Crash near me

[Turningfinal]

flying without and ai should be a none issue. you still have a dg and a turn coordinator to keep wings levels and an alt/vsi and asi to fly straight.

*should* being the operative word here. Real-life statistics, however, tell a very different and much more fatal story.

 

[Henning]

Anyone know the state of her flaps when she crashed?

 

[tiger]

Wouldn't attaching a short string/weight in the cockpit be a good measure of which way is up? ...then again, Bob Hoover drinking while flying would pretty much invalidate that idea wouldn't it?

Exactly. If that 'instrument' worked, so would your inner ear.

 

[Henning]

There is always the 'cat method' of IFR...

 

[jesse]

Just finally listened to this, sad audio for sure. Might have helped if the controllers would have simplified the english. A few simple words are interpreted by those with poor english skills much better than sentences of instructions. Either way, not the controllers fault by any means, she lacked the English needed to safely operate.

I did some flight training for a Japanese man with very poor English. We worked a lot on teaching him to pick up on the key important words in instructions and reply with simple words as well. He did pretty well with his weak English until a controller would hear his english problems and start to spit out sentences of instructions trying to clarify which made things worse. He did pretty well with controllers but things went to hell in a hurry at small airports on CTAF with other pilots using more complicated english instead of the standardized stuff ATC uses.

The weather wasn't what she expected, she didn't have the skills to fly without great visibility, and as the stress increased the English decreased.

So many of these kind of accidents are hard for me to listen to. All I can think is "Damn it, I wish I were in that airplane right now"

 

[ollopa]

I first learned about this crash from the back pages of the NTSB reporter. The two things that really stood out as odd were 1) Japanese woman and 2) not signed off to fly solo. I felt like something was off so I hit the Internets and Googles to try to fill in the missing pieces. Most of the key points have previously been raised here by different people. Their insights agree with mine and through the power of confirmation bias, I am confident I now have all the answers :wink2:

The facts:
Mihoko Tabata was a commercial pilot with 416 hours total time, was instrument rated, multi-engine rated, had a high altitude endorsement, and appears to have done most of her training in California. She was a student at the Santa Monica Institution of Aviation English where she studied to improve her English proficiency enough to meet the ICAO level 4 standards. Most importantly, according to the NTSB preliminary report, her log books showed that she had completed a flight review and an instrument proficiency check in Torrance CA, in a C152, just two months prior to this accident. Also according to the NTSB, Flight Time Building has said that Ms. Tabata flew a C152 a day prior to the accident on a local and a cross country flight first with an instructor and then with an aspiring instructor acting as a safety pilot.

I find it very hard to believe that she was not trustworthy to fly a C152. These comments about her not being checked-out to fly solo are clearly an attempt by Flight Time Building to distance itself from this accident. It may be true that they hadn't photocopied all the necessary documents and had her fill out all the necessary forms to be officially checked-out, but this idea that a 416-hour commercial pilot isn't qualified to fly a C152 after being flight-reviewed in one just two months prior strikes me as a red herring meant to focus attention on the pilot and away from the school. Not that the school is to blame in any way as far as I can see... But it sickens me to see the media spinning this practically as "Defiant student pilot crashes, nobody is surprised." Lack of qualifications was not a contributing factor here.

I'm not at all surprised that she sounded like a lost toddler on the radio. I've spent a lot of time in Japan, my wife is Japanese, I speak the language and I have had the privilege of befriending around 20 Japanese exchange students who have come to California to study English. Japanese are exceptionally disadvantaged when it comes to English for three main reasons: 1) Incorrect pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary are systematically reinforced by their public education system. Indeed they would be better off not studying English at all than to spend 10 years learning unintelligible sentence patterns. 2) The Japanese language has a much smaller subset of syllables than the English language. We all know that they have trouble with L and R but they also struggle with F, H, B, and V sounds. If you want to know what it's like for them to hear English, watch a YouTube video on Chinese tones and try to distinguish the 5 4 tones while listening to a full-speed native Mandarin speaker.... and 3) Japanese grammar is quite different from English. Even Chinese grammar and sentence patterns are similar to English, as are German, Spanish, and most other commonly used world languages. Whereas most major languages of the world are grouped into overlapping families of lexical similarities, Japanese really stands apart in ways that make it easier for foreigners to learn Japanese than it is for Japanese to learn foreign languages.

To me, it is pretty clear what happened during this accident. As much as we all want to be distracted by the fact that it was a woman, or a foreigner, or someone who's experience was confined to a flight school and time-building environment, I think she suffered the simple and ubiquitous fate of flying VFR into IMC. I think she had set out to fly the pattern that night when the fog came in. Having flown mostly in CA, perhaps she wasn't as concerned about the WX as she should have been. Maybe she figured that she would be able to land before conditions deteriorated. Once lost in the soup, she failed to transition to instrument flying despite her rating and recent proficiency check (and was she under the hood with that safety pilot the day prior to the accident?). From the ATC recording, I believe she was trying to fly below the clouds to stay out of the IMC and maintain visual contact with the ground. She's being told where to look for the airport and it sounds to me like she's looking all over for it. She's reluctant to fly up into the fog and in fact the accident happens just as she follows instructions to climb from 600' to 1000' for ATC. You can hear her say two or three times with distress: "I'm in cloud."

This is wildly speculative on my part but I believe that being Japanese contributed to her fate. In America, we take for granted how much inconsistency there is in our society. Japan, by comparison, places a premium on predictability, consistency, quality, standards, regulation, ceremony and regimen. I have no problem believing that she could ace all her exams and handle by-the-book ATC communications and procedures as she perceived them. if ATC had given headings and altitudes and nothing more, I believe that would have reduced Mihoko's stress. The flurry of words and hints surrounding the 3-6-0 heading could only have added to the mental workload, even though they were meant to calm her down and would have been welcomed by most pilots. And how many of us would have taken the time to squawk 7700 as she did? She remembered her emergency checklist procedures but didn't think about her off-script options. She hadn't planned on the fog rolling in before she could make a landing, she hadn't planned to have to fly in IMC to another airport, and she hadn't planned the communication she would use during an emergency. When faced with the unexpected, she squawked 7700, tuned in 121.5, and then though "now what.. ... I have to do something, but it's not on my checklist and with every passing second I'm more lost." So in a moment of desperation she keys up the mic and just inquires "Hello?" This is entirely in-line with my observations of Japanese systems. In Japan every reasonable contingency would be scripted and all those deviating from it would be dealt with. They require flight plans for any flight over 5 miles or any flight landing at a different airport--there is far more structure and precision in their daily lives than there is over here. And as was already pointed out, when stressed to the max, one of the first things to depart the airplane is a solid command of English. They revert to the years of incorrect English they have been bombarded with through school and media back home.

