FLYING LESSONS for November 6, 2014 suggested by this week s aircraft mishap reports

Transcription

1 FLYING LESSONS for November 6, 2014 suggested by this week s aircraft mishap reports FLYING LESSONS uses the past week s mishap reports to consider what might have contributed to accidents, so you can make better decisions if you face similar circumstances. In almost all cases design characteristics of a specific make and model airplane have little direct bearing on the possible causes of aircraft accidents, so apply these FLYING LESSONS to any airplane you fly. Verify all technical information before applying it to your aircraft or operation, with manufacturers data and recommendations taking precedence. You are pilot in command, and are ultimately responsible for the decisions you make. FLYING LESSONS is an independent product of MASTERY FLIGHT TRAINING, INC. This week s lessons: The incredible crash this week of a King Air B200, which lost an engine immediately after takeoff and subsequently crashed into a major flight training facility, killing three in a flight simulator along with the solo pilot of the big turboprop, and injuring six more in the building, burning two severely, is at first hard from which to draw a positive FLYING LESSON. Common comments I ve heard include this isn t supposed to happen in a turboprop, and a King Air should have no trouble climbing out on one engine, especially with only one person on board. See The NTSB preliminary report, unusually detailed for a prelim (perhaps because it s easy to find pilot-qualified witnesses at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport), describes a quick heading change immediately after takeoff, followed by a gradual turn in a shallow descent until impacting the building not precisely the classic loss of control scenario. The landing gear remained down, flaps were extended and the propeller was apparently not feathered. I ll leave you to read the NTSB s preliminary report and make your own (preliminary) judgment about this departure from the standard Engine Failure During Takeoff skills practiced by multiengine pilots the world over. See I still feel uneasy when I read of any fatal aircraft accident. If I ever stop taking crashes a little personally, I think I ll no longer be effective in gleaning positive LESSONS from these events. But I'm particularly sickened by this crash. Not only did the pilot perish, but persons on the ground doing the right thing training, and providing quality flight training (including Russian language translation duties) died or were hurt in the crash as well. The student in the simulator had traveled from halfway around the world to complete this program, in part (no doubt) because simulator training is so much safer than instruction in an actual aircraft. I am also angered, frankly, because I know people who work in that building. It truly hit close to home the impact was into the building just northeast across the street from my office, directly out my office window. It is miraculous that about 100 people made it out of the thick blacksmoking building alive. In addition to the fatalities, I m angry that such a great airplane could create so much damage to such great people and such a great organization. Undoubtedly instructors and staff will be laid off from their jobs, since damage was so extensive as to require much of the building to be torn down. People from around the world depend on those instructors and those one-of-a-kind simulators to learn to safely fly business and corporate aircraft. Other pilots will get less safety training as a result of this crash; airplanes will be grounded because their pilots cannot receive required training. There will likely be lawsuits that further impact good aviation organizations and service providers. The damage footprint of this engine failure on takeoff, in an airplane that should have been able to climb out on one engine, is very far-reaching, both geographically and over time. Think about this damage footprint next time you hear someone justify taking extreme risk with weather or limitations or training and proficiency because they are alone in an airplane and not endangering anyone else. And I feel guilty guilty because, if the airplane had been a couple of dozen feet higher it might have missed the top of the building, and according to the NTSB it was on a direct trajectory

2 for the office of the association by which I m employed (FLYING LESSONS being an unrelated after-hours labor of love on my part). I was late getting to work that morning, running errands before a work-related trip. So I was on the north end of the airport driving in when the crash occurred, an impact that might have taken out our entire staff and left me alive to wonder why. Yet despite the soul-searching that followed this crash (or perhaps because of it), I struggled to find a good LESSON as a result. This mental struggle continued that evening when I boarded a commercial flight to speak and exhibit for my employer at the first FLYING Magazine Aviation Expo in Palm Springs, California. Quite ironically I had been asked by Expo organizers to speak on the topic of multiengine safety. Knowing the King Air crash was widely publicized in public media around the world and would be at the top of mind for pilots attending my talk, only increased the pressure on me to find a way to learn from this deadly crash. See And then, sometime in the night before my presentation, the answer came. When it came it was an epiphany, something I ve never thought before and, when discussing this later even with extremely well-known big name instructors at the Expo, I found none had considered before either. That morning, before my presentation, I updated my slides and my introduction to present what I ve learned from this horrible, close-to-home crash. There are a number of skills and maneuvers that are evaluated on Practical Tests ( checkrides ) that, for many pilots, seem to have no direct application to flying after the pilot certificate or rating is earned. Some evaluated Tasks seem to be some might call circus tricks, skills seemingly learned for the sole purpose of successfully passing those skills on a checkride. Flight at Minimum Controllable Airspeed ( Slow Flight ), S-Turns Across a Road, Lazy 8s, and Turns on Pylons are among those evaluated Tasks that might appear to be checkride circus tricks. Certainly they don t have as obvious an application as crosswind takeoffs and landings, stall recognition and recovery and engine failure procedures. One such checkride circus trick maneuver applicable to multiengine aircraft is the V MC Demonstration. V MC is an airspeed, determined during certification of a multiengine aircraft, at and below which aircraft directional control is not possible with one engine inoperative and the other engine operating at full power. Flight controls become less effective as airflow decreases. Consequently, as speed decreases the pilot must deflect the controls progressively further in order to compensate for asymmetric thrust and maintain heading. Loss of directional control occurs at the point when the pilot reaches full control deflection. Any further reduction in speed is beyond the airplane s capability to maintain heading in this configuration. V MCA, or the indicated airspeed at which this loss of control occurs, is defined under these certification conditions: Maximum available power on the operating engine (full throttle, maximum rpm and takeoff fuel flow). Windmilling (not feathered) propeller on the simulated-inoperative critical engine. Most unfavorable weight and center of gravity position. This is usually maximum takeoff weight and the furthest-aft CG location that is within the approved loading envelope. Landing gear retracted. Flaps in the recommended takeoff position. Cowl flaps, if installed, in the takeoff position (usually open). Airplane trimmed for takeoff. Airplane airborne, with negligible ground effect. Maximum 5 of bank into the good engine. These are worst-case conditions; changes in any of the parameters result in a lower indicated airspeed before loss of directional control occurs.

