself. I cant imagine if my student was solo and that happend, i would think that things would not have been as pretty.The point of this story is that I think 9o% of people making assumptions here dont really understand the situation because im betting they only know the stupid emergency proceedure that has been thumped into their head and nothing else,I dont think any of them would of done any better than Andrew did a few days ago. Im probably going to get slaaged for this but I stand by my story and PS I apologise for the bad vocabulary in advance Im at work and only have 2 min to write....Cheers for reading and keep it safe guys.