Is an accident career ending?

Allow me to paraphrase your inquiry-


"Oh, gee. You had an accident. It sounds like you don't know what you're doing. You sound inexperienced. Give up now while you're still alive"
 
Mike4Foxtrot said:
Ultimately, I shouldn't have allowed the student to flare on his own when his landings prior to that point generally needed my assistance.
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I thought you said this student had previously flown solo? Things are getting very complicated here.
 
Mike4Foxtrot said:
He flew around 10 hours solo several years back, and was beginning lessons again.
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You should DEFINITELY include that extremely helpful detail. ;) If I missed it, sincerest of apologies. Hang in there. You’ll be stronger after all this. Work toward that.
 
Nathan Miller said:
Cute... and about as helpful as you accusing the OP of being inexperienced.
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Accuse is an interesting word choice with a negative connotation, as it implies it is both "a bad thing" to be inexperienced as well as being untrue. Since all pilots start out inexperienced, it is not a bad thing, and since the OP said he was inexperienced, it is not untrue either.

On the other hand, your accusation that I'm telling him to give up, when I said no such thing, was super helpful. I'm so glad you're here to tell me what I'm thinking and read my mind for me. Actually I told him a regional would probably still hire him which sounds a lot like the opposite of trying to get him to give up.
 
sarangan said:
The 150 with full flaps is extremely draggy. A full power stall with flaps can be ugly. Try this out at altitude. Perhaps this is what happened. I teach all landings at 20-deg flap for this reason, and keep the 40-deg as an option for when you need it, such as short/soft fields or emergency landings.

Another factor is, most flight schools seem to assign their newly minted CFIs to primary students, and more experienced CFIs to instrument and commercial students. In my opinion, this is backwards. Most of the accidents/fatalities I have seen around here have been with new students and new CFIs. Taking a student from first flight to first solo is a major undertaking that requires judgement and the confidence to say no.
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When I said full flaps, I meant 30 flaps as most of the planes I fly only extend to 30. Sorry for the confusion. I never would land the 150 with 40 and generally wouldn’t with the 172 either.
 
Mike4Foxtrot said:
When I said full flaps, I meant 30 flaps as most of the planes I fly only extend to 30. Sorry for the confusion. I never would land the 150 with 40 and generally wouldn’t with the 172 either.
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Never is a strong word. As a CFI you should be familiar with how to fly and land the airplane in all configurations and all different kinds of scenarios. If you can't or are unwilling, you should not be teaching students until you change that aspect about yourself.

That is my opinion, but furthermore, it is a fact that you can't perform a short-field landing to the required standards in a Cessna 150 without using 40° of flaps. So by your statement above you are saying that you are unwilling or unable to teach a student the skills needed to pass a private pilot checkride and meet the ACS requirement. Even worse it seems like you are unwilling to practice the skill yourself.

I believe your problems are more short-term in nature than long term. I think you will have trouble finding another job as an instructor in the short term, and by what you have written above and what you've said earlier about not really understanding how the accident happened, you do not seem to be ready to be a CFI anyway. Or maybe instructing isn't for you at all. My advice would be to aim for another time building job that isn't instructing until you get some more experience under your belt, or fund your own time building. During this period, work on your book knowledge of flying as well as stick and rudder skills. I still think you can make it to the airlines, but no one has a crystal ball and can tell you for certain whether an airline will or won't hire you.
 
Mike4Foxtrot said:
When I said full flaps, I meant 30 flaps as most of the planes I fly only extend to 30. Sorry for the confusion. I never would land the 150 with 40 and generally wouldn’t with the 172 either.
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I almost* always use 40 degrees of flaps when I land my 150. (*Depending on conditions, winds, blah blah blah.) I’m not an instructor, but I completely understand teaching with less than full flaps to allow for an easier transition to a go-around. (Didn’t work that way in the OP’s case, but every landing is unique.)
 
