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Old 17th Aug 2019, 12:37
  #41 (permalink)  
 
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I am guessing, but from the passenger seat I think I can understand that as a VFR pilot I have little chance of surviving VFR into IMC. The trouble is that “in theory and with all the toys” you can see yourself surviving, but the reality don’t work that way.

‘’The BS training is a waste of time because foggles are not an effective simulation. You, I think, need to actually fly into bad weather to actually understand why it isn’t a good idea. I think i’ve got close enough while still VFR to realize what a mess going IFR without training would be. Sadly, I don’t think everyone else does.
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Old 17th Aug 2019, 15:00
  #42 (permalink)  
 
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The BS training is a waste of time because foggles are not an effective simulation. You, I think, need to actually fly into bad weather to actually understand why it isn’t a good idea
Also "under the hood" is not particularly effective. It takes only a slight tilt of the head to see the occasional outside horizon which most students will try to do. The only realistic experience is in IMC and/or dark night. It might cost a few hundred dollars but providing the instructor has a current instrument rating and suitably qualified to instruct on instruments at night, a PPL should find that of significant value. As well, a seriously keen pilot will seek out a decent flight training device (simulator) available at numerous flying schools and pick up instrument flying practice that way.

It is arguable if you could count on some Angel Flight pilots going to all that trouble and expense though. Experience has shown that, whether you are a VFR pilot or not, instrument flying currency is the key because sooner or later you can count on being faced with flight into IMC whether planned or otherwise. . If you are going to be an Angel Flight VFR exponent, then an hour in a FTD every month or so, may save your skin.
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Old 17th Aug 2019, 22:09
  #43 (permalink)  
 
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I wonder if there’s a link between older aircraft and higher crash probabilities...

In Victoria recently “they” came up with the conclusion that 75% of fatalities in vehicles occur in vehicles more than 10 years old because those vehicles lack the required technologies and safety features.

What they didn’t say was the average age of a vehicle in Victoria. Edit: the mean average is 9.

I’m thinking along the lines of glass panels, parachutes, airbag seatbelts, etc.
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Old 17th Aug 2019, 23:40
  #44 (permalink)  
 
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Flame suit and helmet on...

To be honest, I don’t understand the outrage at ATSB over this report. In my mind, they got it right.

A pilot, under the pressure of get-there-itis which comes with medical situations made a series of horrifically bad decisions, which I hazard a guess, he would not have made if he had just taken himself for a fly for the day.

Whether the outbound or inbound flights are included in statistics - who gives a proverbial. If they’re not crashing on positioning flights but are crashing when there are pressures to get in/out/whatever, all that does is prove that decision making is failing with stress.

As for instrument training - I disagree. These PPLs are generally flying around safely and avoiding IMC as their licence REQUIRES at other times - but taking the risks when there’s some kid needing chemo.

Im also aware that we shouldn’t tar all AF pilots with the same brush, I’m sure there’s some great operators out there who continue to delay flights and make the right decisions.

This is what happens when you put commercial pressures on private pilots.

Next time you want to fly in and out of an airport where RPT multi-crew turbines are sitting on the ground delaying departure, perhaps it’s best to call it a day, rather than make a series of low level scud running orbits in an attempt to find a runway.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 02:20
  #45 (permalink)  
 
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Commercial pressure on private pilots, my arse.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 02:33
  #46 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by Sunfish
Commercial pressure on private pilots, my arse.
Pete is spot on. You’re a PPL and all of a sudden you’re running to a schedule with strangers you’ve just
met boarding. You have to take care of their needs, be as on time as you can and there is a definite pressure to be there... you certainly don’t want to let them down, especially for something so important to them.

The most dangerous thing on an aircraft.... is a schedule.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 02:36
  #47 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by Sunfish
Commercial pressure on private pilots, my arse.
How about pressure from the passenger of a private pilot?

That has probably taken a few lives.

Just to avoid a argument with the Minister for War & Finance is a commercial pressure.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 02:50
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If the private pilots in this situation are suffering from commercial pressure then they don't understand the operation that they are performing.

AF is not an emergency or air ambulance service.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 02:51
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Originally Posted by Squawk7700


Pete is spot on. You’re a PPL and all of a sudden you’re running to a schedule with strangers you’ve just
met boarding. You have to take care of their needs, be as on time as you can and there is a definite pressure to be there... you certainly don’t want to let them down, especially for something so important to them.

