TNFlyGirl Final NTSB report issued

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Dixiebluesky said:
What do the endorsements have to do with anything? The landing gear, the HP of the engine or the blue knob did not have a single thing to do with any of this. It would be like plowing your truck into a tree at 100 mph and people discussing whether or not you always made sure that your unused spare tire was properly inflated.

I also don't see how the cfi or dpe is even remotely responsible. The standards are all spelled out. At that point in time on that specific day you have to demonstrate your abilities in that given aircraft to pass a checkride. The dpe is just certifying that you met the standards right then and there, it is not his job to certify how you will operate at all points in the future.
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We know it had nothing to do with her being a woman… that’s been settled.

The spare tire analogy doesn’t square… better one: a monkey drives a car into a tree. The monkey, to everyone’s surprise, had a valid driver license. We would ask who in their right mind would give this monkey a driver license. Their toxicology report found way too many bananas in their system, any level makes it unsafe for monkey to drive. This same monkey posted tons of videos of their incompetence and told the world they were a YouTube star. Few months prior this monkey was driving a bumper car but decided they wanted a 911 Porsche! Everyone told that poor monkey that 911 was too much car!

And before the misogynistic accusations start, I wasn’t calling anyone a monkey.
 
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I'd say her being a woman did have some effect. When a man is performing poorly they are way more likely to get called out and confronted on their abilities. May not have changed the outcome but it could make a person at least more aware. But as we all know doing the same for a woman is verboten.
 
Dixiebluesky said:
I'd say her being a woman did have some effect. When a man is performing poorly they are way more likely to get called out and confronted on their abilities. May not have changed the outcome but it could make a person at least more aware. But as we all know doing the same for a woman is verboten.
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I’m calling BS on this. Women in “traditionally male” occupations, hobbies, sports, etc. face a massive burden to prove that they’re just as good as the men. They’re way more likely to be told “maybe piloting isn’t right for your (silently, because you’re a woman).” Just look at the crash in DC. The minute the men found out the helo pilot was a woman that was reason it happened. I’m certain she was a qualified pilot, but I bet the numbers of times a man told her she shouldn’t be flying was much greater than the average man.

Why TNFlyGirl was passed on as if she was qualified, I don’t know, but my two cents is that it’s not because men were afraid of telling her she wasn’t qualified.
 
MFE said:
What everyonis saying, but the helmet of your White Knight suit seems to be blocking for you, is not that they were bad pilots because they were women. It's that they both became qualified to be pilots because they were women, despite being inferior pilots. In plain english, they were crappy pilots, hard stop. Despite that, they were given certification, likely because they were women. Certified =/= Capable even though it's supposed to be all about that.
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That’s not what I said at all. I said that no one is afraid to tell women they’re bad at male dominated things, which is what the premise was of the post I responded to.

I do not for a minute believe that because they were women they were given slack against the standards. We can agree to disagree on this opinion.
 
morleyz said:
I’m calling BS on this. Women in “traditionally male” occupations, hobbies, sports, etc. face a massive burden to prove that they’re just as good as the men. They’re way more likely to be told “maybe piloting isn’t right for your (silently, because you’re a woman).” Just look at the crash in DC. The minute the men found out the helo pilot was a woman that was reason it happened. I’m certain she was a qualified pilot, but I bet the numbers of times a man told her she shouldn’t be flying was much greater than the average man.

Why TNFlyGirl was passed on as if she was qualified, I don’t know, but my two cents is that it’s not because men were afraid of telling her she wasn’t qualified.
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:deadhorse:
 
morleyz said:
That’s not what I said at all. I said that no one is afraid to tell women they’re bad at male dominated things, which is what the premise was of the post I responded to.
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In some cases that's true. In other cases it's not. It depends on the attitudes of the male and the female involved.
 
morleyz said:
I’m calling BS on this. Women in “traditionally male” occupations, hobbies, sports, etc. face a massive burden to prove that they’re just as good as the men. They’re way more likely to be told “maybe piloting isn’t right for your (silently, because you’re a woman).” Just look at the crash in DC. The minute the men found out the helo pilot was a woman that was reason it happened. I’m certain she was a qualified pilot, but I bet the numbers of times a man told her she shouldn’t be flying was much greater than the average man.

