Advice on a new plane

[wwelvaert]

c182 gunzburg « Contract pilot tales

A 182 at Gunzburg, which is 580m grass. This is a stock 230hp (turbo) C182.

[Shorrick Mk2]

I frequently operate a PA28-236 out of our 456m TODA grass strip. In summer when it's really hot it can be a bit restrictive though.

Cruise at around 135ktas (though the book says 140+) on 12-13gph. No problem with 4 real adults and bags + full fuel.

[JimNtexas]

Here in Texas the drug smugglers have pretty much the same requirements, and they favor the C206 and C182 (fixed gear).

There's bunch of big engine and even canard mods to the C182 available if you like.

[mary meagher]

Dear Father Newlands - are you absolutely sure this is the best way to keep your family intact? Especially as they want to take a lot of luggage on their holidays....

How many hours do you have in your logbook driving a car? how many in your pilots logbook? would you trust a low time pilot with your family? be objective.

Teenagers get bored. There are no toilets on light aircraft. Passengers get airsick. Would your wife know how to land the plane if you were incapacitated?

I witnessed a family of six - Mom, Pop, 3 kids and Granny - try to fly 500 miles for a Thanksgiving Weekend. Weather intervened. Attempts to land at 3 different airports unsuccessful, the family returned safely, but nobody enjoyed it, not even the father; he was responsible for everyone's misery.

Suggest much shorter hops by yourself until you have lots of hours, then the odd naughty weekend with your lady love, say in Ireland where the natives are glad to see you and they speak English - or when you have a bit of mountain flying experience, Spain or Italy are not too far. Use the money you save by buying a Cessna to splash out on a really good hotel, or perhaps a few diamonds.....and without the kids she can take all the luggage she wants!

[Pilot DAR]

Mary has said with much great directness, exactly what I was thinking, and trying to subtle about. Though I always want to encourage our industry, a new pilot with his family is a six seat plane is extreme high risk. I have mentored a number of new pilots in their big 4 and 6 seat airplanes, and too frequently been reminded that new pilots don't know what they don't know.... and it can be fatal....

I have a wife and four kids, and 36 years of flying. I have never had all of them up flying together, and have no intention too. I have nothing to prove to them. If we need to get somewhere together, we drive (two cars these days, for comfort), or travel by commercial air. In a few parts of the world, flying the family around is the only way - but not for me....

Before you retort, yes, we've been hit four times by other cars while driving - but never hurt, and always with my same daughter with me. She's my beautiful blonde driving jinx....

[AdamFrisch]

Mary and DAR have some good points. It is very, very easy to kill oneself in a small aircraft. There isn't much room for experimenting or error. I'm not very experienced and I've managed to scare myself a few times already..

I often compare with driving. How many of your friends and family are really, truly good drivers? I bet not many. Sure, they can drive from A to B. But do they slightly ease up on the brakes just before the full stop so to avoid that nodding brake jerk? Do they know where every car is in every lane around them, without having to nervously crane their neck and look? Do they parallel park with perfection every single time? Do they adapt and never drive too fast, nor too slow for the surface conditions? Are they pro's?

I bet very few.

I have so many friends that I've thought about encouraging into aviation, but after seeing them not even mastering the very basic skills of driving safely and well, I've changed my mind. It can't be learned - if you haven't figured out how to drive well after 20 years of doing nothing but, what hope is there for these people in an aeroplane flying 10hrs/year?

Many of the latest fatal crashes have been with super-experienced ex-airline or military pilots with 15.000hrs, so that just goes to show that experience in itself isn't the the solution. There's something else - an X-factor of some sort involved. It's not skills alone. If I'd have to venture, I'd say it's the ability to adapt one's risk-taking and capacity to the given circumstance and condition at hand.

[Hodja]

I've gotta agree - I generally don't take non-pilot passengers on longer trips, and when I do, I never bring more than 1-2 passengers on board.

In particular I'd never fly a large group of family members at the same time.

I just don't find it 1) worth the unnecessary risk (and GA flying does carry inherent risks, like it or not), nor 2) fun for the passengers.

Something I've been wondering about...

There's been a lot of talk about the accident rate of Cirrus aircraft, incl. the recent Avweb article.

What strikes me when reading articles on COPA, is how routinely the owners seem to fly their entire family around in their aircraft, almost treating it like an SUV.

I wonder if this mindset is somehow correlated with the documented accident rate, considering how safe the aircraft itself is actually built.

[AdamFrisch]

Hodja - I quite like to see pilots flying around with their family and toddlers, but I agree that my immediate reaction is always the same as yours. But then I have to tell myself that it's not necessarily a riskier thing to do than many other activities. I think it should be encouraged.