The most dangerous thing on an aircraft.... is a schedule.

Have to agree, commercial pressure was probably the main factor in the pilots decision making.
Some don't realise that commercial pressure doesn't have to be tagged to commercial Ops alone but the 'pressure' in Pvt Ops is still there!
I've knocked back flights over the years due WX and other factors.
Theres a saying in the Aeromedical world......"no point in killing several to save one"!
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 02:55
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I repeat. Put a commercial pilot in a C172 when his boss tells him to do something. You think that’s not pressure? Like the poor commercial sods who died when the wings were ripped off that C210’

commercial pilots free of pressure? My arse.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 04:24
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Originally Posted by Sunfish
I repeat. Put a commercial pilot in a C172 when his boss tells him to do something. You think that’s not pressure? Like the poor commercial sods who died when the wings were ripped off that C210’

commercial pilots free of pressure? My arse.
Sunfish you don’t get it - no one is saying it’s “commercial” pressure. What I believe everyone is alluding to is that “getthereitis”, which was no doubt the cause in this accident, (why on earth would you otherwise blast off into crap weather which you had just arrived in), is akin to commercial pressure. I acknowledge that many if not most AF pilots of whatever experience level know and recognise this, but not all. And that’s the problem.

Last edited by On eyre; 18th Aug 2019 at 04:35.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 07:23
  #52 (permalink)  
 
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getthereitis, passenger pressure, flying to meet a schedule all are seem very plausible contributing factors. In the end, the pilot showed very poor judgement by proceeding to land in Mount Gambier in the first place and probably concluded from this that it would be fine to take-off again in similar conditions. Whether PPL should get an IR for angel flights is obviously debatable (I believe not necessary as these blokes should know when to make no-go decision) but I am strong advocate that basic IF (that's part of the PPL syllabus) should include at least some flying in real IMC. It personally wasn't until I did my own IR flight training and flew in clouds that I could truly appreciate how formidable an exercise this is. Those who "think they know" are just kidding themselves. Add to that some uneventful flying for a couple of years and there's the perfect mix to find out the pain of flying in zero visibility the hard way.

Last edited by Okihara; 18th Aug 2019 at 07:44.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 07:26
  #53 (permalink)  
 
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Including IMC conditions in the RPL/PPL syllabus as part of Basic IF would no doubt be a fantastic and worthy addition, however the exercise would be prohibitive to many schools who wouldn't have the resources available to conduct it (IFR aircraft and IRTE instructors).
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 07:50
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I know I am overreacting having spent the day introducing a Five year old to the joys of skiing. I also should add that I am NOT an Angel Flight pilot nor associated with them in any way.

I am simply pissed off at first of all CASA, who senses that Angel Flight is an organisation with credentials that make it a threat to CASA domination, so they have, like many others, to be destroyed, then with CASA's lapdog, the ATSB who have produced a turd of an analysis in an attempt to justify its masters position. Then along come players and axe grinders who want to stroke their own ego by sinking the slipper into Angel Flight.

Of course it was "getthereitis"! I can't think of any other reason either. However two incidents of it in 10,000 odd Angel Flight over ten years are statistically insignificant. By that I mean rigorous statistical testing of the hypothesis "Angelflight pilots flights are more likely than the rest of the pilot population to suffer from gethereitis" will draw a big ******* blank at the 99.999% confidence level or ATSB would have shouted it from the roof tops by now.

So since that fails, ATSB then invents a convoluted pseudo scientific analysis claiming Angel Flights are seven times more dangerous than ordinary private flying! I looked in vain for the causal link in that steaming pile of **** for the link between runway incursions and gethereitis but haven't found it.

So CASA and ATSB would have the general public believe that Angel Flight is populated by weak minded emotionally unstable pilots with sub human flying skills to boot - the very dregs of the private pilot population! That is the exact conclusion and the obvious corollary is that Angel Flight should be destroyed as a danger to the man in the street, just like a dangerous dog. Nice one CASA, protecting us all the time. At least Angel Flight was able to kick CASA in the balls over that one -you licenced those pilots CASA, didn't you?

And the ATSB, now in full Marie Antionette mode, ruffles its corsets and tells Angel Flight customers not to use Angel Flight but instead to use Regular Public Transport to hospital - Rex, Qantas, Virgin or Jetstar! What are they smoking in Canberra?????

