A pilot traveling to New Orleans might choose to avoid the business commercial airport to the west and instead fly into Lakefront Airport (KNEW) to be closer to downtown. Doing so, it might become useful to approach the airport via the VOR DME Runway 36L approach.

For what looks like a pretty straightforward VOR approach at first glance, there is a lot going on here that might trip up a pilot—and using a solid IFR GPS navigator would help significantly.

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While most of us get used to using GPS-based approaches more frequently, we still find use in VOR approaches periodically. In this case, the procedure will get a pilot down to just under 500 feet agl when flying a straight-in approach, so it might be an acceptable option in all but the worst of weather conditions for many.

A) DME Required

On some approaches, DME requirements are set in the notes section. In this example, DME is noted in the header for the approach. This is an indication that it’s required to be able to conduct the approach. A second and third hint on this one would be that there are no times listed for missed approach points and that DME points are noted along the profile view to identify the final approach fix, step-down fixes, and missed approach point. Be ready to use DME from the Harvey (HRV) VOR or a suitable IFR-capable GPS.

• READ MORE: Chart Wise: Truckee-Tahoe RNAV (GPS)-A

B) The Approach

Navigating to a starting point on this approach may not be as clear to many as some approaches. The good news is that finding the “IAF” denotation over the HRV VOR is the key. A pilot could choose to start this approach from the VOR if not being vectored, or if assigned, then proceeding inbound on a 351-degree heading. There is a note at Harvey VOR. If you are using V552 southbound or A321 northwest bound from the low altitude enroute chart, you would not be authorized to start the approach using this VOR. The reasoning for limitations such as these is typically because they would cause a severe turn onto the final approach course that might take a pilot out of a protected area.

C) Stepdowns with DME

After crossing the HRV VOR, a pilot proceeds along the 351-degree radial to 3 miles from the VOR where they can descend from the crossing altitude of 2,600 feet to 1,700 feet, where they will count up to 6 miles and then cross the final approach fix at CUDRO. Another stepdown fix is available at IMIAL after which the pilot counts up to a distance of 11.2 DME from the HRV VOR, where they would go missed without the runway environment in sight. A key point that a pilot should know is whether they are “counting up” from the HRV VOR using traditional VOR DME or “counting down” when the approach is loaded to use an IFR GPS to substitute for DME.

• READ MORE: Chart Wise: Mackinac Island VOR/DME-A

D) Missed Uses Different VOR

New Orleans may have some connection with voodoo, and flying this missed approach might require some IFR magic if you conduct it without a GPS. The missed first takes a pilot straight ahead using the HRV VOR on a 351-degree radial but then requires the intercept of the 082 degree radial from the RQR VOR. That radial intercept isn’t given a DME point that might help a pilot “count up” to when they will be expecting the turn. Once intercepting this radial, the pilot then transitions to using the RQR VOR and flying east on the 082 degree radial until they intercept the 016 degree radial from the HRV VOR again at a waypoint designated SNAKI. This one at least gives us a DME of 36.6, but it’s worth noting that DME is from the RQR VOR, so make sure your readout is coming from that and not the HRV VOR you might have been using as you flew the approach. One more confusing option: You could also identify SNAKI using the Picayune VOR (PCU) 193 radial.

This column first appeared in the January-February 2024/Issue 945 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Chart Wise: New Orleans VOR DME 36L (KNEW) appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

On a warm day in late spring, four professional helicopter pilots rented a Cirrus SR20 in North Las Vegas, Nevada, for a fishing trip to Bryce Canyon, Utah. Of the four, only one had an airplane rating.

After taking off from North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT) and flying 60 miles, they landed at Mesquite, Nevada (67L), where they added 10 gallons of fuel. The pilot with the airplane rating, who had flown the first leg, now ceded the left front seat to one of his companions, evidently with the idea of giving him some flight instruction. He moved to the right seat, and they performed several touch-and-gos before continuing toward Bryce Canyon, 105 miles distant.

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The terrain rises from around 4,000 feet msl near Mesquite to around 7,800 feet at Bryce. Between them is a pass at 8,500 feet. Shortly before reaching that pass, and still below 8,000 feet, the Cirrus stalled, flipped inverted, and crashed into a mountainside, killing all four men. The Cirrus was equipped with an Avidyne solid-state primary flight display that stored an array of flight and engine data. The memory module was undamaged, and investigators were able to reconstruct the flight in detail. The story it told was surprising.

To start, the airplane was about 225 pounds over gross weight when it left Mesquite. The air temperature on the ground near the accident site was 80 degrees, and the density altitude over 9,000 feet. At the time of the accident, the airplane was just a few hundred feet above the surface, barely climbing, and only 4 miles away from the 8,500-foot pass. Its indicated airspeed was around 70 knots, and for the three minutes before the loss of control, the stall warning had been sounding almost continuously. All the while, its 210 hp Continental engine was turning at a leisurely 2,300 rpm.

• READ MORE: Only Assumptions Can Be Made About What Took Down a Curtiss C-46 in Alaska

So many things are wrong with this picture that I hardly know where to begin. But let’s start with general mountain flying principles. The wind was from the southwest, so the airplane would not expect to encounter downdrafts in the pass. Nevertheless, because in mountainous areas winds close to the surface are unpredictable, it’s chancy to fly toward rising terrain with the idea that you will just make it over the next ridge. Better to circle and climb, and not approach the ridge until you have the altitude to safely clear it, and approach it at a 45-degree angle, in order to have room to turn away if you don’t have enough altitude. The Cirrus, which had reached as high as 7,847 feet, had actually begun to lose altitude, probably because of its very low airspeed, before the stall occurred.

Even overloaded, and despite the high density altitude, the Cirrus had sufficient power to climb at 375 fpm. But to do so would have required increasing the rpm to 2,700, the rated maximum. It would also have required maintaining the best rate-of-climb speed, which was 93 kias. At 2,300 rpm, the calculated rate of climb at 93 knots would have been 22 fpm. At the stall speed, it was zero or less.

As a helicopter professional, the airplane-rated pilot—he was legally the pilot in command, and we assume he was the pilot flying—may have felt comfortable flying from the right seat. But the instrument cluster was on the left, making it difficult for him to see the airspeed indicator. Still, the stall warning should have been airspeed indicator enough.

He was a very experienced pilot, with more than 5,600 hours. Only 160 of them, however, were in fixed-wing airplanes, and only 17 in the SR20. He had originally gained his airplane rating in an SR20 but then began renting an SR22, which has the same airframe but 100 more horsepower. He had not flown an SR20 for 18 months before this trip and used it only because the SR22 he usually rented was not available.

Two major errors, which are immediately obvious to a fixed-wing pilot, are the failure to fly at the best rate-of-climb speed and the failure to increase rpm to make use of all the power available. The low speed may possibly be explained by the pilot wanting to use the best angle-of-climb speed, or by the fact that the best rate-of-climb speeds of helicopters are generally lower than those of fixed-wing airplanes, usually around 60 or 70 knots. As for the rpm, main rotor rpm is not normally used in setting power in a helicopter. Rotor rpm is set at a customary value and remains there, while power is controlled by throttle and, in both turbine and most modern reciprocating-engine helicopters, some type of automatic correlation or linkage with the collective, which controls the average pitch of the main rotor blades. It’s not hard to imagine that fixed-wing power-setting practices might be eclipsed by the ingrained habits of a helicopter pilot with limited fixed-wing experience who flies helicopters daily but airplanes only seldom.

• READ MORE: A Night Flight Leads a Pilot to a Tragic End

That the stall warning could have been allowed to sound for several minutes also seems incredible, but helicopters do not stall. Perhaps the pilot imagined that he could safely fly at what he believed to be the best angle-of-climb speed and that the stall warning was a mere unavoidable nuisance.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) blamed the accident on the “pilot’s failure to maintain sufficient airspeed and airplane control,” to which his assumed lack of experience operating heavily loaded airplanes in a high-density-altitude environment contributed. The NTSB made no effort to explain the egregious failure to use an appropriate speed and all available power, to circle to climb, or to stay well clear of the terrain. The agency did, however, report that the pilot had previously been admonished for overloading an airplane, gone out of his way to conceal his overloading of this one, and was prone to “try to circumvent things” with employees of the rental firm. The NTSB may think that imperfect morals predispose pilots to accidents, but in this case the cause was not overloading by a few percent nor the intent to deceive the renters about it. It was the blatantly faulty management of the airplane.

I used to visit Robinson Helicopter Co. in Torrance, California, from time to time, and founder Frank Robinson, always very cordial and hospitable, would send up one of his pilots with me for a little jaunt to administer CPR to my four-decade-old, but seldom used, helicopter rating. Once he flew with me himself and cautioned me against a too-abrupt forward push on the cyclic. He said this was an error to which fixed-wing pilots were prone when startled, for instance, by the sudden appearance of conflicting traffic. It was harmless in a fixed-wing airplane but dangerous in a helicopter, because the main rotor blades could strike the tail boom. He preferred that helicopter pilots learn to fly in helicopters and not come to them polluted by fixed-wing habits.

It works both ways.

Note: This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in the January-February 2024/Issue 945 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Fatal Cirrus Accident Shows That Some Knowledge Doesn’t Translate appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

There is a lot written about transitioning from piston airplanes to jets, but not much about the reverse.

For this pilot, the transition from a Cessna Citation CJ1, 2+, and 3 to a Beechcraft P-Baron was an eye-opener. Training is different. Jet training includes engine failure during takeoff, the so-called V₁ cut.

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This is almost always accomplished in a simulator and usually easily handled by maintaining heading, retracting the gear, pitching to a speed called V₂, and climbing to a safe altitude. In a piston twin, this is “simulated” at a safe altitude by retarding power on one engine, the so-called V_MC (minimum controllable airspeed) demonstration.

