C-130 Crash Savannah

A difficult read. I was puzzled because an engine failure with three others turning didn't seem it should be an event that would cause loss of control. When I read a little further and learned that meant an imbalance of four thousand horsepower, it became clearer that improper response could result in LOC.

I guess it doesn't matter what's on the wings. A C-130 will roll over just like an Apache if it isn't flown correctly.

While the very experienced pilot's actions are inexplicable, then I consider being in a situation which demands correct second by second decisions. It's a sobering thought.

May they rest in peace.
 
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Really not one to cast stones.......the airborne stuff is what it is/was......plenty of people have shut down the wrong motor, put anti-spin rudder in the wrong way (pro spin I suppose) in the heat of the moment over the years, in a moment of confusion, and paid for it with their lives. The thing I have the most frustration with while reading this report is the maintenance actions, or lack thereof, which took place prior to the mishap. I've been part of an organization before that had such a similar, seemingly, lackadaisical outlook on downing pilot gripes and fixing them (or not). To be clear, I mean the mx leadership, NOT the troops who were busting their butts day and night to get the jets ready. It made my blood boil then, and reading this raised my blood pressure similarly.
 
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I think this one was on the troops. They had the proper pigtail needed to connect the precision tachometer, but didn't ask how to use it.

Then they used a half ass procedure that didn't fix the problem, and sent the flight crew off in a aircraft that had an engine that wouldn't produce power.

Unfortunately, the pilot failed to answer the bell when the fight started.
 
35 AoA said:
Really not one to cast stones.......the airborne stuff is what it is/was......plenty of people have shut down the wrong motor, put anti-spin rudder in the wrong way (pro spin I suppose) in the heat of the moment over the years, in a moment of confusion, and paid for it with their lives. The thing I have the most frustration with while reading this report is the maintenance actions, or lack thereof, which took place prior to the mishap. I've been part of an organization before that had such a similar, seemingly, lackadaisical outlook on downing pilot gripes and fixing them (or not). To be clear, I mean the mx leadership, NOT the troops who were busting their butts day and night to get the jets ready. It made my blood boil then, and reading this raised my blood pressure similarly.
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Hearing some stories on other boards that the PR ANG operates in a way that mimics some S. Florida Charter operators….

What's frustrating to me is that the accident report is very indicative of a culture problem in that unit and the ANG actually was the one who invented/wrote the book on safety culture and safety culture workshops. Why weren't these things identified and being addressed before losing the whole airplane/crew?
 
Maintenance attitude might have been affected by the destination of the aircraft: The boneyard at D-M.

Yes, I know, it *shouldn't*. But....

Ron Wanttaja
 
35 AoA said:
The thing I have the most frustration with while reading this report is the maintenance actions, or lack thereof, which took place prior to the mishap.
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I see it the opposite way.

Yes, the maintenance actions are inexcusable. I was a MX officer before I became an AF pilot, so I wholly understand the pressures and such that maintenance folks work under. One of my duties was transporting and delivering munitions assets for demil and long-term storage, and I understand the temptation to short-cut on items that are never going to be operationally used again. All of it is completely unprofessional, and what I read in that report is shameful.

That being said, all of the maintenance assclownery could have taken place and it wouldn't have resulted in a fatality if the crew had performed their basic airmanship tasks properly.
 
Hacker said:
That being said, all of the maintenance assclownery could have taken place and it wouldn't have resulted in a fatality if the crew had performed their basic airmanship tasks properly.
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I actually read pretty much that entire PDF and it sure sounds like that to me. The sobering thing was that the PIC was so respected by all his peers and was considered one of the best pilots in the squadron and seemed like he would have had the hours to know better. It's a warning against complacency for sure.
 
You're not wrong Hacker, and perhaps I shouldn't minimize the aircrew errors which were the ultimate reason the accident took place. It just makes me scratch my head a little how a crew with apparently that much experience, would make such a series of basic errors. The AIB covered a somewhat nebulous reason they might have introduced rudder in the wrong direction. Perhaps the SIR ventures more of a guess, though a guess is probably the best they are able to do. There is obviously a reason they did what they did, and I guarantee it wasn't "let's go ahead and f this away". Same question popped into my head after reading the reports from AF 447 or Colgan. In the heat of the moment, those 2 crews did the exact wrong thing, which to most of us, is nearly inexplicable, and in light of the lives lost, inexcusable. In those two cases, while the reports didn't specifically allude to it (though at least Colgan mentioned training standards/PTS being too focused on minimizing altitude lost), my personal opinion is that both crews were overly concerned with leaving their assigned altitudes and getting violated, coupled with an apparent lack of awareness to the fact that they had departed controlled flight and were fully stalled. That is a really long way of saying that sometimes people do things that seem really irrational, but there is always a reason they did them.
 
You can add the TransAsia crash as well. That one closer to Colgan with a deficient Captain at the controls.
 
The two incidents that cemented to me that no level of experience or proficiency makes a pilot immune to mistakes were the crashes of Art Vance and Scott Crossfield.

Art Vance was a highly experienced and respected warbird pilot, and the check-pilot for the Reno Air Races. Art crashed while trying to "scud run" in bad weather through the mountains.

https://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb....ev_id=20051012X01621&ntsbno=ATL06LA003&akey=1

Crossfield, famed test pilot, crashed after flying into a thunderstorm. Although the NTSB report shares blame with ARTCC, the weather throughout his planned route was forecast and reported to be poor, and he decided to fly in it anyway.

https://generalaviationnews.com/2007/10/19/ntsb-lack-of-weather-update-killed-crossfield/

There have obviously been countless other examples over the years of good pilots making big errors, some of which were fatal.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Hearing some stories on other boards that the PR ANG operates in a way that mimics some S. Florida Charter operators….
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"The commander of the 156 OG considered the MA to be one of the better aircraft in the 156 AW and believed the MA was good to go with a strong crew to get it to the 309 AMARG.400"

When one of your better aircraft is going to the boneyard it makes me wonder about the rest of their aircraft.
 
