Grumman electrical failure. Crashes into Cessna on runway.

Why? Some have nothing to offer.
You presumably read 120 posts in this thread from people who were not there, but think the person who actually controlled the situation has nothing to offer? He's very likely the only one in the cockpit who really knows what was going on at the time.

Nauga,
and the nut that holds the yoke
 
the person who actually controlled the situation
the only one in the cockpit who really knows what was going on at the time

That’s an interesting way to phrase it. As I said earlier, I keep waiting for “the rest of the story” that might inducate the reasonability of the pilot’s actions. Still hoping, but every new bit of information seems to make it less likely that the pilot “controlled the situation”
 
I've never flown an aircraft with an electrical system, nor have I ever crashed into a Cessna, is it a coincidence, or cause and effect?
So you fly a hand-propped diesel ... cool!
 
That’s an interesting way to phrase it. As I said earlier, I keep waiting for “the rest of the story” that might inducate the reasonability of the pilot’s actions. Still hoping, but every new bit of information seems to make it less likely that the pilot “controlled the situation”
You might notice I said nothing about the possibility of their actions being reasonable. Understanding where, when, and how it became unreasonable is important, and there was apparently only one meat-servo in the cockpit who can say anything about that. I think he should keep his mouth shut for his own self-interest, but I don't think what he has to offer should be discounted outright.

Or we can just sit back and read a multi-page thread of people saying "What an idiot!"

Nauga,
and his pipe dream
 
You might notice I said nothing about the possibility of their actions being reasonable. Understanding where, when, and how it became unreasonable is important, and there was apparently only one meat-servo in the cockpit who can say anything about that. I think he should keep his mouth shut for his on self-interest, but I don't think what he has to offer should be discounted outright.

Or we can just sit back and read a multi-page thread of people saying "What an idiot!"

Nauga,
and his pipe dream
Because he appeared to be as described, perhaps. He admitted fault. I don't think the airplane in front of him even registered in his brain. But we'll never know, even if he makes a statement.
 
You presumably read 120 posts in this thread from people who were not there, but think the person who actually controlled the situation has nothing to offer? He's very likely the only one in the cockpit who really knows what was going on at the time.

Nauga,
and the nut that holds the yoke
I watched the video that showed the Grumman waaaaay too close behind the Cessna. I saw the still photographs of the predictable result. I don't need to hear from the Grumman pilot.

Lack of separation, predictable result. Thankfully, no serious injuries.
 
I watched the video that showed the Grumman waaaaay too close behind the Cessna. I saw the still photographs of the predictable result. I don't need to hear from the Grumman pilot.

Lack of separation, predictable result. Thankfully, no serious injuries.
Yeah, there were probably no other compounding contributing factors worth considering. I guess we're done here.

Nauga,
unchained
 
Last edited:
“Tunnel vision” and “task fixation” can be powerful, especially under stress, and likely played a role here.

That said, with proper training, electrical failure under these conditions should not have been all that stressful. But once the pilot fixated on getting the plane on the ground, I can see how the stage was set for disaster.

Note: attempting to explain pilot behavior does not in any was excuse said pilot behavior.
 
Yeah, there were probably no other compounding contributing factors worth considering. I guess we're done here.

Nauga,
unchained
Maybe I'm just a visual learner. In elementary school we were shown films of idjuts who didn't take precautions, got frostbite, and still pictures of gangrene and amputated digits. I don't recall anything any of them said and it didn't matter.

Nature is a series of mechanical systems and relationships between systems that can be scientifically described with some degree of accuracy. If one does something with predictable results, always bets on the long shot, they should not ever be surprised at the result.

Or, as Grandpa, a WW2 vet, used to say, "we each get one fatal mistake".
 
Maybe I'm just a visual learner. In elementary school we were shown films of idjuts who didn't take precautions, got frostbite, and still pictures of gangrene and amputated digits. I don't recall anything any of them said and it didn't matter.

Nature is a series of mechanical systems and relationships between systems that can be scientifically described with some degree of accuracy. If one does something with predictable results, always bets on the long shot, they should not ever be surprised at the result.

Or, as Grandpa, a WW2 vet, used to say, "we each get one fatal mistake".
Yes, the "how" of this accident seems pretty obvious. The "why" is also not hard to deduce on a broad scale: human factors. The human flying might just be able to offer some insight into the specific human factors that led him into the accident chain, even if what he has to say takes some analysis. Maybe there is nothing new to learn about human performance here, but why not at least try?
 
