I was waiting for someone to mention the manufacturers' liability. In the end, it is ultimately their fault for providing such "unsafe" aircraft. And they have more money than flight schools so I thought they'd be the first stop for lawyers seeking monetary rewards.
Same here. Doesn't matter how ridiculously bad a person may have been driving when he or she wrecked his or her car, some parasite plaintiffs' lawyer will extort money from the manufacturer. It's why I'm now a prosecutor. Too often the correct business decision was not to fight.
Exactly, there's no room for that in aviation.
Checking fuel level is a necessity for ANY powered transportation device, not just airplanes. One wonders why the PARENTS didn't do a better job of teaching that to their kid!
Yup, and the flight instructor's signature on the logbook is an endorsement of that. Of course there are those students that don't retain information well, too, or just ignore it. I flew a Tomahawk in primary and we definitely went over fuel procedures since it was NOT a Cessna with the infamous "both" option and I fail to see how the student could NOT have received some fuel management training.
Was he? Y'all are assuming facts not in evidence. He may have very well received the training but unless you were there to witness it and tell us about it, it's speculation. On another thread someone was bragging about soloing a student in four hours. Is this good or bad? It might be wonderful or it might be gross negligence on the part of an instructor. There are not enough facts to determine either this accident's root cause or the wisdom of soloing a student in four hours. The young man is dead and I'm not about to automatically declare this a Darwin Award. It may very well be but too soon to say.
Good points, but you should know if there is fuel up to the tabs - if not, better think about re-fueling. Additionally there's even less excuse to not check since the wing tanks are easily accessible from the ground. Generally schools that run Tomahawks TEND to be MORE careful about fuel because of the Piper setup.
The NTSB report says this was the student pilot's second supervised solo. How much supervision could there have been if the student took off without enough gas? I don't blame the family for questioning the operation. But he was PIC so that absolves everyone from any possible blame other than the PIC. I would agree 100% if this had been a rated pilot and maybe even a student near checkride proficiency, but this kid was as green as green could be. Nope, sorry dad. Junior f&$$'d up, and paid the price. Nothing more to see here, move along. Pilot error, pure and simple.
It's been awhile since I was a student driver. Don't student drivers have to have a licensed driver along? Maybe we don't trust student drivers not to kill themselves or innocent bystanders until they pass a driver's test and get a license. You're saying that from the moment a student solos he's 100% responsible for the conduct of his flights and needs no supervision since PIC is PIC whether you're a four hour student pilot on a first solo or an ATP with thousands of hours. Heck, why not let student pilots take up family and friends also. They're PICs so let them have all the responsibility. I'm being ridiculously absurd purposely to illustrate that there's a reason few students get their certificates in the minimum amount of hours and are entrusted with passengers. A student on his second solo deserves more than a glance to call it supervision. He made a mistake and suffered the ultimate penalty. Where was the instructor to break that chain? This was his second flight alone in the plane. Second flight! He ran out of gas and stalled/spun. Two horrific errors and no one is willing to consider he had inadequate instruction? OK.
So you think that had a CFI had been aboard that flight they would still have run out of gas because it is the norm to allow the student to preflight the airplane post solo without any supervision whatsoever? I'm not a CFI but if I were, there's no way in Hades I would get in an airplane with a 10 hour student that I hadn't verified as airworthy to include having the required amount of fuel. By the time a DPE flies with someone they should be trustworthy enough to ascertain airworthiness but it is a task that gets evaluated so the applicant is watched closely (or should be). I've seen students do stupid things that no certificated pilot would do without being mercilessly criticised, but the difference is a student is a STUDENT and should be expected to make student mistakes.
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