Mike Connell, GOP Computer GURU and, apparently, a General Aviation pilot, died last night (Friday, Dec 19) in a plane crash on approach to Akron-Canton Airport in Ohio. He has made depositions about possible GOP involvement in GOP election and e-mail shenanigans, and was destined to be involved in upcoming lawsuits as a witness. Larisa Alexandrovna has a piece on this as well.
There's another diary on this as well, today
This link
reports the plane as a Piper SuperCub; other notes I have seen say it was a Piper Saratoga. There is speculation that the crash might be suspicious in nature.
I'm not speculating about the political issues of this particular crash, but rather this is a diary for non-pilots about the risks involved in flying small planes and interpreting news about small plane crashes.
I'm a pilot. I've been flying for over 30 years, and hold Private, Commercial, Multi-engine, Instrument, CFI (flight Instructor) and glider licences. I learned in the Air Force during Vietnam, and even flew the Goodyear Blimp once over LA. That said, I don't have a lot of Hours (<1000) so I'm sure there are many other people with a lot more experience out there, and I welcome any corrections or additions to my thoughts.</p>
In the Air Force one of my duties was as base safety officer, and after the AF I did a certain amount of forensic motorcycle accident reconstruction, so I've always been interested in how accidents happen, and how to avoid them.
Small aircraft, like the sea, are not inherently dangerous, but they are unforgiving of carelessness. That's why most aircraft accidents are chalked up to pilot error. Sometimes these "pilot errors" are shortcomings in training, sometimes they are poor ergonomic design of the controls, sometimes they are unforseen Physics issues that testing didn't revel, sometimes it Hubris. A common nickname for the Beechcraft Bonanza V-Tail V35 (a high performance single engine small plane, used in variations as military trainers) was the "forked-tail doctor-killer" because it was bought by (among others) wealthy doctors who were, shall we say, over-confident of their skills as a pilot, no matter how many lives they saved in surgery. More Pilot Humor Here
I'm going to mention several types of common aircraft accident causes, relate those to how they commonly happen, and also how they can be caused by external forces. The "external forces" could be sabotage, for the Conspiracy theory (CT) types, or they could simply be fate - stuff no one anticipates. Finally, I'll mention some things to be skeptical about when you read newspaper accounts, because most writers have no idea how to write intelligently about small aviation.
Causes:
If I recall correctly (and I'm speaking in this diary almost exclusively of small plane accidents - Commercial Jets are a whole different area) most crashes are caused primarily by two factors - running out of fuel, and flying into poor weather. Everything else (overloaded, too short a runway, landing gear, disorientation)is a small, but not insignificant, proportion of small aircraft crashes. My rule of thumb is that I could increase my odds five-fold if I just made sure I had gas, and was conservative about questionable weather.
Out of fuel
It seems stupid, but pilots run out of fuel, or come close, more than you think. Most times pilots always fill up their tanks after every stop, and before storing the plane, but things can go wrong. One thing is headwinds. You burn more fuel than you thought, it's close, and you might have to abandon your original destination. No pilot likes to do that, because it looks unprofessional. Other reasons for low fuel are unanticipated/unforecast weather(meaning you have to divert to a different course), too much landing traffic at the destination, improper engine settings using too much fuel, and so forth.
A favorite saying to new pilots is "there is nothing more useless than Runway behind you, altitude above you, or fuel left back at the field". So, use the longest runway for both takeoff and landing you can get, Fill your tanks at every opportunity, and get as high as practical, because if you have a fuel or engine problem you can glide farther.
The runway thing is about the fact that you might not accelerate as fast as you think (low engine power, slush), or on landing have brake problems, crosswinds, visibility issues, and so forth.
Weather
Basic private pilots fly by VFR (visual flight rules) and must stay basically clear of clouds, and fly only when there is sufficient visibility to see where you're going. Seems simple, but slow aircraft have much more latitude here. If you're only going 90mph, seeing ahead only four miles means you have about three minutes to think about what's next. If you're doing 200mph, you only have a little over a minute.