I'm not claiming that all Japanese pilots are going to break down in a similar way under pressure, just that they have to overcome a lot of barriers that the rest of us don't even perceive. The English cards are much more heavily stacked against them than they are against other foreign pilots. They are a society that values consistency and predictability whereas America relishes variation, uniqueness, quick thinking and adaptability. I suspect even a novice Japanese pilot lands exactly the same every time whereas I'm still doubting that any two of my landings could ever be claimed as consistent by Japanese standards (Disclaimer: Maybe yours could. I'm still low-time).

By all appearances, most of us wouldn't be claimed by an accident like this because we wouldn't fly when fog is predicted to roll in, we would climb, confess, and communicate, we have no trouble with radio communications even when we're panicked, and we all imagine that we would make a perfect transition to instrument flying and not be fooled by our senses as we are vectored to a lit-up airport. But according to so many of the NTSB reports out there, this isn't completely true. Everyone is at risk of making mistakes in and around IMC and I suspect that her futile attempt to maintain visual contact with the ground (oh so tempting, isn't it?) while going in and out of the fog was the fateful mistake.

Reading Flight Time Building's statement and listening to the ATC recording, it's very easy to dismiss her as an unqualified pilot but I think she must have worked very hard to pursue her dream in aviation. If there's anything to be learned from this, I don't know. "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" focuses on multi-crew cockpit dynamics but perhaps the same principles apply to GA between a single pilot and ATC. Or maybe GA pilots could add a page to their emergency checklists that includes a verbatim statement you can read on guard and a reminder to just climb and fly a standard rate circle in the soup to a safe altitude until you reach ATC and they give you precise instructions.

 

[FastEddieB]

Thanks for the thoughtful analysis.

Great first post!

 

[overdrive148]

I first learned about this crash from the back pages of the NTSB reporter. *snip*

Great first post! You're being paged in this thread by the way
http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80170

You're the 20,000th POA member!

 

[Hank S]

Having lived in Japan and worked for a Japanese company here, I think you nailed your analysis.

Having a script written for an emergency, however, would be difficult, as there are so many possible emergencies. A simple "mayday, mayday, mayday" should suffice, then discuss details when you are answered.

I am concerned that you recommend VFR pilots to fly a circle in IMC. Flying a simple straight line, holding wings level, would be easier to do and safer. I only hit inadvertent IMC once, and I locked eyes on the AI and very nervously made a uturn at standard rates. Flying straight ahead would have been easier, but that way the conditions would have been worse.

Hold wings level and use the radio is better if you hit inadvertent IMC and aren't rated to be there, especially if like in this case it's widespread.

 

[BrianP]

I first learned about this crash from the back pages of the NTSB reporter. The two things that really stood out as odd were 1) Japanese woman and 2) not signed off to fly solo. I felt like something was off so I hit the Internets and Googles to try to fill in the missing pieces. Most of the key points have previously been raised here by different people. Their insights agree with mine and through the power of confirmation bias, I am confident I now have all the answers :wink2:

<snip lots of thoughtful analysis>

Wow, nice post and thanks for the insight Welcome to PoA, you're the root cause of my registration

 

[ollopa]

I am concerned that you recommend VFR pilots to fly a circle in IMC. Flying a simple straight line, holding wings level, would be easier to do and safer. [...]Hold wings level and use the radio is better if you hit inadvertent IMC and aren't rated to be there, especially if like in this case it's widespread.

Hank,
I was really thinking about this specific situation and instrument rated pilot. Nobody should fly a circle just because ollopa or any other random Internet jerk said so.

You're right -- wings level is the safest and depending on altitude I would climb for 1) obstacle clearance, 2) improved radio range and 3) easier RADAR detection by ATC. I suggested a circle because I was thinking that she was lost and might not have even had a sectional with her if she was just out flying the pattern. Over here, flying a straight line at TPA could put you right into a mountain in a matter of minutes or out to sea after a half hour.

What I really wanted to say was not "do x, y, and z" but that our checklists sometimes end rather open-ended and some pilots (from other countries) are not comfortable ad-libbing. We also practice towered and non-towered communications all the time, but much less so "mayday" callups and emergency declarations.

I'm not any kind of an expert on any aviation topic, but I understand that a significant portion of the world's commercial pilots come over here to get their primary instruction and private pilot license because we have a larger and a better infrastructure for training pilots. If I ran a school that dealt with a lot of foreign pilots, I might consider their different cultural and linguistic challenges and supplement the curriculum accordingly. That's maybe something that American schools could take from this crash.

But I really don't want to hijack this thread and turn it into a debate of specific procedures in hypothetical situations. I really appreciate your comment and I think you made a good point.

I'll close by adding what appears to be an obituary written by her parents:

私達の宝物、娘 美穂子へ
美穂子のおかげでお父さんお母さんになれました。
ありがとう。
今日まで本当に良く頑張ったネ。誰よりも誇りに思っています。お姉ちゃんも悔しいし残念だろう。これからは天国から皆を見守ってやってほしい。肩の力をぬいてゆっくり安らかに眠ってください。合掌。
父母より

To our treasure, our daughter Mihoko:
Because of you, we were able to become a father and a mother.
Thank you.
You gave it your all right up until today, didn't you. We're proud of you more than anyone. It must be so terrible and regrettable for you too. From now on we want you to watch over everyone from heaven. Please release the weight from your shoulders and rest peacefully and tranquilly. (hands together as in prayer)
-Your father and mother.

 

[RotorDude]

I first learned about this crash from the back pages of the NTSB reporter. The two things that really stood out as odd were 1) Japanese woman and 2) not signed off to fly solo. I felt like something was off so I hit the Internets and Googles to try to fill in the missing pieces. Most of the key points have previously been raised here by different people. Their insights agree with mine and through the power of confirmation bias, I am confident I now have all the answers :wink2:

The facts:
Mihoko Tabata was a commercial pilot with 416 hours total time, was instrument rated, multi-engine rated, had a high altitude endorsement, and appears to have done most of her training in California. She was a student at the Santa Monica Institution of Aviation English where she studied to improve her English proficiency enough to meet the ICAO level 4 standards. Most importantly, according to the NTSB preliminary report, her log books showed that she had completed a flight review and an instrument proficiency check in Torrance CA, in a C152, just two months prior to this accident. Also according to the NTSB, Flight Time Building has said that Ms. Tabata flew a C152 a day prior to the accident on a local and a cross country flight first with an instructor and then with an aspiring instructor acting as a safety pilot.