• READ MORE: How to Make Sure Your Cross-Country Hours Count

As a practical matter, the Baron is a lot busier than the jet. Taking off with full power means reducing manifold pressure and propeller rpm soon after takeoff. This usually occurs just as the tower gives you a new heading, altitude, and frequency change. Once in cruise, there is the matter of leaning the engines by reducing the fuel flow to each engine while watching the cylinder head temperatures (all 12) and exhaust gas temps.

• READ MORE: What Should a Pilot Do if a Single Engine Quits in Cruise?

In typical jets, the red fuel lever is either on or off, no leaning involved. In descent the piston engine needs to be kept warm, so power reductions are done very gradually. This limits the rate of descent. In the jet, you just pull the power to idle and dial in 2,000 fpm (or more) down and don’t think twice about it.

This column first appeared in the January-February 2024/Issue 945 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post What Does It Take to Transition from a Jet to a Piston Airplane? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Does it seem like there are more student pilots in the air these days? According to FAA data, there are.

The agency issued 69,503 student pilot certificates in 2023, up 24 percent from 2022.

A deeper dive of FAA’s civil airmen data shows the bulk of the certificates were issued in June (7,162) and August (7,813).

• READ MORE: The Cautionary Tale of the Destruction of Meigs Field

The June starts are no surprise. Student pilot starts usually increase in the spring as the weather improves. People receive introductory flights as graduation presents, Mother or Father’s Day gifts, or they decide to use their tax return to check that item off their bucket list or begin a new career.

The August figure may be associated with the beginning of the academic year at Part 141 colleges and universities.

Tips for Finding a School

You cannot control the weather, maintenance issues, or scheduling, but you can manage the amount of effort put into learning. To expedite your training, you will want to fly at least twice a week, although three times is better to make steady progress. Ensure the school has an adequate fleet and enough instructors to go around. 

• READ MORE: The Potentially Deadly Distraction of Social Media

When you do your research, find out how many learners (the FAA’s official term for student pilots) and renters the school has as well as how many airworthy airplanes and active instructors are on staff. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where there are 40 student pilots and seven instructors and only three airworthy aircraft. 

Don’t be surprised if there is a waiting list for training. Many programs at both Part 141 and Part 61 schools cap their enrollment to protect the limited resources of instructors and aircraft.

Also, find out if you can rent aircraft for solo flight after you have obtained your certificate. Some schools are so busy that they only allow active students to rent for solo flights. Find out in advance so there are no unwelcome surprises.

The post FAA Data Shows Student Pilot Numbers on the Rise appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Question: I’m a student pilot about to start my solo cross-country flights. I keep hearing horror stories about private pilot applicants who find out during their check ride that their cross-country time doesn’t count because they measured wrong, or navigated by GPS only, or because they repositioned the aircraft to another airport to give them a 50 nm leg, and that is not allowed. 

Is there a particular way the FAA wants the pilot to measure distances, navigate, and pick a route?

• READ MORE: New Airman Certification Standards for CFIs Is Released

Answer: According to FAR 61.1(b)(ii), to meet the aeronautical experience requirements for a private pilot certificate, a commercial pilot certificate, an instrument rating, or for the purpose of exercising recreational pilot privileges, cross-country flight time must include a landing at least a straight-line distance of more than 50 nm from the original point of departure. Measure that with a plotter and paper sectional, and it’s best if the distance is a bit past 50 nm—like at least 53 nm.

• READ MORE: Is a Medical Certificate Required for a Private Pilot Check Ride?

As far as navigation goes, FAR 61.1(b)(i) navigation for cross-country flights can be ded reckoning, pilotage, electronic navigational aids (GPS), radio aids (VOR), and other navigation systems. Keep in mind that many designated pilot examiners (DPEs) will fail the GPS or ForeFlight to test the applicant’s use of the more basic navigational skills. 

Pro tip: Carry a current paper sectional with you and make sure you can read it. Andexpect to be told to divert to another airport during the check ride using the sectional as your guide.

• READ MORE: The Potentially Deadly Distraction of Social Media

As far as if it is legal to reposition an aircraft to an airport that is not a pilot’s home base, then use it as a starting point to give them a straight-line distance of more than 50 nm, we asked the FAA directly. The answer: Yes, it is legal to do this.

The post How to Make Sure Your Cross-Country Hours Count appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

We’ve all been there. Unless you have recently earned your private pilot certificate, making a decision to launch on any given day can be truly agonizing depending on the weather and other circumstances.

Maybe you are planning a flight to visit your grandkid on their first birthday, or perhaps you are flying to EAA AirVenture for the very first time. Even more excruciating is the decision to press on to your destination when the weather encountered in flight is far worse than what you originally anticipated or had hoped for. A flight with some initial acceptable risks and challenges now becomes one with discomfort, and perhaps disappointment for you and your passengers if you must turn around or land short of your final destination. If you have some self-awareness, that little voice in the back of your mind wonders what the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) final report might say about your poor decision to press on.

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You often hear pilots blame this on “get-there-itis.” That is, the pilot departed and continued on into adverse weather because of outside pressures as well as the intense desire and alternations of confidence and misgiving to complete the mission. It’s the Little Engine That Could mentality, or “I think I can, I think I can” belief that may have been drilled into them over the years as a kid. I don’t pretend to be a trained psychologist, and it’s not to say that this “try-and-try-again” mentality isn’t useful for other aspirations in your life. In aviation, however, some pilots become caught up in this way of thinking too often, and it usually doesn’t end well.

The decision to press on, despite the conscious, elevated risk that has just entered into the picture, is a new branch growing on this budding accident tree. The discussion should not be wrapped up in why the pilot chose to continue on but instead focused on the underlying cause of why they made a decision to launch in the first place without an actionable, low-risk plan to turn around or terminate the flight early.

Other than how much reserve you have in your bank account, weather limits your flying activity more than any other physical factor. There’s no doubt that some flights are more challenging than others, especially as they relate to weather. Finding the best time to depart or finding the optimal route or altitude often comes with more questions than answers. From the perspective of risk, each pilot is inherently unique. What represents low risk to one may be high risk to another. Nevertheless, anything that adds these challenges to the flight needs to be controlled.

• READ MORE: Here’s the Lowdown on ‘Vertical Visibility’

But how does a pilot objectively quantify risk from a weather perspective? The short answer is that there’s no easy approach to quantifying risk for any given route of flight, other than trusting your gut, which may not always be reliable given the circumstances surrounding the flight itself and previous experiences when confronted with specific weather challenges.

No matter where you get your weather guidance as required by FAR 91.103 (a), the data you will use to make critical decisions about time of departure, route of flight, and cruise altitude, as well as your final decision to go or stay, is often a free-for-all. That is, weather reports and forecasts, sometimes quite complex, are thrown at you to see what sticks. There’s no question that for some pilots, much of it does, in fact, stick. The bad news is that the popular heavyweight aviation apps and services such as Leidos (formally Lockheed Martin Flight Services) are all guilty of throwing a bunch of weather guidance at pilots to see what sticks, hence the reason we continue to see weather-related accidents that include some pressing on into adverse weather they had not anticipated.

The real dilemma is that there is no efficient (automated) way to objectively quantify the risk on any given flight. But what we do know is that risk is very personal, and that’s not something these services directly integrate into their application or discussion as a route-based approach. In the end, it’s left up to the pilot to take that next giant leap to quantify the risk.

A difficult question to fully address is to what extent does a pilot’s individual personal weather minimums weigh into their decision to fly, and how can they be integrated into their preflight planning? Personal minimums, in general, represent a set of criteria, rules, guidelines, and procedures to help a pilot decide on the conditions and circumstances under which they can begin or continue operating a flight. These should encompass all elements that may add risk to the flight. Certainly, weather is one that adds risk to every flight.

In this context, personal minimums allow you to further tailor, quantify, and acknowledge the risk you are willing to assume, thus adding a margin of safety based on a set of criteria coupled with your own self-analysis and level of flight experience. In this case, “minimums” reference the minimum acceptable weather conditions at an airport or along a route of flight. Personal weather minimums are thought to be more conservative than the minimums set by the FAA, but applying them is 100 percent optional. And therein lies the open manhole.

As a flight instructor who has been teaching pilots how to minimize their exposure to adverse weather for the past 25 years, I am intimately aware of how few pilots understand how to interpret many of those complex charts and diagrams the FAA touts as essential. Since I’m a meteorologist, pilots and other flight instructors come to me as online students to learn what all of those H’s and L’s they see on the prog chart really mean to them. On one flight, they may have experienced little or no weather issues, while a seemingly similar weather pattern on a subsequent flight was fraught with poor or challenging weather they did not anticipate.

I wish there was a simple answer. If there was, I would not be giving it away for free—it would be worth millions. A common contributor to many fatal accidents is the pilot’s inability to definitively assess the hazard prior to departure from the relevant weather guidance available prior to flight. Therefore, the lack of sufficient weather reports and forecasts and their accuracy are not the core concern, but instead the primary contributing factor is that general aviation pilots have a difficult time consuming the forecast guidance in order to develop a plan as a precursor to making a decision to fly or continuing a flight. This is further compounded by many pilots’ lack of aviation weather knowledge.

Even though high-resolution weather forecasts are now more robust and have become increasingly ubiquitous online, pilots are not utilizing all of this information to their advantage to assess the risk. A GA pilot is not a trained meteorologist and often has a difficult time distilling all of the available information to make good preflight and in-flight decisions, especially when challenging weather is more likely than not.

It’s a gross understatement, but the weather is quite complex and requires a challenging dialogue. Pilots tend to prefer an easy solution (e.g., a few taps on a smart device or making a quick phone call to a briefer) to get their weather information and let someone else interpret it for them. Much of the weather guidance used to make an informed decision to fly on any particular day and time is spread over many different and sometimes complex charts, diagrams, and textual reports they never were taught how to interpret. As such, they often do not have a comprehensive approach that seamlessly integrates all of the pertinent weather guidance to make it obvious if they will encounter adverse weather along a proposed route of flight.

