Plane missing en route YCAB?
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Ooh, Scary out here in the dark.
FBS # 194 - RIAMA derives from the name of a friend of Ron Adair who founded Aircrafts Pty Ltd. His friend's name was Allan Mair. Mair spelled backwards is RIAM plus his initial A and you get RIAMA.
Fantome # 195 - Aircrafts Pty Ltd, founded by RJS Adair in 1928, commenced a Brisbane - Toowoomba service the following year, etc.
I shall do more homework; and, unless someone can adequately explain the deep connection: attempt to at least understand the passion, dedication, respect and love, one man had for the greatest game of all: - flight.
Tailwinds and Godspeed to all of this mans character, a rare and much needed icon amongst the dross we now (laughingly) call 'aviation'.
Last edited by Kharon; 8th Oct 2012 at 08:54.
So the old girl was up for a taxi recently but will not take to the air again for a while due CASA wrangles ('You need two emergency exists Maurice. You might need to cut a hole in the roof'), and sundry work restraints that hold up completion. It will indeed be a great day when she lifts off after decades of work since imported from UK as a basket case. Mac Job long ago was lined up to do the first post restoration flight but now has to decline on grounds of excessive seniority. "Maurice" he'd say "What on earth has been keeping you?"
Last edited by Fantome; 9th Oct 2012 at 11:23.
Fantome. I knew there would be one, and it's you. To answer your first question; Noone can possibly ever reconstruct the pilot's thoughts, not even the coroner, but that won't stop the discussion. We can assess the evidence and make a considered opinion, just that. The evidence that I have read is that the acft circled for 30 minutes, and then climbed into cloud. It is reasonable to deduce that the climb into cloud was a conscious act. The reasons he made this choice are infinite, but the realists among us have fairly good ideas why that choice was made. Funny how so many like to slang off at certain cultures because of "loss of face", but I'd suggest that many from our wonderful AS heritage are just as prone, in a different way. In your other question, I'm afraid you get a fail for grade 4 English comprehension; the whole point of my post was contemplating deliberate VMC to IMC, not inadvertent VMC to IMC. What have you been doing that's wrong? Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything, and you've been lucky. I know I've been in this situation several times, recognised it, acted quickly, and had a safe return. So, you may be making great choices, or enjoying great luck. So sad you seem to take it so personally. And for the last part of that question, I will assume that you do grasp the hazards of unqualified IMC flight, I never suggested that anyone doesn't. I'm sure the pilot was a wonderful person. By definition, because the acft did not make it to destination safely, the pic duties were for some reason not executed satisfactorily. We all make mistakes, most times we are lucky. I think there is a difference between making a mistake, and taking a chance, especially when it risks other innocents. As an analogy; A driver with my kids in the car makes an error such as misjudging the closing speed of traffic, has a headon and wipes out the family-an error, sad, but it happens; another driver, my kids on board, chooses to make a high risk overtake, on a corner or crest, and the risks of corner/crests are well known, and has the headon. In my opinion, quite a different scenario. The second driver knew the risks, but gambled not only his own life, but that of others. Sorry, doesn't cut it with me.
We can be precious, but I've found in many decades of aviation, that you are only fooling yourself if you can't call it as it is. The pilot was a wonderful person, of that there is no doubt. We all talk, in the aeroclub bar, in our houses, at work or whereever, so what's the big deal about pprune? If the dialog has just a slight chance of making someone down the track think twice about deliberate flight into IMC, or other questionable choices, it could be worth the effort. We all make mistakes, most times we're lucky. Funnily enough, I probably know you pretty well, what a small world.
We can be precious, but I've found in many decades of aviation, that you are only fooling yourself if you can't call it as it is. The pilot was a wonderful person, of that there is no doubt. We all talk, in the aeroclub bar, in our houses, at work or whereever, so what's the big deal about pprune? If the dialog has just a slight chance of making someone down the track think twice about deliberate flight into IMC, or other questionable choices, it could be worth the effort. We all make mistakes, most times we're lucky. Funnily enough, I probably know you pretty well, what a small world.
Last edited by growahead; 8th Oct 2012 at 21:46.
Lessons...
Growahead has a point.
With the collosal amount of publicity/interest given to this tragic event, then if just one VFRer heeds the terrible lesson and keeps their ar$e intact... then all the PR has been of use.