I find it very hard to believe that she was not trustworthy to fly a C152. These comments about her not being checked-out to fly solo are clearly an attempt by Flight Time Building to distance itself from this accident. It may be true that they hadn't photocopied all the necessary documents and had her fill out all the necessary forms to be officially checked-out, but this idea that a 416-hour commercial pilot isn't qualified to fly a C152 after being flight-reviewed in one just two months prior strikes me as a red herring meant to focus attention on the pilot and away from the school. Not that the school is to blame in any way as far as I can see... But it sickens me to see the media spinning this practically as "Defiant student pilot crashes, nobody is surprised." Lack of qualifications was not a contributing factor here.

I'm not at all surprised that she sounded like a lost toddler on the radio. I've spent a lot of time in Japan, my wife is Japanese, I speak the language and I have had the privilege of befriending around 20 Japanese exchange students who have come to California to study English. Japanese are exceptionally disadvantaged when it comes to English for three main reasons: 1) Incorrect pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary are systematically reinforced by their public education system. Indeed they would be better off not studying English at all than to spend 10 years learning unintelligible sentence patterns. 2) The Japanese language has a much smaller subset of syllables than the English language. We all know that they have trouble with L and R but they also struggle with F, H, B, and V sounds. If you want to know what it's like for them to hear English, watch a YouTube video on Chinese tones and try to distinguish the 5 tones while listening to a full-speed native Mandarin speaker.... and 3) Japanese grammar is quite different from English. Even Chinese grammar and sentence patterns are similar to English, as are German, Spanish, and most other commonly used world languages. Whereas most major languages of the world are grouped into overlapping families of lexical similarities, Japanese really stands apart in ways that make it easier for foreigners to learn Japanese than it is for Japanese to learn foreign languages.

To me, it is pretty clear what happened during this accident. As much as we all want to be distracted by the fact that it was a woman, or a foreigner, or someone who's experience was confined to a flight school and time-building environment, I think she suffered the simple and ubiquitous fate of flying VFR into IMC. I think she had set out to fly the pattern that night when the fog came in. Having flown mostly in CA, perhaps she wasn't as concerned about the WX as she should have been. Maybe she figured that she would be able to land before conditions deteriorated. Once lost in the soup, she failed to transition to instrument flying despite her rating and recent proficiency check (and was she under the hood with that safety pilot the day prior to the accident?). From the ATC recording, I believe she was trying to fly below the clouds to stay out of the IMC and maintain visual contact with the ground. She's being told where to look for the airport and it sounds to me like she's looking all over for it. She's reluctant to fly up into the fog and in fact the accident happens just as she follows instructions to climb from 600' to 1000' for ATC. You can hear her say two or three times with distress: "I'm in cloud."

This is wildly speculative on my part but I believe that being Japanese contributed to her fate. In America, we take for granted how much inconsistency there is in our society. Japan, by comparison, places a premium on predictability, consistency, quality, standards, regulation, ceremony and regimen. I have no problem believing that she could ace all her exams and handle by-the-book ATC communications and procedures as she perceived them. if ATC had given headings and altitudes and nothing more, I believe that would have reduced Mihoko's stress. The flurry of words and hints surrounding the 3-6-0 heading could only have added to the mental workload, even though they were meant to calm her down and would have been welcomed by most pilots. And how many of us would have taken the time to squawk 7700 as she did? She remembered her emergency checklist procedures but didn't think about her off-script options. She hadn't planned on the fog rolling in before she could make a landing, she hadn't planned to have to fly in IMC to another airport, and she hadn't planned the communication she would use during an emergency. When faced with the unexpected, she squawked 7700, tuned in 121.5, and then though "now what.. ... I have to do something, but it's not on my checklist and with every passing second I'm more lost." So in a moment of desperation she keys up the mic and just inquires "Hello?" This is entirely in-line with my observations of Japanese systems. In Japan every reasonable contingency would be scripted and all those deviating from it would be dealt with. They require flight plans for any flight over 5 miles or any flight landing at a different airport--there is far more structure and precision in their daily lives than there is over here. And as was already pointed out, when stressed to the max, one of the first things to depart the airplane is a solid command of English. They revert to the years of incorrect English they have been bombarded with through school and media back home.

I'm not claiming that all Japanese pilots are going to break down in a similar way under pressure, just that they have to overcome a lot of barriers that the rest of us don't even perceive. The English cards are much more heavily stacked against them than they are against other foreign pilots. They are a society that values consistency and predictability whereas America relishes variation, uniqueness, quick thinking and adaptability. I suspect even a novice Japanese pilot lands exactly the same every time whereas I'm still doubting that any two of my landings could ever be claimed as consistent by Japanese standards (Disclaimer: Maybe yours could. I'm still low-time).

By all appearances, most of us wouldn't be claimed by an accident like this because we wouldn't fly when fog is predicted to roll in, we would climb, confess, and communicate, we have no trouble with radio communications even when we're panicked, and we all imagine that we would make a perfect transition to instrument flying and not be fooled by our senses as we are vectored to a lit-up airport. But according to so many of the NTSB reports out there, this isn't completely true. Everyone is at risk of making mistakes in and around IMC and I suspect that her futile attempt to maintain visual contact with the ground (oh so tempting, isn't it?) while going in and out of the fog was the fateful mistake.

Reading Flight Time Building's statement and listening to the ATC recording, it's very easy to dismiss her as an unqualified pilot but I think she must have worked very hard to pursue her dream in aviation. If there's anything to be learned from this, I don't know. "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" focuses on multi-crew cockpit dynamics but perhaps the same principles apply to GA between a single pilot and ATC. Or maybe GA pilots could add a page to their emergency checklists that includes a verbatim statement you can read on guard and a reminder to just climb and fly a standard rate circle in the soup to a safe altitude until you reach ATC and they give you precise instructions.

Two points, ollopa.
What's the fifth tone in Mandarin? There were only four there last time I checked...
And my main point: If she were so infused with Japanese values of "predictability, consistency, quality, standards, regulation, ceremony and regimen", why would she hop into a plane she's not yet been signed off (by the owner) to fly solo, and fly it in low night IFR conditions? And surely checking the weather before flight, esp. night flight, would be the first step for any pilot dedicated to those values?
If anything, her pre-flight behavior seems to me more cavalier and non-conformist than the average "individualist" American.

 

[SCCutler]

Heartbreaking.

 

[JOhnH]

Good analysis. The only flaw I see is that the fog didn't suddenly roll in. It had been severe all day. I live here and I was in that area a few hours earlier and it was thick at ground level. And it only got worse.

