PC 12 down in Nevada - 5 Fatalities

It can go sideways quickly. Coming home from my first Gaston’s in the club Archer I got boxed in by clouds on all sides at 9500msl. Looking down, I could see the ground clearly, so I started spiraling down.

As I did, lightning flashed across my nose and even through the headsets I heard the thunder. This was pre ADSB pre XM NEXRAD, so as I spiral down I’m looking at the sectional and dialing in radio to get some weather advice. As I’m talking to radio I glanced at the instruments, and I’m at 45* bank rate increasing, airspeed in the yellow approaching the red. At that point I told radio to standby, it was all aviate at that point, I threw everything else out of my mind.

Power to idle, shock cooling be damned, shallowed the bank, and gave a gentle pull to get airspeed back into the green. I continued to watch the instruments like my life depended on it until I was down to the base of the clouds. Radio then gave me a vector away from the storm and I flew the rest of the way home with my tail between my legs.

I called my CFII the very next day and began instrument training. Never again, I very well could have been that guy that day.
 
A multitude of things could have occurred to make this happen, some mentioned. The main thing I’m reminded of is not being complacent; understand the limitations of any airplanes icing certification; understand failures in avionics or systems can occur when it’s least convenient; understand how weather can create havoc no matter how capable the airplane may seem to be. Train and be ready. And, thinking of Colgan, don’t do things that will set you up for failure.
 
Salty said:
If you’re looking anywhere near the instruments I don’t see how you can miss that a 60 degree bank is occurring.

It is frightening that things can go bad so quickly.
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TL;DR answer: channelization. It's not cosmic wrt instrument flying human factors, it's well documented.

Long answer:

As I posted before, the same way colgan 3407 allowed an airspeed decay to go unnoticed then exacerbated by incorrect reaction. There are multitudes more ways btw, I'm just providing one example. They're not all a function of rank lack of aptitude; most in single pilot land (imo) are a function of task saturation leading to channelization.

I've had students on board where I mute the radios and loudly direct them to make a mechanical input to recover the aircraft, and they keep talking to themselves as they continue a deviation. Heck I was there myself as a student. On debrief, they had no recollection of my voice even been present or the words ever registering in their mind, only made aware of it during the tape playback on the ground. That's one of a dozen ways channelization manifests itself. Try that now single pilot, with nobody trying to save you. That's how it happens, even if you're "staring at the instruments".

And it is frightening (spatial D in particular, of which there is a type one can be actively aware of). Scariest stuff I do in the aggregate, and I fly 3 feet wingtip clearance from another airplane in excess of 4 bills, with people with 10 hours in "make and model" at the controls mind you. I rather gamble with that every day, than live in the goo single pilot without an autopilot, just waiting for the one unknowable loaded chamber in this whole Russian roulette to start the chain to the grave. Which is why I'm also rather put off by those who purposely seek out IMC recreationally, and/or downplay the reality of human fallibility towards spatial D. Talk about not knowing what one doesn't know. The hubris is unreal on that front.
 
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hindsight2020 said:
I rather gamble with that every day, than live in the goo single pilot without an autopilot, just waiting for the one unknowable loaded chamber in this whole Russian roulette to start the chain to the grave. Which is why I'm also rather put off by those who purposely seek out IMC recreationally, and/or downplay the reality of human fallibility towards spatial D. Talk about not knowing what one doesn't know. The hubris is unreal on that front.
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I don’t think single-pilot IFR is any more dangerous than any other type of flying provided the pilot is competent and current.

The problem is, competency and currency for safely flying single-pilot IFR in a go somewhere airplane is IMO the highest threshold for any kind of flying.
 
DavidWhite said:
The problem is, competency and currency for safely flying single-pilot IFR in a go somewhere airplane is IMO the highest threshold for any kind of flying.
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A distinction without difference to me, but I'll stipulate your point. We're pointing at the the same thing (e.g. ways to minimize that whole gratuitously dying thing).

At any rate, Part 121 tacitly acknowledges the inherent fallibility question of loss of situational awareness by channelization proxy, and regulates extra bodies into the cockpit accordingly. And still, some of those folks still manage to bone it up every now and then. To wit, it's also the reason fixed wing EMS, as opposed to freight 135 in similar equipment, is not generally available to time-builders.

