TBM Crash May Implicate ATC

jesse said:
I can't imagine wanting to fly a cirrus much that high. There would be nothing comfortable about that.
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I've heard that the Cirrus deck angle gets pretty high at ~17k. Can you confirm?
 
Jaybird180 said:
I've heard that the Cirrus deck angle gets pretty high at ~17k. Can you confirm?
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Not really. In a non-turbo you are definitely getting mushy and the deck angle is going up but not extremely so. It's like flying around at 120 IAS at about any altitude. In a turbo the deck angle would be lower still since you are going a lot faster.
 
Here's a photo:

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Not especially nose high.

And 163KTAS on 9.3 gph ain't bad, either!
 
Since that photo indicates you the airplane was were still climbing, you might want to hide the evidence of your someone's malfeasance :D
 
Muttley said:
The pilot killed himself because he was stupid/inexperienced/untrained/not proficient/afraid.
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You were there! In the cockpit!??!!

The word "hubris" comes to mind.
 
Muttley said:
What should have happened is the PIC should have flown the plane. Read the TBM900 POH for this situation: Don oxygen mask, Fly the airplane

I would have put on my mask, started descent to 10,000 and then told ATC what was happening and what I was doing.

The pilot killed himself because he was stupid/inexperienced/untrained/not proficient/afraid. ATC had nothing to do with it.
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Muttley said:
My own arrogance or pride doesn't factor into this. The pilot did not follow proper training and procedure to keep himself safe and alive.

This is nothing but a pilot error accident. The one thing he could have done to remain alive is put on his mask, as prescribed by POH, checklist and high altitude training/endorsement which he was required to have.
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Muttley gets it. :yes:
 
What does the TBM have for emergency oxygen? Oxygen generators? Have to say it..but perhaps he didn't want to spend the money to use them thinking there wasn't a problem.
 
jesse said:
What does the TBM have for emergency oxygen? Oxygen generators? Have to say it..but perhaps he didn't want to spend the money to use them thinking there wasn't a problem.
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Actually I see it as this. Guy has the big bucks to buy an ultra high performance aircraft and he has the skills of your average private pilot.

He does the training half hearted just wanting to meet the insurance requirement. Since he's paying for the instruction the ones providing it don't want to **** him off by saying he is below standards and possibly take his business elsewhere. Once "checked out" he doesn't have to maintain any standards or meaningful recurrency training, or take a check ride that he could possibly fail if he doesn't meet standards.

Lack of systems knowledge, aircraft that exceeds his limitations and you can guess the outcome when something goes wrong.
 
RotorAndWing said:
Actually I see it as this. Guy has the big bucks to buy an ultra high performance aircraft and he has the skills of your average private pilot.

He does the training half hearted just wanting to meet the insurance requirement. Since he's paying for the instruction the ones providing it don't want to **** him off by saying he is below standards and possibly take his business elsewhere. Once "checked out" he doesn't have to maintain any standards or meaningful recurrency training, or take a check ride that he could possibly fail if he doesn't meet standards.

Lack of systems knowledge, aircraft that exceeds his limitations and you can guess the outcome when something goes wrong.
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Yup.......

Fish food now...:rolleyes2:
 
Muttley said:
TBM has an O2 tank and quick donning masks for cockpit, dixie cup masks for club seats that deploy when cabin pressure is above 14,000 ft
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I see. The Malibu I fly has 15 minutes of emergency O2 provided by an oxygen generator that is probably about a grand to pull the trigger on. We carry an actual o2 tank with more capabilities and by far less cost to use.
 
Muttley said:
My own arrogance or pride doesn't factor into this. The pilot did not follow proper training and procedure to keep himself safe and alive.

This is nothing but a pilot error accident. The one thing he could have done to remain alive is put on his mask, as prescribed by POH, checklist and high altitude training/endorsement which he was required to have.
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Pilot error does not equate to 'stupidity' though, there is no infallible human ever created. Yes, he made a mistake and they died for it. The mistake was that he didn't believe an indication and didn't don his mask. In those few moments of denial, a completely normal and ingrained feature to stressors that humans have in processing information, he very likely suffered enough hypoxia to make the further thought processes accurately impossible.
 
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Do we know that his G1000 gave him a cabin altitude annunciation ? Do we know that the cabin presssure sensor that drops the masks worked ? Do we know that he had oxygen flow when he donned his mask ?
 
RotorAndWing said:
Actually I see it as this. Guy has the big bucks to buy an ultra high performance aircraft and he has the skills of your average private pilot.

He does the training half hearted just wanting to meet the insurance requirement...
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I think this and the rest of your post is assuming a lot of facts not in evidence.

We have found that the kind of pilot that joins and is then involved with COPA is statistically far less likely to be involved in a fatal. A fact, though of course correlation does not equal causation.

The fact that this fellow was in fact president of an owner's group would lead me to think that he was more immersed in the plane and it's systems and procedures than most.