I first learned about this crash from the back pages of the NTSB reporter. The two things that really stood out as odd were 1) Japanese woman and 2) not signed off to fly solo. I felt like something was off so I hit the Internets and Googles to try to fill in the missing pieces. Most of the key points have previously been raised here by different people. Their insights agree with mine and through the power of confirmation bias, I am confident I now have all the answers :wink2:

The facts:
Mihoko Tabata was a commercial pilot with 416 hours total time, was instrument rated, multi-engine rated, had a high altitude endorsement, and appears to have done most of her training in California. She was a student at the Santa Monica Institution of Aviation English where she studied to improve her English proficiency enough to meet the ICAO level 4 standards. Most importantly, according to the NTSB preliminary report, her log books showed that she had completed a flight review and an instrument proficiency check in Torrance CA, in a C152, just two months prior to this accident. Also according to the NTSB, Flight Time Building has said that Ms. Tabata flew a C152 a day prior to the accident on a local and a cross country flight first with an instructor and then with an aspiring instructor acting as a safety pilot.

I find it very hard to believe that she was not trustworthy to fly a C152. These comments about her not being checked-out to fly solo are clearly an attempt by Flight Time Building to distance itself from this accident. It may be true that they hadn't photocopied all the necessary documents and had her fill out all the necessary forms to be officially checked-out, but this idea that a 416-hour commercial pilot isn't qualified to fly a C152 after being flight-reviewed in one just two months prior strikes me as a red herring meant to focus attention on the pilot and away from the school. Not that the school is to blame in any way as far as I can see... But it sickens me to see the media spinning this practically as "Defiant student pilot crashes, nobody is surprised." Lack of qualifications was not a contributing factor here.

I'm not at all surprised that she sounded like a lost toddler on the radio. I've spent a lot of time in Japan, my wife is Japanese, I speak the language and I have had the privilege of befriending around 20 Japanese exchange students who have come to California to study English. Japanese are exceptionally disadvantaged when it comes to English for three main reasons: 1) Incorrect pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary are systematically reinforced by their public education system. Indeed they would be better off not studying English at all than to spend 10 years learning unintelligible sentence patterns. 2) The Japanese language has a much smaller subset of syllables than the English language. We all know that they have trouble with L and R but they also struggle with F, H, B, and V sounds. If you want to know what it's like for them to hear English, watch a YouTube video on Chinese tones and try to distinguish the 5 tones while listening to a full-speed native Mandarin speaker.... and 3) Japanese grammar is quite different from English. Even Chinese grammar and sentence patterns are similar to English, as are German, Spanish, and most other commonly used world languages. Whereas most major languages of the world are grouped into overlapping families of lexical similarities, Japanese really stands apart in ways that make it easier for foreigners to learn Japanese than it is for Japanese to learn foreign languages.

To me, it is pretty clear what happened during this accident. As much as we all want to be distracted by the fact that it was a woman, or a foreigner, or someone who's experience was confined to a flight school and time-building environment, I think she suffered the simple and ubiquitous fate of flying VFR into IMC. I think she had set out to fly the pattern that night when the fog came in. Having flown mostly in CA, perhaps she wasn't as concerned about the WX as she should have been. Maybe she figured that she would be able to land before conditions deteriorated. Once lost in the soup, she failed to transition to instrument flying despite her rating and recent proficiency check (and was she under the hood with that safety pilot the day prior to the accident?). From the ATC recording, I believe she was trying to fly below the clouds to stay out of the IMC and maintain visual contact with the ground. She's being told where to look for the airport and it sounds to me like she's looking all over for it. She's reluctant to fly up into the fog and in fact the accident happens just as she follows instructions to climb from 600' to 1000' for ATC. You can hear her say two or three times with distress: "I'm in cloud."

This is wildly speculative on my part but I believe that being Japanese contributed to her fate. In America, we take for granted how much inconsistency there is in our society. Japan, by comparison, places a premium on predictability, consistency, quality, standards, regulation, ceremony and regimen. I have no problem believing that she could ace all her exams and handle by-the-book ATC communications and procedures as she perceived them. if ATC had given headings and altitudes and nothing more, I believe that would have reduced Mihoko's stress. The flurry of words and hints surrounding the 3-6-0 heading could only have added to the mental workload, even though they were meant to calm her down and would have been welcomed by most pilots. And how many of us would have taken the time to squawk 7700 as she did? She remembered her emergency checklist procedures but didn't think about her off-script options. She hadn't planned on the fog rolling in before she could make a landing, she hadn't planned to have to fly in IMC to another airport, and she hadn't planned the communication she would use during an emergency. When faced with the unexpected, she squawked 7700, tuned in 121.5, and then though "now what.. ... I have to do something, but it's not on my checklist and with every passing second I'm more lost." So in a moment of desperation she keys up the mic and just inquires "Hello?" This is entirely in-line with my observations of Japanese systems. In Japan every reasonable contingency would be scripted and all those deviating from it would be dealt with. They require flight plans for any flight over 5 miles or any flight landing at a different airport--there is far more structure and precision in their daily lives than there is over here. And as was already pointed out, when stressed to the max, one of the first things to depart the airplane is a solid command of English. They revert to the years of incorrect English they have been bombarded with through school and media back home.

I'm not claiming that all Japanese pilots are going to break down in a similar way under pressure, just that they have to overcome a lot of barriers that the rest of us don't even perceive. The English cards are much more heavily stacked against them than they are against other foreign pilots. They are a society that values consistency and predictability whereas America relishes variation, uniqueness, quick thinking and adaptability. I suspect even a novice Japanese pilot lands exactly the same every time whereas I'm still doubting that any two of my landings could ever be claimed as consistent by Japanese standards (Disclaimer: Maybe yours could. I'm still low-time).

By all appearances, most of us wouldn't be claimed by an accident like this because we wouldn't fly when fog is predicted to roll in, we would climb, confess, and communicate, we have no trouble with radio communications even when we're panicked, and we all imagine that we would make a perfect transition to instrument flying and not be fooled by our senses as we are vectored to a lit-up airport. But according to so many of the NTSB reports out there, this isn't completely true. Everyone is at risk of making mistakes in and around IMC and I suspect that her futile attempt to maintain visual contact with the ground (oh so tempting, isn't it?) while going in and out of the fog was the fateful mistake.

