Mooney down in newhall

4

47PILOT

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Jan 1, 2013
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164
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VENTURA CO, CA
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47PILOT
Not much info out yet.
Is there a way to look up the flight from kbnd to kvny?
 
He had a KFC 200 autopilot, aren’t those capable of flying an ILS?
 
I appreciate the warning. I never listen to these. I just can’t do it. (I’ve seen a lot of gore and death in real life as a volunteer firefighter, but I can’t bring myself to listen to the last minutes of someone’s reality).
 
I also don’t like to hear this and it does bother me a lot , but after listening to it a couple times I get past the emotional trauma of it and really think about how this happens and is there any way to learn from it. At this point we don’t know if it was a mechanical problem or pilot error or possibly a combination of both.
 
47PILOT said:
I also don’t like to hear this and it does bother me a lot , but after listening to it a couple times I get past the emotional trauma of it and really think about how this happens and is there any way to learn from it. At this point we don’t know if it was a mechanical problem or pilot error or possibly a combination of both.
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Or none of the above, CO poisoning could explain the poor read backs, the confusion, etc
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
Or none of the above, CO poisoning could explain the poor read backs, the confusion, etc
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That’s a good point. Didn’t sound task saturated but he couldn’t repeat the heading after multiple times prompted.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
He had a KFC 200 autopilot, aren’t those capable of flying an ILS?
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Ryanb said:
Yep.
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If it’s operating properly and you trust it , yes. Ours does too many strange things at this point in NAV, but is fine on HDG. I use it up high where I can hit the big red button and recover if it makes a strange turn. Down low it’s off.
 
benyflyguy said:
That’s a good point. Didn’t sound task saturated but he couldn’t repeat the heading after multiple times prompted.
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I also noticed he was on a 4.5 hour flight at 11.5k feet. I wonder if hypoxia could have been an issue. I’m 40 years old and always use O2 at 11k and up.


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Peter Anderson said:
I also noticed he was on a 4.5 hour flight at 11.5k feet. I wonder if hypoxia could have been an issue. I’m 40 years old and always use O2 at 11k and up.
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It only takes seconds to recover from low O2, CO can take weeks to recover.
 
I listened to the audio and my interpretation was that the sloppy readbacks near the end were probably due to task saturation. He was obviously having issues with tracking the localizer, for whatever reason. I think the plane just got ahead of him.
 
mr_happyland said:
I listened to the audio and my interpretation was that the sloppy readbacks near the end were probably due to task saturation. He was obviously having issues with tracking the localizer, for whatever reason. I think the plane just got ahead of him.
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Funny thing got me not that long ago. I usually fly gps approaches. I was aware I haven’t flown an ILS I alittle while. Well time for some work on that. I went up with a safety pilot and had my charts and approaches ready. There is a VOR about a mile or two away from the field. I just accidentally tuned in the VOR frequency-not the ILS. Then I set the radial and because it’s close to the field it felt kinda right. Even identified the code- but again looking at the wrong little box it sounded right. But I noticed I didn’t get a glide slope. I was just not making sense of it until my safety pilot showed me my mistake. I was kinda flying generally towards the airport but not really as I got closer. It was a comedy of errors that started with not flying outside my usual practice gps approaches. Something I now plan practicing a new or different approach each time I go up.
 
Your experience is a good insight to a possible explanation. I looked at his flight history and there were only 9 flights in the past 3 months, and they all looked VFR. Yesterday was a solid IFR day around here in SoCal. Perhaps he just wasn’t proficient.

I finally got recurrent last weekend and I feel I need to baby step the minimums of my IMC approaches.
 
The pilot sounded frustrated at times. After his read back I heard him say “f***!” pretty harshly and make another loud groan after that. The weather has been pretty solid IFR the past few days but not terribly low. It seemed more like good practice days, to me.
 
dreyna14 said:
The pilot sounded frustrated at times. After his read back I heard him say “f***!” pretty harshly and make another loud groan after that. The weather has been pretty solid IFR the past few days but not terribly low. It seemed more like good practice days, to me.
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I don’t think the swearing and groaning were frustration, more exasperation. The last words of a man who knew he was in far over his head
 
Wow, that was really rough to listen to. In some ways, I wish I had not listened to it.

PeterNSteinmetz said:
What do people think of the last bits of the flight log?
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D408038E-D2CE-4C16-AFDD-7C3B72EFA7A6.jpeg

Looks like the pilot has pretty consistent speed until the top row of this screen capture from Flight Aware where he slowed about 45 knots (to 137-ish knots cruise speed). The last few rows are troubling to me, but I don't have any experience in a Mooney and, out of respect for the pilot, don't want to hazzard a guess.
 
