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Midair Collision over Denver

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Re: Midair Collision over Denver

#171

Post by maigret »

elliekelly wrote: post #164
sokoloff wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no emergency-specific fees. Whether Newark (I think it was EWR, not LGA) would assess a normal landing fee is probably not a consideration for the pilot, especially back then. Landing fees are quite reasonable. Off peak, the landing fee would be $25 now. On peak, it would be $125. https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/pdfs/scheduleofc...

Wow that's surprisingly low! I was imagining the fee was thousands of dollars.

It depends on your aircraft weight basically

Re: Midair Collision over Denver

#172

Post by mdip »

sokoloff wrote: post #85
qayxc wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The weight is so critical that the 7-seat plane can realistically only seat 4-5 adults. I think you overlooked an important factor there. The plane was indeed designed to realistically seat 7 adults. The issue is that in the 50 years since the plane was originally designed, the average weight of adults (in the US) increased by about 18% [0] and the average adult woman today weighs as much as the average adult man i…

I find it very hard to agree that a PA-32 was "designed to realistically seat 7 adults". I don't think they even imagined 6 adults as a typical cabin load, but rather a max of 4 adults and 2 kids and a typical of 2 adults and 2-4 kids. It is one of the more roomy cabins among light singles, but every one of them that I see for listed for sale right now is configured with seating for only 6, which is great for 2 adult…

You're probably right -- I likely have the number wrong. In fact, I was able to find the craft in a database online (still reporting my Dad's corporation as the owner, so it's not perfect) and it indicated 6.

I recall him saying 7, but that was a few decades ago (the plane was destroyed by its new owners in 2006, and I hadn't flown in it since a few years prior to that). :)

Re: Midair Collision over Denver

#173

Post by mdip »

hirundo wrote: post #107
mdip wrote: post #62

Wow, that's incredible. Goes to show that people do walk away from plane crashes with some regularity. My father was a pilot[0]. He sold his plane about 15 years ago (to a group of owners, one of which was a priest, I'm sure there's a joke in there). A few of winters later, he was called out to Romeo Airport; the pilot flying the plane that was formerly his had crashed the aircraft a few miles short of the runway in…

> It's hard to impress upon folks who have never been in a small plane like that just how ... yeah ... how much it feels like you're hanging onto a kite. Years ago I was doing pilot training in a Cessna 152. A coworker of mine was a retired Navy captain and instructor at the TOPGUN program, with hundreds of carrier landings in an F-14. He looked at me like I was crazy. He said those little planes were deathtraps and…

I'm glad my Dad's not flying any longer. He was doing very long (multiple stops for re-fueling, flying on some form of breathing tank[0]) trips. He can go on for hours (and we let him) about stories of how he almost didn't make it home due to X or Y[1].

And he joked that every gauge/gadget on the dashboard that didn't come with the plane was there because "if I had it when X happened, X wouldn't have happened" (...or I wouldn't have left the ground knowing the condition existed, or it would have warned me with well enough time to get to safety before I have to be met by emergency vehicles on the tarmac).

Funny enough, he would get a little uncomfortable flying commercial. I'm not sure if he was putting on a show for us kids or if he was serious but he'd say he "didn't like someone else in charge of the plane". My Dad flew GA (alone) a few times a week most weeks, so he was unusually experienced for a small plane pilot.

[0] He had a breathing apparatus that allowed him to fly at higher altitudes in the unpressurized cabin, IIRC, but I'm not a pilot.

[1] Except, when he tells it, he was never in any danger. Doesn't matter if he's hanging an arm out the window trying to manually spin the prop, "it was always under control.". Uh huh.

Re: Midair Collision over Denver

#174

Post by cameldrv »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #138
sokoloff wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is indeed the early experience with BRS, which has been substantially addressed via training which started with some complex scenario-based messaging and later evolved to a more simplified “pull early, pull often” which has resulted in a bias in a better direction for human safety.

What's the risk to the people below? I'm reminded of a 2011 airshow crash of a Red Arrows T1 jet which, at least according to this account, [0] may have involved the pilot heroically making the decision not to personally eject, but to crash the aircraft away from crowded areas, perishing as a result. Of course, the aircraft itself had no parachute, unlike a Cirrus. (Also, I'm uncertain if that account of the incident…

There’s a huge difference in the danger to those on the ground between an 15000 lb fighter jet going hundreds of mph and a small 3000 lb airplane descending at about 15 mph (plus the wind speed).

It’s possible that the Cirrus could hurt or kill someone but I don’t think it’s happened in the about 100 parachute activations so far.

Re: Midair Collision over Denver

#175

Post by azalemeth »

sokoloff wrote: post #136
t0mas88 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes things a lot harder for the Cirrus pilot. Easy to get the lineup slightly wrong with for example some wind correction in from far away. Crazy that ATC had them do this at the same altitude as conflicting traffic with no underlying approach as a safety net. You can ask someone not to go through final, but that's very easy to miss judge from a couple of miles away.

Slightly harder? I'd agree with that. A lot harder? 20 hour student pilots make visual turns from base to final from 3 miles out every day. This is not Top Gun material.

My gut feeling is that a deconfliction policy will appear on the charts and in the airport's procedures. Just because something can be done correctly, if the momentary-cockup-consequence is potentially the death of a large number of people, it's a good idea to make sure that there's some sort of defence in depth.

