Youtube Pilot and her dad perish in TN

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Remember also, the forked dr killer was v tail Bonanza that above one, they were able to remove the v tail surfaces by pulling. This strait tail debonair may have had control forces she couldn't overcome when pulling enough to break the tail, but still the same condition (diving or spiral dive) to warrant that reaction. Does not excuse getting into the situation, getting into an aircraft you are not knowledgeable nor competent enough to fly in the envelope.
 
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Albany Tom said:
... The CFII's could warn her about the basics, and some may have, but don't believe they signed her off for anything.
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This gave me a thought. All this talk alluding to "the CFI should have..." had me on the defensive for the CFIs but then again...how many CFIs have any experience outside of their own trainer aircraft? Seems they're getting few and far between as we shove young pilots through the pipeline (including myself to be completely honest). Perhaps her CFIs didn't have the foggiest idea how to handle that plane either. Sure, they most likely have their complex and high-performance endorsements but outside of the bare minimum to get their advanced certifications how much experience do the young CFIs have? More specifically...do they have enough experience to teach someone in the student's own plane that they have little to no experience in the left seat of themselves? Maybe this is why her first CFII was just as behind the aircraft as she was and trying to act as copilot more often than not.

That may be a bit of word salad but I think I made my point.
 
KE5BM said:
This gave me a thought. All this talk alluding to "the CFI should have..." had me on the defensive for the CFIs but then again...how many CFIs have any experience outside of their own trainer aircraft? Seems they're getting few and far between as we shove young pilots through the pipeline (including myself to be completely honest). Perhaps her CFIs didn't have the foggiest idea how to handle that plane either. Sure, they most likely have their complex and high-performance endorsements but outside of the bare minimum to get their advanced certifications how much experience do the young CFIs have? More specifically...do they have enough experience to teach someone in the student's own plane that they have little to no experience in the left seat of themselves? Maybe this is why her first CFII was just as behind the aircraft as she was and trying to act as copilot more often than not.

That may be a bit of word salad but I think I made my point.
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every make/model has their own support group (think mooneyspace, beechtalk, etc...) where one can easily find an instructor with focused knowledge in that make/model. same with avionics, where someone out there knows how to work what you have in your panel. you just have to be the type of person that seeks that out because you want the best training in your aircraft you can get. unfortunately we don't even need to speculate whether she put the effort in to do that or not.
 
A little bit of a side note, but in our glider operation we have several students (some members of the glider club) who have been told outright by the guy in charge, something to the effect of, "You will never solo a glider here as long as I'm directing the operation.

Remarkably, you'd be surprised how many of those people continue to show up consistently for instructional flights.
 
Bill said:
For me, the buck stops with the DPE. Yes, CFIs signed her off for the ride, but a higher authority, the DPE, deemed her competent to exercise the privileges of a PPL.
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On a specific day, the DPE saw a specific set of tasks that the applicant knew were going to be expected. Some people are decent at training for the test, but either are otherwise incompetent or consider the checkride to be their peak performance, with rapid decline afterward.
 
dbahn said:
A little bit of a side note, but in our glider operation we have several students (some members of the glider club) who have been told outright by the guy in charge, something to the effect of, "You will never solo a glider here as long as I'm directing the operation.
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“If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught.”
 
Salty said:
So every student is capable of every skill if they only have the right teacher?

Seems unlikely.
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Maxims are not meant to be universal truths.

On the one hand, I’ve been frustrated by students who may have had a diagnosable learning disorder. One that I could not find a way to overcome. I don’t know how many of those did eventually find the right instructor and how many did not and gave up.

On the other hand, I did have some level of success “finishing up“ students who were stuck at some level with another instructor or instructors. Sometimes just a few hours and a new approach was all it took.

So, while I’ll stipulate there may be some students who lack the ability to become competent and safe pilots, I will always be loathe to write them off too soon.
 
Years ago I was one of the instructors working with a glider student who consistently tried to keep his body perpendicular to the horizon on every turn. I made it clear that he shouldn't solo until he corrected that habit, but I moved out of town around that time only to find that soon after that he crashed on his first solo and was badly injured, also destroying the glider. He may have been capable of overcoming that bad habit with more training, but I don't think he ever demonstrated that ability.
 