As mentioned earlier, anything that adds risk to the flight needs to be controlled. Both fatal and nonfatal accidents take place in adverse weather elements, such as strong and gusty surface winds, airframe icing, turbulence, reduced visibility, low ceilings, high density altitude, and/or threats associated with deep, moist convection. All of these elements add risk to the flight and must be evaluated based on the departure, en route, and arrival phases of flight. They need to also take into consideration time of year, time of day, type of aircraft, and perhaps the terrain over which the flight takes place.

Pilots often are lured into thinking that personal minimums are always about a single threshold. That may work to some extent for some. However, with weather, one thing that helped me over the last two decades is to create three buckets of risk—low, moderate, and high. Think of this as a simple traffic light concept—green, yellow, and red—whereby each personal weather minimum category you define is evaluated at the departure and destination airports and along the route of flight based on the forecast weather available for a specific time.

Green is used to define a conservative threshold. When the forecast weather is equal to or better than this threshold, the flight risk from a weather perspective is deemed to be negligible or low risk. Red, on the other hand, is at the opposite extreme. Red defines the pilot’s actual personal weather minimums. That is, if the forecast weather is the same or worse than this threshold, the flight risk is deemed to have a high risk based on these minimums. Lastly, yellow advises caution. In this case, the forecast weather is better than the pilot’s personal weather minimums (i.e., red) but worse than the conservative threshold (i.e., green). Yellow is deemed to be of moderate risk as the weather is forecast to approach your personal weather minimums.

This three-bucket method tends to work a little better since it allows you to float the risk across a range of values and not just straddle a hard line in the sand that most pilots employ. Moreover, the goal is to lean toward the conservative minimums that create a margin of safety. There’s probably an underlying psychological element that may factor in as well. Green is more attractive than yellow or red. You are free to make that moderate (yellow) risk as wide or narrow as you see fit.

The challenging part of this exercise has less to do with setting or determining your own personal weather minimums. In a few minutes, most pilots can figure that part out. The challenge is how to evaluate the weather forecast at your departure and destination airport and along the route against these personal minimums for ceiling, visibility, wind, icing, turbulence, and thunderstorms. Unfortunately, as mentioned, there’s no easy (automated) way to do this without consuming a great deal of your time. That data for this exercise is indeed freely available. What’s missing is the automated application of those personal weather minimums against all of this useful guidance.

If you want to do this manually, you might consider using the graphical forecasts for aviation (GFA) found on the Aviation Weather Center website at aviationweather.gov/gfa. For example, let’s assume your ceiling height personal minimum at your destination airport is 700 feet. If you are landing at 0300Z at Maryland’s Carroll County Regional Airport (KDMW), which is not served by a TAF, you should expect the ceiling will be at or below your personal weather minimums of 700 feet given the forecast from the GFA (depicted above). This shows a ceiling height forecast of about 400 feet based on a quick comparison of the color scale for ceiling height at the bottom. This will be evaluated as red and represents a high risk to the flight. The same could be done with your departure and en route personal minimums for ceiling height.

For other variables, such as airframe icing, turbulence, and thunderstorms, you could perform a similar evaluation for the flight using the GFA tool. Airframe icing, for example, could be evaluated based on the probability (percentage) of icing at your proposed cruise altitude and/or the icing intensity (trace, light, moderate, or heavy). Turbulence could be based on the eddy dissipation rate (EDR), so you could set your personal minimums to values you are comfortable with.

For example, if you want to remain clear of any exposure to severe turbulence, set your personal minimum (red) to 36, which is the threshold for the beginning of severe turbulence in a light aircraft. You might set your conservative personal minimum (green) to 16, which is near the threshold where moderate turbulence begins.

If all of your personal weather minimums evaluate to green, then the weather at the time of your departure and while you are en route has met all of your personal minimums with a conservative margin, and you have a low-risk flight ahead of you from a weather standpoint. But what if you have a bunch that evaluate as yellow, implying some elevated risk? This likely means you’ll need a “look-and-see” plan before you depart to alter your route, altitude, or destination while en route if the weather is far worse than originally forecast.

The advantage is that you have already determined this action plan in advance based on quantifying that personal risk. Taking the time to set your personal minimums and evaluating those along your route of flight will give you a better grasp of the risk you are assuming. The goal is to avoid any surprises after you depart so you can feel more confident in your plan.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Go or Stay? Getting Personal with Your Pilot Minimums appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“So, do you ever get to use any of those little things I taught you in the big leagues?”

My first flight instructor, Mario Feola, always loves to ask me questions like that one. He is perpetually curious about how my job is going and how it relates to the tips he passed on to me. He likes to see the ripple effect his teaching had on the making of a learner pilot, especially one like myself, now a new captain on a 45-ton airliner. Instructors are like that, especially wise, gray-haired ones. Mario has as much experience, and gray hair for that matter, as any airman I ever met. He has a big belly, a white beard, and a dominating presence in any room. He’s pretty much a jolly Italian Santa, only happier and more generous if that’s possible. This Santa, however, doesn’t have any reindeer—just a small, single-engine Cessna.

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“So, what do you use?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, all of those hours crammed in that sardine can-sized plane with you, sweating in the Mississippi heat, cruising at what seems like dangerously low altitudes, really did have a profound effect. I learned a lot.”

• READ MORE: Ice on the Wings Brings About a Near-Miss Episode

Like the time I was in freezing conditions and started picking up heavy ice outside Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (KMSP). It was the kind of cold that makes penguins shiver and Minnesotans fly south for the winter—which was exactly what we were doing. The thick, clear ice started piling up on any surface exposed to the elements. No big deal: “Turn on the wing anti-ice protection.” Without hesitation, my first officer reached up and moved a switch that propels lava-hot air, taken directly from the interior of our own jet engines, and shoots it down a shielded enclosure within the edge of the wings. The resulting spike in temperature melts even the worst that this frozen tundra can throw at us.

Then it happened…a triple chime.

A triple chime is the highest-priority audible alarm in the aircraft. It is usually followed by a dozen nasty messages from the flight computer and an equal number of vulgarities from the flight crew. This one was no exception—bleed leak. The boiling, hot air from the turbines had escaped and was pouring into the unprotected components inside the wing. In a few moments, the compressed air would begin to destroy flight controls or even melt and deform the wing, leading to an uncontrolled roll motion. But to stop the heat now also meant that the ice would continue to compound aggressively on a cold wing, adding weight and disrupting the flow of air, which leads to an aerodynamic stall and a really bad day for my airline’s insurance provider.

“Remain calm, slow down, think.” Mario’s words passed through my mind. I first heard them a decade before. He was trying to get me to finally understand cross-country flying. Back then, long distance was from Diamondhead, Mississippi, to Slidell, Louisiana, not quite LAX to JFK just yet. “Remain calm, slow down, think.” Sage words reminding a learner that a lot of wrong decisions made in haste can turn a simple problem into the headline on the 9 o’clock news. OK, deep breath…think. I just heard another airplane report that the turbulence dissipated when it exited the clouds far below us. That means this layer must end with the base of the clouds.

• READ MORE: Treat High-Altitude Turbulence with Knowledge and Respect

“Perform the checklist for the bleed leak. We are going to declare an emergency, descend out the bottom of this weather layer and into the clear below,” I thought to myself. “Any ice we pick up will be minimal, and we will carry extra speed into the landing to compensate for any lift lost or weight gained.” Twenty minutes later, I was calmly telling the passengers, “Thank you. Please fly with us again.”

That wasn’t the only time a lesson came hurtling back into my consciousness uninvited. Like the time we were learning how to climb and descend at set speeds. It was a basic and rudimentary task that every pilot must get through. It was during that lesson that I observed our course would drive us into a spring shower, the kind that gently sprinkle rain, barely enough to get the ground wet, just enough to make you curse if you just finished washing your car. I asked Mario to go around it, but he refused: “It’s just water. Remember, it’s only water.” We passed through the shoot of drizzle without so much as a bump. The rain splattered the windscreen and slid right off. My fear was unfounded.

Once on the other side, Mario was quick to point out an unusual anomaly. Down below us, on a bubbly set of cotton-white clouds, was a perfectly round rainbow, cotton-white clouds, was a perfectly round rainbow, and in its center, the shadow of our airplane. “It’s a pilot’s cross,” he said. “It only happens when the sun is behind you, water is still hanging in the air, and those puffy marshmallows are down there. Our shadow makes the shape of a cross, and it’s only ever seen from above, solid proof that God loves pilots.”

A dozen years later, I was passing over the Great Plains. This time, however, I was five times faster and 10 times higher but still just as uneasy when the first few raindrops hit my windscreen. After all, the place 30,000 feet beneath me is nicknamed “Tornado Alley.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. You may notice some flashes of lightning originating from the thunderstorm cell to the left side of the aircraft. I just wanted to reassure you that I’ve adjusted our flight path to take us well clear of the storm. However, I do ask that you remain seated and firmly buckled up, as I expect to encounter some residual pockets of isolated rain and turbulence. Please do not be alarmed if we fly through any rain. Remember, it’s only water.”

As I ended the PA, I could see the apprehension of my new-hire copilot beginning to crack through her calm demeanor. “You’re not nervous?” she squeaked out. “Nah, we will be fine,” I said. “God loves pilots.”

At no point did Mario’s words ring truer than during an August flight to Montreal. We had just taken off and made our first turn out of Minneapolis. Passing through 3,000 feet, barely two minutes into our journey, a deafening boom rattled the whole airframe. Dials and needles on the faces of the engine instruments spun wildly out of control, the airplane lurched to one side, and a flame the length of a small car spewed out of the tailpipe of our left engine. I had seen this scenario a dozen times before from the relative calm and safety of our company simulator, but now the stakes were raised with real people behind me and real granite below. Instinctively, I grabbed the controls and reverted back to my Cessna days: “You fly the airplane. Don’t let it fly you.”

