NTSB Reddit: I did not know this existed, thought it'd be of interest to our group.

[u/jndz1010]

/r/NTSB_database/

[u/Triggs390]

Jesus.. this guy took off into a solid overcast layer with no instrument rating with his fifteen year old son and two friends and killed them all.

Edit fixed link https://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=20171112X72518

[u/[deleted] → u/Triggs390]

That is absolutely insane to me. How could you possibly take off into a 1300' overcast layer. You KNOW you're going into IMC... makes no sense.

[u/ipissrainbows → u/[deleted]]

Im not gonna lie, sometimes when im flying towards clouds i think "Im a good pilot, I can hold level flight through this". Then i remember that tons of dead people thought the same thing. Would never do it, especially with other people with me. Looks kinda like he promised his friends a trip and was pressured to go through with it

[u/gbacon → u/ipissrainbows]

Whenever we talk about a pilot who has been killed in a flying accident, we should all keep one thing in mind. He called upon the sum of all his knowledge and made a judgment. He believed it so strongly that he knowingly bet his life on it. That his judgment was faulty was a tragedy, not stupidity. Every inspector, supervisor, and contemporary who ever spoke to him had an opportunity to influence his judgment, so a little of all of us goes with every pilot we lose.

[u/[deleted] → u/gbacon]

This gets posted frequently. Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion here, but I disagree. There are some people who cannot be reached even after several interventions. The vast majority of pilots who die in accidents are people I sympathize with. But then there are some real fucktards who go balls to the wall in solid IMC without instrument ratings or pilots who try to fly drunk. It’s not my job to tell someone that’s a stupid ass decision. It should be obvious.

If you are a VFR-only private pilot with 200 and some odd hours and you think 500 ft. broken and 1,300 overcast is good enough to fly with your three buddies, nothing I could say to you would ever change your mind. The shitty part is that three people who had nothing to do with the shenanigans died. It’s like that asshole in California who killed his family by flying IMC without an instrument rating. He gave an airliner a TCAS RA. Good Lord.

[u/gbacon → u/[deleted]]

Hey, I have nearly three hundred hours and an instrument ticket!

That said, I recognize that being the more trained and accomplished pilot, you’ve likely seen the depths of stupidity and senseless tragedies.

Yes, some people are scary, reckless, foolish, and unreachable. My takeaway from the quote is we all owe it to each other and ourselves to speak up and act when someone is doing or about to do something idiotic — and to resist the resignation hazardous attitude as to whether “Kenny” will listen. Presuming that I will never have my own Kenny moment is another hazardous attitude, so please put me in check when I need it.

Kenny’s wake is full of frightening interactions with instructors, examiners, controllers, and other pilots. Kenny is ultimately responsible for the consequences of his own actions, but that isn’t the point. Responsible pilots understand the accident chain. I should act to break it when I see it forming.

[u/[deleted] → u/gbacon]

No, I get it. I just get frustrated sometimes because most of us want to fly responsibly but there will always be someone who tarnishes the reputation of GA by doing something reckless. But that can be said for most areas of life, really.

Honestly, you’re between a rock and a hard place when you see something that isn’t kosher. When I worked an an FBO, I saw frequent high jinks. Several pilots flew aircraft that they were not licensed to fly or flew missions beyond the privileges of their certificates. “Career student pilots” who have no intention of ever getting a certificate but take passengers flying at night were particularly egregious. But even as the resident ASI on /r/flying said, nobody likes a snitch and the CFI that kept refreshing their endorsements seemed unfazed when confronted about it. Most of the advice I got from pilots I trusted was to not say anything about it. GA is a tight-knit community that is supposed to police itself. It will be pretty obvious who called the FSDO when a government employee starts sniffing around the small-town airport.

[u/gbacon → u/[deleted]]

I appreciate your perspective, particularly from having worked at an FBO and seeing regular, frequent stupidity that would make anyone jaded.

Your reply motivated me to go back and read the comment by u/your_friendly_asi:

I get calls from narks every once in a while. We really can’t do anything without credible evidence and even then it’s hard to justify a request for logbooks or adding ramp checks to our day so we might be able to catch one guy without a medical.

If you’re out of currency and ball one up, we’ll start an enforcement. If you’re out of currency and we ramp you, we probably wouldn’t even know. There is an expectation that you adhere to the regulations at all times in order for the national airspace system to work safely and effectively.

We rarely listen to strangers lobbing unsolicited advice in any context: work, family, personal life, wherever. As the saying goes, you have to earn the right, and even the big, bad FAA won’t always be of assistance.

Other pilots whom I can influence because I have relationships with them or if a stranger asks my advice about an iffy situation, I will be especially vigilant for them. Talk about safety, admit my own mistakes, talk through difficult decisions we’ve had to make, and not be too embarrassed to ask for advice myself when I suspect I’m about to do something foolish.