Yes, the "how" of this accident seems pretty obvious. The "why" is also not hard to deduce on a broad scale: human factors. The human flying might just be able to offer some insight into the specific human factors that led him into the accident chain, even if what he has to say takes some analysis. Maybe there is nothing new to learn about human performance here, but why not at least try?
As a society, or just an aviation interest group, we cannot survive by passively accepting or teaching to the lowest common denominator. Some people, and frankly I just don't care enough about the Grumman "driver" to deduce where he lies on the scale, shouldn't operate aircraft, boats, or wheeled vehicles; shouldn't handle secrets or other people's (maybe even thier own) money; be charged with keeping the peace; and have no business ever advising or teaching others.

Trying to make life idiot proof just means making things not work at great expense to the group. Everything has the potential for harm if used thoughtlessly (even soap).

As an example, one must always treat firearms as if they are loaded. Listening to, or worse believing idiots who believed they were not with harmful results leads to idiocy like mag safeties and loaded chamber indicators.
 
As a society, or just an aviation interest group, we cannot survive by passively accepting or teaching to the lowest common denominator. Some people, and frankly I just don't care enough about the Grumman "driver" to deduce where he lies on the scale, shouldn't operate aircraft, boats, or wheeled vehicles; shouldn't handle secrets or other people's (maybe even thier own) money; be charged with keeping the peace; and have no business ever advising or teaching others.

Trying to make life idiot proof just means making things not work at great expense to the group. Everything has the potential for harm if used thoughtlessly (even soap).

As an example, one must always treat firearms as if they are loaded. Listening to, or worse believing idiots who believed they were not with harmful results leads to idiocy like mag safeties and loaded chamber indicators.
If 121 ops bought into this philosophy, airlines would be every bit as safe today as they were in 1955. On far too many occasions, hundreds of lives have been snuffed out in the blink of an eye because not just one but two "idiots" at a time, both of whom somehow managed to get ATP certs despite their "idiocy," have crashed airplanes directly as a result of the lack of "idiot-proofing" in the cockpit. Forgotten flaps settings, accidental throws of the throttles too far back, misinterpreting a storm scope, failing to recognize instrumentation failures (or misdiagnosing an accurate instrument as wrong), messing up a W&B calculation, missing a unit conversion on a fuel order, CFITing due to a total loss of situational awareness, forgetting to fly the plane while playing with a burned out light bulb... the list goes on and on. If you think you are immune to a human factors failure of some sort, you are deluding yourself. I sure don't think I am.
 
Last edited:
Why? Some have nothing to offer. Would you ask a baseball manager who finished 70 games back and lost by an average of 10 runs per game to breakdown why?

Because there have been a lot of aviation accidents that happened because a smart capable pilot did an incredibly boneheaded thing and we've learned a lot about human factors by investigating why that pilot did the boneheaded thing.

We're all looking at this video and the description of events aghast at how someone could possibly screw up this bad. I've found a lot of the time when things look like that on the surface there's more to the story. Maybe there isn't but I'm sure the FAA and NTSB are going to be asking these same questions and I'm curious to hear the answers.
 
Understanding where, when, and how it became unreasonable is important, and there was apparently only one meat-servo in the cockpit who can say anything about that.

I agree. Getting his take on what happened might help us understand how he arrived at "what not to do" ... :dunno:
 
Because there have been a lot of aviation accidents that happened because a smart capable pilot did an incredibly boneheaded thing . . ..
Objection, a statement not supported in this case by any evidence whatsoever. My $0.02, the "driver" was distracted by a non-emergency, lost all perspective, and didn't remember any of the training he received.

(Not that it stops me from tuning in to the Sachenfrunde Channel.)
 
Understanding where, when, and how it became unreasonable is important, and there was apparently only one meat-servo in the cockpit who can say anything about that.
At T-15 minutes, the circuit breaker labeled "BRAIN" tripped and could not be reset.
 
Objection, a statement not supported in this case by any evidence whatsoever. My $0.02, the "driver" was distracted by a non-emergency, lost all perspective, and didn't remember any of the training he received.

(Not that it stops me from tuning in to the Sachenfrunde Channel.)
I'm not making any claims one way or another. I am asking questions. WHY was he distracted by the non emergency and lost all perspective? WHY didn't he remember his training? Was there a deficiency in his training? Might he have been under the influence of something? Did he not get any sleep the night before? Was there some other factor going on that we don't know about? The fact that this seems so incredibly obviously avoidable is the very reason why I believe there's probably more to the story.

