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Friday, November 1, 2002
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 Friday, November 1, 2002
started 11/1/2002; 10:16:19 AM - last post 11/3/2002; 3:07:16 AM
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Doc Searls - Friday, November 1, 2002 
11/1/2002; 2:16:19 PM (reads: 6179, responses: 14)
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Legal Eagleities 
Like, who are John Leslie and Ian Greaves?
More floating points
Flying against the odds
| | Many years ago my old company was required by its creditors to take out life insurance policies on its principals. In the course of filling out the paperwork, I discovered that we could obtain a substantial rate break if I denied particpating in dangerous practices. Among the few listed, I was surprised to find "scuba diving" and "flying in small airplanes." |
| | Death by small aircraft is a remarkably common event. Not as common as death by automobile, of course, but close enough to bring pause. Just a few celebs that come to mind: |
| | Hale Boggs, John Heinz, Mel Carnahan, John Tower, Patsy Cline, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Reba McIntire's band, Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson, Ritchie Valens, Galen Rowell, Ron Brown, Will Rogers, Wiley Post, Glenn Miller, JFK Jr., Joe Kennedy Jr., Dag Hammarskjöld, Jane Dornacker, Frank Wells, the Evansville College basketball team, two guys from the Oklahoma University basketball team, Jim Croce, Ricky Nelson, Hale Boggs, John Heinz, Bo Rein, Amelia Earhart, Thurmon Munson, Bill Graham, Dean Martin Jr., Otis Redding, most of the Bar-Kays (four died with Otis), John Denver, Jim Reeves, Ronnie Van Zant (+ Steve and Cassie Gaines, also of Lynyrd Skynyrd), Aaliyah, Frank Sinatra's mom... |
| | A lot more seem to have died of drugs, cancer and car accidents, but still, ya gotta wonder. |
| | I was told by a military veteran, after Ron Brown's plane went down in Dubrovnik, that the cause was "brass fever," a condition that afflicts pilots in ther presence of senior officers and other powerful passengers who insist on flying in spite of the pilot's better instincts. I'm sure that was the case with Buddy Holly's plane. Bill Graham's too. |
| | Makes ya think that celebrity itself is a risky condition. |
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chuqui - Bill Graham
11/1/2002; 6:09:05 PM (reads: 657, responses: 2)
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I'm not sure Bill Graham's death was brass fever. he went down in a helicopter that clipped high tension power lines in a place where controversy had raged for years over visibility, while PG&E refused to attach visibility markers to them. The pilot evidently never saw them.
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Ralph Brandi - John Denver
11/1/2002; 9:14:45 PM (reads: 639, responses: 6)
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Doc Searls - Re: Bill Graham
11/1/2002; 9:16:51 PM (reads: 717, responses: 1)
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The conditions were lousy. It was rainy and windy, as I recall. The towers might not have been lit, but they were mapped on FAA sectional charts. The pilot should have been familiar with them. And he shouldn't have been flying that distance (from Concord to Marin) at such a low altitude.
I'm sure the final report blamed "pilot error," as they so often do in cases like this. I also have to wonder if the pilot would have made the same error if his passengers hadn't been VIPs.
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John Robb - Re: John Denver
11/1/2002; 9:33:37 PM (reads: 713, responses: 5)
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Usability is an issue. However, this is an experimental aircraft. My personal rules are that I will not fly unless I can put in more than 3 hours a week on planes that I have spent the time to learn how to fly. I have 2,800 hours of demanding flight time with an ATP license. I will not risk my family, and my friends, nor myself flying a plane without doing the work needed to make sure I can do so safely.
Flying is a dangerous activity. It isn't like driving a car. Good habit patterns can save the day. A bad one can kill you. Knowledge about the particular planes that you fly will make you effective of a walking accident waiting to happen. A "feel" for the air, weather, and mx condition of the plane you are flying can mean the difference between disaster and fun. I have seen way too many people (doctors, execs, etc.) that should have known better, jump in a plane and kill their passengers as well as themselves. Don't do it. If I won't do it without sufficient ongoing training given my experience, then anybody else that does is an unreasonable risk taker.
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Doc Searls - Re: John Denver
11/1/2002; 10:54:43 PM (reads: 770, responses: 2)
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I love to fly. I can sit at a window seat with sectional charts on my lap and be entertained from one coast to the other. I love to talk aviation trash with pilots, too. One of my favorite old hang-outs was the Sky Kitchen at the San Carlos Airport, near where I used to live.
One guy I knew years ago, then a 727 pilot for Piedmont Airlines (now US Airways), asked me why I didn't bother to become a pilot.
"I make mistakes," I said.
"Oh," he replied. "Then you shouldn't be a pilot."