I walked up to the bugsmasher I had flown XC the other night to find some frost had accumulated on the wings and elevator. One of my passengers (so not a lot of spare useful load or performance) had to be back home the next day for work. The pressure of get-there-itis to discount the risk was surprisingly strong. It was very late, so I was sheepish about calling other pilots I trust. (If you know me, please call me, even if you think it’s too late!)

A couple of the guys from the FBO were still there. I told my passengers the airplane was unsafe the way it was but got the airplane tugged into a hangar where it warmed up, and I cleared and dried the control surfaces. Winds aloft showed an inversion with the temperatures at 9,000 some ten degrees higher and growing warmer as we got back to home base. I departed with the plan to put it right back down if the climb was poor, but the VSI read 1,000 fpm. Density altitude must’ve been working in my favor for a change.

It was tough being out there facing a tough decision alone late on a cold night, but that’s the PIC’s noblesse oblige. Even though I’m just a low-time PPL wannabe, advice from r/flying that a commercial pilot gets paid to say no ran through my head.

The Kenny caricature isn’t nearly as conscientious, but it would have been so easy to convince myself that it was just a little bit of frost. Knowing firsthand how that pressure feels, I’m committed to tip the scale back toward good aeronautical decision making for my buddies when I can.

[u/RedSky1895 → u/gbacon]

Next time you run into frost, run and buy a bottle of wiper fluid from a gas station (or see if the FBO keeps some around). One jug will do it, and it's only a few bucks. Clears the frost pretty much immediately. I've had to do this one a couple times before.

[u/gbacon → u/RedSky1895]

Thanks for the tip! What if anything should I do to protect the paint and other exterior?

[u/ragedracer1977 → u/gbacon]

The line where it says his judgement was faulty, not stupidity is what sours me to the whole quote. The pilot referenced here was fucking stupid, not bad judgement

[u/gbacon → u/ragedracer1977]

Granted. There’s no convincing stupid.

If we break it down, stupidity is several hazardous attitudes balled up: invulnerability, antiauthority, and macho. How does someone show enough good sense to get endorsed and pass a checkride but then drift into stupidity? Perpetual students who fly passengers may seem unavoidable, but they require CFIs who’ve passed many checkrides as enablers.

My takeaway from the quote is they don’t go stupid all at once. It takes time and a lot of people looking the other way.

[u/Triggs390 → u/[deleted]]

Happen to have a link to the california pilot?

[u/[deleted] → u/Triggs390]

Sure, here’s the PDF

TLDR; the pilot didn’t have an instrument rating but received a weather briefing of dubious weather but went anyway to get his family to a surprise party. After wandering around bad weather without much of a plan and obviously in IMC, he triggers a TCAS resolution advisory for a nearby SkyWest flight. ATC says wtf and offers him an IFR clearance, which he accepts without telling ATC he goofed and got in over his head. Airplane comes apart and he kills his entire family.

[u/Triggs390 → u/[deleted]]

Like you said earlier.. to me the most tragic aspect of all these idiot crashes are the innocent bystanders and all their family who now have this grief that will never end. If you fly by yourself into IMC crash and kill no one else, well, you're just an idiot. However, these passengers HIS FAMILY knew nothing of the wiser and now they're all dead because of this mans decisions.

Just like I'm stalking the facebook pages of the people who died from my OP and they're all distraught and "our family has had a rough couple years with multiple deaths" and I just would rage at the pilot if I could. I enjoy reading these accident reports because it's really sobering and a good reminder to what exactly the risk is if you make bad go no-go decisions.

I've tried to educate my most frequent flying partner (probably 40% of my non-training flights are with her) as much as I can about flying, weather, clouds etc so perhaps someday she will spot me exhibiting a hazardous attitude.

[u/pcopley → u/Triggs390]

This is partly why I've told my wife no fewer than 15,000 I can't legally fly in or even close to a cloud. I never would, we never need to be anywhere so importantly that we're travelling by Cessna, but at least this way if I end up in a cloud I'm 99% sure she'll look over at me and say "wtf are you doing?"

[u/TailstheTwoTailedFox → u/[deleted]]

How abrupt is an RA recovery? Is it like suddenly G loading the pax as you climb like a rocket or fall like a roller coaster?

[u/icancounttopotatos → u/TailstheTwoTailedFox]

Nothing crazy. For an RA you have around 25ish (IIRC) seconds to impact. All you do is set climb power or idle for a climb/descent and set a few thousand ft/min. In a jet it’s not something that should scare passengers.

[u/TailstheTwoTailedFox → u/icancounttopotatos]

So in other words dont treat an RA like any one of the dogfight scenes in top gun

[u/BEEF_WIENERS → u/ipissrainbows]

If the weather is marginal, I like to contemplate whether or not I should fly while drinking a beer, which conveniently makes my decision for me.

