Accident Case Study: Just a Short Flight

I wish AOPA would do more of these videos. They are very well produced and hard-hitting reminders of what can go wrong up there.
 
So, boils down to someone who barely had the skills to fly, teaching someone else who barely had skills to fly and neither one of them actually flying the plane.

The PIC had bad skills doing a circling approach and the other pilot had bad skills on approaches in general. The other pilot flew the approach he sucked at and was totally unqualified to do, and the PIC flew the approach HE sucked at. Both did it while not paying attention.

Not really surprising this was the result..though good news no one else was on board.
 
Caramon13 said:
So, boils down to someone who barely had the skills to fly, teaching someone else who barely had skills to fly and neither one of them actually flying the plane.
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This can sum up most of the 121/135 Operations crashes lately. In a two pilot environment a weak pilot can manage to succeed, until they are paired with another weak pilot and have something out of the ordinary happen. There needs to be a way to label or rate pilots at that level, to avoid such pairings.
 
Those guys were doomed and behind the airplane before they got in it
 
I can’t even believe a 1200 hr guy getting the right seat of a Lear jet after essentially failing everything in SIM
 
Put folks in a group and the group intelligence descends to that of the least intelligent member, unless one of the smart ones acts as alpha individual.
 
Those guys were doomed and behind the airplane before they got in it. Tough to read or listen to those transcripts.
 
I can see how things in the cockpit can go south in a hurry. But somehow, sitting in the comfort of an operations room on the ground, the PIC thought that climbing to FL270 on a trip from Philly to Teterboro was a reasonable thing to do. That indicates he had no concept of basic geography and flight planning, or just wasn't paying attention.
 
I watched the video to refresh my memory of this accident. In summary, you had a Captain that did not act as PIC, he didn't want to fly the airplane nor be "In-Command". You had an SIC that at the end of the day wasn't qualified as such. If he was not qualified to touch the controls, then that doesn't rank as SIC to me. No such category as PM only should exist. If you can't pass the basic minimums for SIC training, you have no business being in that seat.

In short, there was no PIC, a Captain who only wanted to be SIC at best, and a passenger posing as SIC flying an ultra high performance legacy Learjet into the busiest airspace in the world. The only fortunate part is they had no one else on board, and didn't take anyone out on the ground.
 
I remember this accident from another board.
Yes they were behind the plane even before they left the ground.
I watched the accident video and found another video showing a Lear shooting the identical approach.
Too many people on that board got hung up on it being classified as a "circling" approach, when in effect it was nothing more than a side step or dog leg at a known fix on an ILS to another runway in VFR conditions.
They flew way past that fix for the turn, and that stuffed themselves into a box that they couldn't recover from.
 
Rick182 said:
I wish AOPA would do more of these videos. They are very well produced and hard-hitting reminders of what can go wrong up there.
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1) Thankfully, this kind of completely preventable accident has gone down in occurrence.

2) These videos are apparently incredible resource intensive, and not just money. Time to edit, interview, get background, etc is astronomical. Hence they can only do 2-4 a year
 
There have been several videos (including one from the NTSB
) and article on this on (I think even Peter Garrison did an Aftermath column on it.)
It just sickens me to think that the plane could have been full of paying customers.
 
midwestpa24 said:
In a two pilot environment a weak pilot can manage to succeed, until they are paired with another weak pilot and have something out of the ordinary happen.
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And that is what bothers me is nothing out of the ordinary happened as far as the flight should have gone. It was just a simple fly the vectors as ATC directed, intercept and track the localizer inbound and make a simple dog leg to the other runway from a specified point. It really can't get any easier since the flight was done in just about a clear sky.
 
Short flights can be the toughest, especially in a faster piston, never mind a jet. Need to stay ahead of the airplane, and never forget about aerodynamics and how airplanes fly.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
It just sickens me to think that the plane could have been full of paying customers.
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Problem is that this particular approach/landing scenario cannot be tested for the privilege of carrying paying customers. There is a specific, limited set of operations that can be tested, and most pilots could be trained to pass the test.
 