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John Robb - Re: Bill Graham
11/1/2002; 11:06:22 PM (reads: 843, responses: 0)
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One thing a lot of pilots don't do is CHUM their charts. Charts are published on scheduled intervals (some haven't been published in years...). CHUM notes let you edit your charts to put in new towers and obstacles that weren't included in the chart. It is a big pain in the ass to do. Most people don't do it. If you are going to fly close to the weather VFR near to the ground, you should have a CHUMed chart handy.
One night, I was flying at 200 AGL with Nogs on at a couple of hundred miles an hour. My co-pilot was a senior pilot that hadn't done a sufficient amount of CHUM work. He had vouched for it however. Given his previous record, that was sufficient.
We were near the end of the route when we noticed a T-storm was over the landing zone. The light show under the Nogs was amazing. At the moment I decided to abort the landing and go to an alternative zone, out of the gloom appeared an unanticipated tower. It looked like a big x-mas tree right in front of the plane. I banked 90 degrees to the right and we passed by without a problem. Not much conversation on the way back. None of my crew would never fly with that pilot again.
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John Robb - Re: John Denver
11/1/2002; 11:10:48 PM (reads: 866, responses: 1)
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Everyone makes mistakes. It really depends on your error correction routines. Are they extremely fast or are they slow?
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John Robb - Re: Friday, November 1, 2002
11/1/2002; 11:20:55 PM (reads: 644, responses: 1)
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Just read the original post to this discussion (my bad). "Brass fever" is tough to overcome. I once flew a plane that was scheduled to haul VP Bush's election staff from Iowa to Washington. Unfortunately, they sent me in a plane that had cracks in the wings (hairline cracks that limited the plane to flying in calm weather). So, luck would have it that a line of T-storms from Canada to the Gulf would arrive between me and Washington. Over Washington they had a 60-thousand foot T-storm (wow!).
As our crew rest ran out, I opted to stay another day and try it again tomorrow. After a lots of push-back, nobody questioned the decision. We stayed the night and flew Bush's armoured car and staff the next day back to DC. I slept better given the situation, and it is ultimately unlikely that the brass held a grudge against me for doing this.
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Ralph Brandi - Re: John Denver
11/1/2002; 11:31:52 PM (reads: 760, responses: 1)
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Usability is an issue. However, this is an experimental aircraft.
If you read Tog's article, you'll see that it's likely that if the experimental aircraft had been used the way it was originally designed, John Denver wouldn't have died. But someone along the line made one minor change to the plane that made all the difference.
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Doc Searls - Re: Friday, November 1, 2002
11/1/2002; 11:34:09 PM (reads: 717, responses: 0)
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... and that's why you're still here.
Like the saying goes, There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots; but there are no old bold pilots.
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John Robb - Re: John Denver
11/1/2002; 11:44:30 PM (reads: 850, responses: 0)
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There is always a trade-off. Would I trade off the original design in favor of a lower potential of failure or cockpit fires? Perhaps. It sounds reasonable.
Thing is, you have to spend the time necessary to learn how to do common/emergency procedures in the aircraft you fly. If you don't, you are an accident waiting to happen.
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Doc Searls - Re: John Denver
11/2/2002; 12:03:22 AM (reads: 995, responses: 0)
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I think I correct reasonably fast, judging from how I've handled driving emergencies (e.g. complete engine/electrical failures in the dark, stuff that falls off a truck ahead); but at this point I'm old enough not to trust my body completely. For example, I used to hit about 50% of my outside shots in basketball, just shooting around. Now it's about 15-20% on a good day. Partly it's practice, but mostly it's arthritis in my hands. My fine motor control sucks. My vision is pretty good (actually getting better in some ways), but i don't trust it as much as I once did. Hearing, either. And now passing 55, the likelihood that I'll have a heart attack or a stroke in the cockpit is farther and farther from zero.
So these days I'd rather ride with a good pilot than train to become an adequate one.
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Donald W. Larson - Re: Friday, November 1, 2002
11/2/2002; 7:28:11 PM (reads: 681, responses: 0)
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Doc,
Some of those people died in planes not normally considered small. But, your point is taken.
The pilot for Buddy Holly's and the others was not qualified to fly the plane they flew. I recall reading a book that pointed out that the altimeter used in that plane worked in the opposite way most altimeters do. In a snow storm, having a unqualified pilot using instruments he was not familiar with turned fatal quickly.
Don
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Paul Burchfield - Minor nit
11/3/2002; 7:07:16 AM (reads: 694, responses: 0)
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As the son of a McEntire, I would be remiss if I didn't offer a correction to the mis-spelling of Reba's last name. It's McEntire, not McIntire.
-->Paul B.
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