Reading Flight Time Building's statement and listening to the ATC recording, it's very easy to dismiss her as an unqualified pilot but I think she must have worked very hard to pursue her dream in aviation. If there's anything to be learned from this, I don't know. "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" focuses on multi-crew cockpit dynamics but perhaps the same principles apply to GA between a single pilot and ATC. Or maybe GA pilots could add a page to their emergency checklists that includes a verbatim statement you can read on guard and a reminder to just climb and fly a standard rate circle in the soup to a safe altitude until you reach ATC and they give you precise instructions.

 

[ollopa]

Two points, ollopa.
What's the fifth tone in Mandarin? There were only four there last time I checked...
And my main point: If she were so infused with Japanese values of "predictability, consistency, quality, standards, regulation, ceremony and regimen", why would she hop into a plane she's not yet been signed off (by the owner) to fly solo, and fly it in low night IFR conditions? And surely checking the weather before flight, esp. night flight, would be the first step for any pilot dedicated to those values?
If anything, her pre-flight behavior seems to me more cavalier and non-conformist than the average "individualist" American.

Well you got me on the first point. I couldn't remember how many tones there are so I did a quick search which threw out a graphic from this site:
https://chinesepod.com/tools/pronunciation/section/17
They claim the existence of a 5th "neutral tone" but whatever. There are 4 accepted tones and I goofed by reading off their chart that goes from 1 to 5.

I don't believe that she knowingly flew the plane without being signed off on it. She showed up the previous day and took two flights with two instructors and she was proficiency checked in the same model aircraft recently. We only have the school's word to go by but they do post on their website that they expect students to fly a minimum of 6 hours a day (although they have an exemption for bad weather). I believe it's more likely that there was a misunderstanding than that she would go out and steal a plane for the night. My main beef is with the media stating variously that she's not rated, wasn't signed off to, or wasn't checked out in a C152 as if she lacked the qualifications. The school has made a statement that she wasn't signed off to fly solo but they didn't say that they communicated that to her. If they didn't want her to have the keys then why did she take them home after her last flight on the checkout day instead of the safety pilot they sent with her? I wonder what time they returned from that cross country flight and what time the school closes.

(Short aside -- Right there on their website they explain how the system works. You buy 50+ hours of time, they give you a ground and air checkout and then the plane is yours for the block of time you bought. They don't want you to take a year to get your 50 hours so they stress 6 hours per day / 36 hours per week expected use. She paid them the money, they checked her out, she spent the following day flying. It fits the pattern.)

Unfortunately, she's the only one who knows why she took off for the last time that night and she can't be asked about it anymore. She seems to have flown several times that day and bought fuel. Maybe she did pull the weather but lost track of time. Maybe she never got the weather.
Supposedly she had been warned not to fly because of bad weather -- possibly even on the day of the accident -- but this isn't in the NTSB preliminary so take it with a grain of salt.

Hopefully the probable cause report will shed more light on her activities during the day. I think it's possible that the attempted to make local flights for 6 or more hours that day, and it may have been a new experience for her. Personally, I think it would be different than flying cross-country for the same time. Could tunnel-vision / mission-mindset have clouded her judgment?

But even if it turns out that Flight Time Building was going to return her money and send her packing the next day and that she pilfered the keys, hopped the fence at night, skipped the preflight and took a cowboy joyride into the fog, it wouldn't invalidate my observations of Japanese culture. If you've ever watched anyone operating systems in a professional capacity over there -- be it a bus driver, train operator, pilot, or even a busy front desk -- it's obvious that they are working from a different rulebook than we are. While I don't have as much world perspective as some, it's not merely binary. I lived a short time in mainland China (obviously not long enough to become proficient in the language ) and their mindset is, in my opinion, a lot more like ours. I don't want to fork off on a tangent in this thread so I'll leave it at that.

 

[ollopa]

Good analysis. The only flaw I see is that the fog didn't suddenly roll in. It had been severe all day. I live here and I was in that area a few hours earlier and it was thick at ground level. And it only got worse.

If that's true then she was just crazy. There's no mention of her flying IFR so was she just flying VFR patterns in IMC? Just so there's no confusion, you're talking about weather conditions at X50?

 

[JOhnH]

If that's true then she was just crazy. There's no mention of her flying IFR so was she just flying VFR patterns in IMC? Just so there's no confusion, you're talking about weather conditions at X50?

No, I had driven from KOMN to KEVB. KEVB is about 20nm north of X50. The whole area was socked in all day, but I guess it could have cleared up a little further south. She was just off the coast near EVB when she crashed.

I have trouble explaining this crash myself. Like you, I can't seem to connect all the dots that I read in the paper. It doesn't make sense. The claim that she wasn't qualified in the 152 doesn't hold water.

 

[Florida Cracker]

Stranger things have happened......

I've always thought that might have been the cause of John Denver's (Guccendorf) fatal crash.

 

[ollopa]

No, I had driven from KOMN to KEVB. KEVB is about 20nm north of X50. The whole area was socked in all day, but I guess it could have cleared up a little further south. She was just off the coast near EVB when she crashed.

I have trouble explaining this crash myself. Like you, I can't seem to connect all the dots that I read in the paper. It doesn't make sense. The claim that she wasn't qualified in the 152 doesn't hold water.

Weather conditions at EVB included an overcast ceiling at 500 feet and 8 statute miles visibility.

"Help, I'm in the clouds."
"Hang in there ma'am, we'll vector you out of the clouds and into the fog."

 

[RotorDude]

Well you got me on the first point. I couldn't remember how many tones there are so I did a quick search which threw out a graphic from this site:
https://chinesepod.com/tools/pronunciation/section/17
They claim the existence of a 5th "neutral tone" but whatever. There are 4 accepted tones and I goofed by reading off their chart that goes from 1 to 5.

I don't believe that she knowingly flew the plane without being signed off on it. She showed up the previous day and took two flights with two instructors and she was proficiency checked in the same model aircraft recently. We only have the school's word to go by but they do post on their website that they expect students to fly a minimum of 6 hours a day (although they have an exemption for bad weather). I believe it's more likely that there was a misunderstanding than that she would go out and steal a plane for the night. My main beef is with the media stating variously that she's not rated, wasn't signed off to, or wasn't checked out in a C152 as if she lacked the qualifications. The school has made a statement that she wasn't signed off to fly solo but they didn't say that they communicated that to her. If they didn't want her to have the keys then why did she take them home after her last flight on the checkout day instead of the safety pilot they sent with her? I wonder what time they returned from that cross country flight and what time the school closes.

(Short aside -- Right there on their website they explain how the system works. You buy 50+ hours of time, they give you a ground and air checkout and then the plane is yours for the block of time you bought. They don't want you to take a year to get your 50 hours so they stress 6 hours per day / 36 hours per week expected use. She paid them the money, they checked her out, she spent the following day flying. It fits the pattern.)

