TBM Crash May Implicate ATC

Jaybird180 said:
This seems appropriate here, although written for another context
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Yeah, but this is all fairly obvious.
But this will come into play if you manage to find another party in this particular accident that was partially in fault. Do you have any candidates? I very much doubt FAA will ever be sued in this case or that such lawsuit would even have remote chance of being successful. Was Socata somehow in fault? We may never know unless they recover the wreck.

That NTSB investigations/reports and 'blame' assignment in civil courts have nothing to do with one another we saw very clearly in the case of two recent well publicized Cirrus accidents - the Cory Lidle Manhattan crash and the Minnesota Prokop/Kosak crash. Both resulted in huge legal battles and I think in both cases jurors probably weren't even allowed to know results of NTSB investigation. As we saw in the case of the Prokop crash jurors assigned the 'blame' that was completely misplaced, fortunately it was reversed on appeals. You may easily reach limits of jury's competency when you ask them to rule in aviation cases. Jury systems can be quite effective when asked to rule whether accused committed a burglary but could be totally unfit to judge anything of more technical nature.
 
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N801BH said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by N801BH
Hmmmm... I can't wait to see the outcome the FAA has on the A&P and IA who signed off on that annual... Care to name names??:dunno:



Interesting answer...

So, the FAA's policy is ( if no one is hurt, even though the plane gets destroyed ), there will be NO investigation and sanctions against the FAA certified A&P and IA who clearly didn't perform their duties to the FAA's high standards??:dunno:...:confused:....:rolleyes2:
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They didn't even rate it an accident, they rated it as an incident. If the FAA had the funding to have the manpower to look into the depth of every event, I'm sure they would, but they don't have the resources available for that so they basically have to look at it in a triage fashion and spend their resources where they are most critical, and that is in the airline sector, not private GA.
 
silver-eagle said:
I would suggest that most accidents in general are "pilot" or user error. I'm just surprised the insurance companies have not added culpability clauses to all policies.
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Insurance companies are regulated in what they may or may not put in a policy, it's up to the states to decide, the companies can only make requests of the state insurance commissions.
 
Palmpilot said:
Given that all pilots make mistakes, who would buy such policies?
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Besides, part of what you insure against are your own mistakes, and that doesn't matter what you are insuring. The only time there is an issue is when fraud is involved.
 
Any lawsuits filed yet? Any statements from TBM, NTSB, FAA, or anyone else that can be linked?
 
What are the many reasons a pilot would ask for lower? Not looking for weather answers as the pilot stated that it was a problem in the plane.
 
Very sad. Two take-always for me: always declare, and let controller know the issue.
 
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Following the accident, the airplane manufacturer revised the emergency procedures for newly manufactured airplanes to require flight crews to don their oxygen masks as the first checklist item in each of the relevant emergency checklists.
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What’s unbelievable is that donning the oxygen masks was not the first step in a checklist for any sort of pressurization problem.
 
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Sluggo63 said:
What’s unbelievable is that donning the oxygen masks was not the first step in a checklist for any sort of pressurization problem.
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Agreed. That should be the first step, especially when flying at those altitudes.

Although the service ceiling on the 414 is FL300 (which of course you'd never use in that plane for multiple reasons), I personally go for FL180-190 as my go-to altitudes, with FL200 as a potential if FL180 is unavailable due to low altimeter setting. Hypoxia is one of my reasons for this. At those altitudes, your time of useful consciousness is much, much higher, and given the 414's ability to descend at rates rivaling a Steinway thrown out the back of a C-130, you can get down to safe altitudes quickly.

Flying higher is great, but there definitely comes added risk with it. In the Commander, for which our normal cruise altitudes were FL260-270, the first step we did before engine start was turning on the O2 to the masks.
 
In the 414 I used FL19 to 220 when I needed altitude. And yeah, I checked oxygen before engine start. But in a medical flight plane we had LOTS of oxygen available.
 
It sounds logical and easy to assume that the first thing you should do when there is a pressurization problem is Don the Mask at 100%. After all, it's the first thing on the checklist!! However, it is never as easy in real life as it is on web forums.

It is easy to identify a massive decompression because there is nothing subtle about it. It's loud and violent and you know something is not right. However, a slow pressurization leak is a totally different matter. It is often very difficult to identify and you have no idea that you are becoming hypoxic until it is too late. The higher the airplane, the faster it happens.

For anyone that plans to fly high altitude airplanes, I strongly recommend going to the FAA's Aviation Physiology Seminar that they give in Oklahoma City. It includes a visit to the decompression chamber, which allows each individual to identify their own symptoms of hypoxia so that they can recognize them if they occur in flight Everyone is different. I saw very experienced pilots that didn't recognize that they were hypoxic until they passed out.

Anyway, this particular incident was very sad because this was a very experienced TBM pilot in brand new equipment. Yes, he should have recognized what was happening and acted with more urgency to save himself. However, the controller has also been trained to recognize a dangerous situation and he did not act accordingly. I certainly hope that if I am in that kind of a situation, I will get better assistance from the ATC folks that are working my flight.

Abram Finkelstein
N48KY
 
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