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FLYING LESSONS for April 30, 2015 suggested by this week’s aircraft mishap reports FLYING LESSONS uses the past week’s mishap reports to consider what might have contributed to accidents, so you can make better decisions if you face similar circumstances. In almost all cases design characteristics of a specific make and model airplane have little direct bearing on the possible causes of aircraft accidents, so apply these FLYING LESSONS to any airplane you fly. Verify all technical information before applying it to your aircraft or operation, with manufacturers’ data and recommendations taking precedence. You are pilot in command, and are ultimately responsible for the decisions you make.

FLYING LESSONS is an independent product of MASTERY FLIGHT TRAINING, INC. www.mastery-flight-training.com

This week’s lessons: The War is Over The general aviation fatal accident rate has remained essentially flat for well over a decade. Although preliminary data from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) suggests the 2013 rate of fatal “GA” crashes is the best it has ever been, investigators, instructors, regulators and other safety advocates are frustrated that it has proven extremely difficult to “move the needle” further to make personal flying emulate the safety of other types of aviation.

The challenge is so great that even some staunch advocates of flying safety have thrown up their hands and proclaimed the rate is as low as it can go. They accept the annual number of general aviation deaths as “acceptable losses” inherent to a system that provides so great a freedom to fly (if you think the FAA is restrictive on those freedoms, consider that the U.S. system is the envy of the rest of the world, according to pilots I’ve spoken with in Europe, Australia and Africa).

Yet the “acceptable losses” advocates have been making that statement for several years—even as NTSB data show a trend toward even fewer fatal crashes. Maybe we haven’t reached the “most acceptable” level yet.

The rate is asymptotically approaching a low level—maybe the lowest attainable, maybe not. Many of us have not given up yet. But with pilot decision-making responsible for 70% to 80% of all crashes, by all accounts, moving the needle further probably is close to impossible…unless we are able to change pilots’ ability and willingness to change the way the make and apply decisions.

Take as a somewhat extreme example this video that has circulated widely over the past week or so…the gear-up landing of a Piper Aerostar during an airport fly-in, followed by a power-up, the airplane staggering into the air, and (although the successful outcome of the maneuver was seriously in doubt) this pilot’s decision to fly nearly 80 miles to his home airport despite significant damage

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to the airplane’s propellers. See https://www.facebook.com/RCastle11/vide ... 294656217/

Here’s the set-up: The pilot of the Aerostar twin was arriving for an air show when it landed gear up. The airplane swerved slightly but the pilot was able to re-establish directional control. He applied full power and the airplane lifted off, visibly teetering on the edge of a stall before finally climbing away. Several online aviation news sources report he then flew approximately 80 miles to his home airport. Photos of the post-landing airplane show its severely damaged propellers.

AVWeb now reports the pilot says he was flying a “botched go-around” and had retracted the landing gear just before the video began. “After pulling the gear and firewalling the throttles,” the pilot is quoted, he “retracted the flaps prematurely” and the airplane “dropped about eight feet” onto the runway. This would indeed be an incorrectly flown and “botched” go-around procedure; it is also inconsistent with the video evidence. Power was audibly applied only after a significant part of the ground slide, and the flaps are visibly extended until well after the staggering climbout. See www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/102/3046-full.html?ET=avweb:e3046:227136a:&st=email#223996

Whether this was indeed a go-around attempt or a classic gear-up landing gone even worse is irrelevant once the props hit the pavement. For no discernible reason, the pilot chose to turn a gear up landing—historically the most survivable type of major aircraft accident—into very near a stall during a go-around maneuver (according to the NTSB, by far the most common fatal crash scenario) with the significant potential of an engine failure during or shortly after takeoff (the second most deadly type of event in a piston twin airplane). What bothers me most is the reaction from pilots who have seen this video, on laptops and tablets, and passed around on smart phones all over Sun n Fun last week. The vast majority of pilot response I’ve read and heard—95% or more, I’d wager—is incredulity that the pilot would do such a thing. None of these pilots think they would ever try to power up and go around after a gear-up landing. And they say that if they did climb out of it they would not fly 80 miles back home before putting the airplane down. I’ve seen and heard no statements about where they’d land in such a case…which of course would never happen anyway.

The real problem I have with this is the “other” maybe five percent or so—the pilots who say they’d like to buy that pilot a beer, or that at least tacitly laud the pilot for being able to keep it in the air long enough to land back at home.

Pilots who say that it could never happen to them, that they would not possibly try to climb away from a gear-up landing, should remember that most pilots say they would never have the gear up landing either…yet it happens with amazing frequency, even to experienced fliers. Pilots who applaud the action and proclaim the pilot’s superior flying skills for straightening out the airplane during its belly slide, hauling it into the air until the incipient stall was nixed, display the very dangerous attitudes of machismo, invulnerability, and impulsiveness that are three of the five hazardous pilot attitudes according to the FAA. The fourth hazardous attitude, resignation, can actually help us in cases like this: sometimes you must resign yourself to the fact that you must accept the consequences of your actions or inactions. Exhibiting the fifth hazardous attitude, anti-authority, would probably prevent you from reading this far into FLYING LESSONS. See http://flighttraining.aopa.org/magazine/1999/September/199909_Features_Hazardous_Attitudes.html

There is a strong culture of heroism in aviation. This is no doubt a result of the strong influence war has placed on flying, flight training and the perception of flying, among pilots as well as the general public. The heroic culture probably also stems from the fact that for about the first forty years of heavier-than-air flight flying was an extremely dangerous thing, even when no one was shooting at you (consider that far more American pilots died in training and ferrying accidents during World War Two than in combat, and the disastrous experience of flying the airmail before

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the 1940s). Pilots had to be heroic or they died. Pilots who died as a result of accidents were simply not good enough, so the culture said. And no matter what the circumstances, a “real pilot” tried to accomplish the “mission”—whether the mission was real or imagined.