AKBill said:
I think they said wanted a go around or missed, but they stalled before recovering from the steep turn
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I thought the tower controller said to go missed, but either way the PIC should have gone missed way earlier. I’ve never heard so many missed calls and missed instructions! As screwed up as the flight was, if the had started the circle at the proper fix, they might have lived. At least a few more days!
 
N747JB said:
I thought the tower controller said to go missed, but either way the PIC should have gone missed way earlier. I’ve never heard so many missed calls and missed instructions! As screwed up as the flight was, if the had started the circle at the proper fix, they might have lived. At least a few more days!
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I think these guys had no situational awareness. It just didn't click how short this ride was and they were just not with the program. Very sad and they paid the ultimate price, just glad no one else was hurt. IIRC.
 
midwestpa24 said:
This can sum up most of the 121/135 Operations crashes lately. In a two pilot environment a weak pilot can manage to succeed, until they are paired with another weak pilot and have something out of the ordinary happen. There needs to be a way to label or rate pilots at that level, to avoid such pairings.
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Exactly. Just look through the NTSB docket for Giant 3591 (Atlas 767 crash last year) for another eye opening example.

The pilot shortage is real.
 
What surprised me is the number of "anti authority" and "macho" traits that were displayed. I have always downplayed the traits that the FAA describes until now.

I'm surmising that the "#" indicated cussing. Perhaps it's the way they talk up north but it certainly lacked professionalism in the cockpit and it showed in their flying. I cannot believe they put a guy in the right seat that wasn't even allowed to touch the controls.
 
Read the whole transcript sometime. The #’s are for “impertinent” words. Probably all of which started with an F. The rest of it is truly appalling, but every pilot can go down that road if he makes all the right (as in wrong) choices.
 
k9medic said:
I cannot believe they put a guy in the right seat that wasn't even allowed to touch the controls.
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I still get hung up on that. The "0" grade SIC in their system should never have been allowed to exist. The SIC should be capable of at least operating the basics of the aircraft. A PM that you don't trust to touch anything is a passenger.
 
Cheese and rice! I would not want to have one of them fly my 85 horse tin can!

there are old guys with private strips that have never had a medical and there birds not been annualled by an IA since they bought it that have more reverence for aviation than they did on that flight! Wow!
 
midwestpa24 said:
I still get hung up on that. The "0" grade SIC in their system should never have been allowed to exist. The SIC should be capable of at least operating the basics of the aircraft. A PM that you don't trust to touch anything is a passenger.
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One place I worked established a policy that new hire copilots couldn’t fly the airplane until they had 100 hours in the type or 1 year with the company. Pretty much prevented copilots from developing as crewmembers for that period, because they had no clue what the PF was doing, and had no good example of what PM duties looked like.

However misguided it may be, and not having read the docket, I’d guess it’s probably a policy like that rather than the copilot’s performance that made him a “0”.

Edit: I did scan the final report, and find it interesting that the company didn’t have any captains who could fly with an SIC-1, so there was actually no way to not be an SIC-0.
 
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MauleSkinner said:
One place I worked established a policy that new hire copilots couldn’t fly the airplane until they had 100 hours in the type or 1 year with the company. Pretty much prevented copilots from developing as crewmembers for that period, because they had no clue what the PF was doing, and had no good example of what PM duties looked like.

However misguided it may be, and not having read the docket, I’d guess it’s probably a policy like that rather than the copilot’s performance that made him a “0”.

Edit: I did scan the final report, and find it interesting that the company didn’t have any captains who could fly with an SIC-1, so there was actually no way to not be an SIC-0.
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I can understand not wanting a green SIC flying with passengers on board, scaring the hell out of them. But to not even allow them to fly on deadhead legs says they have no business being in that aircraft to begin with, or that the training and testing program is extremely lacking.
 
midwestpa24 said:
I can understand not wanting a green SIC flying with passengers on board, scaring the hell out of them. But to not even allow them to fly on deadhead legs says they have no business being in that aircraft to begin with, or that the training and testing program is extremely lacking.
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Amazing the messages that management sends sometimes simply because they don’t know what message they’re sending.
 