Unfortunately, she's the only one who knows why she took off for the last time that night and she can't be asked about it anymore. She seems to have flown several times that day and bought fuel. Maybe she did pull the weather but lost track of time. Maybe she never got the weather.
Supposedly she had been warned not to fly because of bad weather -- possibly even on the day of the accident -- but this isn't in the NTSB preliminary so take it with a grain of salt.

Hopefully the probable cause report will shed more light on her activities during the day. I think it's possible that the attempted to make local flights for 6 or more hours that day, and it may have been a new experience for her. Personally, I think it would be different than flying cross-country for the same time. Could tunnel-vision / mission-mindset have clouded her judgment?

But even if it turns out that Flight Time Building was going to return her money and send her packing the next day and that she pilfered the keys, hopped the fence at night, skipped the preflight and took a cowboy joyride into the fog, it wouldn't invalidate my observations of Japanese culture. If you've ever watched anyone operating systems in a professional capacity over there -- be it a bus driver, train operator, pilot, or even a busy front desk -- it's obvious that they are working from a different rulebook than we are. While I don't have as much world perspective as some, it's not merely binary. I lived a short time in mainland China (obviously not long enough to become proficient in the language ) and their mindset is, in my opinion, a lot more like ours. I don't want to fork off on a tangent in this thread so I'll leave it at that.

Regarding the number of Chinese tones, you might have been thinking of something like Hong Kong Cantonese, which has six tones (e.g. same monosyllabic "word" from a Western perspective meaning six completely different unrelated things depending on the tone). Mandarin (the "official" Chinese) only has four, so it's easy.
Regarding our Japanese pilot, I don't know any inside details, only what's been published (including the very unusual ATC audio), and what the owner stated on the record (possibly under oath, not sure how that goes) to the NTSB/FAA and to the media, where he insisted that she had not been approved for solo flight. My guess is that they have some formal mechanism for that approval (not just "You're good to go, have fun!") that requires a logbook endorsement and likely a signed waiver/renter form for their files.
So it's unlikely that aspect would just go down to "he says she says", but we'll wait for the final NTSB report.
Not sure about you, but I have been to pretty small FBOs, both fixed and rotary wing, and have yet to meet any (in the last couple of decades) that just let you take a ride with an instructor and then release you to rent their equipment without any approval paperwork. (Actually the smallest one I've been to wanted the most paperwork!)
But my main point was about the weather. I am definitely not steeped in Japanese tradition and culture, yet consider it a sacred ritual to check the weather before every flight. The weather check includes as a minimum the next few hours. If I contemplate night flight, the weather forecast becomes even more critical.
So to say that on the one hand this woman was the archetypal rigid Japanese adherent of protocol and custom (as you describe her hypothetical landing techniques etc.) but following only a secondary subset of mechanical routines and not the primary one of careful pre-flight preparation, sounds inconsistent, and I can imagine Japanese pilots taking issue with that logic.

 

[Henning]

I first learned about this crash from the back pages of the NTSB reporter. The two things that really stood out as odd were 1) Japanese woman and 2) not signed off to fly solo. I felt like something was off so I hit the Internets and Googles to try to fill in the missing pieces. Most of the key points have previously been raised here by different people. Their insights agree with mine and through the power of confirmation bias, I am confident I now have all the answers :wink2:

The facts:
Mihoko Tabata was a commercial pilot with 416 hours total time, was instrument rated, multi-engine rated, had a high altitude endorsement, and appears to have done most of her training in California. She was a student at the Santa Monica Institution of Aviation English where she studied to improve her English proficiency enough to meet the ICAO level 4 standards. Most importantly, according to the NTSB preliminary report, her log books showed that she had completed a flight review and an instrument proficiency check in Torrance CA, in a C152, just two months prior to this accident. Also according to the NTSB, Flight Time Building has said that Ms. Tabata flew a C152 a day prior to the accident on a local and a cross country flight first with an instructor and then with an aspiring instructor acting as a safety pilot.

I find it very hard to believe that she was not trustworthy to fly a C152. These comments about her not being checked-out to fly solo are clearly an attempt by Flight Time Building to distance itself from this accident. It may be true that they hadn't photocopied all the necessary documents and had her fill out all the necessary forms to be officially checked-out, but this idea that a 416-hour commercial pilot isn't qualified to fly a C152 after being flight-reviewed in one just two months prior strikes me as a red herring meant to focus attention on the pilot and away from the school. Not that the school is to blame in any way as far as I can see... But it sickens me to see the media spinning this practically as "Defiant student pilot crashes, nobody is surprised." Lack of qualifications was not a contributing factor here.

I'm not at all surprised that she sounded like a lost toddler on the radio. I've spent a lot of time in Japan, my wife is Japanese, I speak the language and I have had the privilege of befriending around 20 Japanese exchange students who have come to California to study English. Japanese are exceptionally disadvantaged when it comes to English for three main reasons: 1) Incorrect pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary are systematically reinforced by their public education system. Indeed they would be better off not studying English at all than to spend 10 years learning unintelligible sentence patterns. 2) The Japanese language has a much smaller subset of syllables than the English language. We all know that they have trouble with L and R but they also struggle with F, H, B, and V sounds. If you want to know what it's like for them to hear English, watch a YouTube video on Chinese tones and try to distinguish the 5 4 tones while listening to a full-speed native Mandarin speaker.... and 3) Japanese grammar is quite different from English. Even Chinese grammar and sentence patterns are similar to English, as are German, Spanish, and most other commonly used world languages. Whereas most major languages of the world are grouped into overlapping families of lexical similarities, Japanese really stands apart in ways that make it easier for foreigners to learn Japanese than it is for Japanese to learn foreign languages.

To me, it is pretty clear what happened during this accident. As much as we all want to be distracted by the fact that it was a woman, or a foreigner, or someone who's experience was confined to a flight school and time-building environment, I think she suffered the simple and ubiquitous fate of flying VFR into IMC. I think she had set out to fly the pattern that night when the fog came in. Having flown mostly in CA, perhaps she wasn't as concerned about the WX as she should have been. Maybe she figured that she would be able to land before conditions deteriorated. Once lost in the soup, she failed to transition to instrument flying despite her rating and recent proficiency check (and was she under the hood with that safety pilot the day prior to the accident?). From the ATC recording, I believe she was trying to fly below the clouds to stay out of the IMC and maintain visual contact with the ground. She's being told where to look for the airport and it sounds to me like she's looking all over for it. She's reluctant to fly up into the fog and in fact the accident happens just as she follows instructions to climb from 600' to 1000' for ATC. You can hear her say two or three times with distress: "I'm in cloud."