There are a few clues here to look at.
In no way whatsoever do I want to put any sort of shadow over the pilot or disrespect he or his family with my armchair thoughts
For some reason I can’t let this one go.
The flight logs tell a story. The pilots language and emotion tell more of the story.
For the most part this was an uneventful flight until the last few min during the decent into KVNY. Yes I believe the weather was a factor and may have become a much larger factor very quickly if in fact there were one or more faulty indicators giving the pilot false information. I also believe the timing of all the factors that led to this very unfortunate situation came together very quickly. If the logs match up with ATC instructions advising him he was off course and altitude and gave him heading and altitude instructions to
“turn to 160 and climb maintain 5k” in a stern tone and more than once, could be a good clue as to what happened.
If I’m 4.5hrs into a flight, who knows how bumpy or smooth it was for those 4 hrs, and know I’m going to descend through the soup and all the sudden I loose one or more of my instruments, and while I’m doing my best to “fly blind” while I’m working on figuring out what’s wrong in the cockpit , I get sternly told to make a turn then told again to climb to 5k, I can see how I would be working the problem in the cockpit and perhaps subconsciously making the turn and pulling back on the yoke. At this point we don’t know what was working and what wasn’t but if he had issues with his AI and or ALT, it would be almost impossible to regain control while in the clouds. I believe the “f@!_k” we heard was him in some sort of unusual attitude trying to recover. The second noise was most likely when he realized any control was completely lost.
 
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No I don’t care to listen to the last moments, the summaries are enough.

I didn’t see the exact weather, sounds somewhat uncooperative.

Seems it was a longer flight? If so, hopefully he had some type of weather onboard, if not, once in range we have ATIS or AWOS.

If the plane or pilot has limitations that are being encroached upon, any, then we get to the divert decision. This divert decision doesn’t have to be anywhere near an IMC MAP, diverting from cruise altitude is preferred.

I’m so ready to divert it’s a wonder I get anywhere. Sorry, didn’t study every listed detail, some may not apply. It does sound like some components weren’t ready for conditions on arrival.
 
I did listen to it and it is hard. I would be curious to see the exact correlation between the audio and flight path. After the final “aargh” it seems like the mike stayed keyed for several minutes and then went back to static on the receiver, but I may be mistaken. I assume the NTSB will work that out.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
I did listen to it and it is hard. I would be curious to see the exact correlation between the audio and flight path. After the final “aargh” it seems like the mike stayed keyed for several minutes and then went back to static on the receiver, but I may be mistaken. I assume the NTSB will work that out.
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I'm actually working on that exact thing. Similar to how I made a YT video re-creating the Kobe flight path, I'm in the process of going over the data and matching the flight path and audio together. I fly thru the Newhall pass all the time as this crash happened very close to my home airport. Hopefully it can provide more info. I will post my results if I find it worthwhile.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
I did listen to it and it is hard. I would be curious to see the exact correlation between the audio and flight path. After the final “aargh” it seems like the mike stayed keyed for several minutes and then went back to static on the receiver, but I may be mistaken. I assume the NTSB will work that out.
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The pilot's mike remained keyed more than once after a radio transmission during the ATC recording. The controller alerted the pilot to it, but it occurred several more times after that. I don't think his exclamations were exasperation or frustration, they were, sadly, indications he had lost control of the airplane.
 
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Very professionally and respectfully done, thanks.

Sobering and sad for the two who perished.

"Instrument flying, I had concluded, is an unnatural act, probably punishable by God.” - Gordon Baxter
 
Yes great video.

For WHATEVER reason, they seem unprepared to enter IMC for that approach.

Now we back up, to ADS-WX, and even ATIS. With the fresh weather, seemingly uncooperative for the plane & pilot, it’s VMC divert time.

Yes I know, hindsight is always easier, still putting it out there.
 
Yes great job on the video
My question is, I realize there is data available to show altitude, speed,and heading, but in this and other similar situations, is there any way to know the “attitude” of the plane during the sequence, such as bank angle or even if it’s inverted at some point?
 
47PILOT said:
Yes great job on the video
My question is, I realize there is data available to show altitude, speed,and heading, but in this and other similar situations, is there any way to know the “attitude” of the plane during the sequence, such as bank angle or even if it’s inverted at some point?
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Thx. My guess is you could only pull that data from onboard flight computers. I seem to recall seeing that kind of thing in some Cirrus accidents.
 
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