You see it time and again on the TV, a heap of junk in a paddock because "holding" in crap weather, or pushing on, goes wrong when just a bent aircraft and the ability to walk away would have been a better option. And certainly not the final one.
The great unknown in this sad case is the thinking behind the decision made.
We might suppose a reason... we will never know.
But we can certainly learn by the tragic mistakes of others.
If there is anything that I have learnt over the decades...Know thy weather and seriously digest the stories in old crash comics.
You can feature there so easily yourself.!!
With the collosal amount of publicity/interest given to this tragic event, then if just one VFRer heeds the terrible lesson and keeps their ar$e intact... then all the PR has been of use.
You see it time and again on the TV, a heap of junk in a paddock because "holding" in crap weather, or pushing on, goes wrong when just a bent aircraft and the ability to walk away would have been a better option. And certainly not the final one.
The great unknown in this sad case is the thinking behind the decision made.
We might suppose a reason... we will never know.
But we can certainly learn by the tragic mistakes of others.
If there is anything that I have learnt over the decades...Know thy weather and seriously digest the stories in old crash comics.
You can feature there so easily yourself.!!
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and seriously digest the stories in old crash comics.
You can feature there so easily yourself.!!
You can feature there so easily yourself.!!
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...............yeah okay you speeling Nazi's
..here's yr ........'e'
Can't believe that RAPIDe is still under resto..............Maurice must be about a 100 by now beard & all (if he still has it!)
Ah the good 'ole days at Exec's.......Knotty (RIP), Maurice, George (GA8 George) Richard, Alan P & the many others I can't recall at this time where we all talked about restoring many an old plane.............keep at it Maurice there's gotta be a medal in it for you there somewhere for being persistent
Wmk2
..here's yr ........'e'Can't believe that RAPIDe is still under resto..............Maurice must be about a 100 by now beard & all (if he still has it!)
Ah the good 'ole days at Exec's.......Knotty (RIP), Maurice, George (GA8 George) Richard, Alan P & the many others I can't recall at this time where we all talked about restoring many an old plane.............keep at it Maurice there's gotta be a medal in it for you there somewhere for being persistent
Wmk2
So sad you seem to take it so personally.
Not for a minute. The devil in me took a twist. I cannot tease the topic out
as lucidly as you and gladly (even humbly) resume seat, shut trap.
Last edited by Fantome; 8th Oct 2012 at 15:52.
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Growahead, thanks for your posts; you've made some good points and some of your analogies add usefully to the discussion. In regards to this:
You could be correct. There could have been a conscious choice along the lines of "Okay well this holding I've been doing for 30 minutes now is not working out. I'd be better off going up into the cloud and heading further towards home and hopefully exit the cloud a little further along". Clearly a conscious choice to take the flight into IMC and one that carried with it very serious consequences for which we could all shake our heads with the benefit of hindsight (especially when considering what the eventual outcome was) and think, "Mmm; wasn't the right thing to do...."
Or you might not be framing this whole scenario correctly either. What I think Fantome was getting at
is that the reality is likely to be far more complex and less black and white. There are "reports" of the aircraft "holding" for 30 minutes and then going into cloud. Like so many things, the reality is that we just will never know what was actually happening in the cockpit of that aircraft or the mind of the pilot when the aircraft was sighted circling near the Borumba Dam area and then went into cloud. He may have been in a terrible high terrain situation flying low with the circling radius being squeezed by some low hanging mist and suddenly faced with quick flashes of in and out of IMC whilst down low at steep bank levels with hills all around. The sudden realisation that he was going to be IMC any moment whether he liked it or not may have resulted in him levelling the wings, applying full power and ascending into the cloud to climb away from the rapidly deteriorating visual situation where he was circling that may have offered nothing but a very rough ground high speed crash with poor forward visibility or a belief that he was likely to impact one of the hills during a turn because his ability to see properly was so hampered, he couldn't make out the hills clearly and his turning radius was getting dangerously tight (or dozens of other possible scenarios that none of us may even think of....)