KE5BM said:
how many CFIs have any experience outside of their own trainer aircraft? Seems they're getting few and far between as we shove young pilots through the pipeline (including myself to be completely honest). Perhaps her CFIs didn't have the foggiest idea how to handle that plane either. Sure, they most likely have their complex and high-performance endorsements but outside of the bare minimum to get their advanced certifications how much experience do the young CFIs have? More specifically...do they have enough experience to teach someone in the student's own plane that they have little to no experience in the left seat of themselves? Maybe this is why her first CFII was just as behind the aircraft as she was and trying to act as copilot more often than not.
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When I was training for my CFI (in 1980) a fair amount of the training was how to familiarize myself with an unfamiliar airplane. I only had the opportunity to do that once. A friend let me borrow his C210. I checked myself out in it and flew it for many hours after. This was also long ago when I knew nothing of insurance.
I wonder if that's part of CFI training anymore?
 
dbahn said:
Years ago I was one of the instructors working with a glider student who consistently tried to keep his body perpendicular to the horizon on every turn. I made it clear that he shouldn't solo until he corrected that habit, but I moved out of town around that time only to find that soon after that he crashed on his first solo and was badly injured, also destroying the glider. He may have been capable of overcoming that bad habit with more training, but I don't think he ever demonstrated that ability.
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My wife, sweet as she is, has the same problem. When she drives a car she can't turn her head, else she runs off the road. She's in her 40's and apparently been driving like that all her life. I would NEVER put her at the controls. My 13-old son is more trusted with the airplane controls than my wife.

Some people should just never attempt being a pilot.

I'm sure that problem of "go where your eyes are looking" is a disaster waiting to happen in IMC.

In case someone is chiming into this thread late, the pilot, Jenny had this problem. It was in several of her videos.
 
Lon Stratton said:
When I was training for my CFI (in 1980) a fair amount of the training was how to familiarize myself with an unfamiliar airplane. I only had the opportunity to do that once. A friend let me borrow his C210. I checked myself out in it and flew it for many hours after. This was also long ago when I knew nothing of insurance.
I wonder if that's part of CFI training anymore?
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For the most part, I’d say no. Most of the instructors I’ve dealt with over the years should have “Archer” instead of “airplane single engine land” on their instructor certificates.
 
MauleSkinner said:
For the most part, I’d say no. Most of the instructors I’ve dealt with over the years should have “Archer” instead of “airplane single engine land” on their instructor certificates.
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Last week, I was going to take one of my newest crewmen on an area familiarization flight that unfortunately didn't work out...different thread for the story behind that. But one of the A&Ps at my home field is retired Coast Guard who happened to be working that day so I was showing this new guy around the hangar. As we were looking at the hangar full of planes in various degrees of maintenance, the new guy asks me if I could fly them as well. I looked around and to my surprise, there was only one plane in the whole hangar that I am certified to fly. There were tail draggers, complex, and gyrocopters in the hangar and then one of the C172 rentals. A gentle reminder to myself that I still have a long way to go.
 
eman1200 said:
every make/model has their own support group (think mooneyspace, beechtalk, etc...) where one can easily find an instructor with focused knowledge in that make/model. same with avionics, where someone out there knows how to work what you have in your panel. you just have to be the type of person that seeks that out because you want the best training in your aircraft you can get. unfortunately we don't even need to speculate whether she put the effort in to do that or not.
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Odd you should mention it. She had five total posts on Beechtalk, one of which was inquiring about her Century 2000. Both responses told her that it was broken and one even referred her to a good shop (apparently not done). Another asked for a CFI to train her in her "new debonair." She also got good instruction there on why you shouldn't try to takeoff with flaps on in the C33.
 
flyingron said:
She had five total posts on Beechtalk, one of which was inquiring about her Century 2000. Both responses told her that it was broken and one even referred her to a good shop (apparently not done).
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Several posts on this topic are speculating if they autopilot trim was or was not the problem. It wasn't because this airplane did not have electric trim. But this does not rule out the autopilot as being a contributing factor. I wonder if the autopilot enganged and for whatever reason would not disengage?