Admit it. We all want to be the dashing young pilot who brings a damaged Fort/Lanc/Heinkel/ Mitsubishi back to base with engines on fire and the tail shot off. We all somehow know we have the skill to have done it…or at least would like to think we do. So when we’re faced with a serious airplane problem we want to solve it and get the airplane to its target (the planned destination) or back to base (home). We almost look forward to the chance to prove we can (the airline passenger “can anyone aboard fly an airplane?” scenario). It’s in our blood.

Trouble is, those scared kids flying the World War Two airplanes only tried to save the airplane as a means of saving their crewmates and themselves—it was common to get out of the combat zone and bail out, or to land at the very first friendly airfield, not trying to make it to home base. It was never about saving the airplane, it was about saving themselves. The airplane was always expendable.

Many FLYING LESSONS readers are current or past military pilots. As a former Air Force officer myself, I know that a pilot who performed a stunt like the Aerostar “scrape and go” was more likely to be stripped of his wings and taken off flying status than to receive a medal for such an action. As I saw someone put it on FaceBook, “if you crash, stay crashed.” There’s no need to turn an expensive and embarrassing event into a flight with a high likelihood of fatality.

OK, enough soap-boxing. This week’s LESSON is this: The war is over. If we thought we need to fly heroically, we were wrong. I’m sorry, you’re not a B-26 pilot flying low over occupied France, or a Betty crewman skimming some Pacific atoll, or wrestling a Wellington or a Dornier through dark and flak-filled skies. Your goal is to avoid heroics, to stay as close to the middle of the flight envelope as today’s flight allows. Sometimes that means flying heavy, or out of a short field, or some other closer-to-the-edge condition. But never fly outside the boundaries of your airplane, your personal skills and currency, and the environment. Don’t flirt with pilot fatigue. Don’t try to land with as little fuel as you can, all of it in one non-redundant tank. Don’t try to land when the winds are too strong, or too misaligned with the runway. Don’t take off when you know something is wrong with your airplane. Don’t skirt too close to thunderstorms, icy clouds, other airplanes, or other things that can kill you and your passengers on contact. See my 17 years of study in one easy FLYING LESSON. Always sacrifice the “mission” and the airplane if need be to get your passengers and yourself safely on the ground. See www.mastery-flight-training.com/20150101flying-lessons.pdf

Flying can be incredibly safe if it’s done properly. However, it is tremendously unforgiving of error and hubris. The “acceptable losses” folks are probably right when they say there’s not much more of what we’ve been doing that can do to reduce the fatal accident rate. It’s only by tackling the hero culture head-on that we can break through the asymptotic fatal-rate barrier.

Fly right and you’ll never feel you have to display the heroic skills that we misinterpreted from aviation history anyhow. Any one of us is susceptible if we succumb to the heroic pilot culture. The war is over. That’s the LESSON I take from the Piper Aerostar video. Let us learn from you, at mastery.flight.training@cox.net. All responses will be kept anonymous.

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See http://www.pilotworkshop.com/tip/clearances/qa-tip

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Thank you, generous supporters.

One more time Thanks once again to all who have congratulated my on my induction into the Flight Instructor Hall of Fame. And congratulations to my co-inductee (and FLYING LESSONS reader) Fred Nauer.

As I tried to convey in my acceptance speech, I am amazed to be included among those who have been named to the Hall of Fame before me, and astounded to have been selected before so many more awesome and talented flight instructors who I’m sure will get their recognition in coming years. I hope I’m able to live up to this honor and provide useful flying safety instruction and information to pilots for many years to come.

The ceremony was held last Friday evening at Sun n Fun in Lakeland, Florida. Thank you especially to my friends and colleagues in the National Association of Flight Instructors, which administers the Hall of Fame. Thanks also to the Board and staff of the American Bonanza Society, especially my friend Whit Hickman for making my introduction at the induction event and my son Alan who took time from his studies to attend.

Thank you. See: www.nafinet.org/programs/hof.aspx www.nafinet.org www.bonanza.org

Share safer skies. Forward FLYING LESSONS to a friend

Personal Aviation: Freedom. Choices. Responsibility. Thomas P. Turner, M.S. Aviation Safety, MCFI 2015 Inductee, Flight Instructor Hall of Fame 2010 National FAA Safety Team Representative of the Year 2008 FAA Central Region CFI of the Year

FLYING LESSONS is ©2015 Mastery Flight Training, Inc. For more information see www.mastery-flight-training.com, or contact mastery.flight.training@cox.net.