This is literally how crash investigators approach these things. Yeah, we KNOW he made bad decisions and caused a crash when he had multiple other options that would have resulted in a safe outcome. We know who is at fault. We don't know why, we should ask why. A huge amount aviation safety advances have been made because of asking why. If you're not interested in that, fine but there's no reason other people shouldn't be curious and look into it.
 
This is true, but the FAA tends to handle willful negligence differently than "unintentional" negligence. He was probably looking at mandatory remedial training +/- a 709 ride at worst. This changes things in a big way. It opens the doors to a punitive enforcement action.
I agree with you there. And this might even have been one of those cases where it's not "unintentional" to begin with. The airplane was there and, unless there is indeed a mitigating "rest of the story" he intentionally kept flying toward it instead of diverting to avoid it. In that case, it might be certificate action to begin with and the extra twist of maybe knowing he had a failed battery can make the difference in terms of the length of the suspension and revocation is a possibility under the enforcement guidelines in Order 2150.3C. Just pulling one paragraph of the section on revocation out.

1734637407504.png
 
“I smelled a strong odor of burning wires/plastic/electrical fire and thought it prudent to get on the ground ASAP”

- One of any number of reasons why someone would do what this guy did. Until we hear it from the PIC, it’s all speculation (just like my quote above)
 
“I smelled a strong odor of burning wires/plastic/electrical fire and thought it prudent to get on the ground ASAP”

- One of any number of reasons why someone would do what this guy did. Until we hear it from the PIC, it’s all speculation (just like my quote above)
Once he got it on the ground, what could be the justification for risking 2 sets of lives and wrecking 2 airplanes instead of 1 and 1?
 
Once he got it on the ground, what could be the justification for risking 2 sets of lives and wrecking 2 airplanes instead of 1 and 1?
I don't think anyone here has even remotely suggested that the outcome was justifiable. I am interested in *all* of the links in the chain of events that led to the collision, not just the end stage. We should be able to learn from mistakes that were made along the way, but we won't if we aren't willing to listen to them.

Nauga,
pushing a rope
 
I don't think anyone here has even remotely suggested that the outcome was justifiable. I am interested in *all* of the links in the chain of events that led to the collision, not just the end stage. We should be able to learn from mistakes that were made along the way, but we won't if we aren't willing to listen to them.

Nauga,
pushing a rope
I guess we can start with the takeoff.
 
I guess we can start with the takeoff.

Or the engine start.
Or the flight planning, the maintenance records, the stressors on the pilot, medical history, etc. Lessons learned rarely, if ever, start after the canopy is closed. Nothing excuses the outcome, "We learn from speculation" seems to be a catchphrase here, but I'm baffled that no one seems interested in other factors. Not to excuse the pilot, but to better understand the chain. It's likely we'll have to wait until the NTSB starts releasing material, y'all can just skip the pilot's statement, I suppose.

Nauga,
and his due diligence
 
Maybe I'm just a visual learner. In elementary school we were shown films of idjuts who didn't take precautions, got frostbite, and still pictures of gangrene and amputated digits. I don't recall anything any of them said and it didn't matter.
It's all too easy to look at an accident and say "What an idiot" about the pilot. I know, I've done in myself plenty of times.

It wasn't until I learned root cause analysis that I really started thinking deeper. Most of the people who crash airplanes aren't idiots, even if they did idiotic things. They were people just like you and me who went out one day and somehow got themselves into situations where they made completely boneheaded errors. But why?

Even if the Grumman pilot is an idiot, he didn't go up that day planning to crash a plane, and some of the things that led to him doing a dumb thing are things that any of us could potentially experience. As such, it is still valuable to hear his story.
 
It's all too easy to look at an accident and say "What an idiot" about the pilot. I know, I've done in myself plenty of times.

It wasn't until I learned root cause analysis that I really started thinking deeper. Most of the people who crash airplanes aren't idiots, even if they did idiotic things. They were people just like you and me who went out one day and somehow got themselves into situations where they made completely boneheaded errors. But why?

Even if the Grumman pilot is an idiot, he didn't go up that day planning to crash a plane, and some of the things that led to him doing a dumb thing are things that any of us could potentially experience. As such, it is still valuable to hear his story.
This is a very underrated opinion. If you disagree, look up invulnerability.
 
There's a risk management concept taught in the Coast Guard (and many other areas) that is not mentioned in the PHAK...the Swiss Cheese model. We are all seeing and discussing the end result. We're simply making assumptions (albeit LIKELY correct assumptions) but to Jack's question, we should know exactly what layers of the cheese where he went through the hole.