Let's say hypothetically the trim was way too high. The autopilot would try to push the nose over. A confused pilot might have trimmed in the wrong direction, making the situation worse. Then the autopilot while still turned on pushes as hard as it can until something gets stuck. I'm not sure what would happen if the airplane was in full opposite trim from what the autopilot was trying to do. I'm just saying it would be possible that something could get stuck in this situation because it's an old autopilot.

A trained pilot should know where the breaker for the autopilot is. I'm going to assume she didn't know how to hard-kill it from the breakers. So then what would a new-ish pilot instinctively do? Probably call mayday and wait for a repair guy?

I didn't notice in any of the videos if the breakers were the pull-out style. In my old Beechcraft, it had the breakers that were flat when not tripped. These are not pullable by the pilot. So the only other option would have been to kill the master switch. Doubtful that anyone would have taught her that.

If the autopilot is still on, did she or her passenger have the strength necessary to overcome the autopilot? Did they know this was a feature? Was the feature adjusted correctly? (it works from measuring how many amps/volts it needs to maintain force, and when a threshold is hit it shuts down. The threshold could have been out of alignment).

Without any additional info, this is the only scenario that kinda makes sense. Why else would they keep the airplane at cruise power straight into the ground? Reducing power would have caused it to descend faster. Let's assume she at least knew that much.

We know from people who do math (thanks for that) that the airplane was approximately 30 degrees nose down. If the seat belts were not adjusted tightly, the body weight would have been quite forward after the initial G-unloading. So she would have had to overcome about 1/3 of her own weight (here comes the math fact checkers... go ahead...) PLUS the force required to overcome the autopilot. So let's say she was about ~130 lbs. The autopilot would require about another 30-40 lbs to overcome? So that means she would be doing about half a pull-up excercise of her own body weight, while nose down 30 degrees, and probably the only leverage would be her feet on the rudder pedals.

I'm assuming the autopilot was engaged to the end because it was basically wings level for the entire decent. For a pilot who couldn't keep it wings level flying by hand when she turned her head, let's rule out that she was hand flying it.

Then at some point the airplane want past Vne. Game over.
 
FastEddieB said:
“If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught.”
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Having spent 4 decades in higher ed, I can say there are lots of reasons why students don't learn. No amount of "teaching" will reach a disengaged or distracted student. Even the slowest learner can usually be taught if they stay engaged and interested. Sometimes it takes a herculean effort to change the teaching environment to increase engagement, but there are limits to the ROI, especially in a busy teaching environment. But for some, for whatever reason, will never "get it." It happens in academics and in sports, too.

The most important things learners can do is ask a lot of questions, and not passively wait for someone to guess what to spoon-feed them. Professional teachers love students who help direct their learning.
 
rickgn said:
Without any additional info, this is the only scenario that kinda makes sense. Why else would they keep the airplane at cruise power straight into the ground? Reducing power would have caused it to descend faster. Let's assume she at least knew that much.
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The available evidence (well...formerly available now that all the videos are private now) clearly shows that the pilot did NOT understand the power/lift relationship. Multiple times, she would try to climb via the autopilot without adjusting power and be dumbfounded as to why she was approaching stall speed. Juan did a great job highlighting this in his analysis.
 
rickgn said:
Several posts on this topic are speculating if they autopilot trim was or was not the problem. It wasn't because this airplane did not have electric trim. But this does not rule out the autopilot as being a contributing factor. I wonder if the autopilot enganged and for whatever reason would not disengage?

Let's say hypothetically the trim was way too high. The autopilot would try to push the nose over. A confused pilot might have trimmed in the wrong direction, making the situation worse. Then the autopilot while still turned on pushes as hard as it can until something gets stuck. I'm not sure what would happen if the airplane was in full opposite trim from what the autopilot was trying to do. I'm just saying it would be possible that something could get stuck in this situation because it's an old autopilot.

A trained pilot should know where the breaker for the autopilot is. I'm going to assume she didn't know how to hard-kill it from the breakers. So then what would a new-ish pilot instinctively do? Probably call mayday and wait for a repair guy?