....And then people, come here to Pprune and solemnly nit pick and criticize Angel Flight - for trying to help people??? CASA and ATSB make the pre revolutionary French aristocracy look grounded and in touch with the common man by comparison, they are the problem.

There is a cure to this madness and it doesn't involve ******* over Angel Flight. Maybe we need our own form of French revolution in Canberra.

*The asterisked word involved is a synonym for intercourse with the suffix -ing.

Last edited by Sunfish; 18th Aug 2019 at 08:09.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 08:00
  #55 (permalink)  
 
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Agreed. I'm also not suggesting to make that a legal requirement for basic IF but just saying that the many schools in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide that already tick the boxes in terms of staff, fleet and weather would see their students benefit greatly from the experience of flying with an IR instructor in actual IMC (no peeking through the left corner of the hood).
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 08:19
  #56 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by Sunfish
Of course it was "getthereitis"! I can't think of any other reason either. [...]
That's the thing. Maybe not. Maybe the bloke flew in in marginal conditions and thought to himself: "Come on mate, that's nowhere near as bad as people say". You just cannot rule out that the pilot might have felt overly confident in his abilities, perhaps in part due to the fact that "nothing ever happened" to him in similar conditions.

I would have liked to read something like that in the report because that threat is an insidious one.

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Old 18th Aug 2019, 23:27
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I second Centaurus call for a few hours “real” IFR aspartame’s of the PPL syllabus.

My own untutored opinion of “getthereitis” is its a subset of human behaviours where people believe that, rationally, they can do something without having the experience to make an informed choice.

Examples:

- teenagers who think that driving 160 kmh on a suburban road is smart. They have never felt what it is like to start losing control at that speed.

- The weekend yachtsmen who think that weathering a depression in Bass Strait is easy peasy.

- The would be Military Rambo who has to discover the hard way that lying in the mud at 4am in freezing cold is not what they signed up for.

- The private pilot who thinks that all that Skyview stuff and GPS is going to save him in Instrument conditions coupled with severe turbulence.

We rationalise we can do this without training and experience. We can’t.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 23:49
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"get-there-itis" isn't the sole domain of CSFlights, there are many pressures on a pilot when travelling, like not wanting to lose the hotel booking, car rental, family disappointment etc. etc. etc. Part of a pilots training, whether PPL/CPL/ATPL etc, is how to deal with this factor. ATSB are implying that doing a Community Service Flight (CSF) is somehow applying more pressure than a weekend getaway to the snow or a family wedding in Tasmania. To truly study the statistics you would need to look at all flights that come under this category - of course that data is not available. Maybe a better statistical analysis of Angel Flights would be to look at all incidents of VFR flights into IMC and then determine the purpose for each flight and find the percentage of those flights that are CSF's. Then you can say that whether or not there is something peculiar or not about CSF's.

On flying VFR into IMC in general, after doing my IR I read a few stories in the RA-Aus mag and spoke to a few people and the impression I got was that, because of whatever reason, a person found themselves entering IMC, they would generally tense up, be fearful to some degree and endeavour to get out of the clouds. Some persisted on, generally climbing, others would do a slow turn back all the while trying to watch their instruments. Obviously the ones who wrote the stories and could talk about it afterwards survived and the attitudes were mixed, everything from "it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be" to "I will never do that again!". Those attitudes probably determine the future outcomes for those pilots.

Learning a bit of Instrument Flying can be both good and bad, you need the confidence to only look at your instruments. Flying on a dark night is easier than day through broken clouds. At night you can only see your instruments, while during the day you can get distracted by glimpses of terrain and the tendency for visual pilots is to keep looking at the ground. All that head swivelling and turning will disorientate you very quickly. Certainly learn to fly and navigate on instruments but more importantly learn to trust those instruments.
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Old 18th Aug 2019, 23:53
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I know I am overreacting having spent the day introducing a Five year old to the joys of skiing. I also should add that I am NOT an Angel Flight pilot nor associated with them in any way.

I am simply pissed off at first of all CASA, who senses that Angel Flight is an organisation with credentials that make it a threat to CASA domination, so they have, like many others, to be destroyed, then with CASA's lapdog, the ATSB who have produced a turd of an analysis in an attempt to justify its masters position. Then along come players and axe grinders who want to stroke their own ego by sinking the slipper into Angel Flight.