3 The V MC Demo consists of climbing to a safe altitude and clearing the area, then establishing the demonstration configuration (flaps, cowl flaps, gear and trim) with the critical engine (if one engine is identified as critical by the manufacturer) at idle power with the propeller control in the takeoff position. While maintaining heading in a climb at approximately 10 knots above V SSE, or that airplane s minimum safe single engine speed (as defined in the Pilot s Operating Handbook), slow the airplane at the rate of approximately one knot per second (a very gradual deceleration). Add rudder and aileron input as needed. Recover at the first sign of inability to maintain heading or the first indication of a wing stall, whichever occurs first. Recover by reducing power on the operating engine sufficiently to stop the heading change (generally to idle power, to quickly eliminate the asymmetry that causes the V MC effect) while simultaneously lowering the nose (to increase airspeed and therefore airflow, making the controls more effective). Do so properly and within 20 of the entry heading, accelerating to V XSE or V YSE (as designated by the pilot examiner) +10/-5 knots, and you ve passed this task on the Multiengine Rating Practical Test at the Private Pilot level. Why do twin-engine pilots learn to fly the V MC Demonstration? Most say: In order to pass the checkride. The FAA s Airplane Flying Handbook doesn t emphatically state the purpose of this demonstration on multiengine Practical Tests, but does say that: A thorough knowledge of the factors that affect VMC, as well as its definition, is essential for multiengine pilots, and as such an essential part of that required task. Seemingly the V MC Demonstration is the ultimate circus trick maneuver, one taught for the sole purpose of giving pilots something on which to be evaluated. After all, you have to be at or below V MC (red radial) speed in order to perform this maneuver. Takeoff in most multiengine airplanes is recommended at V MC + 5 knots, and final approach speed is usually 15-20% above V MCA. You ll never be near red radial speed. After the checkride, you might think, there s no situation when you re likely to find yourself in a V MC maneuver. My epiphany, however, was that the King Air crash is a perfect illustration of the reason pilots learn to perform the V MC Demonstration. The missing instructional element is to put the maneuver into context.

4 An engine failure immediately after takeoff calls for maintaining directional control with aggressive use of rudder (automatically boosted in some cases, such as in the King Air 200 if rudder boost was turned on and working properly) as you confirm the power controls are set for maximum power. It demands lowering the airplane s pitch attitude to an angle that supports flight at blue line, or Best Rate of Climb Single Engine speed, followed by retracting landing gear (if it s down and the airplane is sufficiently powerful to fly through gear retraction on one engine), and retracting flaps. As soon as aircraft control is assured, identify the failed engine and feather its propeller or confirm it has feathered, in the case of aircraft like the King Air 200 that might have an authofeather system that, if turned on and working properly, senses power loss and automatically feathers the propeller. Once in this single-engine configuration, climb out straight ahead until reaching an altitude at which safe turns are possible, then divert to a nearby airport closer to straight ahead or maneuver to return to the departure airport whether on the runway used for takeoff, the same runway in the opposite direction, or another runway or acceptable landing area. While we wait several months (or longer) for the NTSB to complete its final report, we re left to speculate on which of these situations was going on in the cockpit of that King Air: 1. The pilot did everything right but for some reason climbing out straight ahead wasn t working. 2. The pilot thought he had done everything right but missed something, and his attempt to climb out straight ahead wasn t working. 3. The pilot made a decision to disregard industry s century of experience with multiengine airplanes, and do something other than clean up the airframe, feather the propeller and climb out straight ahead as we are all taught. 4. The pilot was just along for the ride, for reasons unknown. Regardless of whether the actual situation was condition 1, 2 or 3 (and perhaps even condition 4), my epiphany is that the purpose of the V MC Demonstration is to give the pilot a survival tool if he/she thinks he/she has done everything right and the airplane still begins to depart from controlled flight. The V MC Demonstration is a checkride circus trick no more! Think about the other checkride maneuvers that are often taught as circus tricks, maneuvers presented as if they are solely for the purpose of passing a checkride. Really think, and you ll find a potential life-saving (or at least damage-preventing) reason for every one. For example: Flight at Minimum Controllable Airspeed ( Slow Flight ). This teaches the control feel and finesse required at high angles of attack during the landing flare and in the initial stages of a soft-field or short-field takeoff. The actual time spent in the slow flight regime in takeoffs and landings is so short that we have very little opportunity to develop habits in this regime. Some time a long time ago, a smart flight instructor figured out that we can extend the time we practice this vital lesson by artificially recreating it at a safe altitude. Many pilots and instructors have just forgotten the context. S-Turns Across a Road. This maneuver fine-tunes our ability to detect the effect of winds on ground track, and to subtly alter the angle of bank and therefore rate of turn in order to maneuver the airplane into precise alignment with ground features. It sounds a lot like practice making the base-to-final turn without making too steep of a bank, to avoid the commonly cited base-to-final turn stall scenario. True, the Practical Test completion standards don t require us to be directly over a specific object or ground track as we pass through wings-level flying perpendicular to a road or other ground feature. But the maneuver also teaches that it takes shallow, coordinated corrections to fly this precisely and perhaps even reminds us that sometimes we cannot safely become