I didn't notice in any of the videos if the breakers were the pull-out style. In my old Beechcraft, it had the breakers that were flat when not tripped. These are not pullable by the pilot. So the only other option would have been to kill the master switch. Doubtful that anyone would have taught her that.

If the autopilot is still on, did she or her passenger have the strength necessary to overcome the autopilot? Did they know this was a feature? Was the feature adjusted correctly? (it works from measuring how many amps/volts it needs to maintain force, and when a threshold is hit it shuts down. The threshold could have been out of alignment).

Without any additional info, this is the only scenario that kinda makes sense. Why else would they keep the airplane at cruise power straight into the ground? Reducing power would have caused it to descend faster. Let's assume she at least knew that much.

We know from people who do math (thanks for that) that the airplane was approximately 30 degrees nose down. If the seat belts were not adjusted tightly, the body weight would have been quite forward after the initial G-unloading. So she would have had to overcome about 1/3 of her own weight (here comes the math fact checkers... go ahead...) PLUS the force required to overcome the autopilot. So let's say she was about ~130 lbs. The autopilot would require about another 30-40 lbs to overcome? So that means she would be doing about half a pull-up excercise of her own body weight, while nose down 30 degrees, and probably the only leverage would be her feet on the rudder pedals.

I'm assuming the autopilot was engaged to the end because it was basically wings level for the entire decent. For a pilot who couldn't keep it wings level flying by hand when she turned her head, let's rule out that she was hand flying it.

Then at some point the airplane want past Vne. Game over.
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Following Juan Browne's logic, it would appear the basic problem was that she didn't know the differences between ALT and PIT, or the correct buttonology for adjusting pitch or changing altitude. When it ended, I suspect she wasn't pulling on the yoke at all, but pushing the "up" button on the C2000.

This is all wild conjecture, and I feel a little scuzzy in a Dan G*** sort of way for commenting at all.
 
rickgn said:
So she would have had to overcome about 1/3 of her own weight (here comes the math fact checkers... go ahead...)
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Why couldn't she push on the rudder pedals with her feet? Her legs would be perfectly strong enough to keep her pressed against the back of her seat so that all she has to do is pull the yoke towards her with her arms.
 
PPC1052 said:
Why couldn't she push on the rudder pedals with her feet? Her legs would be perfectly strong enough to keep her pressed against the back of her seat so that all she has to do is pull the yoke towards her with her arms.
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Because she was TNFlygirl.
 
KE5BM said:
I'm not a lawyer...hell I don't even know enough to play one on TV but I'm thinking it would be hard to hold a CFI liable for the proficiency or lack thereof of a certificated pilot. Once you earn your certificate, you've essentially been signed off by 3 different entities. The CFI twice...once for your written, once for your checkride. Then the written exam itself, then the DPE twice via the oral and checkride. All three would then have to be held liable for a new pilot (like myself at just shy of 100 hours) who memory dumps everything they've learned. At 400+ hours, though (allegedly) there's nobody to blame but the pilot.
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I think the Captain would disagree.
 
PPC1052 said:
Why couldn't she push on the rudder pedals with her feet? Her legs would be perfectly strong enough to keep her pressed against the back of her seat so that all she has to do is pull the yoke towards her with her arms.
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I'm suggesting that if the seatbelt were too loose her body would be thrown forward a bit. Pulling back close to your chest would require more bicep strength than if the arms are extended. I don't know how far back she adjusted her seat. I've seen crash report videos that show the seat slipping on the rails under extreme conditions. "it's just a seat" and "I want the seatbelt to be comfortable" attitude and other seemingly harmless complacencies can cause major issues in extreme situations.

Also, what was on the floor? The Bonanza yoke column is a huge target for any debris to get stuck against. Could something have sprung forward on the floor and jammed the control column? She had all that camera crap all over the place. The G-load transfer from when it likely stalled at 6000' to when it rapidly accelerated could have thrown stuff everywhere.

A similar case happened on a Air Force transport (or tanker? I can't remember) when the pilot put his personal camera on the console and it flew forward, jamming the side stick. Another crash happened when a night vision goggles case got stuck between the yoke and the panel.