It may have all happened in a few murky seconds. Visual one moment, flashing in and out of cloud the next. No time to go for a sudden forced landing and certainly not survivable ground. Next thing; full power, wings level, keep it straight, up he went to make a choice for something less dangerous at that very moment (flight into IMC) than going for a less than 'controlled' crash. The time critical, highly unstable and uncertain world of marginal VFR conditions down low in rough terrain is a terrible place to find yourself and these sudden extreme decisions are thrust upon you with little preparedness or mental capacity for the weighing up of options.
We certainly all should think about what brought him to that critical point; circling low in bad conditions that he eventually flew away from into IMC (and then ultimately to a fatal crash site). It's all the decisions prior to that point that are likely to be where this accident's real genesis lies. Right back to the decision to go to Monto for the weekend with passengers who most likely needed to be back for the Monday, and when they couldn't get back on the Sunday afternoon and then stayed over probably needed to be back even more on Monday afternoon to go to work or for other commitments in Brisbane on the Tuesday (maybe not all of them but Jan who worked at Virgin Australia may have been due back at work and this would have created additional pressure).
I guess what I'm saying is that it's very easy to talk about a pilot's choices (post fatal crash), in a manner that's suggestive of the pilot making a black and white decision to do something they weren't qualified to do and then surmising that the entire event hinged on this one bad call i.e. "flight into IMC when the pilot wasn't IFR rated". This type of thinking is what's facilitated the rise of the term "pilot error" this past century or more since aircraft started dropping out of the sky. A notion that a single error caused the accident and it was "the pilot's fault". As we've become more aware of human factors in aviation accidents, things like the Swiss cheese model have started to bring awareness that a whole series of events facilitate and allow an accident scenario to develop and be fulfilled.
(From rereading your post growahead it's fairly clear you're already pretty aware of this stuff. I'm just articulating it here for the benefit of the overall discussion and an acknowledgement of how a forum like this can be very beneficial but also the limitations of people's writing styles can suggest notions that may not be accurate too.)
I think the big big wake up call here is the need to teach pilots the skills to recognise the beginnings of a likely accident sequence and how to nip it in the bud very early. As I've noted in a previous post on this thread, I long ago learnt that taking people and yourself away for a weekend where you have to get back in order for you or your passengers to fulfil some crucial duty the next day (like going to a job or needing to be there for family, etc) is a pressure for the VFR pilot that is just too likely to adversely affect your decision making and result in flight into IMC. And whether it's inadvertent or deliberate is not so much the issue; it's all the pressure to perform, complete the mission, demonstrate your great pilot competency, maintain that reputation as 'an excellent pilot' and get everyone home on time that lines the holes up ready for disaster to take over. It's in this area where we need to get people thinking about how to avoid needing to then make a life or death decision to go into IMC because they've found themselves trapped in a scud running corner and have no other option.
Ren
I think an important aspect of this accident was that the pilot consciously chose to take his chances in IMC. Reports are that the aircraft circled for about 30 mins, then climbed into the cloud base.
Or you might not be framing this whole scenario correctly either. What I think Fantome was getting at
Oh . . . so what enables you to reconstruct the flight with insight into what conscious thoughts occupied the pilot's mind between take-off and crash site?
And what have I and many others been doing wrong all these years, failing to grasp what makes "inadvertent VFR to VMC" so hazardous?
And what have I and many others been doing wrong all these years, failing to grasp what makes "inadvertent VFR to VMC" so hazardous?
It may have all happened in a few murky seconds. Visual one moment, flashing in and out of cloud the next. No time to go for a sudden forced landing and certainly not survivable ground. Next thing; full power, wings level, keep it straight, up he went to make a choice for something less dangerous at that very moment (flight into IMC) than going for a less than 'controlled' crash. The time critical, highly unstable and uncertain world of marginal VFR conditions down low in rough terrain is a terrible place to find yourself and these sudden extreme decisions are thrust upon you with little preparedness or mental capacity for the weighing up of options.
We certainly all should think about what brought him to that critical point; circling low in bad conditions that he eventually flew away from into IMC (and then ultimately to a fatal crash site). It's all the decisions prior to that point that are likely to be where this accident's real genesis lies. Right back to the decision to go to Monto for the weekend with passengers who most likely needed to be back for the Monday, and when they couldn't get back on the Sunday afternoon and then stayed over probably needed to be back even more on Monday afternoon to go to work or for other commitments in Brisbane on the Tuesday (maybe not all of them but Jan who worked at Virgin Australia may have been due back at work and this would have created additional pressure).
