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An Aerobatics Crash . . . and thoughts about Missions, Hardware and Risk

The tragic death this weekend of former national unlimited aerobatics champion and International Aerobatic Club president Vicki Cruse hit the aerobatics community hard. Cruse was killed during a practice flight at the World Aerobatic Championships in England when her Zivko Edge 540 crashed.

Even for a segment of aviation, competition aerobatics, that lives within the penumbra of tragedy, Cruse's death hit hard, in part because she was meticulous about her preparation and she was at the top of her game, looking forward to a chance to realize her dream of winning a world aerobatics championship. The crash came out of nowhere and seemed to defy explanation. When such a tragedy strikes, it's natural to think, "It couldn't happen to me." But in this case, the opposite conclusion is the more natural one. It seemed as though it could have happened to any aerobatic pilot.

In terms of raw statistics, the accident was not a surprise. Like flying in general, aerobatics are inherently risky, only much more so. The margins of safety in aerobatic flight are slim, and the machines, and their pilots, are pushed to their limits on each and every flight. A friend who is an aerobatic pilot once told me that her RRolodex is sprinkled with the business cards of colleagues who are no longer with us. It's the cruel nature of the game.

What can we run-of-the-mill pilots take away from the tragedy?

For one thing, we can take some solace in the fact that what we do is a great deal less risky--I won't say "safer"--than what aerobatics pilots do. Your chances of dying in a Cessna 172 on a typical short transportation flight are very slim when compared to the risk of doing inverted flat spins at 1,000 feet agl. And to some degree, the more proficient a pilot you are and the safer you fly, the lower your risk.

But it's important, I think, to remember that our risk is closely tied not only to how we train and fly but to what we fly and for what missions. That same 172, with its one engine, one pilot and single-string systems, will never be as safe as a Cessna Citation with two of everything, especially since those things, like engines and pilots and so forth, are stronger and more reliable than the systems in the single.

And the missions are, likewise, different. There is in corporate and airline flying very little guesswork involved in how the flight will go. Occasionally there will be a deviation ten degrees right or left for weather, or in extreme cases, a diversion to a different landing field. But the rule in flying jets is predictability. When you know what you're going to be doing and how you're going to be doing it---because you've done it many times before--the chances of something going wrong are much, much lower.

In my flying that's not the case. When I head from Austin to Duluth in my PlaneSmart SR22, let's say, there are a great number of variables. I'm a single pilot, so there's no backup there. The SR22 has one engine. No backup there either. Weather affects a light single a great deal more than it does a twinjet, so there's increased risk there. And the fact that I've flown the route five times, instead of 50, makes it less predictable, meaning, again, more risk.

Vicki Cruse, like each and every one of her colleagues, knew that what she was doing was risky. But for her, the rewards outweighed--greatly outweighed--the risks.

And that's the same calculus we as pilots are all faced with. What we fly, on what missions and how we approach that flying all has to be calculated into our risk assessment. Thinking that somehow your high level of flying skill exempts you from risk is an adolescent attitude, or worse.

Minimizing those risks, by rejecting hazardous missions and by being honest with yourself about your limitations, and those of your airplane, are smart, realistic and the best way to tip the risk equation in your favor.

Hudson Disaster Reveals What Non-PIlots Don't Get About Flying

The tragic mid-air collision last Saturday between a Piper Saratoga and a sightseeing helicopter, a  Eurocopter AS350. resulted in the loss of nine lives, three aboard the Piper and six on the Eurocopter  It was a classic case of see-and-avoid not being enough, a classic case of the "Big Sky" theory failing (as it is bound to do at some point), and a classic case, most likely, of two pilots being guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place a the wrong time. It could happen to any of us, and those of us who think it can't are simply in denial. While rare, midairs are not unknown . . . in the United States over the last ten years there have been around six a year, and they're an unusually deadly type of accident. They result on average in around 16 deaths a year.

Now, something you might have remarked upon is the fact that people, non-pilots, specifically, are still talking about this mid-air. That is because it happened in the heart of New York, the most populous city in the country and headquarters to the nation's television news industry. 