“I have the controls. Give me the quick reference checklist for engine one fail, severe damage, no relight, N₁ at 0.0 percent, engine temp past limits, standby for possible fire indication.”

That bark to my copilot was unmistakable. I am the captain. The ship returned to earth just a few seemingly hour-long minutes later with procedures done, flight attendants needlessly ready to spring into action, miles of runway cleared, a massive commercial airport at a standstill, and a dozen fire trucks waiting patiently. I landed without incident, taxied to the gate and then personally apologized to each passenger for the interruption of their travel plans. Every single one of them boarded our spare airplane to take them along the same stretch of sky just 40 minutes later. That told me that they trusted me—and would do so again.

Mario, there are some lessons from you that are far more important, though—the ones I live every day. The things I took to heart most were the things you didn’t do or say—like the fact that you never gave me a bill. Thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of your time, just volunteered, for nothing in return. You taught me that the best things in life are freely given to those that can never give it back to you. I’ve heard it elsewhere called grace. You taught me the value of patience, especially during the times it seemed like I was learning to crawl, not fly. I’ve never seen you get angry, and I’m not sure it’s possible for you. You taught me about having faith in the people you care about, and you never doubted me, even when I failed—and I failed a lot. You taught me to push myself to excellence, even if that push felt like a kick in the butt.

You once told me that you envied me. I guess it’s because I’m living out your dream occupation. But that’s just not the reality. I envy you. It is true that I’m a captain now, but you didn’t just make me into a pilot. You molded me into a better man, a man more like yourself, and that’s what I really wanted the most. That’s what I learned from you, Mario. I learned about flying, and life, from that.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Beloved Flight Instructor’s Lessons Continue to Replay in Airline Captain’s Head appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

According to a recent report from Alaska Public Media, that state’s rate of fatal general aviation accidents was about twice that of the rest of the country until 2016 when, for unspecified reasons, it began to decline. It still remains higher than elsewhere. The gist of the article—which was motivated by the death of Eugene Peltola, husband of U.S. representative Mary Peltola, in a Piper Super Cub—was that the main problem for Alaskan pilots was lack of weather information, since the density of automated weather reporting stations in the state is half that of other parts of the country.

Actually, it would be difficult to define the main problem for pilots flying in Alaska. There are so many of them. And there is an additional problem that is created by the sheer existence of all the other problems: a certain style of flying and acceptance of risk arising from the combination of urgency and improvisation that backcountry operations entail.

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In December 2000, a Curtiss C-46 called Maid of Money—a twin-engine World War II-era transport similar to, but larger than, a DC-3—collided with a mountain ridge. It was destroyed and its two pilots killed. The airplane was returning from a round-robin trip out of Kenai delivering fuel to Big River Lakes and Nondalton. It left Nondalton, empty and light, at about 15:40 local time, bound for its home base 113 nm distant. The flight would take it eastbound across the Alaska Range and then across Cook Inlet, a body of water about 30 miles wide. The winter sun was setting, but darkness was still far off, so the flight would take place in the lingering Alaskan twilight.

• READ MORE: A Night Flight Leads a Pilot to a Tragic End

There are two ways to fly from Nondalton to Kenai. One, through Lake Clark Pass, follows a river and allows low-altitude VFR flight under an overcast, preferably in stable weather. (The crew may have used the Lake Clark Pass route to fly from Big River Lakes to Nondalton.) The other is the straight line over the Alaska Range, whose highest peak, Mount Redoubt, an intermittently active volcano, rises steeply to more than 10,000 feet. Most of the terrain in the area, however, although quite rugged, is lower than 4,000 feet.

The pilots, both of whom had logged more than 600 hours in the C-46 in just the past five months before the accident, must have known the route intimately. They had briefed the weather for the out-and-return flight and were aware of an AIRMET for turbulence and mountain obscuration. Nondalton and Kenai were VFR, but as they prepared to depart, the pilots must have seen that the weather was rapidly worsening. Shortly after they left, snow began to fall, and the surface wind picked up to 50 knots. A person living 30 miles south of the accident site described the storm as the worst he had seen in 25 years. The conditions were not ones in which the Lake Clark Pass would have been a good choice, so the C-46 took the straight shot over the mountains instead.

The crew did not file an IFR flight plan. Its transponder failed to deliver any Mode C information, but Air Force radar evaluation specialists concluded that the airplane had climbed to a maximum altitude of 10,800 feet msl and subsequently descended. The last altitude that could be determined was 8,800 feet. The National Transportation Safety Board’s report does not say where along the route these altitudes were measured.

We don’t know what the pilots saw or did along the way. They may have circled to climb, or they may have had a strong easterly headwind, because when the accident occurred, around 16:20, they had gone only 70 nm in 50 minutes. Mount Redoubt would have been abeam as they approached the accident site, and so if they climbed to 10,800 feet and didn’t stay there, it may be that they were on top and could see the tip of the peak and the clouds dropping away ahead of them. It is also possible, however, that they were in cloud, on the Kenai 227 radial, and uncertain how far they had come. The NTSB report states that the airplane was equipped for IFR flight but does not say whether it had GPS or DME. Still, the Homer VOR, 50 miles away on their right, could have provided cross-track guidance.

• READ MORE: Something Happened: Wind Shear Takes Down a Grumman Trainer

One thing that seems obvious is that the crew must have been in cloud when it hit the ridge at 2,900 feet msl. To judge from the condition of the wreckage, the pilots were at cruising speed, and if they had been a few yards higher, they would have cleared the ridge without ever knowing how close they had come. They were under a Victor airway, but all the minimum safe altitudes in the area were above 12,000 feet, and so they may have felt that the risk of meeting someone else in the clouds was negligible. The fact that the transponder was not reporting altitude is suggestive, but who knew that some Air Force boffins in Utah could somehow extract posthumous altitude information from raw radar returns?

That they descended so low—2,900 feet—when they were still 43 miles from Kenai is hard to explain. They evidently didn’t know their position. Kenai was reporting 2,000 scattered. Perhaps they wanted to get below clouds covering the western side of the inlet so that they could make a plausible case, in the event that someone asked, that they had been in VMC all along. Perhaps they misread the radial from Homer that would mean they were safely over water. Perhaps they did not consult a sectional and forgot that there was one more little ridge before the shoreline. Perhaps they had flown this route so many times before, in so many kinds of weather, that they had lulled themselves into a feeling that nothing could go wrong and began the descent after a certain time had elapsed, as they had countless times before, without checking the Homer radial at all.

In all flying, we rely on certain assumptions: Engines will keep running, weather will be as reported or forecast, and insurgents will not have seized the runway. Gradually, pilots who fly certain routes over and over again develop a sense of what to expect. As “old hands,” they have a sixth sense about what lies beyond the next mountain ridge or bend in the river. Assumptions begin to take the place of up-to-date information.

Lacking CVR records, we cannot know what the C-46 pilots were thinking or saying to one another, or whether they even discussed the question of when to start the descent. But it’s not too hard to imagine a pilot glancing at his watch 40 minutes into what would normally be a 50-minute flight and saying, “Let’s start down.” After all, who ever heard of a C-46 making a groundspeed of only 84 knots?

Editor’s Note: This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Only Assumptions Can Be Made About What Took Down a Curtiss C-46 in Alaska appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Question: I’m a private pilot learner flying on a third-class medical certificate. Life got in the way, and I’ve determined that my medical will expire before I complete my training. I’d like to fly using BasicMed, but can I take the check ride with that, or must I renew the third-class medical?

Answer: According to the FAA, “as long as the pilot meets the criteria to fly with BasicMed, they can use it, including on a check ride.”

• READ MORE: How to Find Your Best Ground School Fit

According to FAA Advisory Circular 68-1A, to meet the criteria for use of BasicMed, the pilot needs to hold a current and valid U.S. driver’s license, hold or have held a medical certificate issued by the FAA at any point after July 14, 2006, answer health questions on the Comprehensive Medical Examination Checklist (CMEC), receive a physical examination from any state-licensed physician, and have them  complete the CMEC. Be sure to keep the CMEC.

Finally, the pilot needs to take the BasicMed online medical education course. Keep the course completion document issued to you by the provider.

• READ MORE: Can the Owner of a Certified Airplane Do Their Own Maintenance?

The post Is a Medical Certificate Required for a Private Pilot Check Ride? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

A trip to Lake Tahoe on the Truckee, California, side might find a pilot wanting to visit the Truckee-Tahoe (KTRK) Airport. With a relatively long, 7,001-foot runway, even with the higher field elevation of just under 6,000 feet msl, the airport is an attractive option for many flying into this mountain getaway because of its proximity to Lake Tahoe, area ski resorts, and hiking trails. That’s not to say the approach isn’t without unique considerations that make it worthy of some review.

A) Terrain All Around

The airport elevation of 5,904 feet msl doesn’t sound all that terrible until you look around and see that there are many parts of the terrain that are above 9,000 feet, especially to the west and south. The pilot needs to get established on the approach and then navigate along the course while descending between higher terrain.

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B) Turn to the FAF

Approaches typically keep a pilot flying a straight line from fixes preceding the final approach fix as much as possible, but because of terrain here, that isn’t an option. A pilot would typically navigate using their GPS system to the initial approach fix (IAF) at the SIGNA waypoint and then follow the 091 course to the intermediate fix (IF) at GEGVY. At this point, they turn to follow a 076 course through the LIDGE waypoint and to the final approach fix (FAF) at ASETE. Through this sequence, you descend from minimum altitudes of 10,000 to 9,500 feet msl, then 9,100 feet, which will be achieved before a final descent from the FAF to the missed approach point at NEDVE.