This is wildly speculative on my part but I believe that being Japanese contributed to her fate. In America, we take for granted how much inconsistency there is in our society. Japan, by comparison, places a premium on predictability, consistency, quality, standards, regulation, ceremony and regimen. I have no problem believing that she could ace all her exams and handle by-the-book ATC communications and procedures as she perceived them. if ATC had given headings and altitudes and nothing more, I believe that would have reduced Mihoko's stress. The flurry of words and hints surrounding the 3-6-0 heading could only have added to the mental workload, even though they were meant to calm her down and would have been welcomed by most pilots. And how many of us would have taken the time to squawk 7700 as she did? She remembered her emergency checklist procedures but didn't think about her off-script options. She hadn't planned on the fog rolling in before she could make a landing, she hadn't planned to have to fly in IMC to another airport, and she hadn't planned the communication she would use during an emergency. When faced with the unexpected, she squawked 7700, tuned in 121.5, and then though "now what.. ... I have to do something, but it's not on my checklist and with every passing second I'm more lost." So in a moment of desperation she keys up the mic and just inquires "Hello?" This is entirely in-line with my observations of Japanese systems. In Japan every reasonable contingency would be scripted and all those deviating from it would be dealt with. They require flight plans for any flight over 5 miles or any flight landing at a different airport--there is far more structure and precision in their daily lives than there is over here. And as was already pointed out, when stressed to the max, one of the first things to depart the airplane is a solid command of English. They revert to the years of incorrect English they have been bombarded with through school and media back home.

I'm not claiming that all Japanese pilots are going to break down in a similar way under pressure, just that they have to overcome a lot of barriers that the rest of us don't even perceive. The English cards are much more heavily stacked against them than they are against other foreign pilots. They are a society that values consistency and predictability whereas America relishes variation, uniqueness, quick thinking and adaptability. I suspect even a novice Japanese pilot lands exactly the same every time whereas I'm still doubting that any two of my landings could ever be claimed as consistent by Japanese standards (Disclaimer: Maybe yours could. I'm still low-time).

By all appearances, most of us wouldn't be claimed by an accident like this because we wouldn't fly when fog is predicted to roll in, we would climb, confess, and communicate, we have no trouble with radio communications even when we're panicked, and we all imagine that we would make a perfect transition to instrument flying and not be fooled by our senses as we are vectored to a lit-up airport. But according to so many of the NTSB reports out there, this isn't completely true. Everyone is at risk of making mistakes in and around IMC and I suspect that her futile attempt to maintain visual contact with the ground (oh so tempting, isn't it?) while going in and out of the fog was the fateful mistake.

Reading Flight Time Building's statement and listening to the ATC recording, it's very easy to dismiss her as an unqualified pilot but I think she must have worked very hard to pursue her dream in aviation. If there's anything to be learned from this, I don't know. "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" focuses on multi-crew cockpit dynamics but perhaps the same principles apply to GA between a single pilot and ATC. Or maybe GA pilots could add a page to their emergency checklists that includes a verbatim statement you can read on guard and a reminder to just climb and fly a standard rate circle in the soup to a safe altitude until you reach ATC and they give you precise instructions.

Thanks for the details on her qualifications, it was much as I suspected. Let me give my analysis on the situation, and let me know if you see any fundamental errors, and perhaps you can gain some perspective from a 25+ year pilot whose beginning aspirations in aviation were the same, and trained in the same place, now I fly off the same Florida coast.

What I see is a young lady who has decided to pursue an airline pilot track, and she was working at it every chance she could, building the time and requirements to earn an ATP rating. Night and IMC time are spelled out in those requirements, and here she was getting both for the same time and money. Considering the low occurance of that kind of low fog in the SoCal climate she was trained in, there was a good possibility she did not understand the significance of the weather report. Her limited ability in English probably did not help this fact.

Considering it is possible, and even common to be fully IFR rated and current and never have been in IMC, heck, the way the training industry is today combined with the climate she trained in, it's likely that she saw only the gentlest form of IMC there is, a Marine Layer that is a few hundred feet thick and typically >800' high with 12 miles+ below.

This probably left her over confident in her abilities to handle really low IMC with really low visibility. It is a completely different thing, because the lower and closer to the runway you get, the 'off' it requires to get a 'full scale deflection' increases.

I think she was pushing too hard toward a goal, made a decision to make a flight towards that goal, and got into conditions she was not prepared to handle. It is not a particularly rare thing to have happen in highly competitive society regardless ethnicity.

 

[RotorDude]

Thanks for the details on her qualifications, it was much as I suspected. Let me give my analysis on the situation, and let me know if you see any fundamental errors, and perhaps you can gain some perspective from a 25+ year pilot whose beginning aspirations in aviation were the same, and trained in the same place, now I fly off the same Florida coast.

What I see is a young lady who has decided to pursue an airline pilot track, and she was working at it every chance she could, building the time and requirements to earn an ATP rating. Night and IMC time are spelled out in those requirements, and here she was getting both for the same time and money. Considering the low occurance of that kind of low fog in the SoCal climate she was trained in, there was a good possibility she did not understand the significance of the weather report. Her limited ability in English probably did not help this fact.

Considering it is possible, and even common to be fully IFR rated and current and never have been in IMC, heck, the way the training industry is today combined with the climate she trained in, it's likely that she saw only the gentlest form of IMC there is, a Marine Layer that is a few hundred feet thick and typically >800' high with 12 miles+ below.

This probably left her over confident in her abilities to handle really low IMC with really low visibility. It is a completely different thing, because the lower and closer to the runway you get, the 'off' it requires to get a 'full scale deflection' increases.

I think she was pushing too hard toward a goal, made a decision to make a flight towards that goal, and got into conditions she was not prepared to handle. It is not a particularly rare thing to have happen in highly competitive society regardless ethnicity.

You theory doesn't seem to explain why she'd fly solo in an aircraft she hadn't been signed off in.

 

[Henning]

You theory doesn't seem to explain why she'd fly solo in an aircraft she hadn't been signed off in.

I do not believe that to be a truthful statement by the operator. I believe she was fully signed off for that rental. I think he lied in an attempt to deflect any potential liability for renting her the plane to take into those conditions.

 

[RotorDude]

I do not believe that to be a truthful statement by the operator. I believe she was fully signed off for that rental. I think he lied in an attempt to deflect any potential liability for renting her the plane to take into those conditions.

If he lied, there would be some kind of paper trail, one would think, plus witnesses. A pretty big risk.