For the record, I'm not against single-pilot flying. It's what I live for. Love the stuff; not hyperbole when I say I wouldn't have become a professional pilot if the former was illegal. But I don't have any illusions regarding double standards of safety. Caveat emptor and all that jazz. Single pilot IMC is not to be trifled with, and anybody can have a day when they're not on their A game.
 
hindsight2020 said:
A distinction without difference to me, but I'll stipulate your point. We're pointing at the the same thing (e.g. ways to minimize that whole gratuitously dying thing).

At any rate, Part 121 tacitly acknowledges the inherent fallibility question of loss of situational awareness by channelization proxy, and regulates extra bodies into the cockpit accordingly. And still, some of those folks still manage to bone it up every now and then. To wit, it's also the reason fixed wing EMS, as opposed to freight 135 in similar equipment, is not generally available to time-builders.

For the record, I'm not against single-pilot flying. It's what I live for. Love the stuff; not hyperbole when I say I wouldn't have become a professional pilot if the former was illegal. But I don't have any illusions regarding double standards of safety. Caveat emptor and all that jazz. Single pilot IMC is not to be trifled with, and anybody can have a day when they're not on their A game.
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So what’s the antidote?
 
I'm not sure how to react to the single pilot IFR thing. That's really my only option. Are you saying we should be relegated to VFR only?
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
I'm not sure how to react to the single pilot IFR thing. That's really my only option. Are you saying we should be relegated to VFR only?
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I have limits on IFR. For instance, flying over broad areas of LIFR? Nope, that’s a take the car day.
 
Bill said:
I have limits on IFR. For instance, flying over broad areas of LIFR? Nope, that’s a take the car day.
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That is an area of personal minimums that does not get addressed well enough. I talk about this exact thing with my instrument students.
 
DavidWhite said:
I don’t think single-pilot IFR is any more dangerous than any other type of flying provided the pilot is competent and current.

The problem is, competency and currency for safely flying single-pilot IFR in a go somewhere airplane is IMO the highest threshold for any kind of flying.
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Having a second set of eyes and scrutiny will always have the advantage IMO.
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
I'm not sure how to react to the single pilot IFR thing. That's really my only option. Are you saying we should be relegated to VFR only?
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As with anything there is a spectrum, departing or arriving through an overcast layer is one thing, flying an airplane into icing conditions at night in moderate turbulence is another
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
I'm not sure how to react to the single pilot IFR thing. That's really my only option. Are you saying we should be relegated to VFR only?
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Who is "we"? If you mean rec part 91, that's a non-sequitur in this discussion. This is about what is the willing cost of life loss acceptable of revenue single-pilot operation. Freight (zero pax), EMS (3-5?), single pilot certified turbines (up to 10-15 in the case of the King Air depending on cabin config)? It's a sliding scale in present circumstances, good bad or indifferent.

Salty said:
So what’s the antidote?
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Depends on who you ask. According to part 121? Banning single pilot, of course. Me? Of course I'm not advocating that, because 1) I'm not a hypocrite (I'm single-pilot-biased in recreational and professional life), and 2) I already acknowledged there are double standards of safety the FAA tolerates every day. That much shouldn't be shocking to people.

Shy of banning it, all the regulatory suggestions I could proffer would also represent a capital cost increase to the firms currently deriving a living off single-pilot operations, so they're ultimately moot (to them). This is in an environment where insurance companies largely price-set and make the dynamic in question self-limiting already anyways. Things like insurance for single pilot ops be more expensive than hiring a second pilot, though the proficiency and usefulness of said second pilot [by compensation proxy] in those circumstances is specious to me (but that's for another day).

BL, there's no silver bullet, nor did I argue there was. Part 121 does advocate that position, which is fine. People are free to align with that sector's approach to the question of instrument flying human factors. I suppose a life-critical injury patient doesn't really have much agency/pricing power when it comes to agreeing to get hauled out of the side of a rainy Smoky Mountains road by @Velocity173, fixed wing transferred out of a level IV to a higher trauma or specialty center (what perhaps was going on in the accident in question), or hauled out of a Reservation village in Central Alaska. But for everybody else there is a choice I guess.
 
It seems to me you are implying that two pilots is the antidote.
 
hindsight2020 said:
…BL, there's no silver bullet, nor did I argue there was. Part 121 does advocate that position, which is fine.…
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I don’t know the airlines advocate for it so much as the regulator demands it, and it’s not just redundant peopling that is required. Just look at part 25 equipment requirements.