Lachlan said:
I almost* always use 40 degrees of flaps when I land my 150. (*Depending on conditions, winds, blah blah blah.) I’m not an instructor, but I completely understand teaching with less than full flaps to allow for an easier transition to a go-around. (Didn’t work that way in the OP’s case, but every landing is unique.)
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Following the same procedure has merit when it comes to safety. But adaptabiilty is also important. When a student has mastered a repetetitve procedure, I change things up, such as landing with no flaps, landing at night with the landing light off etc..
 
sarangan said:
Following the same procedure has merit when it comes to safety. But adaptabiilty is also important. When a student has mastered a repetetitve procedure, I change things up, such as landing with no flaps, landing at night with the landing light off etc..
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That’s a great point, and the hallmark of a true teacher. I don’t practice enough no-flap landings to say that I can land on a 10” wide line every time, that’s for sure. I should vary my landings more often. :)
 
An accident may change your options, but it doesn’t have to end your career.

If your biggest concern, though, is whether or not you can still get paid the big bucks as an airline pilot, I can tell you right now I’d hope it caused a trajectory change and that I'd prefer to never fly behind that kind of attitude on an airliner (edited to clarify my thoughts).

OTOH, if you work hard to diagnose your failures and have a humble attitude about things, and work doubly hard to be a better pilot, & a better instructor, people will figure that out.

I, too am curious how many hours you have as a pilot, and more importantly as a CFI prior to this accident. My first employer as a CFI had a theory that every new CFI should be paired with an experienced CFI mentor initially to help them work through their first steps. It’s also too bad that we have so many of our rookies that don’t even want to teach feel like they have to in order to get to the airline money they crave.
 
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RyanShort1 said:
If your biggest concern, though, is whether or not you can still get paid the big bucks as an airline pilot, I can tell you right now I’d hope it caused a trajectory change and that I never fly behind you on an airliner.
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Now now, all noted but let's all dial down the sanctimony. If you told every one of these industry cannon fodder that the highest they'd ever be allowed to top out was min guarantee regional CA, an eff ton of them would not even complete their PPL. My point being, you already fly commercially behind a cohort of people who spend more time figuring out ways not to have to go to work while getting paid. For many, doing ONE trip to a simulator every 90 days for a full time upper-class yearly wage is an actual point of pride. And don't get me started on my sub-demographic (dual-hatter mil/airline pilot) coworkers.

This isn't just limited to flying. My RN wife is surrounded by a metric ton of peers who only got into nursing for the EZ-bake-oven money-2-training timeline ratio. Many have no intention of working bedside and can't wait to get into additional credentials or any administrative flexes within the field that would limit the length of the "touch n go" they begrudgingly tolerate in clinical work. Easy come easy go. Is that who I want to take care of my loved ones? Hell no. Guess what, I'm forced to. We're all captured by these dynamics.

Even on my own occupational landscape, I work with people rated and non-rated alike who rather leave the service outright, than accept continuation to 20 years as passed over O-3s. Same s^^t, different uniform.

We're all innocent in Shawshank.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Now now, all noted but let's all dial down the sanctimony. If you told every one of these industry cannon fodder that the highest they'd ever be allowed to top out was min guarantee regional CA, an eff ton of them would not even complete their PPL. My point being, you already fly commercially behind a cohort of people who spend more time figuring out ways not to have to go to work while getting paid. For many, doing ONE trip to a simulator every 90 days for a full time upper-class yearly wage is an actual point of pride. And don't get me started on my sub-demographic (dual-hatter mil/airline pilot) coworkers.

This isn't just limited to flying. My RN wife is surrounded by a metric ton of peers who only got into nursing for the EZ-bake-oven money-2-training timeline ratio. Many have no intention of working bedside and can't wait to get into additional credentials or any administrative flexes within the field that would limit the length of the "touch n go" they begrudgingly tolerate in clinical work. Easy come easy go. Is that who I want to take care of my loved ones? Hell no. Guess what, I'm forced to. We're all captured by these dynamics.

Even on my own occupational landscape, I work with people rated and non-rated alike who rather leave the service outright, than accept continuation to 20 years as passed over O-3s. Same s^^t, different uniform.

We're all innocent in Shawshank.
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Not gonna disagree, but it's sometimes better NOT to know the misdeeds. If you knew a chef had gotten people sick, you'd probably choose to go to another restaurant as opposed to if you didn't know. There's plenty of pilots flying heavy iron that haven't broken anything. Also, I tried to make it clear if he's passionate about flying and not just the big bucks, and learns from the mistake, I WOULD still ride behind.
 