Why TNFlyGirl was passed on as if she was qualified, I don’t know, but my two cents is that it’s not because men were afraid of telling her she wasn’t qualified.
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A woman's need to prove herself is often directly related to her attractiveness, in an inverse manner. I experienced this firsthand, as I was in college (and later worked in the same place) with my sister, who is much more conventionally attractive than I am. I am prone to believe that most of the time, people don't even realize they are judging an attractive person less stringently -and people are much, much less likely to criticize an attractive person even when they see a lack of skill.

Also, aviation is not nearly as sexist as you are claiming. The reason that people were wondering about the heli pilot's qualifications was the social environ at the time - having quotas for woman pilots was a great detriment to women in aviation because it was no longer known whether you were there by skill or by quota.
 
SkyChaser said:
I am prone to believe that most of the time, people don't even realize they are judging an attractive person less stringently -and people are much, much less likely to criticize an attractive person even when they see a lack of skill.
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I think it's human nature to be nicer or more accommodating to the people who you want to be liked by.
And who you want to be liked by is definitely influenced by someone's attractiveness and social standing/power (at least initially). I think that's just built into the human DNA and symmetric across sexes :)


Separately...
There's also that most people don't enjoy confrontation. We like to get along. Few people love dropping bad news on people. Especially when the bad news in this case would have been: "your piloting skills are horrendous. You're unsafe and an accident waiting to happen. You're overly prone to distractions in the cockpit and your ADM is atrocious. You have no navigation skills. You are generally an all-around-bad pilot. We need to start from the fundamentals." Gender bias aside, how many CFIs are excited to have that talk, really?

Also what's interesting is that this discussion is so heavy on the male CFI to female student bias. Not enough on HER BIAS. How did she end up with these instructors? It's not a lottery. She picked them more than they picked her. It's very possible she self-selected her way into ***king catastrophe by choosing the most non-confrontational, go-along-to-get-along, inexperienced newbie CFI/II. There's plenty of cases on camera where the I/II should have flipped sh*t, but they didn't. I don't think it's because they all had a hard-on for her, I think it's likely that she specifically picked people who she likes. And my guess is she likes/liked people who are pushovers.

Perhaps the lesson should be: don't pick a CFI just b/c you get along with them. Maybe it's the CFI you perceive as a strict, judgmental ******* who you really need and who will make you a better pilot.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
Separately...
There's also that most people don't enjoy confrontation. We like to get along. Few people love dropping bad news on people. Especially when the bad news in this case would have been: "your piloting skills are horrendous. You're unsafe and an accident waiting to happen. You're overly prone to distractions in the cockpit and your ADM is atrocious. You have no navigation skills. You are generally an all-around-bad pilot. We need to start from the fundamentals." Gender bias aside, how many CFIs are excited to have that talk, really?
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I've had that talk once, with an experienced pilot who had just come in for a field checkout. Of course I didn't use any of those words, but it was still difficult. More for him than me, perhaps, as he became incredibly defensive and began insulting, well, everything about me. Nevertheless, there was no way I would have signed him off.
ArrowFlyer86 said:
Also what's interesting is that this discussion is so heavy on the male CFI to female student bias. Not enough on HER BIAS. How did she end up with these instructors? It's not a lottery. She picked them more than they picked her. It's very possible she self-selected her way into ***king catastrophe by choosing the most non-confrontational, go-along-to-get-along, inexperienced newbie CFI/II. There's plenty of cases on camera where the I/II should have flipped sh*t, but they didn't. I don't think it's because they all had a hard-on for her, I think it's likely that she specifically picked people who she likes. And my guess is she likes/liked people who are pushovers.

Perhaps the lesson should be: don't pick a CFI just b/c you get along with them. Maybe it's the CFI you perceive as a strict, judgmental ******* who you really need and who will make you a better pilot.
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Just as your car keys will be in the last place you look, your endorsement will come from the last CFI you try with.
 
morleyz said:
That’s not what I said at all. I said that no one is afraid to tell women they’re bad at male dominated things, which is what the premise was of the post I responded to.

I do not for a minute believe that because they were women they were given slack against the standards. We can agree to disagree on this opinion.
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You're delusional if you don't think this is even possible in the least, which is what you're asserting. Never mind for a minute.
 
How can I be more clear that the indictment among posters here is not that women are inherently worse at piloting aircraft? Is this going to get bounced too?
 
So Jenny's ONLY flights that were basically meeting standards was her qual/checkrides?