So yes, the regulator accepts there’s a loss-of-life continuum in revenue ops. Every operator has to find their risk balance (note I did not say mitigation) point and insurers have their actuarial tables that aren’t predictive, but are instead informative.

In this specific incident, I get the feeling we’re overlooking the ADM that led up to launching, but I’ll also admit I haven’t put any effort into this incident at all and accept the conditions and forecast could have been rainbows and unicorns.
 
I was at the departure airport (KRNO) earlier that day and the visibility was 1/4 mile at best. You could not see the tower from the west ramp. It was better in the evening, but not much. I can’t imagine what sort of ADM went on. The pilot is not supposed to know the condition of the patient.
 
Sort of surprised we're quick to assume the pilot was underwhelming here. I only say that because most of the air-ambulance operations I know actually have really high minima (4000+ hours, a commensurate amount of turbine time, etc)

Was this operator not one of those and this was some fresher in the front seat?
 
schmookeeg said:
Sort of surprised we're quick to assume the pilot was underwhelming here. I only say that because most of the air-ambulance operations I know actually have really high minima (4000+ hours, a commensurate amount of turbine time, etc)

Was this operator not one of those and this was some fresher in the front seat?
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Counterpoint: do hours translate to experience?

And yes, pilot error is still the #1 killer.
 
TCABM said:
Counterpoint: do hours translate to experience?

And yes, pilot error is still the #1 killer.
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Of course not, but the flight tracks look completely bush league, like 100-hour-pilot graveyard spiraling a skyhawk, which I'd be surprised a 4000 hour pilot would do without other extenuating circumstances.

I know nothing about this accident, just strange optics from my comfy chair.
 
schmookeeg said:
Of course not, but the flight tracks look completely bush league, like 100-hour-pilot graveyard spiraling a skyhawk, which I'd be surprised a 4000 hour pilot would do without other extenuating circumstances.

I know nothing about this accident, just strange optics from my comfy chair.
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I don’t know jack about this incident either, but we don’t know the pilot’s own confidence level and proficiency hand flying in craptastic conditions either.
 
Salty said:
It seems to me you are implying that two pilots is the antidote.
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Not me, that's part 121. I'm not advocating anything of the sort, which is why I was disclosing my bias as someone who wouldn't be a pilot if single pilot work was outlawed. @DavidWhite hit close to the mark regarding actual operational and training behavior that could be construed along the lines of "antidote", to use your word. I do share the opinion of a more recurrent and shorter interval environment for single pilots to retain their IMC "qual" so to speak. But that cost $ and the operators are not gonna play ball.

I have the benefit of Uncle Sam providing that re-currency to an outsized degree, given I work for the Country's largest primary/secondary training department. What is undeniably true is that as a career flight instructor I handfly thrust-vectored square circles around the (comparatively) instrument-flying tub of sh$t I was during my stint as a line pilot in the combat obsolete Prairie Schooner.

Private firms don't have the luxury of being afforded such an outsized amount of recurrent training. It's not a practical solution for many civil operators. That's money not being made pushing boxes or meat bags from A to B. A balance [unfortunately] has to be struck.

NealRomeoGolf said:
This is what I was referring to.
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You're misplacing the context of my comment. What I was referring to were the chuckleheads that launch on a cat I min day with freezing precipitation in a TKS Cirroid/twin plastic wonder to do cruising laps in reported-icing IMC for youtube clicks under the auspices of "I'm doing it 91 so it's lEgUL", while regional airliners are diverting. Not talking about the cursory punch in punch out, non-convective IFR, CAVU on top of non-precision alternate minima stuff most us with equipment-limited spam cans may incur to get to from whatever destination centric flying we may do. @Tantalum hit on that distinction earlier. I echo some of his comments.

I also have zero problem with people going up with a properly seasoned IP and getting recurrent in actual. I derive a full time living doing that very thing, ffs.

At any rate, that's what I meant by "seeking it out". Lastly, none of my commentary ever advocated banning any of it anyways.

schmookeeg said:
Sort of surprised we're quick to assume the pilot was underwhelming here. I only say that because most of the air-ambulance operations I know actually have really high minima (4000+ hours, a commensurate amount of turbine time, etc)
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Apropos of nothing, that's texbook halo effect bias. I could say it's no different than you appearing equally "quick" to assume IMC LOC (aka fight club, for those who still haven't figured out what fight club is, since we don't talk about fight club :D) is a sin of the inexperienced. The fact FW EMS is a high hiring minimum job doesn't insulate that operation from having IMC LOC losses in the least. Insurance may dictate that for their own actuarial hedge, but that and a buck twenty gets the dead a cup of coffee. That's 2 in just 3 months, if my hunch about the Hawaii one ends up up the same alley.