OP didn't blame the student for the crackup, and instead looked for things he could have done better. In addition, he's understandably concerned about his career. That shows self-reflection and honesty to me. Way too many other threads on here, and other forums, start out as "I didn't do anything wrong, everyone's conspiring against me, and...".

I've read a lot of accident reports, and I'm a bit familiar with risk in other fields. People generally don't kill people because of lack of skill, but rather lack of judgement. If you include pilots and doctors that haven't had the sense to quit flying/operating when they loose their skills in the judgement category, it's more.

To hindsight2020's point, I believe, a lot of people don't care, or think they're so good at their particular field that in their head they're special and the rules don't apply to them. Those are the ones that I try to avoid during the interview stage, and if possible get rid of after hired...but it doesn't always work, and not everyone can do that. My take, though, is OP isn't either of those.

My guess, though, is that OP's real mistake could have been instructing before he was ready, or before he was familiar in that particular aircraft. He mentioned the electric flaps on the 172. So most of his time is in PA-28's or Diamonds, and he doesn't have a lot of hours PIC 172, then that could have been a thing. I'm NOT a cfi, but would think a pilot would want to know handling of the instructing aircraft backwards and forwards before doing primary training in it. Just a guess, though.
 
Thank you for all the comments and input everyone. I appreciate both the "nicer" replies and the constructive criticism. I agree that an element to being a better teacher is adaptability and changing things up. I haven't had as much experience with landing practice yet. In fact, this was my 4th landing lesson, and first with this particular student, as well as in a 150. I do have close to 50 hours of other dual training, especially IFR. All the feedback is really appreciated and I will take the comments about adapting to heart.

In response to another poster, I absolutely am concerned about the type of impact this will have on my future. I've worked hard and invested a lot to get to this point. I studied for several hours everyday for my CFI for three months straight, in addition to everything else. I've never had an incident/checkride bust, and always follow the checklist. And while I think I have been really helpful to the students I've worked with thus far, I am aware that there is a lot more I need to continue learning and work on to improve as an aviator. Being anxious about what's to come doesn't change that or mean I'm not striving to be better. I don't necessarily aspire to make big bucks at a major airline. I primarily just want to get to the regionals and see how I like it there.

One other thing, I'd only had about 5 hours in a 150, though a lot of time in a 152. I felt comfortable flying the 150 but giving instruction in it, especially a landing lesson was poor judgement.
 
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Mike4Foxtrot said:
Right before what I anticipated to be a nose gear touch down, I abruptly added back pressure which caused a high bounce from the touchdown. I made the immediate decision to execute a go-around. On the attempted go-around, full power was added and I dropped the nose to just above the horizon line to gain speed. I also retracted the flaps as I could. I didn't intend to go full flaps up but on this particular aircraft, you had to manually keep pressure on the lever in order for the flaps to change at all, which made the retraction transition a little slower. We also landed behind a leer jet. I thought there was adequate timing in between our landings but perhaps it played a factor. Ultimately, I shouldn't have allowed the student to flare on his own when his landings prior to that point generally needed my assistance.

Thank you for all the responses, everyone. I'm not sure what's going to happen next as I did lose my instructor job (understandably). Everyone has been saying I'll be alright and I can still fly at the regionals but I can't help but think there's no getting past this.
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This kind of event along with others is in part why I don’t teach full flap landings has a Normal landing in most Cessna’s. They land better and students are less likely to land on the nose wheel with 10-20 degrees of flaps, and Cessna generally go around better if they are already partially retracted. Flaps also become a tool to use when you are to high instead of just a checklist item to put them down. I once had 3 failure to retract events in about a 3 month period. One of them would have been more exciting if it had been a full flap landing/go around.

As to the OP’s question. The better question/answer IMO is what have you done (not only learned) to prevent this from happening again. Who have you flown with since to evaluate your teaching style and what you might have done better. Did you get an outside evaluation rather than just a self evaluation of your skills and decision making. I think it would be best to show that you were very proactive to improve yourself and actively working to prevent this kind of event from happening again. The FAA and I think employers will really appreciate this kind of attitude. You were fortunate the FAA did not require a 709 ride, but it might be best to do some training as if you were going to have to do one after an event like this

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
You can overcome the accident and make it to the airlines. If I were giving you a interview it would cause me to take a closer look at your training and progression. If you took 20 hours to solo and 90 hours to get your private I might find it a red flag. If on the other hand you progressed quickly with no obvious training issues it would be a non issue. Your biggest issue at the moment may be insurance. It can be very expensive after a accident/claim.
 