These are cases when professional pilots with 1000's of hours couldn't control the aircraft. In both instances the pilots became fixated on an aircraft or avionics problem, not realizing it was a physical obstruction that could have been removed.

The 30 degree down angle + the control force to overcome the autopilot + any small amount of physical obstruction might have been enough that she didn't have the strength to overcome. From the videos it doesn't look like her father was a body builder either.
 
And to stay negative g, for that long, would have put here in an outside loop.
 
I'm curious to know the dates of endorsement for complex and hi-perf, compared to the date of the accident. I assume that endorsement training was accomplished in the Debbie, but who knows. The more hours and days since the endorsement, the more plausible deniability for the signatory CFI.

Does anybody know of a CFI having their instructor privilege 709'd as a result of a public interest crash?
 
hindsight2020 said:
I'm curious to know the dates of endorsement for complex and hi-perf, compared to the date of the accident. I assume that endorsement training was accomplished in the Debbie, but who knows. The more hours and days since the endorsement, the more plausible deniability for the signatory CFI.

Does anybody know of a CFI having their instructor privilege 709'd as a result of a public interest crash?
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One of her now missing videos had her flying an Arrow. For some reason I assumed she'd gotten her complex and HP in the Arrow, but I could be wrong on that.
 
jpwing said:
One of her now missing videos had her flying an Arrow. For some reason I assumed she'd gotten her complex and HP in the Arrow, but I could be wrong on that.
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I don't think she could get the HP in an Arrow. Not over 200 hp.
 
jpwing said:
One of her now missing videos had her flying an Arrow. For some reason I assumed she'd gotten her complex and HP in the Arrow, but I could be wrong on that.
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She had a video where she flew a Dakota, I believe even titled it "high performance training" or something similar. This was before she bought the Beechcraft. I don't remember seeing an Arrow.
 
dmspilot said:
She had a video where she flew a Dakota, I believe even titled it "high performance training" or something similar. This was before she bought the Beechcraft. I don't remember seeing an Arrow.
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You're right, it probably was the Dakota I was thinking of. She was fairly behind the airplane in that video. I remember the nose pulling to the left pretty good on roll out.
 
jpwing said:
You're right, it probably was the Dakota I was thinking of. She was fairly behind the airplane in that video. I remember the nose pulling to the left pretty good on roll out.
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I renewed my Dakota currency recently after more than a year of not flying one, and I was definitely behind the airplane! (The instructor did a good job of pointing out what I needed to work on.)
 
dmspilot said:
I got some videos before they were taken down and made an analysis of one. Watch before the copyright police lodge a complaint.
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What a ****show. She had no business in an airplane. It's mind blowing. In the video with the doctor's analysis, she recorded and uploaded, to the internet, herself running multiple stop signs ffs! Something was "off" about all of her behaviors. How do you fly a ground track like that as a 400hr pilot?!? The ipad, her cell phone, the garmins she knew nothing about, her father fishing for the breakers, WTF?
 
dmspilot said:
I got some videos before they were taken down and made an analysis of one. Watch before the copyright police lodge a complaint.
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Excellent analysis. I tried watching her original video before it was pulled down from the YouTube and I found it too frustrating to get to the end. I can't believe she thought it was a good idea to post it; I skipped to the end where she said she laughed at her mistakes. I found them very concerning. The comments at the time were just a few steps short of calling her the next Amelia Earhart. Sadly, her father and her are both casualties of "everyone gets a trophy!"
 
jpwing said:
Sadly, her father and her are both casualties of "everyone gets a trophy!"
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The trophy was the one she purchased ,the Debonair, that she couldn't handle. She bought more horse than she could ride. The societal phenomena she fell victim to wasn't "everyone gets a trophy", but I would submit, it was social media's appeal to exhibitionism. She fixated on her toys, instead of flying the plane. Nobody could stop her from doing that. She didn't want anyone who would correct her, in the plane. She wanted to look the part of a "girl pilot" and make content. The AP was supposed to fly the plane while she looked cute for the cameras. If she has to actually fly the plane, how will she mug for the cameras? Her and her father, are casualties of her vanity, hence the removal of the videos.
 
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