Of course it was "getthereitis"! I can't think of any other reason either. However two incidents of it in 10,000 odd Angel Flight over ten years are statistically insignificant. By that I mean rigorous statistical testing of the hypothesis "Angelflight pilots flights are more likely than the rest of the pilot population to suffer from gethereitis" will draw a big ******* blank at the 99.999% confidence level or ATSB would have shouted it from the roof tops by now.

So since that fails, ATSB then invents a convoluted pseudo scientific analysis claiming Angel Flights are seven times more dangerous than ordinary private flying! I looked in vain for the causal link in that steaming pile of **** for the link between runway incursions and gethereitis but haven't found it.

So CASA and ATSB would have the general public believe that Angel Flight is populated by weak minded emotionally unstable pilots with sub human flying skills to boot - the very dregs of the private pilot population! That is the exact conclusion and the obvious corollary is that Angel Flight should be destroyed as a danger to the man in the street, just like a dangerous dog. Nice one CASA, protecting us all the time. At least Angel Flight was able to kick CASA in the balls over that one -you licenced those pilots CASA, didn't you?

And the ATSB, now in full Marie Antionette mode, ruffles its corsets and tells Angel Flight customers not to use Angel Flight but instead to use Regular Public Transport to hospital - Rex, Qantas, Virgin or Jetstar! What are they smoking in Canberra?????

....And then people, come here to PPRuNe and solemnly nit pick and criticize Angel Flight - for trying to help people??? CASA and ATSB make the pre revolutionary French aristocracy look grounded and in touch with the common man by comparison, they are the problem.

There is a cure to this madness and it doesn't involve ******* over Angel Flight. Maybe we need our own form of French revolution in Canberra.

*The asterisked word involved is a synonym for intercourse with the suffix -ing.
I hate CASA as much as the next gender neutral pilot. But if you can’t read your own rant above and understand your view is greatly warped because you have an axe to grind with aviation oversight, then no amount of me or others pointing it out will make one iota of difference. I can’t imagine any ATSB report being produced at the moment where you don’t throw your hands up in the air dramatically and wander off muttering CASA this and CASA that.

As for commercial pressures, I think you’re struggling to grasp the concept. A 200 hour pilot with a CPL and a pushy boss - they have 3x the experience under their belt, they have currency, they have more IF training, they have better theory and human factors awareness. Does that mean they won’t make a mistake? No. But they are better equipped to resist pressures of people and schedules - absolutely.

In my mind, AngelFlight involves private operations where the the possibility of get-there-itis is placed into the shoulders of pilots who don’t normally and who haven’t been trained to recognise and resist those forces. AngelFlight can throw their hands up in the air Helen Lovejoy style about statistics and ATSB has gone to the dogs blah blah blah... or they can suck it up, and invest that energy in training and awareness for their pilots about how to recognise and avoid these things in the future.
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Old 19th Aug 2019, 00:33
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Pete, you are, of course technically correct about your commercial pilot. I believe I am also technically correct in stating that two VFR into IMC accidents involving Angel Flight in their Ten years of operation is statistically insignificant and is not a basis on which CASA or ATSB or anyone else for that matter, can draw meaningful conclusions about AF’s safety compared to the private pilot population, especially since the ATSB data is skewed by the vast volume of training flights.

My hunch would be that if you eliminated that data and compared apples with apples, Angel Flight would come out way ahead in the safety stakes. I’m not sure meaningful conclusions could be drawn comparing charter, air work or low density RPT either.

The ATSB analysis of “occurrences” is crap not worth a mention.

I thus believe that talking about the alleged “pressures” on Angel Flight pilots as if they were real and not already being mitigated by Angel Flight has no basis in fact.

Furthermore, that means that both CASA and ATSB are being dishonest in their conclusions and actions against community service flights for purely political reasons.

If we wanted to test the hypothesis that AF pilots are frequently running unmitigated risks, then my suggestion would be to have one or two IFR equipped aircraft and commercial pilots on call and see how many times AF pilots bail during an operation and avail themselves and their pax of that backup service.

Going way back to the 1970’s, I designed and built a system for Ansett and CAA to monitor the entire airline fleet - looking for safety trend anomalies in maintenance and aircraft reliability to ensure that both Ansett and CAA were identifying and investing their time and money in investigating real safety issues and not just reacting to random failures. It appears ATSB and CASA are not interested in data driven investigations any more.

Last edited by Sunfish; 19th Aug 2019 at 00:48.
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