Re: Midair Collision over Denver

#176

Post by BashiBazouk »

mdip wrote: post #62

Wow, that's incredible. Goes to show that people do walk away from plane crashes with some regularity. My father was a pilot[0]. He sold his plane about 15 years ago (to a group of owners, one of which was a priest, I'm sure there's a joke in there). A few of winters later, he was called out to Romeo Airport; the pilot flying the plane that was formerly his had crashed the aircraft a few miles short of the runway in…

I once witnessed an airplane crash that everyone survived. I was a preteen hanging around outside the Scotts Valley roller rink with a friend in the early eighties. The roller rink is next to the now defunct airfield. The airfield was lower than the rink by an embankment. We had recently been watching Jaws on Betamax and my most persistent memory is seeing only the tail crossing the field. It reminded me of a shark fin moving through the water, as the embankment was high enough that I could not see the body of the plane. Then bam, the plane hit the embankment right in front of me, caught air then crashed nose down. I think the plane was a Piper but my knowledge of small craft is limited. It was definitely a wing under. My friend ran to get his father and we all ran over to the wreck. My friend's father opened the doors and everyone but the pilot was able to get out by themselves. The pilot had hit his head on something and his face was covered in blood but alive. I found out from press reports later that was the only time I "met" Steve Wozniak.

Edit: just looked it up. The plane was a Beechcraft Bonanza A36TC.

Re: Midair Collision over Denver

#177

Post by mdip »

osenthuortuh wrote: post #101
sillysaurusx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did his wife survive?

The second link is the crash report. There were four occupants and only one fatality, so only he died. Looks like he tried to land in bad weather, descended before he could see the runway, and clipped some trees. Weather is an alarmingly common cause of accidents in general aviation.

So the "details" are a little off. There wasn't rain, it was an outright winter storm. The pilot was VFR and should not have been flying in that weather.

I don't know what the characteristics are of that airport but I've been in the plane during a really touchy landing in bad snow, before. The occupants described that "everything seemed fine", they were coming out of the clouds and expecting to see the runway up ahead, but instead found tree-tops.

In the case of landing with my Dad in similar weather, the clouds were very low, he had no visual and was reaching the point where he'd have to put it down or abort the landing[0] when he suddenly flung the clipboard at my mom's lap and grabbed onto the yoke.

We were on the ground in a few tense seconds and I've never seen my Dad jump like that -- it seriously freaked me the hell out. His explanation was that he had already decided to abort the landing when the clouds broke and he realized he was in a good position to put it down. I get the impression that he was a little surprised about the position he was actually in -- and it was an uncharacteristically violent landing.

[0] I'm not sure what the technical details are or if I am getting that right...

Re: Midair Collision over Denver

#178

Post by mdip »

strogonoff wrote: post #143
osenthuortuh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second link is the crash report. There were four occupants and only one fatality, so only he died. Looks like he tried to land in bad weather, descended before he could see the runway, and clipped some trees. Weather is an alarmingly common cause of accidents in general aviation.

> Weather is an alarmingly common cause of accidents in general aviation. Or—to rewind the causal chain just a little further—pilot hubris, impatience and/or ignorance, which leads to weather being a factor in the first place. The choice to wing it and hope bad weather in the area will not affect you is the pilot’s. From my shallow study of fatal and non-fatal GA accidents, there is hardly ever such a combination of…

Without reviewing your profile, I'm just going to guess you're a pilot or you know pilots -- just from this:

  > Or—to rewind the causal chain just a little further--pilot hubris, impatience and/or ignorance, which leads to weather being a factor in the first place. The choice to wing it and hope bad weather in the area will not affect you is the pilot’s.
My Dad says "it's always pilot error" and backs them up with statements like this. And he accepts that fault on himself. These are obvious things, too -- in the case of this crash, the pilot was VFR rated and as my Dad harshly put it "had no business being where he was in that weather".

But he really meant everything is the pilots fault. I heard him explaining to someone that there's ultimately no other valid excuse. When his engine failed over Lake Michigan, it was pilot error because he didn't have the necessary instruments to detect a common engine condition that would have prevented him from taking off had he known it was happening.

I think it's a little extreme, but frankly, I want the person flying my plane to have that attitude for themselves!

Re: Midair Collision over Denver

#179

Post by EricE »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #138
sokoloff wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is indeed the early experience with BRS, which has been substantially addressed via training which started with some complex scenario-based messaging and later evolved to a more simplified “pull early, pull often” which has resulted in a bias in a better direction for human safety.

What's the risk to the people below? I'm reminded of a 2011 airshow crash of a Red Arrows T1 jet which, at least according to this account, [0] may have involved the pilot heroically making the decision not to personally eject, but to crash the aircraft away from crowded areas, perishing as a result. Of course, the aircraft itself had no parachute, unlike a Cirrus. (Also, I'm uncertain if that account of the incident…

>What's the risk to the people below?

A lot less than from a plane traveling at terminal velocity!

Re: Midair Collision over Denver

#180

Post by dehrmann »

mdip wrote: post #62

Wow, that's incredible. Goes to show that people do walk away from plane crashes with some regularity. My father was a pilot[0]. He sold his plane about 15 years ago (to a group of owners, one of which was a priest, I'm sure there's a joke in there). A few of winters later, he was called out to Romeo Airport; the pilot flying the plane that was formerly his had crashed the aircraft a few miles short of the runway in…

> how much it feels like you're hanging onto a kite

The two "small" planes I've ridden in were a Cessna and an L-39. The Cessna felt like a toy, and the L-39 was a serious piece of hardware. Landings were also very different; the Cessna just got tossed around a lot more.

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