• READ MORE: Chart Wise: Mackinac Island VOR/DME-A

C) Circling Only; Higher Too

This particular approach is an “-A” approach, which indicates that it does not align with a particular runway. Instead, it lines up approximately with the approach end of Runway 11, although not straight with it. As such, only circling minimums are offered, and a pilot will need to stay above 7,500 feet msl (or 7,700 feet if flying a faster approach) until they are in a position to land using normal maneuvers. This is going to require circling at an altitude of 1,596 feet agl (or 1,796 feet for the faster aircraft). For most pilots used to flying traffic patterns at 1,000 feet agl, this circling altitude is higher than they are used to, and extra care in maneuvering is advised.

D) Multisequence Missed with a Speed Limit

If a missed approach is needed, the pilot is going to have to first climb ahead to 7,800 msl before initiating a climbing left turn to 12,000 feet msl and heading to the intermediate fix at KEBTE. While doing this, a notation indicates the pilot must not exceed 200 knots. This is to allow the pilot to climb while not traveling farther laterally in the time toward terrain. After doing this, they then turn and track a 282 course to the LEKYI waypoint, where they would enter the hold as depicted. Going straight to the point where the hold is depicted would not be authorized and, in fact, might cause the pilot to encounter terrain while they were climbing—something that would surely like to be avoided.

• READ MORE: Chart Wise: Finger Lakes RNAV Rwy 1

E) Not for Nighttime

A specific approach notation states, “Procedure NA at night.” It makes sense, as circling in this terrain without visibility would be a pretty risky endeavor. This approach is best saved for daytime operations.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Chart Wise: Truckee-Tahoe RNAV (GPS)-A appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

One of the most talked about challenges at the NAFI Summit in October in Lakeland, Florida—which attracted several hundred current and aspiring instructors— was how to sustain quality flight instruction when the majority of those who hold current CFI certificates are building time, geared toward advancing to the airlines.

During the summit, I shared a table with David St. George, designated pilot examiner and executive director of the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators. St. George noted that most flight instructors teach for about a year before they move on. They often train through accelerated programs, where the goal is to meet the requirements and pass the check ride in as little time as possible. This “hurry-up-and-get-it-done” model is repeated by these instructors. Stereotypical behavior includes “check-the-box instruction,” where the flight is performed to meet the certificate requirements. Other behaviors include a minimum of ground time spent with the learner and pushing weather boundaries and learner fatigue levels to keep the Hobbs meter running.

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The aviation community has been buzzing lately about a fatal accident in Kentucky in September that took the life of a 22-year-old instructor and an 18-year-old learner. The event gathered a lot of attention online because the CFI, who had a pronounced social media presence, chronicled the flight through Snapchat in a series of public remarks demeaning the learner. The CFI’s last post documented the line of thunderstorms they flew into that ultimately tore the aircraft to pieces.

According to the preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), on September 27, CFI Timothy McKellar Jr. and private pilot candidate Connor Quisenberry intended to fly a Piper PA-28-161 from Owensboro/Daviess County Regional Airport (KOWB) on a VFR flight plan to Bowling Green-Woodhurst Airport (KBWG). The Snapchat story begins with McKellar talking to the camera and shaking his head along with a caption disparaging the student. Then the camera angle reverses to show Quisenberry, flashlight and checklist in hand, performing the preflight inspection of the Warrior.

• READ MORE: Practice Crosswind Landings Whenever You Can

McKellar shows himself drumming his fingers on the outside of the airplane and expressing impatience with Quisenberry who “wanted to have a conversation” when McKellar wants to get the flight over with because he has to be up at 4:30 a.m. The time stamp of the Snapchat shows 8:39 p.m. as McKellar is heard saying, “C’mon.” They have a three-hour flight ahead.

McKellar’s comments, along with FlightAware’s capture of nine takeoffs and landings at the destination airport, seem to indicate this flight was intended to meet the night training requirement for the private certificate. The NTSB report did not indicate if either McKellar or Quisenberry obtained a weather briefing prior to the flight. A review of TAFs and METARs from the area shows a probability of convective activity, including warnings of lightning “in all quadrants.” Given this information, the decision to make the flight at all is puzzling.

According to social media posts, McKellar did most of his training at ATP, the largest accelerated training program in the U.S. He held CFI, CFII, and MEI certificates. Some graduates of accelerated programs may not know how to teach beyond the test because that’s how they were trained. They exhibit rote learning rather than understanding and application. Correlation—the level of learning that requires the learner to perform real-world tasks and exhibit in-depth knowledge—is often missing in these cases.

The Snapchat video continues showing the night takeoff and some moments in cruise flight. McKellar’s decision to record the takeoff—one of the critical moments of flight—also raised a few eyebrows among experienced instructors because that’s when things can go wrong quickly.

• READ MORE: When You Go Back to Flight School, Don’t Lose What You’ve Learned

At 22:15, approximately one hour after takeoff, McKellar posted an annotated weather image from a mobile-device-based aviation navigation tool. The image shows the airplane’s position northwest of Bowling Green, along with the planned route of flight back to KOWB. Radar imagery was also displayed in the image, marked with a circle around the flight track and nearby returns, and a comment from McKellar about the storms approaching like “pissed-off hornets.” The storms are approximately 15 miles away.

The NTSB report includes a screen grab of the post with attention called to the location of the approaching storms, airplane’s position (blue airplane icon), planned route of flight (magenta line), and depicted imagery with the storms circled in red on either side of the route line.

ATC warned of heavy to extreme precipitation to the aircraft’s 9 o’clock. ADS-B data showed that the airplane continued its northwesterly course, and FlightAware displayed some extreme altitude fluctuations. About two minutes later, McKellar requested an IFR clearance. ATC told them to head east. McKellar advised ATC that the airplane was “getting blown around like crazy.” The airplane’s flight track showed a turn to the northwest, followed by a right circling turn. The controller reiterated the heading of 090 degrees. McKellar replied that they were in “pretty extreme turbulence.”

There were no further comms. The last ADS-B position was recorded at 22:49 at an altitude of 2,200 feet. The wreckage, described by the NTSB as a “debris field,” was spread over 25 acres in a hilly, densely wooded area. The aircraft was torn in half with the forward fuselage, including the cockpit, engine, and right wing, located together in the most westerly portion of the debris field. The stabilator was torn chordwise just outboard of the hinges, with the right side located 1,500 feet away from the fuselage. The NTSB did not uncover any preaccident anomalies or malfunctions.

McKellar’s family has defended his actions, saying he was joking with the learner and that he demanded excellence from the pilots he flew with. CFIs are supposed to model professionalism for their learners. Posting on social media during a flight, especially demeaning your learner, is not demonstrating professionalism. Nor is recognizing approaching thunderstorms and flying into them.

All CFIs become frustrated with their learners from time to time, especially when they fail to meet expectations, but good CFIs focus on ways to help them improve. It may mean developing a different approach to the task or even suggesting a change of instructor. Shaming the learner on social media is not how to do it.

The Kentucky accident will likely become a lesson in hazardous attitudes (macho, invulnerability, etc.) and risk identification for future aviators. It is too bad that two families had to lose their sons for this.

At most colleges and trade schools, the instructors have spent years in the industry they are teaching. They often have decades of experience in the field before they step into the classroom. In the aviation world, it is backward. We expect someone with the least amount of experience, often approximately 300 hours, to teach the next generation of pilots.

The question now is how do we encourage more instructors to teach longer so they have a chance to build experience? More money is my first thought, but if the CFI doesn’t enjoy teaching, it will be the students who suffer.

One of the sobering messages from the NAFI Summit was if we continue to have the less experienced, less committed instructors training the bulk of future pilots, we can likely expect more accidents caused by failure to identify and mitigate risk in pursuit of hours.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Who Is Teaching? Low Time and Social Media Make for a Bad Combo appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Question: If the engine in a single quits in cruise, what should I do with the throttle, propeller, and other controls to get the best glide?

Answer: Most singles can glide eight times their height above the terrain. If you’re at 7,500 feet and the local elevation is 700 feet, you’re about one and a quarter miles above the ground, so don’t pick a place to land outside a 10-mile radius. Don’t count on achieving the longest possible  lide—better a nearby cornfield than a distant runway.

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Slow to your best rate-of-climb speed. If the prop doesn’t stop of its own accord, let it windmill. To reduce drag from the windmilling propeller, open the throttle fully and set a constant-speed prop to the lowest possible rpm (vernier all the way out).

• READ MORE: Can the Owner of a Certified Airplane Do Their Own Maintenance?

If you’re landing in the rough, turn off fuel to the engine. Slide your seat as far back as you can while still holding the yoke, and make your lap and shoulder belts as tight as possible. Keep the flaps and gear retracted until you’re in position to land, then use full flaps.

Otherwise, touch down on the numbers.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post What Should a Pilot Do if a Single Engine Quits in Cruise? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Question: I just bought a Cessna 172 to finish my private pilot certificate. I’ve been working on cars since I was in my teens, so I think I can do my own maintenance. But doesn’t the FAA limit what a pilot can do on their airplane?

Answer: FAR 43.3 permits a pilot to perform preventive maintenance on an aircraft they own or operate, provided it is used strictly for noncommercial operations under Part 91, so no flight instruction or scenic flights.

• READ MORE: What Is the Criteria for Issuing a Convective SIGMET?

Under Appendix A of Part 43, you’ll find a list of preventative maintenance that can be done without supervision of an A&P mechanic. Much of it has to do with replacing something already installed. For example, the pilot/owner is allowed to perform tire changes, service shock struts, lubricate wheel bearings, and replace hydraulic fluid, side windows, lights, batteries, and tray-mounted avionics with the exception of transponders, DMEs, and autopilots. They can also replace, clean, gap, or rotate spark plugs, replace prefabricated fuel lines and nonhydraulic hose connections, and clean or replace fuel and oil strainers and filters.

• READ MORE: Can You Pilot an Aircraft While Wearing a Cast?

