Worst Pilot Decisions

[CyranoAH]

I want to share a couple of stories regarding bad pilot decisions... please add yours if you know them!

1.
This fella was a casual pilot, with the minimum 4 hours flying time per year. 50 something yrs old.
He decides to go for a ride with a couple of friends on a hot summer day. Wind calm.

The runway is 900 yds long, about 2º down slope, with some 300yds without any obstacle but soon after that there are trees and houses.

The plane is a Cessna 172 N, 160HP, fixed pitch blade.

Everything is going fine until he goes for the take off run... and he has this incredibly stupid procedure... at the beginning of the take-off run, he sets full flaps only to retract them as he's picking up speed... that gives him "a better sense of acceleration"... at this point you know he's asking for it.

So he goes full throttle and the flaps won't retract... now he's in deep toejam, but does he abort the take off and step hard on the brakes? Noooosireee he takes off and picks some feet over the rwy but he's on the verge of stalling and houses and trees are approaching fast.

Somehow he clears the houses and trees but then stupidity comes back into play. He retracts flaps... apparently from full to 0º in less than 10 seconds. Obviously, the poor Cessna has no choice but to sink several feet before he can even begin to level the plane... only to try to fly under a highway sign, hit a post with the left wing and crashing into an unsuspecting car that was passing by.

Result: pilot lost an arm, passengers mostly unhurt and the Cessna lost for good. He was lucky. Big time.


2. Another "week-end pilot" goes for a trip to another airport that he doesn't know... never been there before. The airfield is 1100 yds long and is located at 3600 feet.

He miscalculates approach height and speed and tries to land at a speed which will clearly put him out of the runway. Does he abort the landing? Nope, he bounces and bounces and hits the brakes hard, but he's going too fast. Before he knows it, the runway is over and he falls several feet into a ditch and capsized.

Result: pilot and passengers unhurt. Plane lost.


Things like this are the ones that teach me valuable lessons as a non-professional pilot:

- Leave pride at home when flying. ABORT IF NECESSARY.
- ALWAYS follow the procedures by the book.

I have some other stories that didn't have a happy ending, but it's late and I want to hear yours too!

Daniel

[Animal]

Damn that Cessna pilot is a fool.
Full flaps on TO... WTF

[Hangtime]

feature.. a 70 hour fledgling pilot with a bandy-new license buys a piper dakota. this thing is a cherokee on steriods, loaded with all the sweet dashboard goodies.. and it's a complex aircraft.

one heluva jump from a cessna 172 to a dakota.

anyway.. said pilot was a good student, and intensely intrested in the technical wiz bang toejam on dashboards; next goal is an intrument rating. he lures me into the plane one bright sunny day.. (confession): i'd been up with him many times before, our CFI and the lil 172 are friends of mine. I digress.. we're up in the dakota, toolling towards the calverton vortac at 2,500 while said pilot fiddles with tying his new satnav to the companion route following autopilot.

i'm eyeballing for traffic.. the skies above long island are always buzy as hell. i call out stuff as i see it, and always have.. , clock position, relative bearing, above; below. After two or three look-ups from his dash, he tells me 'don't call 'em out unless they're a factor.' The guy was kinda miffed.. seemed my eyball reports were breaking his concentration with the gizmo he was playing with. (there was a new northstar yokemount gps navigator manual in his lap) I shut up.. but the last call was a tomahawk on a collision bearing.

Collision bearings are pretty easy to spot, the relative bearing from your vantange point does not change as the aircraft gets closer. the tomahawk is yet distant, but I call it out again anyway. 'tomahawk.. 11:00, constant, closing" and said pilot eyeballs it, gives me a dirty look and goes back to fartin with the dash.

We close on the tomahawk. i look over at said pilot, who's head is still down, and look back over at the tomahawk. nice paint. t-tails are gay. i can't see the other pilot.. so he sure can't see me....

I look over again at said pilot, still head down, punchin buttons and scrolling displays. "ahem. when they get big in the windshield, are they factors???" i politely enquire. said pilot looks up at me.. then swivels his head around towards the now 300 feet distant tomahawk.  

i haven't flown with him since.

[straffo]

I've seen  two "moustachu" (veteran pilots) land on the wrong runway with the wind in their back ...

[davidpt40]

My pappy could tell of some bad piloting decisions- He was in Kentucky Civil Air Patrol in the 60s.  However you would have to kind of guess at the mistake though, since he never found anyone alive.  The observation plane of choice was the L4 military pipercub.  65hp engine I do believe.

[beet1e]

Good post, Daniel.

When I saw some of the stupid stuff some pilots did, my biggest surprise was that there are only about 12 fatal accidents a year in the UK. Taking off overweight, fuel exhaustion, and continued VFR into IMC are common serious errors. Our own CAA (Campaign Against Aviation) reports that the stall/spin is the leading cause of fatal accidents - in some cases, I have no doubt that this stems from an overloaded aircraft. Some guys I knew were quite cavalier about this. Another danger I saw was the way some people "assumed" so many critical factors.

My personal golden rule was never to take any action which removed anything from my list of options.

Something that ought to be included in the British PPL syllabus is the decoding and understanding of TAF/METAR. It is sadly lacking, but so vitally important on long trips, when flying in a foreign country whose language is not your own.

[BUG_EAF322]

There was a dutch pilot who was a bit hasty after he landed he turned off both engines . He climbed out the cockpit and walked through the propellor. ouch

He was a proffesional pilot.

[devious]

Emphasis on the was.

