PA28 rescued by Edinburgh ATC
 

Congratulations to Edinburgh ATSU, The EDI Fire Service and Scottish ATC for rescuing the PA28 Arrow G-BREP from what nearly turned out this afternoon to be a nasty accident in the Hills south of Edinburgh. We heard the a/c transiting from SAB VOR to Carlisle on Scottish early afternoon as we descended into EDI IFR from the South. From our view point inside controlled airspace the VFR flight seemed in jeopardy given severe gales, low cloud, mountain wave and turbulence at all levels. We both agreed from our cosy flight deck the route would be extremely challenging for the a/c!

As we taxied out at EDI an hour later a full emergency was in progress as Scottish and EDI ATSU had expertly rescued this a/c from a very unpleasant situation. The a/c’s approach in semi IMC and windshear from out over the Firth luckily resulted in a successful arrival onto 24 at EDI despite some very extreme manoeuvres on short final. Well done EDI ATC guy’s – a good job done well.

The pilot of the Halfpenny Green registered aeroplane needs to spend a while reflecting on his captaincy!

The Arrrow had been at Strathallan for the weekend and it looks and sounds like a must get home:confused: :suspect: :8 , will be now be a member of the glad to be on the ground brigade.

Even though they maybe made the wrong decision in proceeding with the flight, they made the right decision in confessing and seeking help from ATC...I stay very near EDI and my roof nearly blew off yesterday so must've been a very intense flight. Good job to all involved, the terrain and weather system in Scotland can bite really bad if not treated with respect!

Whilst I’m not in a position to judge whether or not this may have been a possibly fatal case of press-on-it is, it provokes sobering thought for myself as a newly-qualified PPL.

Good job to those who assisted the pilot in making a safe recovery, congratulations to the pilot (and any pax) on getting down safely.

Top "Rash Judgment" there ALTSEL!!

They're alive.. and the aeroplane is in one piece.. top result by everyone.

What is "Semi IMC"? and are you certain the pilot had not instrument qualifications?

I hear that the other husband is not very happy:O

this may have been a possibly fatal case of press-on-it is

There is no such thing. Every flight; indeed everything we do in our lives, is done under pressure of some kind.

If somebody wishes to fly from A to B and ends up in a mess due to weather, it not because they wanted to fly from A to B badly. It's because they did not know how to read the weather data and/or how to make enroute decisions regarding changes of plan or escape routes.

If a pilot wasn't particularly bothered about flying somewhere, he would stay at home and GA would disappear!

PPL training is largely to blame in this department. It needs to be modernised, with modern (internet) weather sources, etc.

So, let's stop using this meaningless "Pressonitis" expression and - if anything - start examining what exactly a pilot did to get into a pickle. That way, somebody might learn something. Pressonitis is something straight out of a retired and rather patronising RAF navigator and doesn't teach anybody anything useful.

sigmets forecasting severe turbulence for most of scotland and the whole of the London FIR below FL60 should eb a big clue as to how bad the conditoins were to fly in. These are available via the AFTN and not from modern briefing techniques.

Perhaps you could start a poll, TATC, on how many pilots have ever used a SIGMET ;)

I never have.

Also, a forecast of turbulence over the entire northern hemisphere (which is the type of "forecasting" we often get) is not going to be taken seriously by many.

The horrid weather was obvious, that I agree, and continues as I write this. But there were also perfectly flyable gaps within it. Something fairly basic went wrong here, and I don't think it was the pilot just really wanting to fly somewhere.

IO540,

What I meant was that-

I'm by no means in any position to judge whether or not this incident was due to pilot error, i.e. continuing on when a diversion/route change would have been the prudent thing to do (which is what I was summing up as "press-on-itis").

Indeed, since it would be very wrong for me to assume that this was the case (given my levels of experience, limited info and so on) the only reason I talked about press-on-itis was to point this out whilst I said that this was a sobering thought for a newly qualified PPL, I wasn't necessarily assuming that this was the cause.

Anyway, I thought "press-on-itis" meant "to continue your flight regardless of other factors that may have a detrimental effect on your flight, due to the overriding desire not to accept changes to your plan"? Surely avoiding that situation due to pressure is worthwhile?

Yes, I just think that those decisions can be made dispassionately, if one has the right training.

How badly you want to get somewhere should not come into it very much.

I don't have Sunday afternoon's F214 in front of me but I'd be very surprised if it showed anything other than very high winds at all levels. Flying over an area of hills up to 2674 feet in those conditions is bound to be very challenging. I don't see how 'we didn't take the forecast seriously', whatever methods one uses to obtain that forecast, could be deployed as an argument here.
NS

KIRSTEY - I assure you I had a grand-stand view of the a/c arriving into EDI, the vis was poor by VFR standards with rain and drizzle and evil gust's with wind-shear at low level. The a/c was vectored to final from out over the water and literally hedge hopped all the way from the Crammond Inn on the waterfront to the 24 numbers, he even had to climb to hop over the railway track 400 mts from the r/w start and that was with some of the most weird maneuvers I have ever seen a PA28 perform. The planned trip from Perthshire to Carlisle via SAB VOR that afternoon in those conditions suggest to me the CAA should have a quite word in this bod’s ear

the CAA should have a quite word in this bod’s ear

Having a word with his instructor would be far more productive, but the CAA doesn't seem to do that. Here in the UK, when an instructor is done with a student he's done and there is very unlikely to be any comeback.

Well, there are MUCH better forecasts available than these forms put out by the Met Office.

Loads of info here

http://euro.wx.propilots.net/

and here

www.homebriefing.com

and here

http://www.eurometeo.com/english/maps

There are quite a few more, so if you want to have a pretty darn good picture of what's going on out there, all you need is an internet connection. These forms are, IMHO, completely useless, as they cover far too big an area. Btw, does anyone have the EGPH METAR for the time in question ? Just curious.....

Listen, all this crap about what we should think and say is rubbish, the weather on Sunday was of a degree, 70mph recorded in Perthshire during the day that no PPL in a small aircraft should have been flying and if they were at the stage of considering this then they should line up and have a brain transplant and the CAA should look more at this decision process.

May I also add short field take off 600m, grass, wet wet wet, muddy, no flaps!!!!!!!!!! head wind and still struggled to get off

This was a gross case of, have to get the girl home and I would suggest that THERE may be the reason for the request for Edinburgh, may be the passenger had more sense.

There was no instructor on board the aircraft. It was PPL w/IMC and 1 PAX.

Hopefully the FTO wil stop the idiot flying.

I meant the instructor who trained him. This pilot, it would appear, didn't know how to get weather and understand it. That itself is of no suprise to me; when I got my PPL I knew next to nothing.

You did not need any fancy weather forecast on Sunday from any web site or other, all you had to do was stand in the middle of the airfield and lean very forceabily forward and use the 2 things at the front of your head for the visabilty, or lack of it.

But of course the only thing that was being considered that weekend was a lot lower down.

the weather that day was by far not flyable, it was one of the worst days ive seen this year...alot of flooding around my local area and alot of rivers burst it banks in the borders.