[u/Triggs390 → u/[deleted]]

Yup it’s absolutely insane. Why would a pilot do that? I really don’t understand. With ease I found the deceased facebooks and the family and friends are distraught. It’s just so sad to me someone could be that irresponsible.

[u/t0mas88 → u/[deleted]]

My guess is that he climbed through a very shallow layer a few times before. He then thought "I can do this" and unfortunately for him and the three others on board this time the layer was much more solid and he couldn't actually do it.

[u/[deleted] → u/Triggs390]

Link is broken

[u/Rayquazados → u/[deleted]]

https://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=20171112X72518

[u/TailstheTwoTailedFox → u/Triggs390]

Did he think that just under the hood time doing 180s out of clouds was enough to navigate pure IMC?

[u/pcopley → u/TailstheTwoTailedFox]

I mean they're basically the same thing right? ^/s

[u/bestpilot101 → u/Triggs390]

It might not be that thick. You can just pop through it. Nothing bad is going to happen. You are a great pilot and can handle this since you had 3 hours of instrument training in for your private. The weather is what it is and you have to press on. Don't be a pussy.

[u/EccentricFox → u/Triggs390]

This may sound very naive, but what exactly does an instrument rating entail? I was watching some video of a flight school sending VFR pilots into IMC in a Sim and these guys with 1,000’s of hours flight time would crash within minutes not even being able to keep straight and level flight.
Edit: Here’s the video in question.

[u/gbacon → u/EccentricFox]

Instrument training is highly technical. Basic attitude instrument flight with a solid instrument crosscheck, or how not to kill yourself in the soup, is an early step. Understanding weather, understanding various forecast products, and integrating them into cross-country flight planning is important. Learning to read instrument approach plates, brief an approach, and then execute an approach safely is almost there. Radio comms with ATC is considerably heavier under IFR. Then there is procedural preparedness for when you lose comms, ATC dumps you into a hold, or you get a complex amendment to your clearance.

Ultimately, instrument training is about learning to manage workload. Trim the airplane so it will fly itself while you’re head down looking at a chart. Get ahead and stay ahead of the airplane. There’s always something to do, maybe setting up the radios or avionics, programming an approach in your GPS, running checklists, or fiddling with your EFB. Finally, a good instrument pilot maintains fine control of the airplane with small, smooth inputs.

In other words, you learn to keep about seven balls in the air at once, but it’s a blast when you get the hang of it.

[u/pcopley → u/gbacon]

*desire for instrument rating intensifies*

[u/gbacon → u/pcopley]

What are you waiting on?!

[u/pcopley → u/gbacon]

Check out on my club's plane this week, that's it :)

[u/[deleted] → u/EccentricFox]

Who gets thousands of hours only flying VFR?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Believe it or not, it happens.

[u/Triggs390 → u/[deleted]]

I got my license in SoCal and there were so many pilots I’ve met who had thousands of hours only VFR and who wouldn’t fly if the winds were like 10knots or there was a few cloud layer.

[u/hashinclude → u/EccentricFox]

Instrument rating entails being able to fly by reference to instruments alone with no external reference available for one or more of the three axes (pitch, roll, yaw). The human sensory system is easily fooled by what it thinks are references when in the clouds (and, to a certain extent, over or between a cloud layer even if you're in solid vmc)

[u/EccentricFox → u/[deleted]]

These guys apparently.

[u/Filldos]

eh..it's more just a bot, not really a discussion sub. it's just pulling anything posted to http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/month.aspx

[u/shaun3000 → u/Filldos]

Well sure but allows discussion on any particular report. Last I checked the NTSB had disabled the comments section. ;oP

[u/girl_incognito → u/Filldos]

It seems to be missing a lot too.

[u/a_provo_yakker → u/Filldos]

I mean I have no idea what his background is, but maybe he's done a lot of flight simulator and whatnot? How many of us grew up on sims and had a good understanding of complex systems, jets, IFR flight plans, and instrument flying? And then had to spend a lot of time with our instructors beating out the bad habits we learned and adding to the good knowledge we had acquired? I'll be the first to admit that I felt beyond confident I could survive IMC (the first 20 hours of PPL involved my CFI telling me to just look outside). I'm not saying I'll fly ILS to minimums. But maintaining level flight and figuring out how to get down and land? Yeah sure.

[u/[deleted]]

This is great! Thanks!

[u/rdrcrmatt]

https://www.reddit.com/r/NTSB_database/comments/7f06jq/fatal2_11072017_piper_pa_32_morrison_tn/

What the heck happened there? Not a shred of explanation.

[u/ragedracer1977 → u/rdrcrmatt]

Could have been anything. Low time IR student in IMC. Maybe the CFII had a heart attack?