It's a bit like when I grew up in the city as a kid. Me and my mates we're alway out on the street with our bikes, climbing scaffolds, up to no good, exploring derelict buildings etc. You simply do not see any kids on the street today because the great paranoia has set in. We as a society see perverts, pedophiles and child snatchers in every person we meet, yet there are no more of those than there were in the 20's when all kids - no matter what age - played in the streets.

I digress, but it's just a sad state of the times we live in that our kids are not allowed to go out by themselves and play, explore and learn. So a little flying with the family, a little risk taking should be encouraged, I think. But then again I'm not a parent, so I might feel differently if they were my kids.

[peterh337]

There's something else - an X-factor of some sort involved. It's not skills alone

You could start with picking a suitably nice day to fly

The passengers will also enjoy it a lot more.

Even when flying alone, I will chuck it in and drive instead. Despite really disliking driving, I drove to a meeting at an airport the other day (150 miles each way) - because the return trip would not have likely been possible due to wx.

On my long trips to the south, usually with Justine my girlfriend, we set aside 3 days to get out of the UK, and about 75% of the time we get out on the planned day. I avoid drilling holes through frontal weather, which is an obvious recipe for collecting ice, not to mention scaring the hell out of passengers with turbulence in IMC. Even though a lot of warm frontal weather is smooth, and you may get lucky on icing, if you badly scare passengers just once they will never fly with you again.

Most people know there is an increased risk in GA flight, but they take it on trust that you won't kill them. If they get scared even once, that trust is gone and that's it, game over.

Piloting skills come into it of course but only to a limited degree, during takeoff and landing. With modern cockpit automation, the flight should be pretty straightforward and is largely a process of constantly evaluating the wx ahead, climbing, etc. Not having oxygen and an IR also cuts off your best wx avoidance options.

It takes a lot of judgement to suss out the likely wx - an area very poorly taught in the PPL. In my PPL (done 2001) the internet was never mentioned and today this would deprive you of 99% of the required information.

I find that most of the 20k-hour pilots one reads about getting killed actually had little GA experience. They built the time flying fully deiced big jets with a 5000+ fpm rate of climb and enough TAS to completely avoid icing enroute due to the airframe heating (AF447 was a case where even this didn't work). Of the airline pilots who fly GA, the huge vast majority avoid IFR; they prefer basic rag-and-tube flying, which is understandable (makes a nice change I am sure) but this deprives them of getting any experience relevant to going A to B in real wx.

but it's just a sad state of the times we live in that our kids are not allowed to go out by themselves and play, explore and learn

They can if you live somewhere where they won't get run over if they step outside the door. That unfortunately usually involves spending more money on the house purchase

[Hodja]

There's something else - an X-factor of some sort involved. It's not skills alone

You could start with picking a suitably nice day to fly

Yeah, the X-factor is called "luck"

But seriously, Adam, point taken - life, and the general progress of human civilization is all about taking risks.

I guess my point was, that I don't equal light aircraft with family transportation, both for feasibility and numerous practical reasons as Peter explains so well, and in terms of risk.

Actually I have to conclude, that most of the flying enjoyment is really for our own personal selfish reasons as pilots of the aircraft. Passengers tend to have a separate experience.

[Pilot DAR]

Actually I have to conclude, that most of the flying enjoyment is really for our own personal selfish reasons as pilots of the aircraft. Passengers tend to have a separate experience.

For my experience, the passenger's desired experience is usually nothing more than getting there. This, from flying with each of my kids over the years (three of whom are in their 20's now). They have zero interest in flying the plane, they just wanted to get where I could take them. My youngest can be coaxed into a bimble, but after 30 minutes is usually declaring boredom, if there is no clear objective. I have done many 1000+ mile trips with my wofe, who really seems to enjoy the charms of a fair weather trip.

I have considered the "x-factor" for decades, trying to hone and optimize it. I have reached the following conclusion:

The "x-factor" is the opitimum point in between very well informed decision making (personal skills and equipment capability considered) and complacency.

I have seen new pilots, who I obsevered to be complacent right from the start - they would have a hard struggle to overcome that to become well informed decision makers.

I have seen new pilots who seemed to be great decision makers, but had yet to develop the broad experience upon which to base those decisions - they have time to improve, and have th potential to be great.

I have seen (and fear becoming) complacent pilots, who were now flying only on luck, 'cause they were not applying skill very much. I've been to a number of their funerals. Others I have sat down and chatted with....

At the height of fearing personal complacency, I trained for my helicopter license - that straightened me out!

Flying which is high challenge, but low risk is excellent for skills development and warding off complacency. I do not notice new pilots attempting to refine their skills after being licensed, they are sometimes riding the high of being licensed, and imagining the vista of opportunity in front of them, without realizing what those who are doing the bigger vista, have put into that flying.