Hacker said:
The two incidents that cemented to me that no level of experience or proficiency makes a pilot immune to mistakes were the crashes of Art Vance and Scott Crossfield.
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Both Vance and Crossfield were flying solo. I believe there is often a subconscious temptation to take risks when flying without passengers that one would never take with others on board.
 
Stan Cooper said:
Both Vance and Crossfield were flying solo. I believe there is often a subconscious temptation to take risks when flying without passengers that one would never take with others on board.
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Crossfield's accident was baffling to me. I was standing on the ground at my home airport talking with my IA at the time Crossfield went down. My home field is about 30 miles SW of where he crashed. We were looking to the North and commenting on the strength of that line of storms and that we would not want to be flying near it. Why someone with Crossfield's experience challenged that, instead of diverting 10 miles SE, just makes no sense.
 
I don’t know about how those guys train or stay current. But to practice these types of failures do they do any sim training like some others do?? We all talk about engine out on take off and what to do about it.
 
Stan Cooper said:
Both Vance and Crossfield were flying solo. I believe there is often a subconscious temptation to take risks when flying without passengers that one would never take with others on board.
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Perhaps true, although my personal belief is that no pilot values anyone else's safety more than his own, but that's a worthy debate to have.

My point in posting those two was that those were the specific cases that drove home to me personally that even the most experienced and skilled pilots are susceptible to poor judgment and/or airmanship.

I can provide plenty of other examples of poor decisionmaking that involved crew aircraft or passengers, because bad judgment, airmanship, and execution can be found all across the pantheon of aviation, across time, and across training, skill, and experience levels.

None of us are immune.
 
benyflyguy said:
I don’t know about how those guys train or stay current. But to practice these types of failures do they do any sim training like some others do?? We all talk about engine out on take off and what to do about it.
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TD;DR: Yes they practice them. More than likely in a simulator, maybe in an airplane.

Let me preface all this with although I flew mostly large, 4-engine airplanes in the Air Force for 25 years, I retired back in 2016 so some of this information may have changed in the past few years. Also, I didn’t fly C-130s, so although the AF would like to think they are standardized across airframes and across commands, they aren’t. I flew KC-135s, and even though its been years since we transitioned from SAC to MAC, now AMC the tanker worlds always held onto some SAC-isms and still to this day does things differently than airframes that were MAC/AMC (C-5s, C-141s, C-17s).

Speaking from the KC-135 world, we would have a monthly requirement to perform takeoffs with a simulated engine failure (we could pull an engine to idle after 200’ AGL), and to do simulated engine out landings and engine out go-arounds. The would also be evaluated on our recurrent checkrides. These items for the longest time were done in the airplane under the supervision of an Instructor Pilot. In addition to the OEI flying, Instructors were also allowed to demonstrate other failures in the aircraft (jammed stabilizer approaches and landings, OEI approaches with hydraulic failure to the rudder, etc.)

With this kind of training, I would say pilots were mostly proficient in their flying and handling of flying Emergency Procedures. We would still go into the simulator to practice other EPs that couldn’t safely be done in the airplane.

Several years ago (maybe 10 or so), the Air Force decreed, under the guise of safety that all EP training would be done in the simulator. All engine out procedures, all failure simulations, etc. There was an exception made for units that didn’t have a simulator collocated at their base. Luckily, our base didn’t have a simulator, so we were able to continue to train in the aircraft. For those pilots who were at a base with a simulator, all they could do in the plane were four engine operating approaches, landings, and go-arounds.

Personally, I think the training is not as good as it is in the plane. The simulators are not near what a full, Level-D sim is capable of and the sims that we had really didn’t replicate the airplane with the fidelity that I would have thought was necessary to really get a feel for the jet.

So, how much training and practice did these guys have in engine out flying? I don’t know, but I bet it was less than they would have had 20 years ago.
 
Hacker said:
The two incidents that cemented to me that no level of experience or proficiency makes a pilot immune to mistakes were the crashes of Art Vance and Scott Crossfield.

Art Vance was a highly experienced and respected warbird pilot, and the check-pilot for the Reno Air Races. Art crashed while trying to "scud run" in bad weather through the mountains.

https://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb....ev_id=20051012X01621&ntsbno=ATL06LA003&akey=1

Crossfield, famed test pilot, crashed after flying into a thunderstorm. Although the NTSB report shares blame with ARTCC, the weather throughout his planned route was forecast and reported to be poor, and he decided to fly in it anyway.

https://generalaviationnews.com/2007/10/19/ntsb-lack-of-weather-update-killed-crossfield/

There have obviously been countless other examples over the years of good pilots making big errors, some of which were fatal.
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Most definitely. The one that hit home most for me was Al Pietsch, warbird and airshow pilots Warren & Kent Pietsch's father. 40,000 hr pilot, 3000 hours in type (Navajo Chieftain), once again weather related.

Lost two friends to CFIT this past summer. Scud running in the mountains in a Cessna. They didn't have the level of experience of Vance, Crossfield or Pietsch, but they both knew better.
 
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