Bad day yesterday

Aztec Driver

Aztec Driver

Line Up and Wait
Joined
Mar 7, 2005
Messages
982
Location
Elizabethtown, PA
Display Name
Bryon
Home Airfield
LNS
Got done with work near the airport yesterday and decided to fly the moisture out of the oil in Twinkie.

Took off and did some practice maneuvers and returned to land. after landing, I decided to do a few more landings for practice, and taxied to the departure end. Around midfield in my taxiway, an ultralight announced departure and took off on the runway next to me. They usually take off and climb fairly aggressively, so the high climb angle only gave me a small pause as he passed me.

I turned all equipment on, announced my departure and turned onto the runway, only to see a billowing cloud of black smoke at the opposite end of the runway. I fast taxied to the other end, shut down and ran to see what help I could offer. By the time I got there, there were 5-6 others there already, but no one could get near the site due to the fire that completely engulfed the area. Unfortunately, the pilot died. Sad time for the family and to our hangar community.

As I called my boss to let him know, he told me that one of our recent private pilots had taken his family for a ride and lost control of the aircraft on takeoff from a short field and destroyed the aircraft in the trees. Thankfully, no one was hurt in that one.
 
Sad story. It is interesting to me that at almost 400 hrs I still consider myself a beginner yet the paper calls him experienced with 300 hrs. So what makes a pilot "experienced".
 
douglas393 said:
Sad story. It is interesting to me that at almost 400 hrs I still consider myself a beginner yet the paper calls him experienced with 300 hrs. So what makes a pilot "experienced".
Click to expand...

It's all relative. An 80 hr pilot is twice as experienced as a brand new 40 hr pilot. At 300 hrs he was more experienced than that. But I learned a lot between 300 and 1,200 hrs. Even more between 1,200 and 3,200. I suspect there remains a lot more to learn, or at least a lot more experiences yet to acquire.
 
More time in the log, perhaps, but any significance in lessons learned during the second 40 hours? For example, if the first 40 hours were accumulated in 4-5 months and the second 40 required another 18 months (similar to numbers we actually see during FR's and such) which pilot is bettter/safer etc. when acting as PIC?

LDJones said:
It's all relative. An 80 hr pilot is twice as experienced as a brand new 40 hr pilot. At 300 hrs he was more experienced than that. But I learned a lot between 300 and 1,200 hrs. Even more between 1,200 and 3,200. I suspect there remains a lot more to learn, or at least a lot more experiences yet to acquire.
Click to expand...
 
Very sad, my prayers go to his family.
 
Bud Davisson had an article a few years ago about someone making the call to your family after you (the pilot) did something stupid and killed yourself. It made an impression on me and I try to think about that beforehand. Its pretty easy to get careless, but we owe it to those who care about us not to do that. Ya'll be careful out there!
 
douglas393 said:
Sad story. It is interesting to me that at almost 400 hrs I still consider myself a beginner yet the paper calls him experienced with 300 hrs. So what makes a pilot "experienced".
Click to expand...

Depends on who's writing the article.

There's some formula one could come up with that involves total time, recency of time, and quality of time, with a few more factors on time. The quality of time is hard to quantify, but the insurance companies use the others along with recency of FR/IPC in assigning you a risk category. So if you believe their numbers, they'd be the ones to ask.

When I was talking to my broker about what drives rates on the 310, she said I was in the lowest risk category (and thus lowest cost) because of time in type, the hours per year I flew, and total/multi time. It'll be interesting to see how that changes this year with substantially fewer hours.
 
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