To explain for those who don't know, think of multiple layers of swiss cheese as individual barriers to a mishap. For the sake of argument, let's say the first layer is pre-brief, second is using a checklist on preflight check, third may be your IMSAFE or PAVE checklist, etc. A debrief would be helpful for all of us to understand what safety barriers he had in place and why/how he went through them.

Much like the near-mishap I had almost exactly a year ago detailed in these pages, it led to a very good conversation with other pilots where I definitely learned some things and I hope others did, too. I flew through some holes in the cheese and now I know better...and hopefully some new pilot will read my experience and learn from my mistakes.

Maybe it IS just as simple as the PIC was a bonehead...evidence certainly points that way. Maybe not. We won't know until we hear from the actual PIC and not some underinformed, motormouth passenger clawing for his five minutes of fame.

-My CFI belly-landed his 172RG a couple years ago due to distraction with more than 3000 hours experience
-A new Commercial pilot in the area ran a 172 out of gas on a paid sight-seeing flight at 1000' AGL with over 1000 hours
-Harrison Ford landed his plane on the taxiway, mistaking it for the runway...at his home field with thousands of hours
-A presumably experienced pilot in the same week as this mishap exhausted his plane of fuel and put down in probably the worst spot available to him, injuring several on the ground (with likely thousands of hours)

All of these could easily be written off as "bonehead" but in reality, all 4 of them have elements we can all learn from...once we hear from the pilot. Sadly, sometimes (as in the case of TNFlyGirl last year) the pilot doesn't survive so we never get to hear their side of the story. So we are left to just assume that very, very bad decisions were made. I'd rather have the opportunity to hear from the PIC to either learn something...or confirm they're an idiot.

Either way, if you can intentionally and recklessly crash a plane and get your certificate back in just a few months (looking at you, Trevor) then I'm certain this pilot will be back among us in short order.
 
A student pilot I know had his checkride recently. During the oral, the DPE realized the student didn't know how a magneto worked. Drags the student by the ear (joking) to the hangar, finds his CFI and tells him "you have 15 minutes to teach him how a magneto works". He passed his checkride.
I can honestly believe a pilot might not know how a mag works. Some of us have technical backgrounds, but I can see how a non-technical individual, coupled with a CFI that didn't care much about the "how it works" and a DPE that didn't ask, could slip through wothout understanding the magneto magic.
 
A student pilot I know had his checkride recently. During the oral, the DPE realized the student didn't know how a magneto worked. Drags the student by the ear (joking) to the hangar, finds his CFI and tells him "you have 15 minutes to teach him how a magneto works". He passed his checkride.
I can honestly believe a pilot might not know how a mag works. Some of us have technical backgrounds, but I can see how a non-technical individual, coupled with a CFI that didn't care much about the "how it works" and a DPE that didn't ask, could slip through wothout understanding the magneto magic.
Where in the ACS does it require a private applicant to know how a magneto works? He has to know how to use it and what to do if it’s not working right, but it’s a stretch too say he has to know the internal operation of it. For an A&P, absolutely. But not for a private pilot.
 
Where in the ACS does it require a private applicant to know how a magneto works?
Don't know if that would be covered under knowledge of aircraft systems or not. I guess that DPE felt it was important. Judging by what happened here, maybe he was right.
 
Where in the ACS does it require a private applicant to know how a magneto works? He has to know how to use it and what to do if it’s not working right, but it’s a stretch too say he has to know the internal operation of it. For an A&P, absolutely. But not for a private pilot.
I would say it's covered by the systems knowledge Task of the private ACS.

We don't have to make it complicated. We're not talking about knowing how to build them or A&P level knowledge any more than we are asked to know how to build ailerons or elevators. Not even looking for a description as deep as spinning magnet inside a wire coil that generates a current (the level of knowledge of the pitot-static system typically required for an instrument rating applicant). Just that it creates a spark that runs the engine and, apropos of this thread, does so independent of the aircraft electrical system.

Coincidentally, I walked into a pre solo knowledge session this morning where they were discussing this video. The student had some questions about magnetos, so buttinsky that I am, I asked whether he ever used a lawnmower with a pull start. He had. Question answered and systems knowledge gained.
 
Last edited:
I asked whether he ever used a lawnmower with a pull start. He had. Question answered and systems knowledge gained.
I think you might have stumbled across the single best way to explain this to a new pilot of *ahem* this era. Then again...I fear my oldest son (12 years old right now) may be one of the few in today's society who has actually USED a gas-powered mower.
 
Back
Top