In the "interviews" section of the NTSB report, there were some comments about the captain that raised some red flags. These are excerpts from a few different interviews with people that flew with him.

They talked very little outside work. He knew William led an “odd life”, and had no bank accounts and only a PO box. William was nervous about the government knowing his business. For instance, at the hotel once, the clerk was going to make a copy of his ID at check-in, and he didn’t like that. He gave the clerk his airport id badge, instead. He did not know why William was that way. William was very private. They would talk about guns, and went to pawn shops and gun shows. They were not close since they did not have compatible personalities.

He had an issue once with William talking below 10,000 feet in sterile cockpit. He pulled William to the side to discuss it, and then he went on to do a good job. William was a little rough around the edges with the passengers, not presenting himself as being personable, and would drop the F-bomb very loud in the FBO and in front of passengers. It was very unusual, more so than normal. After he got through that, he did a fine job, was always on time, was never late for work, and was good employee. William was highly intelligent, but would that would also get him in trouble. At CAE, he could read and know the whole manual on an airplane, but he would also correct an instructor on things like the systems, and point out their errors. During training, it was a bit of a distraction, to the point that CAE finally had to separate him and William in the end since it was holding him back. Will did not get along with the instructors.

He knew Will had served several years in the army, and they had a common interest in guns. When asked if Will would swear in his personal life, he said Will was a Mormon, and that was a “silly question.”

Asked about William’s reputation at the company, he said he had heard stories, but did not have any specifics. He had heard William had personality differences with another pilot, but did not know the specifics on that, either. He heard stories about quirks he had, didn’t like to talk to the desk clerk at hotels, but did not see it himself.

 
Groundpounder said:
In the "interviews" section of the NTSB report, there were some comments about the captain that raised some red flags. These are excerpts from a few different interviews with people that flew with him.

They talked very little outside work. He knew William led an “odd life”, and had no bank accounts and only a PO box. William was nervous about the government knowing his business. For instance, at the hotel once, the clerk was going to make a copy of his ID at check-in, and he didn’t like that. He gave the clerk his airport id badge, instead. He did not know why William was that way. William was very private. They would talk about guns, and went to pawn shops and gun shows. They were not close since they did not have compatible personalities.

He had an issue once with William talking below 10,000 feet in sterile cockpit. He pulled William to the side to discuss it, and then he went on to do a good job. William was a little rough around the edges with the passengers, not presenting himself as being personable, and would drop the F-bomb very loud in the FBO and in front of passengers. It was very unusual, more so than normal. After he got through that, he did a fine job, was always on time, was never late for work, and was good employee. William was highly intelligent, but would that would also get him in trouble. At CAE, he could read and know the whole manual on an airplane, but he would also correct an instructor on things like the systems, and point out their errors. During training, it was a bit of a distraction, to the point that CAE finally had to separate him and William in the end since it was holding him back. Will did not get along with the instructors.

He knew Will had served several years in the army, and they had a common interest in guns. When asked if Will would swear in his personal life, he said Will was a Mormon, and that was a “silly question.”

Asked about William’s reputation at the company, he said he had heard stories, but did not have any specifics. He had heard William had personality differences with another pilot, but did not know the specifics on that, either. He heard stories about quirks he had, didn’t like to talk to the desk clerk at hotels, but did not see it himself.
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Aside from not getting along with instructors, which by itself doesn’t say much, I don’t see much in this that would indicate a crash in the making.
 
MauleSkinner said:
Aside from not getting along with instructors, which by itself doesn’t say much, I don’t see much in this that would indicate a crash in the making.
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Shows that he was perhaps a little mentally unstable, which could could certainly lead to other issues. Cursing out the controller because they wouldn't give him FL270 on that flight reinforces my impression.
 
Groundpounder said:
Shows that he was perhaps a little mentally unstable, which could could certainly lead to other issues. Cursing out the controller because they wouldn't give him FL270 on that flight reinforces my impression.
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That may be true, but general incompetence is far more pronounced and far more relevant, IMO.
 
I enjoy watching and learning from these videos. Am glad they are making more of these.

RIP those two guys.
 
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