Halo effect is real. Look at all the pearl-clutching that ensued before the NTSB confirmed Snort Snodgrass forgetting to unlock the back stick, or the wagon circling going on by the UAL thin blue line crowd over on APC wrt the OGG close call. Same deal, we're all innocent in shawshank/John 8:7/pick your platitude/ notwithstanding of course.
 
DesertNomad said:
The initial reports are saying it broke up in flight. Not sure if that was the root cause yet.

https://carsonnow.org/story/02/26/2...flight-go-down-last-few-years-weather-was-not
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It’s very well possible that it started or had an inflight breakup due to the spiral/spin. However, the fact it was able to fly into the upset and keep flying until the last ADSB hit shows it entered the terminal upset intact.

Any failure of a primary structure will very quickly cause the airplane to depart from controlled flight.

I had an accident that had an extremely similar flight path and profile. The airplane stayed intact until the low teens at which point the part of the horizontal stab was overloaded due to a violent pitch up. The instant the stab failed the airplane pitched over and the wings bent downward leading to an immediate failure of the right wing. In a very short period and distance the aircraft went into vertical falling leaf spin.
 
I don’t disagree with the last few comments, but ultimately, the reported conditions shouldn’t have brought this airplane down.
ARFlyer said:
I had an accident that had an extremely similar flight path and profile. The airplane stayed intact until the low teens at which point the part of the horizontal stab was overloaded due to a violent pitch up. The instant the stab failed the airplane pitched over and the wings bent downward leading to an immediate failure of the right wing. In a very short period and distance the aircraft went into vertical falling leaf spin.
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Wow! And you lived to tell the tale!
 
DesertNomad said:
The initial reports are saying it broke up in flight. Not sure if that was the root cause yet.

https://carsonnow.org/story/02/26/2...flight-go-down-last-few-years-weather-was-not
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The question there is "Chicken or egg?" Did the airframe fail and cause the crash, or did the airplane go out of control and subsequently experience a break - up? I'd bet on the second scenario given the radar track - graveyard spiral, high speed, then an airframe failure when the pilot tried to recover or the airplane simply reached its limits.
 
DesertNomad said:
The initial reports are saying it broke up in flight. Not sure if that was the root cause yet.

https://carsonnow.org/story/02/26/2...flight-go-down-last-few-years-weather-was-not
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Highly unlikely to be the root cause. An in-flight break up does not cause a tightening spiral while continuing to fly at 200 knots. But said spiral does cause in-flight breakups. An improper, delayed, or ham-fisted recovery attempt from said spiral is also likely to lead to an in-flight breakup. And as I mentioned before, even if the situation was recognized, the last ADS-B return at 12,700 would have only given a couple seconds before recovery would be futile.

kyleb said:
The question there is "Chicken or egg?" Did the airframe fail and cause the crash, or did the airplane go out of control and subsequently experience a break - up? I'd bet on the second scenario given the radar track - graveyard spiral, high speed, then an airframe failure when the pilot tried to recover or the airplane simply reached its limits.
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The turn rate and groundspeed suggest an average bank angle of 60° during a 360° turn, with the average bank angle closer to 70° during the second half of that turn. Bank angle may have reached 80° by the last ADS-B return which would result in a load factor of 5.76. This exceeds both the limit load factor of 3.8 and ultimate load factor of 5.7 for a normal category airplane. Possibly the last ADS-B return captured the breakup in progress as there is a sudden loss of groundspeed.
 
hindsight2020 said:
or the wagon circling going on by the UAL thin blue line crowd over on APC wrt the OGG close call. Same deal, we're all innocent in shawshank/John 8:7/pick your platitude/ notwithstanding of course.
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You've mentioned this before (and certainly you're no fan of 121 pilots), but I'm surprised by how much you love to beat this drum. Nothing insidious is going on here - we all go through Human Factors class, and all of us have spent enough time on a flight deck to either have done some dumb s**t, or at least have seen ourselves in a position to do that dumb s**t. So we all tend to be a little reluctant to start throwing stones until more facts make themselves known. It's not circling the wagons, it's "Okay this was f***ed - what happened and how can I prevent it from happening to me?"
 