5 aligned with a runway if we ve misjudged the wind, and our only option is to go around and try again. Lazy 8s. The Commercial Pilot training joke is that Air Traffic Control never directs a pilot to give me a Lazy 8 out there before being cleared on course or for landing. The reality, though, is that in addition to teaching very precise control inputs, the Lazy 8 teaches pilots perhaps subconsciously to avoid a condition called rolling Gs. If you watch military aircraft and professional aerobatics pilots closely, you ll see when they maneuver their airplane they always pitch first, then roll, or roll first, then pitch. Except when making very small changes, they do not pitch and roll at the same time. That s because changing pitch rapidly loads the wing (adds a G load), and rolling the airplane creates a larger G-load on one wing as compared to the other. Rolling Gs can overstress an airplane even well below its design limit, because the load is carried asymmetrically through critical structure. Get to where you fly Lazy 8s well and without having to concentrate too much, and you ll be hard-wired to avoid loading and rolling the airplane at the same time. Eights on Pylons. Another Commercial Pilot checkride maneuver, Eights on Pylons teaches the concept of pivotal altitude, the altitude at which a landmark will appear steady off your wing as you turn about it. Pivotal altitude varies with ground speed, so you need to make constant corrections as you maneuver in a circle around a landmark. In Eights on Pylons, if your landmark appears to be moving aft along your wingtip you need to gain height to maintain pivotal altitude. That sounds to me like good training for detecting the need to pull up if you re focused on an object outside of your airplane in a turn, and your altitude begins to decrease without you otherwise noticing. The highest level of learning is called correlation. Correlation is the ability to associate what you have learned under one set of circumstances with the need for action under a different set of circumstances. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration s Aviation Instructor s Handbook more precisely defines correlation as Associating what has been learned, understood and applied with previous or subsequent learning. See

6 Flight instruction is generally oriented toward teaching and demonstrating application. The license to learn we receive with a new, temporary pilot certificate or rating is the challenge to develop the experience, and learn from the experiences of others, to rise to the level of correlation. The positive LESSON from last week s awful crash at Wichita, Kansas, is a reminder that all maneuvers on all our checkrides can be correlated to real lifesaving and airplane-saving situations. We learn what we are required to learn for a reason. No matter what else he had done, if the pilot of the King Air noted an inability to hold heading, he probably could have chopped both power levers, lowered the nose and landed straight ahead correlating the V MC Demonstration to an actual Engine Failure During Takeoff. The challenge is to retain at least the level of proficiency we once demonstrated to earn our pilot certificates and ratings, and to correlate those skills with others. Tempered with judgment, this gives us a much better chance of being ready if we think we ve done everything right, but the outcome is still seriously in doubt. Questions? Comments? Let us know, at mastery.flight.training@cox.net See bootcamp/update Debrief: Readers write about recent FLYING LESSONS: We ll get back to your excellent comments and observations in the next issue. Thanks for indulging my more-introspective-than-usual observations, and reporting a day late this week. What do you think? Let us know at mastery.flight.training@cox.net. I ve enjoyed FLYING LESSONS for over a year now and figured I should just do my share. Thanks for bringing such great content to the discussion. --Marc Dulude Thank you, Marc, for your financial help toward delivering FLYING LESSONS each week. Be a FLYING LESSONS supporter through the secure PayPal donations button at Thank you, generous supporters Share safer skies. Forward FLYING LESSONS to a friend Personal Aviation: Freedom. Choices. Responsibility. Thomas P. Turner, M.S. Aviation Safety, MCFI 2010 National FAA Safety Team Representative of the Year 2008 FAA Central Region CFI of the Year FLYING LESSONS is 2014 Mastery Flight Training, Inc. For more information see or contact mastery.flight.training@cox.net.