Everything I saw was a 10hr student who didn't progress at all. I'm wondering if the instructors were paid off by her or her dad to look the other way. Her social media was more important to her than anything else, including flying. Yeah, she picked some real cupcake pushover instructors to sign her off and the evidence is in her videos.

I wonder how many more Jenny's are out there
 
morleyz said:
Just look at the crash in DC. The minute the men found out the helo pilot was a woman that was reason it happened.
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Maybe we're not reading the same forums...what I saw was a majority of members here calling out the check pilot for being too kind to the female pilot, not that the female pilot was an inherently poor pilot. She was allowed to exceed the standards multiple times which are causal to the incident.
 
KE5BM said:
Maybe we're not reading the same forums...what I saw was a majority of members here calling out the check pilot for being too kind to the female pilot, not that the female pilot was an inherently poor pilot. She was allowed to exceed the standards multiple times which are causal to the incident.
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Take a screen shot, this post will be disappeared.
 
KE5BM said:
Maybe we're not reading the same forums...what I saw was a majority of members here calling out the check pilot for being too kind to the female pilot, not that the female pilot was an inherently poor pilot. She was allowed to exceed the standards multiple times which are causal to the incident.
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If she exceeded the standards multiple times wouldn't that mean she was a poor pilot?
 
We know that the accident aircraft had a Century 2000 prompting autopilot that couldn't control elevator trim itself. Did the aircraft have (pilot operated) electric trim? Was there anything unusual about the Debonair's manual trim wheel? There are so many model years and configurations of Debonairs/Bonanza family that it's hard to know how this plane was configured. I'm guessing that she moved the trim wheel face down (i.e. really is pitch up) and was reversing her trim inputs. Does the Debonair trim wheel work in the direction like most any other airplane?

Her former Cherokee 140 was a 1960s model. I've flown those much older 140s and some have the trim wheel on the ceiling. I don't even remember which way I cranked the ceiling wheel to go up/down, but I'm sure it was easy to figure out. Perhaps she never made the transition from something like that to a panel mounted trim wheel.
 
neaviator said:
Her former Cherokee 140 was a 1960s model. I've flown those much older 140s and some have the trim wheel on the ceiling. I don't even remember which way I cranked the ceiling wheel to go up/down, but I'm sure it was easy to figure out. Perhaps she never made the transition from something like that to a panel mounted trim wheel.
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You wonder if she ever really understood what the trim did, how it functioned, or how to easily figure out if she was trimming in the right direction or not. That would be similar to when she tried to climb at a very low power setting and didn't realize why she needed to push the throttle forward... She just didn't understand. Or was too chemically altered to think through the issues.
 
kyleb said:
You wonder if she ever really understood what the trim did, how it functioned, or how to easily figure out if she was trimming in the right direction or not. That would be similar to when she tried to climb at a very low power setting and didn't realize why she needed to push the throttle forward... She just didn't understand. Or was too chemically altered to think through the issues.
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The impairment would explain a lot of this.
I'm just wondering if there is anything unusual about the trim control wheel on this Debonair compared to most GA aircraft. I've always thought the nose moves in the direction the front of the wheel is moving when you manipulate the rear of the wheel. Is that still true on the Debonair? I've flown newer Bonanzas, but not the 1960s Debonairs.

Those overhead trim cranks on some (not the Debonair) old planes are funky!
 
neaviator said:
The impairment would explain a lot of this.
I'm just wondering if there is anything unusual about the trim control wheel on this Debonair compared to most GA aircraft. I've always thought the nose moves in the direction the front of the wheel is moving when you manipulate the rear of the wheel. Is that still true on the Debonair? I've flown newer Bonanzas, but not the 1960s Debonairs.

Those overhead trim cranks on some (not the Debonair) old planes are funky!
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She did not have electric trim. I thought about mentioning that she trained in a Cherokee 140 with the aforementioned ceiling-mounted trim crank. Possible (or probable, considering what was said in the instructor NTSB interviews) that she never developed an instinctive feel for the Beechcraft trim wheel.
 
If the trim is not instinctive a pilot should be able to get that solved in one good flight lesson so it becomes second nature. That flight lesson didn’t happen in this case.

A medicated, marginally skilled pilot with a limited understanding of their airplane’s trim and autopilot system is a recipe for disaster.

As the story line unfolded on YouTube I have to wonder if some of the pilots watching it were no different than the observer that whipped out their phone to capture a moment instead of stepping in and intervening when it’s sorely needed. Yes, this is a random thought in a particularly sad and preventable story.
 