Mike4Foxtrot said:
Right before what I anticipated to be a nose gear touch down, I abruptly added back pressure which caused a high bounce from the touchdown. I made the immediate decision to execute a go-around. On the attempted go-around, full power was added and I dropped the nose to just above the horizon line to gain speed. I also retracted the flaps as I could. I didn't intend to go full flaps up but on this particular aircraft, you had to manually keep pressure on the lever in order for the flaps to change at all, which made the retraction transition a little slower. We also landed behind a leer jet. I thought there was adequate timing in between our landings but perhaps it played a factor. Ultimately, I shouldn't have allowed the student to flare on his own when his landings prior to that point generally needed my assistance.
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That is an unfortunate situation with the flaps. My own personal experience with a go-around in a 150 was one notch reduction causes significant sink. Better off leaving the flaps alone and letting the critter fly as best as possible to a safe altitude. Hopefully with enough persistence you will find your home in aviation.
 
Jeff767 said:
If you took 20 hours to solo and 90 hours to get your private I might find it a red flag.
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Why? That seems unnecessarily judgmental; both those numbers are quite within range of normal.

(I took 26 and 82, respectively.)
 
I would not call those hours in the range of normal if there was a reasonable cadence to the flight training. If on the other hand you were flying once or twice a month during training and having to constantly relearn it would be fine. The military long ago learned that you can teach anyone to fly given enough time but pilots who require to much extra training usually ended up as statistics down the road.
Given the OP had what most would term a skill related accident I would be looking for a correlation in his training records.
 
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Jeff767 said:
I would not call those hours in the range of normal if there was a reasonable cadence to the flight training. If on the other hand you were flying once or twice a month during training and having to constantly relearn it would be fine.
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But in the civilian Part 61 world, it is indeed quite common…
 
woodchucker said:
That is an unfortunate situation with the flaps. My own personal experience with a go-around in a 150 was one notch reduction causes significant sink. Better off leaving the flaps alone and letting the critter fly as best as possible to a safe altitude. Hopefully with enough persistence you will find your home in aviation.
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This was really helpful, thank you. Something I learned is that I shouldn't have given landing instruction in a plane of which I have limited experience in, and no training in. In this case, I think keeping pressure on the lever to retract the flaps sustained the sinking momentum. This was the only aircraft I've flown where you had to hold pressure on the lever for the flaps to retract, so in holding that pressure, the flaps were in a constant retracting motion. The transition was slow so even in the moment of the crash, the flaps were still around 15degrees. But in hindsight, I should have had more experience in the 150 before doing this lesson, and I would have had a better understanding of the significant sink from retracting even one notch of flaps, and also how to manage the lever, and when to let go. In a 172, I would have brought it to 20 like that, but with everything happening so fast, I felt that the right thing to do in that moment was just get the flaps to 20 as quickly as possible by keeping the lever up to do so. I'm thinking it went beyond 20 to more like 15 as I didn't release pressure on the flap lever until it was too late.
 
Dan Gryder seems to he doing okay since his C152 accident.
 
brcase said:
This kind of event along with others is in part why I don’t teach full flap landings has a Normal landing in most Cessna’s. They land better and students are less likely to land on the nose wheel with 10-20 degrees of flaps, and Cessna generally go around better if they are already partially retracted. Flaps also become a tool to use when you are to high instead of just a checklist item to put them down. I once had 3 failure to retract events in about a 3 month period. One of them would have been more exciting if it had been a full flap landing/go around.


Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
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When I read this, I thought I must written it. You stole the words from my mouth. Can't agree with this more.
 
Jeff767 said:
You can overcome the accident and make it to the airlines. If I were giving you a interview it would cause me to take a closer look at your training and progression. If you took 20 hours to solo and 90 hours to get your private I might find it a red flag. If on the other hand you progressed quickly with no obvious training issues it would be a non issue. Your biggest issue at the moment may be insurance. It can be very expensive after a accident/claim.
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Seriously? You would look at the hours to solo and hours to earn private as a red flag at an airline interview?
 
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