Not to imply that the media is beating this drum too loudly; people clearly wanted to hear the news about it, in part because it was such a horrific accident but in larger part because it happened in New York City.

But it's more than that, too. Air crashes are fascinating and terrifying to nearly everyone, but to non-pilots in particular. There's an air of mystery and a lack of control involved in an airplane accident that horrifies the imagination unlike other mishaps.

Which explains why so little attention is paid to other threats New Yorkers face on a daily basis. Did you know, for instance, that each year around 500 people are murdered in New York? (That figure is down from an average of more than 2,000 a year only a few years back.) And there are on average nearly 300 traffic deaths each year in the City, as well. While generally aware that they have a murder and traffic safety problem, New Yorkers are typically not typically horrified by these facts. Indeed, they take them as a regrettable cost of living in a large urban environment.

Another reason for the attention this accident has received is that non-pilots are learning things about aviation in general and New York airspace in particular that fly in the face of some cherished assumptions.

In particular, your average non-flyer believes that every flight is under what we know as "positive control." In their mind, a controller tells every pilot what to do and where to be at every moment. Moreover, they believe that controllers have the ability to foresee collisions and, hence, prevent them from happening.

As we know, neither of things is true. Should airplanes flying the Hudson Corridor be under positive control, as is required inside the Class B Airspace? It would be possible, of course, with the addition of millions of dollars worth of equipment and more controllers to handle the job of controlling these aircraft flying the corridor. But the truth is, it would probably not cut down on mid-air collisions, because there are hardly any mid-air collisions on the Hudson Corridor to begin with.

And while the loss of life is a terrible thing, it is a testament to how well the system works that mid-airs in such a confined piece of airspace with so many airplanes in it are such rare events.

Could the system be tweaked? Probably. Some have suggested segregating sightseeing helicopters and transiting traffic. It's an idea worth exploring. But making wholesale changes to a system that largely works is missing the point. Flying, like the rest of life, has risks. Sometimes terrible things happen, as was the case on Saturday. Let's hope the alarmists, some of whom are calling for the Corridor to close, will take a moment to take a deep breath, mourn the loss of those who died and then move on . . .  intelligently, hopefully working to make an already largely safe system safer still.

The Electric Revolution Begins

If you were at AirVenture last week you probably at least heard people talking about electric-poweredairplanes. There were at least three of them there at the show, and one, the Yuneec e 430 is actually a commercial product. You can reserve one today for around $90,000, and Yuneec expects to be delivering them soon.

Is it a viable product, though? Well, it actually sounds as though it's close to that. With a big battery pack, the airplane can fly for up to three hours, and there's plenty of available payload. (Strangely, with this airplane, there's no fuel weight; the batteries are part of the airframe and electrons, last time I checked, didn't weigh much.) So, you can get two good-sized guys in there and go flying for three hours. With the equivalent of 54 hp, you won't go very fast, 60 knots or so, and you won't go very far. And because you're battery powered, you'd better be landing somewhere you can stay for a three or four hours, if you can find a place to plug in, that is.

Flight schools have already begun to express interest, and with "fuel" costs of around $2.50 an hour, compared with roughly 7 or 8 gallons per hour at $4.00 a gallon, that cost is very low. Sure, the batteries cost a lot, as much as a small used car, but the engine overhaul and maintenance costs are pennies on the dollar. And a flight school could always have spare battery packs charging waiting to be popped into an airplane that was "out of fuel." That model makes excellent sense. Cross country flight is another matter.

But even that is likely to change soon. The most promising idea is hybrid power, with a small (or not so small) gas or diesel engine powering the airplane when the charge runs low, or for climb, and charging the batteries up in the process. Fifteen or 20 hour endurance figures are not out of the question.

Until we see significant advances in battery storage capacity, which is almost a certainty, the electric technology we see today is an interim step. Promising, but not good or affordable enough for mainstream users to adopt. And electrics probably have their limits. Without some unimaginable breakthrough, an electric-powered King Air remains the stuff of science fiction.