Dana said:
If she exceeded the standards multiple times wouldn't that mean she was a poor pilot?
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From a pure logical point of view, no. All of us have “exceeded the standards multiple times”. We are not all poor pilots.
 
4RNB said:
Trim gets talked about a lot here.

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A few towns over there was an auto upholstery repair place, “Vic’s Trim Shop”, my brothers and I would cackle like hyenas when we passed by then Mom would yell “shut up or I’m gonna crack ya”. Good times!
 
TrueCourse said:
If the trim is not instinctive a pilot should be able to get that solved in one good flight lesson so it becomes second nature. That flight lesson didn’t happen in this case.

A medicated, marginally skilled pilot with a limited understanding of their airplane’s trim and autopilot system is a recipe for disaster.

As the story line unfolded on YouTube I have to wonder if some of the pilots watching it were no different than the observer that whipped out their phone to capture a moment instead of stepping in and intervening when it’s sorely needed. Yes, this is a random thought in a particularly sad and preventable story.
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I guess I don't follow how watching videos on Youtube is similar to being at an emergency in person in real time and not intervening.

How would a Youtube/instagram viewer intervene? Post an anonymous comment on the Internet? Even if well-intentioned, I'm not sure people tend to take "advice" from strangers or anonymous unsolicited internet postings...
 
Dana said:
If she exceeded the standards multiple times wouldn't that mean she was a poor pilot?
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Think he means exceeded in the sense of didn't meet standards, not did better than.

Separately, I don't think she had any notion of what trim does. Regardless of the wheel/crank etc. If you move it, it will either reduce or increase control forces, assuming you are hand flying. If on AP, and the trim annunciation isn't going away then hand fly for minute and get it in trim.
 
kyleb said:
You wonder if she ever really understood what the trim did, how it functioned, or how to easily figure out if she was trimming in the right direction or not.
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The ceiling mounted trim crank handle on the 60's era Pipers was very easy to figure out and operate.

Looking up at the ceiling at the crank: trimming UP was counterclockwise, and trimming DOWN was clockwise. The memory item of which way to spin was simply when the lever was pointed at the door, push forward to trim down, and backwards for up.

It was relatively powerful and easy to spin. Like many manual trim mechanisms, it didn't take a lot of motion to figure if it was headed in the right direction, or not.

Minor trim adjustments needed only the pointer finger pushing forwards or backwards on the appropriate side edge of the crank lever. Big trim adjustments were handled by grabbing then spinning the handle using the little plastic rotating piece, just like cranking a non-electric car window up and down.

I really liked that Piper trim ceiling design, much more than the small fairly stiff trim wheel stuffed between the seats on a Mooney.
 
Rick A said:
The ceiling mounted trim crank handle on the 60's era Pipers was very easy to figure out and operate.

Looking up at the ceiling at the crank: trimming UP was counterclockwise, and trimming DOWN was clockwise. The memory item of which way to spin was simply when the lever was pointed at the door, push forward to trim down, and backwards for up.
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I believe yours was hooked up backwards.
 
dtuuri said:
I believe yours was hooked up backwards.
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Sounds to me like it was. From my limited time in a Cherokee I remember it was a clockwise turn to bring the nose up.

In the planes I have flown it didn't seem difficult to figure out which way to move the trim to get the desired result (relieve pressure on the control). I've used crank handles & wheels. My experimental has a trim lever. Works like the stick. Push forward the nose goes down, move back the nose trims up. :dunno:
 
dtuuri said:
I believe yours was hooked up backwards.
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No, my humble apologies, you two are both correct. Not rigged backwards.

My 43 years of memory had forgotten the lever, when pointed towards the left side pilot’s window (rather than to the right), was what I should have referenced.

The pointer finger pushed trim down, and pulled it up. That finger motion is still ingrained in my mind, same with the N number. But the lever position was off by 180 degrees!
 
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Rick A said:
My 43 years of memory had forgotten the lever, when pointed towards the left side pilot’s window (rather than to the right), was what I should have referenced.
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I just sort of mentally blanked out the right side of the crank’s arc. Visualizing just the left half, it was easy to see that pushing it towards the nose was nose down, pulling it away was nose up. It was long time ago, but I don’t recall it being especially difficult to learn.

As an aside, I also saw “towards the door” in your post as to the left, up until dtuuri reminded us Piper doors were on the right!
 
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