If you are attempting this maintenance for the first time, it’s a good idea to have an experienced aviation mechanic (A&P) by your side just to make sure you’re doing it correctly, have the right tools, and don’t accidentally wrench yourself into a corner.

The post Can the Owner of a Certified Airplane Do Their Own Maintenance? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Question: What is the criteria used by forecasters for issuing a convective SIGMET?  

Answer: During the warm season, convective weather has a huge impact on the National Airspace System (NAS). As the amount of usable airspace diminishes on any given day, this ultimately engenders delays in the system. A departure within busy airspace usually means a delay. In the worst-case scenario, ground stops may be levied depending on route of flight and destination airport. Nevertheless, forecasters at the Aviation Weather Center (AWC) are busy at work issuing advisories to warn pilots of these dangerous convective areas.  

A single-cell, pulse-type thunderstorm is normally easy to spot in the distance and maneuver around while in flight. In this situation, a deviation around such a cell does not eat into your fuel reserves. However, when thunderstorms become embedded, severe, or dense in coverage within an area or along a line, they are considered a significant en route hazard to aviation. This often requires you to plan a more circuitous route, which means carrying extra fuel than if you flew a direct route. It is in this case that an AWC forecaster will issue a convective SIGMET (WST) to “protect” this airspace. 

When you hear “convective SIGMET” during your preflight briefing, don’t think of it as a forecast for thunderstorms. Instead, think of it as a “NOWcast” of organized convection that may be highly challenging or dangerous to penetrate. These active thunderstorms must meet specific criteria before a convective SIGMET is issued. Areas of widely scattered thunderstorms, such as shown in the XM-delivered satellite radar image below, are generally easy to see and avoid while in flight and often do not meet convective SIGMET criteria.

Nevertheless, on any particular eight-hour shift a single forecaster at the AWC’s convective SIGMET desk looks at all of the convective activity occurring throughout the conterminous U.S. on a continual basis. On an active convective weather day, they are likely the busiest forecaster on the planet. This forecaster is given the responsibility to subjectively determine if an area or line of convection represents a significant hazard to aviation using these minimum criteria:

• A line of thunderstorms is at least 60 miles long with thunderstorms affecting at least 40 percent of its length.
• An area of active thunderstorms is affecting at least 3,000 square miles covering at least 40 percent of the area concerned and exhibiting a very strong radar reflectivity intensity or a significant satellite or lightning signature.
• Embedded or severe thunderstorm(s) are expected to occur for more than 30 minutes during the valid period regardless of the size of the area. 

For reference, 3,000 square miles represents about 60 percent of the size of the state of Connecticut.

Will an advisory be issued as soon as the convection meets one or more of these criteria? Possibly. A special convective SIGMET may be issued when any of the following criteria are occurring or, in the judgment of a forecaster, expected to occur for more than 30 minutes of the valid period:

• Tornadoes, hail greater than or equal to three-quarters of an inch in diameter, or wind gusts greater than or equal to 50 knots are reported.
• Indications of rapidly changing conditions, if in a forecaster’s judgment they are not sufficiently described in existing convective SIGMETs.

However, special issuances are not the norm, especially when there is a lot of convective activity to capture. In most cases, a convective SIGMET is not issued until the convection has persisted and met the aforementioned criteria for at least 30 minutes. Given that these advisories are routinely issued at 55 minutes past the hour, any convection that has not met the criteria by 25 minutes past the hour may not be included in the routine issuance. Consequently, there are times where a dangerous line or area of developing thunderstorms could be present without the protection of a convective SIGMET. All convective SIGMETs will have a valid time of no more than two hours from the time of issuance.

• READ MORE: Surviving Thunderstorms: Cut Your Risk

Last but not least, these convective SIGMETs are often coordinated by an AWC forecaster with meteorologists at the various Center Weather Service Units (CWSUs) located throughout the country at the various Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs). At times, a meteorologist at the CWSUs may issue a Center Weather Advisory (CWA) when building cells are approaching convective SIGMET criteria. The goal is not to duplicate advisories when possible and provide the best guidance for pilots.

The post What Is the Criteria for Issuing a Convective SIGMET? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Around 7 in the evening on September 4, 2020, the Muskogee, Oklahoma (KMKO), pilot-owner of a Cirrus SR22 telephoned his flight instructor to report he was going to fly to Pickens, South Carolina (KLQK), that night. His instructor advised him to wait until morning. Instead, the pilot fueled the airplane, loaded his father, wife, and child aboard, and took off at 8:27 p.m. for the four-hour flight.

As you will have guessed, since you are reading about this in Aftermath and not in I Learned About Flying From That, the flight did not end well. About 25 minutes after takeoff and shortly after crossing the Arkansas border, the 31-year-old pilot, whose in-command time amounted to 75 hours, lost control of the airplane and went down in a remote woodland. All aboard perished.

A few minutes before the impact, as he was climbing to 9,500 feet msl, the pilot contacted ATC and requested flight following. The weather along his route—which, notably, he had last checked with ForeFlight 17 hours earlier—was generally VFR, with a chance of scattered convective activity. There was, however, one patch of rainy weather just to the left of his course, and the controller advised him to turn right to avoid it.

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On the controller’s display, the target of the Cirrus crept eastward just below the edge of the weather. Radar paints rain, however, not cloud. The flight was over a remote area with few ground lights and the harvest moon had not yet risen, but its hidden glow may have faintly defined an eastern horizon. In the inspissated blackness of the night, the pilot, whose instrument experience was limited to what little was required for the private certificate, probably could not tell clear air from cloud.

As the Cirrus reached 9,500 feet, it began to turn to the left toward the area of weather. Perhaps the tasks of trimming and setting the mixture for cruise distracted the pilot from his heading. The controller noticed the change and pointed it out to the pilot, who replied he intended to return to Muskogee. He now began a turn to the right. Rather than reverse course, however, he continued the turn until he was heading northward back into the weather. The controller, who by now sensed trouble, said to the pilot that he showed him on a heading of 340 degrees and asked whether he concurred. The pilot, whose voice until this point had betrayed no sense of unease, replied somewhat incoherently that “the wind caught me, [but now] I’m out of it.”

With a tone of increasing urgency, the controller instructed the pilot to turn left to a heading of 270. The pilot acknowledged the instruction, but he did not comply. Instead, he continued turning to the right. At the same time, he was descending at an increasing rate and was now at 6,000 feet. “I show you losing serious altitude,” the controller said. “Level your wings if able and fly directly southbound…Add power if you can.”

It was already too late. In a turning dive, its speed increasing past 220 knots, the Cirrus continued downward. Moments later, its radar target disappeared.

In its discussion of the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) focused upon the pilot’s preparedness—in the broadest sense—for the flight. A former Marine, he should have been semper paratus—always ready—but his history suggested a headstrong personality with a certain tendency to ignore loose ends as he plunged ahead.

He had failed his first private pilot test on questions related to airplane systems; he passed on a retest the following week. But this little glitch tells us nothing about his airmanship. His instructor reported he responded calmly and reasonably to turbulence, and was “good” at simulated instrument flight. He had enrolled in Cirrus Embark transition training shortly before acquiring the airplane. He completed all of the flight training lessons, but—again, a hint of impatience with tiresome minutiae—may not have completed the online self-study lessons. The flight training was strictly VFR and did not include night or instrument components.

The airplane was extremely well equipped for instrument flying, but it was a 2001 model, and its avionics were, according to the Cirrus Embark instructors, “old technology” and “not easy to use.” In other words, it did not have a glass panel, and its classical instruments, which included a flight director, were sophisticated and possibly confusing to a novice. The airplane was equipped with an autopilot, and the pilot had been trained in at least the elements of its use.

The airplane was also equipped with an airframe parachute, but it was not deployed during the loss of control. In any case, its use is limited to indicated speeds below 133 kias, and it might not have functioned properly in a spiral dive.

• READ MORE: Dissecting a Tragedy in the Third Dimension

An instructor familiar with the pilot and his airplane—whether this was the same instructor as the one whom he called on the night of the fatal flight is not clear—wrote to the NTSB that the pilot had made the night flight to South Carolina at least once before, and he had called her at midnight before departing to come help him fix a flat tire. She declined and urged him to get some sleep and make the trip in the morning.

“I told him he was starting down the ‘accident chain,’” she wrote. “New pilot, new plane, late start, nighttime, bad terrain, etc….To me, he seemed a little overly self-confident in his piloting skills, but he didn’t know enough to know what he didn’t know.”

He fixed the tire himself and made the trip safely that night. Undoubtedly, that success encouraged him to go again.

We have seen over and over how capable pilots, including ones with much more experience than this pilot, fail to perform at their usual level when they encounter weather emergencies. A sudden, unexpected plunge into IMC—which, on a dark night, can happen very easily—opens the door to a Pandora’s box of fear, confusion, and disorientation for which training cannot prepare you.

There are two clear avenues of escape. One is the autopilot. Switch it on, take your hands off the controls, breathe, and count to 20. The fact the pilot did not take this step suggests how paralyzed his mental faculties may have become.

The other is the attitude indicator. It’s a simple mechanical game. Put the toy airplane on the horizon line and align the wings with it. That’s all. It’s so simple. Yet in a crisis, apparently, it’s terribly hard to do. The fact that so many pilots have lost control of their airplanes in IMC should be a warning to every noninstrument-rated pilot to treat clouds—and, above all, clouds in darkness—with extreme respect.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post A Night Flight Leads a Pilot to a Tragic End appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The well-known accident chain we read about in National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports also happens, no doubt even more often, in incidents that end up as hard-won lessons instead of accidents. The chain often starts well before the first rotation of a prop at start-up.