 

[azure]

If he lied, there would be some kind of paper trail, one would think, plus witnesses. A pretty big risk.

It's also possible that it's technically true, as in the paperwork was not complete, but that she was given verbal statements to the effect that she was good to go, and took the keys without anyone realizing that she had done so. That misunderstanding could also reflect her imperfect command of English.

 

[RotorDude]

It's also possible that it's technically true, as in the paperwork was not complete, but that she was given verbal statements to the effect that she was good to go, and took the keys without anyone realizing that she had done so. That misunderstanding could also reflect her imperfect command of English.

I would have accepted that explanation had I not heard her on the radio. I can't imagine anyone in their right mind signing her off solo with that "command of English" and radio skills.

 

[azure]

I would have accepted that explanation had I not heard her on the radio. I can't imagine anyone in their right mind signing her off solo with that "command of English" and radio skills.

The audio clip that was posted doesn't play on my Mac for some reason, so I can't really comment except to suggest that maybe her radio skills were okay in training, without the pressure of an emergency situation.

 

[RotorDude]

The audio clip that was posted doesn't play on my Mac for some reason, so I can't really comment except to suggest that maybe her radio skills were okay in training, without the pressure of an emergency situation.

I've copied the (edited) LiveATC audio from that link to mp3, so hopefully you'll be able to hear it now.
After listening, please let me know if you as a CFI, or any CFI you can think of, would have released her to fly solo. (Yes, bearing in mind she is under stress in this case.)

 

[Henning]

If he lied, there would be some kind of paper trail, one would think, plus witnesses. A pretty big risk.

Not really, the level of risk is the same as admitting she had permission, the lie would just serve to mitigate that. Besides, he would likely have the only documentary evidence, so the paper trail has likely turned to ashes, if one existed. Destroying Evidence is taught in every business ethics class.

He needs to provide documentation she signed showing that she did not have permission, because the fact that she had the keys is pretty strong ircumstatial evidence that kinda counters that. Especially since she was a 400+ hr IR-CPL who had already flown with them. Typically after the first flight, you are "checked out" in a 152 when you have a few hundred hours in them.

 

[RotorDude]

Not really, the level of risk is the same as admitting she had permission, the lie would just serve to mitigate that. Besides, he would likely have the only documentary evidence, so the paper trail has likely turned to ashes, if one existed. Destroying Evidence is taught in every business ethics class.

I suspect Martha too believed that it's OK to lie to the feds.

 

[Henning]

I suspect Martha too believed that it's OK to lie to the feds.

Heh, the SEC has a lot more teeth than some civil claimant's attorney.

 

[RotorDude]

Not really, the level of risk is the same as admitting she had permission, the lie would just serve to mitigate that. Besides, he would likely have the only documentary evidence, so the paper trail has likely turned to ashes, if one existed. Destroying Evidence is taught in every business ethics class.

He needs to provide documentation she signed showing that she did not have permission, because the fact that she had the keys is pretty strong ircumstatial evidence that kinda counters that. Especially since she was a 400+ hr IR-CPL who had already flown with them. Typically after the first flight, you are "checked out" in a 152 when you have a few hundred hours in them.

This pilot was anything but "typical". As I've noted elsewhere, listening to that audio, I can't imagine any CFI or DPE in their right mind releasing her into the wild.

 

[RotorDude]

Heh, the SEC has a lot more teeth than some civil claimant's attorney.

NTSB and FAA don't use civil attorneys (to my knowledge), and lying to them (or fed investigators) would no different from Martha's fibbing.

 

[azure]

I've copied the (edited) LiveATC audio from that link to mp3, so hopefully you'll be able to hear it now.
After listening, please let me know if you as a CFI, or any CFI you can think of, would have released her to fly solo. (Yes, bearing in mind she is under stress in this case.)

Thanks for the audio, I was able to play it. Honestly, I couldn't make out much of what she said - what I could make out sounded pretty bad, more like a non-pilot passenger was flying the airplane. But we also know that she was a 400-hour CPL, so that doesn't gibe with the audio either. It's very hard to make judgements about how she performed during the checkout based on audio from an emergency situation. People react in unpredictable ways (recall the woman pilot who lost control of the airplane due to severe icing).

Disclaimer: I'm not a CFI.

 

[RotorDude]

Thanks for the audio, I was able to play it. Honestly, I couldn't make out much of what she said - what I could make out sounded pretty bad, more like a non-pilot passenger was flying the airplane. But we also know that she was a 400-hour CPL, so that doesn't gibe with the audio either. It's very hard to make judgements about how she performed during the checkout based on audio from an emergency situation. People react in unpredictable ways (recall the woman pilot who lost control of the airplane due to severe icing).

Disclaimer: I'm not a CFI.

I am sure she'd have been more calm and collected with a CFI next to her, but her English skills couldn't have been much different (possibly even worse since presumably she kept improving them). And it's not just the language proper, but aviation terminology and usage.
I personally think the FAA should nail whoever let her loose at that skill level.

 

[FastEddieB]

I suspect Martha too believed that it's OK to lie to the feds.

Martha???

Please say it ain't so!

 

[RotorDude]

Martha???

Please say it ain't so!

Hey, that was the only reason I hyperlinked it.

 

[FastEddieB]

Hey, that was the only reason I hyperlinked it.

I know.

I was just playing dumb.

Assuming I have to play at it at all!

 

[Henning]

This pilot was anything but "typical". As I've noted elsewhere, listening to that audio, I can't imagine any CFI or DPE in their right mind releasing her into the wild.

I listened to the tape too. But inability to communicate in a foreign language under stress is not indicative of ones ability as a pilot when not.

If I was on the jury, I would want to see it in writing with her signature. That or no prohibition existed. Show me evidence that she was not competent. The tape does not count, she was deep over her head by that point with both the plane and the language. That she was lacking in ability for the flight she set out on is self evident. However, did the flight school make that evident to her before the flight?

How did she have the keys? Did she have the clipboard?

 

[RotorDude]

I listened to the tape too. But inability to communicate in a foreign language under stress is not indicative of ones ability as a pilot when not.

If I was on the jury, I would want to see it in writing with her signature. That or no prohibition existed. Show me evidence that she was not competent. The tape does not count, she was deep over her head by that point with both the plane and the language. That she was lacking in ability for the flight she set out on is self evident. However, did the flight school make that evident to her before the flight?

How did she have the keys? Did she have the clipboard?

Well there are obviously witnesses involved, such as the CFI-in-training she had flown with just prior. I'd be curious about what they have to say, under oath.
Re keys, some of the smaller places keep the keys in the binders, and the binders unlocked and easily available to "regulars".