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GA Accidents: Seeing Improvement in a Dismal Picture

The final accident figures are out for the 2007 calendar year, and they are depressing. If we thought we were making any meaningful kind of progress in reducing the accident rate or the fatalties, we were wrong. And anybody who tries to spin these numbers to make it seem otherwise is either not being honest with you or with themselves. Maybe both.

Now, before you start talking about accident statistics, you always need to say that the numbers we have are not accurate and they're probably not reliable either. Even though the FAA is using what it says is a more accurate survey method, these figures need to be taken with a grain of salt. The figures that really matter is how many airplanes got wrecked and how many lives were lost. Those figures we know.

The number that really stands out is total accidents. There were 1,385 GA fixed-wing accidents, an increase of 6.3 percent from the year before, a sure sign that we are making too little progress or, perhaps, none at all.

There was a slight decrease, around 5 percent, in the number of fatal accidents and the fatalities. There were 252 fatal accidents in '07, a reduction of 14 accidents, and there were 449 fatalities, an improvement with 48 fewer lives lost. The fatal accident rate of 1.18 per 100,000 flight hours was an improvement, based on the FAA numbers, from a rate of 1.24 the year before.

You can look at the numbers in great detail, and that needs to be done. But examining a big problem with a microscope can lead you to forget the nature of the beast itself. There were more than 449 fatalities in GA flying last year, and that's simply too big a number. It could be argued, in fact, that this figure represents no statistically meaningful improvement over the historic record,

What can we do? Well, the FAA and the AOPA Air Safety Foundation are both doing a good job of pointing out the areas where pilots and their passengers come to grief. And we''ve all been attacking those hot spots with education, education, education, technolgy, technology, technology. And a little regulation here and there. It's not as though we aren't trying. We all care deeply about the issue. But for all that concern, we don't seem to making a lot of progress in making the GA skies safer. 

Take just one issue: There is a lot of speculation as to how the growing numbers of technologically advanced aircraft have helped, or hurt the record. Do advanced avionics and in-cockpit weather keep pilots safer, or embolden them? Do airplanes designed to fly long distances at a good rate of speed put pilots at odds with the weather in a greater way than in the past? These questions, and more, deserve to be discussed. Maybe we can makes some gains if we better understand what's happening here.

And the same is true for numerous risk areas: VFR into IMC, CFIT, loss of control at low altitude, icing and more. All of this slices deserve attention. But when it comes to the big picture, all you need to do is look at the big numbers and ask yourself, have our efforts been enough?

You should only come up with one answer to that question: No. 

The next question is tougher: What do we do now?

Crash in Butte Raises Thorny Questions

The question on everybody's mind is: Just what happened to the Pilatus PC12 that crashed on Sunday while bound for Bozeman (but diverting to Butte)? The crash killed 14 people, including the pilot, six other adults, and seven children.

You've probably read the details elsewhere, but here are the basics: The airplane flew from Redlands (located in the eastern part of the Los Angeles Basin) to Vacaville, California, then on to nearby Oroville, where it picked up passengers and headed out for Bozeman. The families aboard were reportedly heading out for a ski vacation at an exclusive ski club near there. The flight should have taken about three hours.

When the airplane was nearing Butte, the pilot told controllers that he was changing his destination from Bozeman (around 80 miles away) to Butte. This is a common enough exchange--the pilot didn't offer a reason for the diversion (or simply change of plans) and the controllers didn't ask. If anything unusual was going on with the airplane, the pilot didn't mention it to controllers.

Though speculation abounds, just what happened next is a mystery. After the pilot changed frequencies, presumably to unicom at the uncontrolled field at Butte, Bert Mooney Airport, the airplane crashed, just short of the runway, apparently in an extreme nose down attitude, into a cemetery. All 14 aboard surely died instantly.

With this crash, as with the Buffalo crash of a Q400 last month, ice is a leading suspect. Unlike in Buffalo, the PC12, if it encountered icing conditions at all, encountered them for a short period of time, and the pilot spoke with controllers after he reported having the airport in sight. But ice could explain the loss of control at low altitude without, as in Buffalo, the pilot having made any reports of control issues.

There was a post crash fire, though speculation abounds over what that means in terms of fuel remaining. One blogger pointed out that it doesn't take much of a flame to ignite a fire in pine trees, which can be seen burning in post crash photographs. Did the pilot divert because he was low on fuel? Did the crash result due to fuel exhaustion? If so, the NTSB might be able determine that, by examining the post crash fire and the patterns of the flames, among other things.