[CyranoAH]

Thanks for the replies guys, lots of good things to learn from them.

I'll add another one.

This was way before I entered the Aeroclub, about 7 years ago.

The club has quite a variety of planes, ranging from the tiny 152 to 3 PA-27 Aztecs and a Cessna 301, and most of them are used for little one-day trips to nearby (1 hour flight) fields. The 152 are hardly used for this kind of trips due to being a 2-seater, climbing poorly when loaded (they have a 110hp Lycoming engine), limited visibility and being quite slow (95 kts cruise speed).

They are even worse when you fly to a field in the pyrenees (3500 feet high). Not much power/speed to play with.

So this pilot, who is approx. 60smthing, decides to go to La Cerdanya airfield, 1 hour away from Sabadell. It is a beautiful place, with the nearest town (Alp) being just a relaxing walk away. (see pics below)
Food is good and it is a common destination for both spanish and french pilots.



(Some other images, too big to display here:
http://idd02np2.eresmas.net/lell-lecd-lell.htm
http://casal.upc.es/~miquel/cgi-bin/photo/index.cgi?mode=view&album=/2002-11-17+Cerdanya+en+bimotor)

The TAFOR were all but optimistic about the weather that same afternoon, but they decided to go anyway: "if it starts looking bad, we leave".

They get there, go have lunch, and a couple of clouds appear in sight... no rush.

They start their walk back to the airfield and now things are starting to look real bad. Some low-base Cb are covering the sky, hiding the tops of the highest mountains. Full overcast seems just minutes away.

Before taking off, they ask a local pilot about the weather. Well, you have to know this pilot first: he's an expert in local weather in the pyrenees. You'd see him flying in the rain, with low-base clouds, or bad visibility. He'd always find an opening. ALWAYS. Never had an accident. He's considered by people to be too daring.

This guy tells the couple: "If I were you, I'd stay for the night and let this one pass, it's gonna get worse".

But the pilot's mother-in-law, which is 90something, is alone, and they tell this guy they can't leave her alone. (TAKE A FRIGGIN' TRAIN FOR GOD'S SAKE).

They take off and soon enough they are flying IMC (did I say this guy had no Instruments time whatsoever?). And that's the last someone knew from them in 8 months.

Search & rescue parties were dispatched when the weather cleared, but they couldn't be found. The club offered free flying time to anyone wishing to join in the search efforts.

After 8 months, someone at traffic control thought "hey, weren't they carrying a transponder?" (wise guy, it took you 8 months)
Sure enough, the transponder trace was retrieved and their last location unveiled. They were located not far from there. They had crashed into a peak some 10 minutes away into french airspace.

It's true what they say... "gethomeitis will kill you".

That and pride.

The club has always paid for a flying instructor to go pick a grounded aircraft due to weather, so money was not a factor. Pride was. Overconfidence was.

Daniel

[moose]

a few years ago someone put a gulfstream iv down hard and fast in icy conditions, blew through the fence at end of runway, across rt 28, and into the staples parking lot

my cfi was also telling me a story about one of the managers at cape cod airport who died doing banner work.

apparently the procedure for picking up a banner fast is to come in high, swoop down with throttle cut, grab the line, and pull up and full throttle at a high rate of climb away.

the guy in question encountered a power on stall and crashed while on climbout after picking up banner.  too bad. he was a cfi too i think.

[beet1e]

Yep Daniel. I've spent many a night at Le Touquet when the cross channel weather deteriorated. Much of the business at one hotel in Rue St. Jean came from stranded pilots. One time, we ran into an airline captain, who had his Jaguar car there. He was very reassuring about our plight (staying the night etc.) and quoted the very useful maxim: "Time to spare? Go by air!"

[Bonden]

Moose, I remember both of those incidents. I had met the banner tow guy some time before he died, the one that wound up in staples - lots of people will remember that one.

Bonden

[moose]

Originally posted by Bonden
Moose, I remember both of those incidents. I had met the banner tow guy some time before he died, the one that wound up in staples - lots of people will remember that one.

Bonden

yep

the veterans at the VFW had a front row seat

funny thing is that when i land on that runway, it seems so long that a 747 could come down without a hitch. that gulfstream isnt really that big, the guy musta really fouled his approach for sure

[Toad]

Originally posted by beet1e
"Time to spare? Go by air!"

And, in the early days of the jet introduction there was another line:

"More time yet? Take a Jet!"

Mechanical reliability/MEL was a problem then.

[CyranoAH]

Ah banner work, it is dangerous indeed. We had a death at Sabadell not long ago related to banners.

In summer, there's a lot of planes doing banner dragging and so several banners are placed on different lines on the ground for them to pick them up, most of the planes being PA-18 due to their superb climb performance.

One of these planes apparently didn't line up properly and unadvertedly picked up 2 banners. Apparently, he didn't realize what he had done and thought it was an engine failure, so he turned 180º for the runway. He tried to get rid of the banners, to no avail, and while turning they got caught in a lo-power electric line, making the plane crash some 300 yds short of the runway.

The sad thing is that even though the pilot could walk out of the burning plane, he died days later due to nasty burns.

From that day, tower is required to visually confirm the banner pick-up procedure and instruct the pilot to land at once if there's a problem.

SIDE NOTE: It could seem otherwise, but the Airport where I fly has a safety record, just that it's one of the busiest airfields for light aircraft in Europe (5 flight schools, firefighters, police, the aeroclub, some companies, and lots of private planes).

Daniel