I guess what I'm saying is that it's very easy to talk about a pilot's choices (post fatal crash), in a manner that's suggestive of the pilot making a black and white decision to do something they weren't qualified to do and then surmising that the entire event hinged on this one bad call i.e. "flight into IMC when the pilot wasn't IFR rated". This type of thinking is what's facilitated the rise of the term "pilot error" this past century or more since aircraft started dropping out of the sky. A notion that a single error caused the accident and it was "the pilot's fault". As we've become more aware of human factors in aviation accidents, things like the Swiss cheese model have started to bring awareness that a whole series of events facilitate and allow an accident scenario to develop and be fulfilled.
(From rereading your post growahead it's fairly clear you're already pretty aware of this stuff. I'm just articulating it here for the benefit of the overall discussion and an acknowledgement of how a forum like this can be very beneficial but also the limitations of people's writing styles can suggest notions that may not be accurate too.)
I think the big big wake up call here is the need to teach pilots the skills to recognise the beginnings of a likely accident sequence and how to nip it in the bud very early. As I've noted in a previous post on this thread, I long ago learnt that taking people and yourself away for a weekend where you have to get back in order for you or your passengers to fulfil some crucial duty the next day (like going to a job or needing to be there for family, etc) is a pressure for the VFR pilot that is just too likely to adversely affect your decision making and result in flight into IMC. And whether it's inadvertent or deliberate is not so much the issue; it's all the pressure to perform, complete the mission, demonstrate your great pilot competency, maintain that reputation as 'an excellent pilot' and get everyone home on time that lines the holes up ready for disaster to take over. It's in this area where we need to get people thinking about how to avoid needing to then make a life or death decision to go into IMC because they've found themselves trapped in a scud running corner and have no other option.
Ren
Last edited by RenegadeMan; 8th Oct 2012 at 18:51.
Valuable advice. As most of us know and concede it's a time worn subject, one that has been aired over and over again. Still, to have a look over that aforementioned abyss and survive is an experience equalling no other in terms of making the deepest and most lasting impression as to one's mortality.
Not a learning or teaching method to be put into the syllabus. The safe way advocated today is to lead the would be intrepid birdman through a course in Human Factors so as to shield him and anybody else from the risks inherent in subscribing to the school of hard knocks and the prospect of death by misadventure.
The skipper of a square rigger or the hard bitten old DC-3 skipper showing the new to the game, cocky whippersnapper the ropes, ( a la Gann in "Fate is the Hunter"), men who've seen it all and come through scarred and so much the wiser, are entirely relics of a past age. Only in books can anyone get a taste today of the era and of the lore, the absorption of the latter being once essential to getting anywhere before the mast or into the left seat of those wondrous round engined machines.
Ossie Osgood, up in Darwin, used to require and charge his every new pilot recruit to read through a prescribed list of books written by those pilots who had sat down and recounted in graphic detail how they survived the odds. If they were slack about following Ossie's credo and failed to answer a few questions from Ossie as to how Chichester found Lord Howe for instance, then their days with Arnhem Air Charter were numbered.
Thinking of Des, though a considerable remove from those pioneers that Gann sought to immortalise, as in his long list of those who perished that others might learn and endure, and as other posters here have touched on, the lessons to be learnt, the message to be interpreted, is cogent, perennial and essential, and one that many tied up in aviation in Australia today have undertaken to conscientiously pass on in any way they can.
There was a missionary aviation chief pilot once upon a time in PNG who knew all this, in his bones, in his head and in his heart. Any new arrival about to be inducted into the ways of survival in the unforgiving work environment ahead of him, was first taken to the cemetery where he would be shown sundry head-stones and told in graphic detail the circumstances that entrapped the deceased. In this there is a parallel in those attempts to get through to kids and others on dangerous driving charges being taken into the mortuary to see first hand what carnage really looks like.
You can train a dog by shock treatment to modify it's behaviour. You can teach a lion to jump through a hoop. You can lead a horse to water, but . . .. .. . (Thinks . .. . . there were quite a few old sky pilots of the genus aviatus who wore the 'dog collar', but whether of the order of Saint Zapper or not, F Nose.)