According to this, the horizontal stabilizer, elevator, and part of the right wing were missing.

 
dmspilot said:
Highly unlikely to be the root cause. An in-flight break up does not cause a tightening spiral while continuing to fly at 200 knots. But said spiral does cause in-flight breakups.
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Just musing here, and I’m sure once the aircraft pieces are mapped out a better picture of what happened may result, but would a large pocket of turbulence be able to tear off the horizontal stab? Maybe in conjunction with some ice build up?

If so, wouldn’t a similar profile occur? Steep dive and loss of part of a wing resulting in the spiral.

That’s assuming turbulent air could be so severe as to tear flight control surfaces from the airplane.
 
woodchucker said:
Just musing here, and I’m sure once the aircraft pieces are mapped out a better picture of what happened may result, but would a large pocket of turbulence be able to tear off the horizontal stab? Maybe in conjunction with some ice build up?
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Anything *could* have happened. Something improbable did happen. Turbulence severe enough to rip apart a relatively new turboprop? That wouldn't be near the top of my list, but is certainly a possibility.
 
DavidWhite said:
I don’t think single-pilot IFR is any more dangerous than any other type of flying provided the pilot is competent and current.

The problem is, competency and currency for safely flying single-pilot IFR in a go somewhere airplane is IMO the highest threshold for any kind of flying.
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And it's quite a perishable proficiency... I would NOT fly single pilot IFR right now, even if I was legal and current.
 
hindsight2020 said:
that launch on a cat I min day with freezing precipitation in a TKS Cirroid/twin plastic wonder to do cruising laps in reported-icing IMC for youtube clicks
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I think I know exactly which video you are talking about, at least one of them

After I got my instrument ticket I was pretty brave. Always legal but I scared myself enough times that I approach instrument flying with far more vigilance now
 
woodchucker said:
Just musing here, and I’m sure once the aircraft pieces are mapped out a better picture of what happened may result, but would a large pocket of turbulence be able to tear off the horizontal stab? Maybe in conjunction with some ice build up?

If so, wouldn’t a similar profile occur? Steep dive and loss of part of a wing resulting in the spiral.

That’s assuming turbulent air could be so severe as to tear flight control surfaces from the airplane.
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I don't think. Loss of the horizontal stab would cause a sudden, drastic pitch-down. The ADS-B track suggests a smooth (albeit rapid) bank with a resultant build-up in descent rate.
 
kayoh190 said:
You've mentioned this before (and certainly you're no fan of 121 pilots), but I'm surprised by how much you love to beat this drum.
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Says you. I hold no such intent. I do live rent free in a few airline pilot heads tho, that much is clear to me.
 
RyanShort1 said:
And it's quite a perishable proficiency... I would NOT fly single pilot IFR right now, even if I was legal and current.
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We have a winner. That's the mark my friend, and what fight club is all about. To wit, there is no way of regulating that in a way that single pilot operators would not find objectionable. So we'll continue to play the odds, here and in two pilot land.
 
hindsight2020 said:
We have a winner. That's the mark my friend, and what fight club is all about. To wit, there is no way of regulating that in a way that single pilot operators would not find objectionable. So we'll continue to play the odds, here and in two pilot land.
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This may sound odd, but I'd sooner scud run (and I'm shy of that, too, so I'm not actually saying I want to do that) if it was within my personal visibility limits. We do something like 500+ hours a year of photo flying so I'm pretty comfortable in the plane, but I remember a time about 10 years ago when I got hard spacial D turning final in a 210 and I was a lot more proficient back then at IFR than I consider myself to be right now. We have flown some approaches to get home as a crew with my commercial pilot flying and myself backing him up and it just seems a lot easier for a crew to recognize if something is going wrong.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Says you. I hold no such intent. I do live rent free in a few airline pilot heads tho, that much is clear to me.
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One thing's for sure, you definitely fit in over at APC. ;) But anyway. Spatial disorientation, okay. Certainly possible - and I don't think anyone has indicated otherwise. Offer up some solutions, objectionable by the industry or not. How do we fix it?

I've always thought that one thing the industry could do is focus more on being 'startled' into suddenly having to hand fly. We all do just fine when we know it's coming, but perhaps the transition our brains are forced to make from being the aircraft manager to suddenly having to rely on our scan is problematic - especially when a lot of other stuff (weather, failures, etc) is going on.
 
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A 2019 airframe? No, parts didn’t fall off for no reason, likely over stress. I’m kinda going with the more simple explanation.
 
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