My father got his private certificate when I was a tyke. He logged about 800 hours in his life. He never owned his own airplane, but I grew up around aviation enough to have caught the disease very early. Though he was the one who actually taught me to fly, he was not an instructor. I went through the formality of earning my private certificate in 1983 at the age of 26. I did this at the Grosse Ile Municipal Airport (KONZ) in Michigan, located on an island in the mouth of the Detroit River where it empties into Lake Erie. I always loved flying, but now I was rabid about it.

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In those days I was working very long hours, and with a fresh ticket and access to a Cessna 150, I squeezed in flights whenever I could. That involved more night flights than was probably advisable at that point in my experience. But I loved being up at night and my regular routine of flying up the river and around downtown Detroit at 1,000 feet. Taking in the tapestry of lights was always magical and intoxicating.

One night the urge to fly welled up within me, and I headed to the airport where the 150 was tied down outside. Perhaps the most dangerous thing in life, and most certainly in aviation, is that you don’t know what you don’t know. And there were things I needed to know but did not. (Obviously, as I had been stupidly flying around at 1,000 feet at night.) As was a completely ordinary thing in Detroit in the winter, it had snowed. Per my training, I got out the broom and brushed off all the snow from the airframe. But (cue scary music here) there had been a bit of thaw, and under the snow was just a bit of ice. Not much, mind you. It was just a bit of crustiness, so I thought it couldn’t weigh very much. I figured it wasn’t a big deal since it was just me flying with partial fuel in the tanks.. It was a cold, clear, still night. Plenty of lift in this cold air, right? And, dang it, I wanted to fly so badly.

Everything else checked out just fine. I fired up the Continental O-200 and made my way across the big, dark, completely deserted field to the longest runway, did the run-up, lined her up, and shoved in the throttle. All seemed completely normal until I was out of ground effect, maybe 50 feet up. She felt saggy. This thing was not climbing. I was staring ahead into the inky blackness, where I knew a tall stand of pine trees was waiting for me at the north end of the runway. The accident chain instantly marched across my consciousness: inexperience, winter, night, ice, overeagerness, and drag, you idiot! I had stacked the deck against myself, and it was all going to end in those trees in a few seconds. There was really no better option than straight ahead, so I uttered a short prayer and waited for the impact.

It didn’t come. In the pitch darkness, I held the attitude indicator where I thought it should be and realized from the altimeter reading that I must have cleared the trees. I was soon high enough to have visual reference from the lights on the ground to the north. All I could think of was “climb.” The little 150 ponderously clawed its way up, while the altimeter moved at about the pace of hands on a clock. I eventually got up to a couple thousand feet and realized with terror that I was at that moment a test pilot in an unknown machine. I had no idea how to get it back down safely. I decided I needed to find out what the stall speed was with this stuff on the wings, so I would know what approach speed to use to avoid falling out of the sky. I decided I had enough drag already, so flaps probably would not be a good idea. I slowed down with my eyes on the airspeed indicator and waited for the break. To my surprise, the stall occurred at about the same speed it would normally. OK, I guess I’ll approach at the normal speed. I got her back to the field and lined up.

• READ MORE: Life Lessons of an Iced-Up Mooney

Grosse Ile airport is basically surrounded by water, and going in there on a moonless night one cannot see the surrounding trees. The runway lights are all you’ve got. It was a scary ride down the hill, and I carried a little extra speed anyway. At first, all seemed normal, but then almost too late, I realized that stalling wasn’t going to be my problem. This thing was coming down like a brick. The sink rate registered on my brain, and I firewalled the throttle, once again terrified that I was going to settle right down into those pine trees. The O-200 roared (like a mouse in a lion suit), and the laden little 150 somehow lumbered over the unseen treetops. I kept full throttle until I was just over the pavement. Fortunately, the runway was plenty long and I settled in smoothly. It was over, except my heart was about to pound its way out of my chest.

I vowed right then and there to never again fly any airplane with even a hint of anything on the wings. But perhaps even more importantly, I came away from that near miss with a constant question on my mind for any situation: What about this do I not know? Finding the answer is well worth any time and effort it takes. This has served me well in airplanes and in many other areas, such as just getting along with people.

This feature first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Ice on the Wings Brings About a Near-Miss Episode appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Mackinac Island Airport (KMCD) in Michigan is close to home for me, and it’s one I visit a few times a year. Many pilots who fly in the Midwest have this historic tourist destination on their GA bucket list.

The runway isn’t long—a mere 3,501 feet—so depending on your aircraft performance, it might be shorter than many runways you use regularly. That being said, once you arrive and park, your aircraft may be the last motorized vehicle you use until you leave an island where time appears to have stood still. Enjoy the horse and buggy or bicycle ride into town or to the historic Grand Hotel. But before you get to relax, you just might find yourself in need of an approach to this airport where clouds often develop even in the summer months, thanks to the cool waters of Lakes Michigan and Huron that surround the island.

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During one personal experience on an IFR flight to Mackinac, I found myself needing the VOR/DME-A approach and a circle-to-land because of GPS system testing (signal blocking), thanks to a summer military exercise conducted to the south of the island.

A) IAF AT PELLSTON VOR

A pilot flying this approach might expect to start at the PLN VOR for it. While they might be able to continue from the enroute environment directly inbound as the chart indicates, “NoPT for arrivals on the PLN VORTAC airway radials 131 CW 219” (meaning in general from the south), they should expect a turn in the hold otherwise. Coming from other directions would require the pilot to conduct a course reversal to establish inbound. A hold is depicted to do this.

B) VOR COURSE WIDENS AT DISTANCE

This VOR isn’t on the destination field, but instead at the point where the approach starts. Traveling 14 miles to the missed approach point at MABEH, a pilot should expect this VOR course to widen as they travel farther from the VOR. This might mean they won’t be perfectly aligned with the center of the airport.

C) CIRCLING IS THE ONLY OPTION

With only circling minimums published, and an approach to the runway on a south-to-north line for a runway that is generally east-west, a pilot is going to need to circle to land. Relatively low minimums are present—well below a normal traffic pattern altitude at 579 feet agl. Plus, if you are going to attempt this approach at night, a note indicates it would not be allowed for Runway 8.

D) DME IS THE MISSED

A DME point at MABEH is noted at 14 nm from the PLN VOR for the missed approach point. No other time or cross radials are given on this approach, so make sure you have the DME tuned properly. An IFR GPS can substitute for this normally, but if you were in the scenario I had to use this approach for when GPS was being blocked, the GPS in your aircraft could not substitute for DME. If I didn’t have a separate DME receiver, I wouldn’t have been able to fly this approach because of a lack of ability to identify the missed approach point under those NOTAMed conditions.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Chart Wise: Mackinac Island VOR/DME-A appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“How are your crosswind landings?”

“We’re about to find out.”

Have you ever had this conversation in the aircraft? It often occurs when you listen to the one-minute weather or ATIS and learn the winds are blowing at an angle to the runway rather than parallel to the direction of landing. As a result, there is the increased potential for drifting off the centerline—unless the pilot is prepared to take prompt and corrective action. As we go into the winter months, winds tend to kick up across the U.S., making it more likely for you to encounter a crosswind.

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Since most airports are designed with runways aligned into prevailing winds, many pilots don’t get much practice with crosswind takeoffs and landings—and it shows. A search of accident and incident reports compiled by the National Transportation Safety Board shows pages upon pages of landing accidents and incidents where a crosswind got the better of a pilot.

In FAA Advisory Circular 150/5300-13, it is noted that “generally, the smaller the airplane, the more it is affected by wind, particularly crosswind components. Crosswinds are often a contributing factor in small airplane accidents.” The FAA has devoted several pages in the Airplane Flying Handbook and the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge to giving pilots tools for landing in crosswinds.

Determining the Crosswind Component

Many POHs also have a performance chart that allows the pilot to determine the crosswind and headwind component.

The first step is to determine what direction the wind is coming from and note the velocity. Next, select the runway that gives you the smallest angle between the wind direction and the runway. For example, if the wind is reported as 300 at 15 knots and the runway options are 34/16, 34, (Runway 340) the angle difference is 40 degrees. If you select Runway 16, there’s a 140-degree angle.

Make It Visual

This is where the mechanical E6B flight computer shines. Look at the wind side of the unit, placing the runway heading under the True Index—300 is to the left. Using Runway 34 will mean a wind from the left side of the nose.

Now put 160 under the True Index—300 is now a tailwind from the right. Taking off and landing with a quartering tailwind is dangerous and should be avoided.

Demonstrated Crosswind Component

Before an airplane is type certificated by the FAA, it is flight-tested to ensure it meets certain requirements. Among these is the demonstration of being satisfactorily controllable with no exceptional degree of skill or alertness on the part of the pilot in 90-degree crosswinds up to a velocity equal to 0.2 V_SO. This means a wind speed of two-tenths of the airplane’s stalling speed with power off and in landing configuration. Often this information is placarded in the aircraft.

According to the POH for the Cessna 172S, the crosswind component chart has fine print reading “maximum demonstrated crosswind velocity is 15 knots (not a limitation).” This means 15 knots was the maximum component the manufacturer tested to, so it does not necessarily mean operations with a great crosswind are particularly dangerous or difficult. It greatly depends on the type of airplane and the experience, skill, and proficiency of the pilot. However, in Chapter 9 of the Airplane Flying Handbook, the FAA offers the warning that “it is imperative that pilots determine the maximum crosswind component of each airplane they fly and avoid operations in wind conditions that exceed the capability of the airplane.”

Crosswind Technique

Both crosswind landings and takeoffs require the pilot to put aileron deflection into the wind to maintain directional control. As control effectiveness (especially ailerons) increases with a rise in airflow over the wings, landings tend to be more difficult, because control effectiveness is reduced as the aircraft slows down.

There are two methods for the crosswind approach and landing: the crab method and sideslip method.

