caldrail's Blog

That looked horrible on the telly. Here in NZ it was reported as being lucky that the plane did not hit any more houses, but still, what a tragic loss of life.

The pilot of the jet is being hailed as something of a hero - his stricken plane had to be nursed away from a hospital and a playing field. Without knowing what the air accident people will make of the accident, it begins to look as if the pilot tried to extend the glide as much as possible to avoid a collision with a built up area - and ironically that made the aircraft prone to a stall/spin situation that caused it to dive in. That certainly happened in the Thruxton incident, where the loss of power on one side caused the aircraft to roll over and turn without enough control authority to prevent it. There was another incident some years ago when a training flight in a light aeroplane got into difficulty on approach. It isn't known who had the controls - I suspect the instructor took over at the last moment - but the aeroplane attempted to glide over houses to reach a runway and sadly it too stalled and spun in.

 

Its an automatic reaction. Your aeroplane is over peoples property and selves, and you don't have enough power to fly to the runway ahead. The instinct to attempt to keep aircraft flying at minimum speed in an effort to cover distance must be very strong. Its also potentially fatal. Even if its physically possible, the margin of safe airspeed is so low that any change in wind might precipitate a bad situation.

 

Strange thing is, I was once flying a Piper Tomahawk on a training flight with an instructor. He asked me to conduct a practice engine failure. Once I'd settled into the glide, he asked which field I was heading for. I pointed at a grass meadow of some large house. The instructor looked at me as if I was crazy. But I got there. I was over the field with plenty of height. So much of this accident risk is perception. The pilot of the jet weighed up what he thought he could do in his situation and tragically it went wrong for him (assuming there were no mechanical/hydraulic control failures). Its easy then to say that the pilot was guilty of pilot error, but he was in a difficult situation - a stressful situation - and having to make decisions with options running out.

 

One of my instructors said the first decision in the event of trouble is where you want to be when you reach the ground. He was spot on.