Weight and balance issues are at the forefront of the investigation, too. And everyone has been pointing out that the PC12 is certified almost always for a maximum of 11 occupants, 10 passengers and the single pilot. With 14 aboard, there were almost certainly at least three too many occupants for the number of belts available.

While some in the FAA might like to think so, airplanes don't crash because they violate FAA regulations. However, CG issues are a possibility that the NTSB is looking at closely. How was the airplane loaded? Where were the bags? How much baggage weight was there? With that many people going on a ski vacation, one might safely assume there were a lot of bags. The PC12 has both a stick shaker and a stick pusher, and the PC12 lands slowly, at just above the normal 61-knot stall speed for singles--it gets credit for the pusher and shaker, and its extremely crashworthy seats. So, while the airplane will still stall, and spin, the airplane is designed to make that as unlikely a scenario as possible. 

Then again, if there were CG issues, most likely a too far aft CG condition, all bets are off in terms of control. A question that has been asked a lot is, will the CG shift aft dramatically as the PC12 burns fuel? The answer is, no, not dramatically. Could it have been a factor still? At this point, it's impossible to rule it out. That's impossible to say right now. In fact, it's impossible to say much authoritatively at all. The NTSB is trying to find out how much fuel the airplane took on and where, the number and weight of bags and passenger loading, seating arrangements and weights. 

Which leads to another question: Was the PC12 over gross? Depending on how much fuel the pilot loaded, the answer could be "yes" or "no." The PC12 has a long range and big tanks, so it can still fly a three hour flight without full fuel. The question remains though: Might a pilot who was willing to put 14 people into an airplane certified for 11 be willing to bend other rules too? That's a question investigators will try to answer as well. It's probably moot. By the time the airplane arrived near Butte, it had burned off around three hours of fuel. If it had been over weight for takeoff, it mostly likely wasn't by that point. 

And surely the NTSB will be looking at pilot incapacitation as a possible cause. Could it be that the pilot didn't report any problem with the airplane because there was no problem with the airplane? Incapacitation can happen to any of us, and the onset can be subtle. It's also one of the hardest things for investigators to determine, especially in a crash as violent as Sundays and especially when there's a post crash fire, as there was.

Or maybe there was a problem with the airplane. There was reportedly no flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder on board, nor would one expect there to be, but the NTSB might be able to retrieve some valuable data from the engine monitoring system or the navigators, if that data is recoverable after the crash. Tracking down a mechanical problem, if there was one--and the PC12 has what appears to be an excellent safety record--would be a tough chore, but it's been done before.

In an accident as tragic as this one is and as mysterious as it's shaping up to be, any bit of evidence is critical. Because everyone wants to know what happened and why. Whether we ever learn those answers is an open question at this early stage of the investigation.

Why Experience Matters

If you've been flying for any length of time, you know that awful feeling, that sinking sensation, that knot in your gut that tells you something just isn't right. Maybe the weather is worse than forecast, or maybe the pressure to complete the flight is making you do things you're entirely comfortable doing. Take a peek at the approach, even though it's reportedly gone below minimums? Try to sneak through that maybe-too-narrow gap between storms? Push on for another leg even though you've been flying all day and you're now running on fumes? These are the kinds of decisions we can make when you put yourself in a corner.

I just got done re-reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, his 2005 look at how people approach the act of thinking "on their feet," known in scientific circles as the field of "rapid cognition."

Gladwell's premise, and he jumps right into it, is that in order to pull off the incredibly complex feats we people do all the time, like navigate city streets on foot or fly a night approach to an unfamiliar airport with high terrain all around, we need to use a part of our brain that makes decisions before our conscious brain gets involved in the act. Otherwise, we'd never act in time to get out of the way of that speeding truck or throw in that extra jab of rudder when that crosswind gust catches us.

In most parts of our life we've been taught to do just the opposite, to gather evidence, weigh it, and only then come up with a decision, a carefully considered plan of action that takes into consideration every bit of data we can dredge up. Gladwell's research, however, found that the opposite approach is often the better one. By going with that gut feeling, we nearly always come up with the right answer even before our conscious brain gets involved. Ever made a gut decision to turn around on a particularly challenging flight? Did you regret that decision? The answer, I can tell you without knowing any of the details, is almost certainly that you did not regret the call. Had you, in fact, thought about it more, weighed the pluses and minuses, you might not have had the option any more of turning back.

And Gladwell makes the case that experience matters, not so much in how we perform the physical skills we use to go about our job or daily life but in making those tough calls we're sometimes forced to make. Although Blink is not about flying per se, Gladwell's research showed that those people in whatever walk of life who had gained a great deal of experience got better at listening to that inner voice and knowing what to make of what it said.