In the crab method, the pilot aligns the airplane’s ground track with the centerline of the runway, with the nose of the aircraft pointed into the wind. The pilot makes small adjustments, maintaining the crab angle until just before touchdown. The pilot must use rudder control to align the longitudinal axis of the airplane with the runway centerline to avoid side loading the landing gear. Ideally, the pilot will straighten out the airplane just in time for the upwind wheel to touch down a moment before the downwind wheel. This takes practice to get right. If the pilot is too early or too late, side loading can occur. Too much side load and there can be gear damage and possibly a wingtip strike.

• READ MORE: Mastering Crosswind Landings

Using the sideslip method, the pilot first uses the rudder to align the airplane on runway heading then notes the amount of drift occurring as a result of the crosswind. The pilot then adjusts the bank angle, with some calling it “leaning into the wind” to keep the airplane’s longitudinal access and ground track aligned with the runway centerline.

You need to hold that alignment through final approach, roundout, touchdown, and rollout, remembering that as the aircraft’s speed diminishes, so does flight control effectiveness. If you’re struggling, running out of rudder on final, it’s probably only going to get worse. The prudent thing to do is go around.

The roundout is made like a normal landing approach, but the application of a crosswind correction is continued as necessary to prevent drifting.

Some pilots use a combination of the two methods, using the slip into the wind and opposite rudder to keep the aircraft from turning into the wind. If there is not enough rudder to compensate for the strong turning tendency caused by the steep bank, the wind is likely too strong for a safe landing on that particular runway with those wind conditions. This is the time to find an alternate runway.

Weathervaning, when the aircraft makes an uncommanded turn into the wind, is possible with strong crosswinds, especially in a tailwheel aircraft because of greater side area behind the main landing gear, which acts as a pivot point. The greater the crosswind component, the more difficult it is to prevent weathervaning.

Challenge to Find Crosswind Runways

Our aviation infrastructure is designed to mitigate crosswinds, as you will note runway orientation is usually into the prevailing winds. You show me an area with runways aligned 17/35, 18/36, or 1/19, and I’ll show you an area where the winds blow north-south. You may be lucky and fly out of an airport that was built in the 1940s when the runways were arranged in a triangle shape to accommodate the propeller-driven airplanes.

No matter how strong the winds, one of those runways had to work. Over the decades, most of these airports lost one if not two of the runways because the FAA determined they were not being used frequently, and the agency or airport sponsor did not want to pay for their upkeep. Some were turned into ramp space or taxiways—ensuring good crosswind technique is required.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Practice Crosswind Landings Whenever You Can appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Question: I am a student pilot and have been flying several times a week. I was just about to go solo, then last week I broke my right wrist and thumb in a skateboarding accident. My instructor won’t let me fly until the casts come off weeks from now. Is this an FAA rule, or is my instructor making up rules?

Answer: FAR 61.53 prohibits operations during a medical deficiency. It can be argued that having broken bones and a cast constitutes a medical deficiency that would prohibit you from acting as pilot in command (PIC), ergo, no solo flight. Your CFI probably doesn’t want to risk the liability. However, you could still do dual lessons, provided you have the strength and dexterity in your right arm and hand, and you’re not in pain or on medication that affects your faculties. On dual flights the CFI is the PIC, so you would not be breaking the rules.

The post Can You Pilot an Aircraft While Wearing a Cast? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Do you remember preparing for your first night flight?

Maybe you’ve read Chapter 17 of the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge and Chapter 11 of the Airplane Flying Handbook, learning about the dangers of spatial disorientation and runway illusions caused by the reduction of visual cues. Most of us read along the way, too, about the black hole approach, where a lack of visual cues on the ground make it challenging for the pilot to find the runway and fly a stable approach. Oddly enough, the other side of the black hole approach—the black hole departure—that can make takeoffs challenging and sometimes downright deadly does not receive the same amount of attention.

Perhaps it’s time that it did.

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Accident at KVNC

On April 5, a commercial pilot flying a Piper Cherokee Lance took off from Venice Municipal Airport (KVNC) in Florida, destined for Albert Whitted Airport (KSPG) in St. Petersburg under a full moon. The airport sports two runways, 13/31 and 5/23. Noise-sensitive communities surround the airport, and the recommendation is that pilots use Runway 23 at night and follow a noise abatement procedure that has them maintain runway heading and climb to 1,000 feet msl at best rate of climb (VY) before heading on their way. The airport is located on the west coast of Florida, and Runway 23 puts the aircraft over the Gulf of Mexico.

The weather at the time of the flight was reported as 10 miles visibility and clear. However, security camera footage of the takeoff showed there was no discernible horizon over the dark waters of the Gulf.

According to the data track provided by the FAA, the aircraft reached an altitude of approximately 300 feet and a ground speed of about 103 knots then began a turn to the right and entered a descent. The aircraft hit the water at 136 knots and a vertical descent rate of approximately 3,000 fpm, killing the pilot and all three passengers.

While it will take several months for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to determine the probable cause of the accident, the black hole nature of the departure environment is already under review.

“This accident really drove home how insidious VFR night flight can be,” said the late Richard McSpadden, former Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) senior vice president and executive director of its Air Safety Institute (ASI).

Recently, the ASI took an in-depth look at this accident.

“The departure is more of a risk than the approach is, because on the approach the pilot is already on instruments,” said McSpadden in October 2023, explaining that during black hole approaches the pilot is carefully watching the airspeed indicator, heading indicator, attitude indicator, and altimeter to maintain situational awareness. “On departure, the pilot may not be expecting to be on instruments, then the darkness comes at them rather quickly—and they are not ready to transition.”

McSpadden flew the Runway 23 departure at KVNC at night to have a better understanding of the challenge. “When you take off, the coastline is at an angle,” he said. “The way the coastline falls away, you are truly completely dark really quickly, as you are over the water.”

Many pilots don’t recognize the challenge of the black hole departure, according to David St. George, the exec-utive director of the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators, a 21,000-hour charter pilot, and a designated pilot examiner. “Taking off into a black hole (dark night) is like flying into the belly of a whale—no references,” St. George said. One of the scenarios he uses for check rides is having the applicant plan a night flight that includes a black hole departure, such as out of Tampa Executive Airport (KVDF) in Florida. “First, to see if they plan a direct flight over water,” St. George said, “second, to see if they detect the hazards of departure. The airman certification standards are all about risk management.”

Over-water departures aren’t the only challenging ones, said St. George, adding that departures over dark and featureless mountainous terrain also pose challenges. McSpadden suggested that instructors prepare learners for these situations by teaching them to use the instruments during night flight because “the lack of horizon can be disorientating, and if it happens at low altitude, you are in serious trouble because the surprise factor limits reaction time.” He believed pilots should practice black hole departures in an aviation training device so they understand how to use the instruments to maintain aircraft control.

Taking McSpadden’s advice, I decided to give it a try. Using the NTSB preliminary report as a guide, I re-created the accident at KVNC in a Redbird FMX advanced aviation training device, right down to the time, date, and weather. I used a large, black tarp to block out exterior light.

McSpadden was correct—when the aircraft passes over the shoreline and the lights fall away, it is disorienting, and you need to get on the gauges quickly, just as you do for an IFR departure.

Practice Going on the Gauges

Spatial disorientation is defined as the lack of orientation with regard to the position, attitude, or movement of the airplane in space. Pilots are prone to spatial disorientation if they rely on their vestibular system (the organs in the inner ear), the somatosensory system (also known as the “seat-of-the-pants” sensation), and visual system without identifying a horizon.

In short, your body becomes confused between acceleration forces that result from gravity and maneuvering the aircraft. This can, and often does, lead to spatial disorientation. You may feel like the airplane is in straight-and-level flight when actually it is nose-high attitude and turning to the left.

Just as pilots train to identify and recover from unusual attitudes, it can behoove you to practice experiencing spatial disorientation and flying the aircraft by instruments. Do this with the help of an instructor and at appropriate altitude. You could put on a view-limiting device then close your eyes and tilt your head forward while the instructor puts the aircraft through climbs, turns, and descents to ensure you’re appropriately disoriented. Then the instructor can have you attempt to hold the aircraft on an assigned heading while climbing at V_Y. An exercise like this demonstrates how the body can lie to you, and it gives you confidence in using the instruments.

• READ MORE: Flying at Night: What You Need to Know

Safely in the Black Hole

There are a handful of tips you can follow to help mitigate risk when you face a potential black hole departure, though these practices and procedures help any takeoff profile. First, before you taxi onto the runway, make sure the altimeter is set to the field elevation.

In your regular flying, practice V_X and V_Y climbs in day VFR conditions, noting the pitch angles on the attitude indicator for reference at night.

Study the sectional, airport guide, and Google Earth images of the area around the airport before you take off for better situational awareness. You can also use tools in apps like ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot to visualize terrain and obstacles in unfamiliar areas. Note the elevation of obstacles near the airport and determine what altitude the aircraft will have to be at to safely pass over them.

This last tip was impressed upon me as a CFI candidate taking off from Norm Grier Field (S36), a nontowered airport in Kent, Washington. The runway, 15/33, measures 3,288 feet by 40 feet with low intensity runway lights. The airport is surrounded by 30- to 40-foot trees, and on the north and south ends there are power lines that run perpendicular to the runway.

“You need to be at 650 feet to clear the wires,” my CFI told me.

He was correct.

Getting Out of the Hole

• Check that the altimeter is set to field elevation before takeoff.
• Practice climbs at V_x and V_y in day VFR conditions.
• Study the lay of the land via the sectional, Google Earth, ForeFlight terrain awareness, or other apps.
• Note the elevation of obstacles and high-terrain points in the departure path—and all
  quadrants in case of an ATC vector or traffic avoidance course change.
• If you have access to a desktop flight sim or AATD, set up a black hole departure at one of the airports noted (KVNC, KSPG, or KVDF) and experience the process.

This feature first appeared in the October 2023/Issue 942 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Respect the Darkness of the Black Hole Departure appeared first on FLYING Magazine.