Not a learning or teaching method to be put into the syllabus. The safe way advocated today is to lead the would be intrepid birdman through a course in Human Factors so as to shield him and anybody else from the risks inherent in subscribing to the school of hard knocks and the prospect of death by misadventure.
The skipper of a square rigger or the hard bitten old DC-3 skipper showing the new to the game, cocky whippersnapper the ropes, ( a la Gann in "Fate is the Hunter"), men who've seen it all and come through scarred and so much the wiser, are entirely relics of a past age. Only in books can anyone get a taste today of the era and of the lore, the absorption of the latter being once essential to getting anywhere before the mast or into the left seat of those wondrous round engined machines.
Ossie Osgood, up in Darwin, used to require and charge his every new pilot recruit to read through a prescribed list of books written by those pilots who had sat down and recounted in graphic detail how they survived the odds. If they were slack about following Ossie's credo and failed to answer a few questions from Ossie as to how Chichester found Lord Howe for instance, then their days with Arnhem Air Charter were numbered.
Thinking of Des, though a considerable remove from those pioneers that Gann sought to immortalise, as in his long list of those who perished that others might learn and endure, and as other posters here have touched on, the lessons to be learnt, the message to be interpreted, is cogent, perennial and essential, and one that many tied up in aviation in Australia today have undertaken to conscientiously pass on in any way they can.
There was a missionary aviation chief pilot once upon a time in PNG who knew all this, in his bones, in his head and in his heart. Any new arrival about to be inducted into the ways of survival in the unforgiving work environment ahead of him, was first taken to the cemetery where he would be shown sundry head-stones and told in graphic detail the circumstances that entrapped the deceased. In this there is a parallel in those attempts to get through to kids and others on dangerous driving charges being taken into the mortuary to see first hand what carnage really looks like.
You can train a dog by shock treatment to modify it's behaviour. You can teach a lion to jump through a hoop. You can lead a horse to water, but . . .. .. . (Thinks . .. . . there were quite a few old sky pilots of the genus aviatus who wore the 'dog collar', but whether of the order of Saint Zapper or not, F Nose.)
Last edited by Fantome; 9th Oct 2012 at 23:41.
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Just to the north of there they were rising up from 6000ish up near Gladstone, and near Maryborough up to 7500 and becoming 8/8ths. After that I had decided to stay VFR and go under, so I have no facts on any closer, but it could have been getting more like 9000' as a guess.
morno was in the hold at MLY at the time. He might remember.
morno was in the hold at MLY at the time. He might remember.
Around FL130.
morno
morno
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Fantome's lucidity
Crikey Fantome, for someone who previously stated
you sure added some poetically descriptive thoughts and concepts to the discussion! I never read "Fate is the Hunter" but am sourcing a copy. Some reviews written on Amazon talk about people owning well worn copies they've gone back to again and again.
Re the mention of Rapide a few posts back , I'm surprised no one picked up that the DeHavilland Dragon Rapide was the DH89, a model that was built after the DH84 Dragon, Des' aircraft (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
Ren
I cannot tease the topic out as lucidly...
Re the mention of Rapide a few posts back , I'm surprised no one picked up that the DeHavilland Dragon Rapide was the DH89, a model that was built after the DH84 Dragon, Des' aircraft (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
Ren
Last edited by RenegadeMan; 10th Oct 2012 at 18:30.
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You're correct Ren, the Rapide is the 89 Des' was an 84.
The Rapide was really only an updated variant of the original dragon with better performance & more powerful engines....
The Rapide was really only an updated variant of the original dragon with better performance & more powerful engines....
..and totally different wings, propellers and undercarriage! Other then an identical fuselage and tail group, arguably a bit more than an updated Dragon..
Last edited by Dora-9; 10th Oct 2012 at 22:24.
Fantome,
Fate's an old favourite, but can you elaborate on the list of books you mentioned?
Fate's an old favourite, but can you elaborate on the list of books you mentioned?
Slightly off topic but wasn't the Rapide developed so that Qantas could fly from Bne to Sin then Imperial did the rest back to London. The start of the Kanagaroo Route.
I think that was the DH.86 (a sort of dangerous 4-engined Rapide)...
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http://www.ozatwar.com/ozcrashes/qld115.htm
They may well have been, and perhaps for the same reason.
They may well have been, and perhaps for the same reason.
Last edited by prospector; 11th Oct 2012 at 02:24.