As pilots, the lessons are many. Uncomfortable with the guy you're flying with? You probably want to listen to that feeling. A little sick and tired and not quite sure that today's the best day to make that long flight? Your inner voice sounds pretty smart to me. Feeling as though a circling approach to an unfamiliar airport at night might not be the best thing to do? Listen, and go to that airport just a little farther away with a big fat ILS waiting for you like a friendly port in a storm.

The message is, that little voice inside has much to teach us.  And experience teaches us to really hear that little voice and pay attention to the important things it has to say.

by Robert Goyer

Fat Cats

We pilots are in the midst of a culture war regarding the use of business aircraft. The new battlefront is perhaps the most serious that GA has ever faced, and that is, the perception that what we do is an expensive and wholly unnecessary luxury. 

Two parts of that equation are undeniable. It is expensive and it is a luxury, at least when compared to the survival course that is commercial air travel as we know it today.

But the last part of that equation, the "wholly unnecessary part," is the notion that we need to argue, and we're, thankfully, doing it. Taken by surprise initially, the business aviation community is finally waging a fight on that front by explaining that business aviation makes sense. NBAA is doing it, by resurrecting its No Plane, No Gain campaign, and individual companies,like Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft, are joining in with their own educational programs.

That we're having this discussion at all is sad commentary on the level of hypocrisy and cynicism from Washington's decision makers, that has them thumbing their noses at business aviation flyers.

Does what they're saying make sense, though?

Let's put one user to the test.

The head of a large organization has meetings in both Europe and the Middle East in the same week. Instead of flying readily available commercial flights, this bigwig takes a $50 million Gulfsteam GV outfitted with state of the art creature comforts.

The trip goes off very successfully, saving days of travel time in the process and allowing the organizational head to conduct important business along the way while maintaining a high level of security befitting the position.

Fat cat or savvy leader? You make the call. In case you haven't figured it out, it's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton I'm talking about. And she's far from the only federal employee making use of business aviation to do her job better. It's part of the fabric of getting business done in this new world.

So the question is, how can Washington on one hand make perfectly sensible use of business aircraft and on the other hand vilify those who do the same thing in the private sector?

That's the question we need to asking them.—By Robert Goyer

Funny Ideas about Eclipse

Hindsight is 20/20, and when it comes to the sad saga of Eclipse, our foresight was pretty much 20/20 too. From the get-go, we said the price was too low, the engines too small, the projected performance too ambitious and the market too, well, imaginary. 

But when the leadership truly believes that its course is on target and the evidence--and the mounting evidence--be damned, there's not much wiggle room for changing that plan. Until things are desperate. And by then, as we saw, it was too late. Far too late.

Which is why the plan formulated by businessman Phil Friedman to acquire the assets of Eclipse and put it back into production, eventually, is so bittersweet. Everything he's saying is what we've been saying all along.

And we're rooting for somebody to resurrect the Eclipse effort. It would be great to see the fleet supported and the airplane get a real lease on life. After all, right now, the continued airworthiness of the EA500 is not a given. And if new airplanes are eventually built, and built right, all the better.

And the plan that Friedman is putting forth, should he indeed be successful in buying the company's assets at the bankruptcy auction, is strikingly similar to the plan that we proposed Eclipse follow oh so many years ago.

1. Price the airplane realistically. Friedman is looking at a price point of about $2.5 million, for a complete airplane, something Eclipse never delivered.

2. Make the business plan make sense. Friedman says he wants to first get the existing 260 airplanes into the same, final configuration. That means owners will have to pay for it. And it won't be cheap. He's not saying how much, but depending on what upgrades the airplane in question has already had, it could be as much as half a million per airplane, or more. And remember, that owners have already "paid" for it, so it'll be a hard check to write. Only then would the new Eclipse start making new airplanes.

3. Have a realistic market outlook. Friedman says the ongoing market might be a hundred airplanes a year at the $2.5 million price. In good times, that's a reasonable plan. And it's a far cry from the 2,000 airplanes a year that Eclipse fantasized about way back when.

Whether it turns into an airplane company or not, Friedman's proposal underscores the kind of unrealistic thinking that got Eclipse into trouble from the start. While the original leadership succeeded in developing a core constituency of ardent followers, all the power of positive thought that generated could never be transformed into an actual product.

That process takes a healthy dose of realism and the ability to recognize that there are indeed limits to all things, in terms of aaerodynamics, market forces, financial realities and customers' patience.

Friedman with his proposed New Eclipse seems to get all of that.

It's a great start to a long trip.—By Robert Goyer