Pilots who fly under instruments have much more latitude, but not only require more intensive training, but must keep their skills up with frequent retraining. They depend on their instruments working OK, and all aircraft for instrument use have redundant instruments, and all instrument pilots are trained to cope with occasional instrument failure.
But, it's a more complicated task, and requires complete attention. The closer to the ground, the closer to landing, the more difficult it is.
The most difficult flight test I ever had to complete was flying a twin-engine Piper Apache with relatively low power at 5000 feet in Colorado, on an instrument approach to landing, and having the check pilot fail an engine during the final turn, with a visibility ceiling of 400 feet. It's often said of small twin-engine planes that the purpose of the second engine is to fly you to the scene of the crash in the event of the other one's failure. And most people don;t know that on a lot of small twins, one engine is more of a problem if it fails, due to direction of rotation.
Every Instrument pilot has gone thru something like this in his or her training. It's a test to see that not only can you do something difficult, you can do it even with failing systems.
Other Things
An out of balance aircraft (loaded wrong, or overloaded) is usually a takeoff problem. Engine failure usually results in a forced landing. An engine failure on a twin is often more difficult to handle than on a single engine unless your training is up to date, and can often lead to landing crashes and controllability issues, especially in bad weather and under instrument conditions. Most pilots with any experience have either gone through training on or experienced one or more of these things, or known someone who has, so that's where pilot experience comes in.
Simulating or causing failures
There are things that can be sabotaged, either obviously or subtly, on small aircraft. For instance, if you substituted a good over-wing fuel tank cap with one with a bad gasket or one that failed to seal, it might go unnoticed by the pilot or the refueler. Then, once in the air, the slipstream causes a vacuum which siphons fuel out of the tank, thus reducing available fuel. Contaminants can be added to the fuel before or after refueling. Instruments can be mis-adjusted so that you fly lower than you think, or mis-adjusted to not tell the pilot the real condition of the engine.
If the pilot is flying on instruments, mis-adjustments or failure of the artificial horizon could cause the pilot to lose control in clouds and go into what's called the "death spiral", where the pilot's balance system is confused by external forces and he can't figure out which way is up, literally. John F. Kennedy Jr. probably succumbed to some issue like this in his fatal accident
Navigation antennas or other electronics can be tampered with, confusing the pilot about where he really is. The Mel Carnahan crash in Missouri might have been related to this. Either mistaking where the pilot is, or how high in an area or rising terrain can be very problematic.
The Paul Wellstone crash has been a favorite of conspiracy theorists for years, some of whom feel that the NTSB report was incomplete. There are even people who have claimed that purposeful electronic interference is to blame in many of these cases, either interfering with instruments or engine electrical systems, on the theory that you don't actually have to sabotage something obvious, just cause so many problems for the pilots that they lose control, and there's no evidence at the crash site.
That there are so many things that can go wrong in a small aircraft that can tax the pilots means that it's quit easy to create a dangerous situation. When I hear of a plane crash, especially concerning a high-profile person, I want to evaluate all the circumstances, including pilot experience, history of the aircraft, weather conditions, and the coincidence of whether anything made that particular person especially dangerous politically or financially at that point in time. But that's where the conspiracy stuff creeps in.
Many investigations of crashes which result in a verdict of pilot error do not actually find out what error the pilot made, it's just that no other clear cause was found, and pilots hate that - for instance, if water in the fuel causes icing in the carburetor, the engine stops, the plane crashes and burns, what's to find? It's like stabbing someone to death with an icicle. But, in most cases where an engine stops, the pilot knows how to get it to ground under controlled conditions, so a flaming crash due to "running out of fuel" as opposed to a forced landing off the airport which may be quite survivable is a puzzle...
This is an overly-long diary, and there's much to say, I'll leave with the thought that a well trained pilot in a sound airplane is actually quite safe - so it makes pilots wonder when peculiar things happen.
And, if you haven't read it yet and don't want to be too depressed, go back to the top of the diary and read some pilot humor first.