Timebuilder
Entrepreneur
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2001
- Posts
- 4,625
Last Friday, August 8th, two guys that I knew well died while attempting to land at Seamans airport near Scranton, Pa.
Randy, the pilot, was a former seal, just a little older than I am. He shared a Cherokee Six with another friend of mine. Both partners in the plane learned to fly at the same small airport where I first flew with my dad back in 1962. He and his business partner, Bryan, were scheduled to have a business meeting on Friday morning not far from their destination. The report is not yet posted on the NTSB site, but there is an all-too-familiar set of circumstances at work here: marginal weather, poor visual contact, and a pilot who is highly motivated to make the landing "the first time". A mechanic reported after the accident that ground visibility was 1/8 mile at the time of the crash.
Note: Seamans airport has a VOR or GPS-A approach, with an MDA of 491 feet AGL (with local altimeter setting and 13.0 DME) and one mile visibility.
I'm getting steamed about crashes like this and the Connecticut Lear crash more and more as time goes on. It's one thing if your airplane comes apart (almost never) or you catch fire (hardly ever) or your engine quits (sometimes, but nowhere near "often"). It's another thing when you, the pilot fail to follow the rules, good operating practices, or just think that you can "get away with it" just this one time.
It may be difficult for the untrained eye to differentiate between 1/2 mile and 3/4 mile, but I don't think there is much doubt about the average pilot's ability to tell the difference between 1/8 mile and ONE mile. Similarly, there is no reason that I can see to be doing 60 degree banks over an airport at 100 to 200 feet AGL in a Lear 35 in order to land the airplane, short of being on fire.
I'm not an investigator and I don't like to speculate, so I'm trying to limit my comments to what has been reported so far as alleged "fact". If what I have learned about both of these accidents is indeed true, then neither of these crashes had to happen, and we wouldn't have lost four good men.
With 10,000 active pilots registered on this board, there is a very good chance that someone will face the same decisions that these two pilots faced in the past two weeks. Most of us will learn a lifesaving lesson from these two events, and the many other preventable accidents that happen every month in the US.
Will YOU be one of the many pilots who learn something from this, or will you be mentioned on the NTSB website as "the pilot"?
Think about it.
Randy, the pilot, was a former seal, just a little older than I am. He shared a Cherokee Six with another friend of mine. Both partners in the plane learned to fly at the same small airport where I first flew with my dad back in 1962. He and his business partner, Bryan, were scheduled to have a business meeting on Friday morning not far from their destination. The report is not yet posted on the NTSB site, but there is an all-too-familiar set of circumstances at work here: marginal weather, poor visual contact, and a pilot who is highly motivated to make the landing "the first time". A mechanic reported after the accident that ground visibility was 1/8 mile at the time of the crash.
Note: Seamans airport has a VOR or GPS-A approach, with an MDA of 491 feet AGL (with local altimeter setting and 13.0 DME) and one mile visibility.
I'm getting steamed about crashes like this and the Connecticut Lear crash more and more as time goes on. It's one thing if your airplane comes apart (almost never) or you catch fire (hardly ever) or your engine quits (sometimes, but nowhere near "often"). It's another thing when you, the pilot fail to follow the rules, good operating practices, or just think that you can "get away with it" just this one time.
It may be difficult for the untrained eye to differentiate between 1/2 mile and 3/4 mile, but I don't think there is much doubt about the average pilot's ability to tell the difference between 1/8 mile and ONE mile. Similarly, there is no reason that I can see to be doing 60 degree banks over an airport at 100 to 200 feet AGL in a Lear 35 in order to land the airplane, short of being on fire.
I'm not an investigator and I don't like to speculate, so I'm trying to limit my comments to what has been reported so far as alleged "fact". If what I have learned about both of these accidents is indeed true, then neither of these crashes had to happen, and we wouldn't have lost four good men.
With 10,000 active pilots registered on this board, there is a very good chance that someone will face the same decisions that these two pilots faced in the past two weeks. Most of us will learn a lifesaving lesson from these two events, and the many other preventable accidents that happen every month in the US.
Will YOU be one of the many pilots who learn something from this, or will you be mentioned on the NTSB website as "the pilot"?
Think about it.
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