And I tend to give fellow pilots the benefit of the doubt, not assume the worst.

But That's Just Me! (tm)
 
Muttley said:
No assumptions...pilot is dead because he didn't operate his airplane properly. He killed himself and his passenger because one malfunction was not addressed properly.
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Correct, but that does not equate to stupidity necessarily.
 
Muttley said:
Definition of stupid: lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind

I think that sums up the pilot's actions as to why he didn't respond properly.
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Oh, c'mon guys. It's clear as a bell. Anytime someone says they have a false indication, ATC should immediately assume command of the aircraft and descend them below 10,000'!
 
FastEddieB said:
I think this and the rest of your post is assuming a lot of facts not in evidence.

We have found that the kind of pilot that joins and is then involved with COPA is statistically far less likely to be involved in a fatal. A fact, though of course correlation does not equal causation.

The fact that this fellow was in fact president of an owner's group would lead me to think that he was more immersed in the plane and it's systems and procedures than most.

And I tend to give fellow pilots the benefit of the doubt, not assume the worst.

But That's Just Me! (tm)
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:yeahthat:
 
Muttley said:
Definition of stupid: lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind

I think that sums up the pilot's actions as to why he didn't respond properly.
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Have you *ever* missed or forgot something when flying, or misinterpreted what was happening with your airplane?

WHAT ARE YOU, STUPID?!? :dunno:
 
Muttley said:
No we don't know any of that...but if pilot was following procedure he would have known before engine start if he had adequate supply of O2, would have turned on O2 as per checklist item, and if annunciator panel malfunctioned he also would have know by monitoring cabin pressure differential in his normal scan. Only pax masks drop...cockpit masks are quick donning as per requirements of Part 23 for high altitude certification.
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If the pressure sensor that feeds into the G1000 malfunctioned, his scan would never show the rising cabin altitude and by the time he did notice that something was off, he would been too hypoxic to figure out what was wrong and how to react. Then there is the chance that while the cabin altitude sensor was ok, the interface on the G1000 was faulty and gave him an erroneous indication. Computers never make mistakes, right ?
 
Muttley said:
What would you call it then? Stupidity may be too harsh of a vocabulary word but the results are the same.

If he looked at a gun and didn't believe the indication that the safety was off, then pulls the trigger and kills himself or someone else, would that be considered stupid?

If you refuse to believe an warning indication that could render you incapacitated in 1-3 minutes and do not possess the wherewithal to assess or handle the situation properly, then the fault lies with you.
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The fault is not stupidity though, stupidity is mental laziness, the not wanting to think. Some people react to stress differently than others. The problem he had is lack of experience with real emergencies which coupled with the 'this is a new plane. It can't be really broke, it must be a bad gauge' kind of wishful thinking that we are as a species prone to. Is there a 'lack of training' coupled to this as well? Well, it depends on the definition of 'lack'. I seriously doubt he had airline level training, kinda hard to justify spending $30k a year doing 2 sim programs a year like we make airline captains go through, so if that is the standard you believe that should be required, then yes, I bet he had a lack of training.
 
Muttley said:
You're absolutely right! Those airplanes are death traps, just waiting to kill unsuspecting pilots with no recourse. I'm sure there's absolutely no failsafe mode or any other way to respond than by just letting the airplane kill you at will.
Might as well call the pilot's death a suicide since he knowingly launched in such a manipulative and predatory machine!
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Like hyperbole much ?

The initial failures may well have been mechanical or software related. It was a new plane, serial#4 after a major re-design, I dont see why an infant mortality or design issue is ruled out.
 
Muttley said:
Definition of stupid: lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind

I think that sums up the pilot's actions as to why he didn't respond properly.
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The petty and judgmental sniping evident in posts such as this degrade the overall quality of the discourse on this forum.

Or it's just trolling. In either case best ignored, IMHO.
 
The American mindset of today is "it's always someone/something else's fault". That theme is played over and over again. "It must have been the airplane, no way he could have made that mistake", or "it's a bad design flaw of the airplane" or "the controller should have recognized a problem and done something!", etc, etc.

People make mistakes, people screw up. Sometimes it cost them their lives.
 
Muttley said:
No assumptions...pilot is dead because he didn't operate his airplane properly. He killed himself and his passenger because one malfunction was not addressed properly.
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That's a reasonable summary of the facts.

My point was that beyond those facts, we have no idea why he failed to address the malfunction properly, yours and RotorAndWing's mostly pejorative theories notwithstanding. You didn't know the guy. RotorAndWing didn't know the guy. You were not there. RotorAndWing was not there.

Two people are dead. The NTSB will probably attribute it to pilot error. But no one will ever know why.
 
RotorAndWing said:
The American mindset of today is "it's always someone/something else's fault". That theme is played over and over again. "It must have been the airplane, no way he could have made that mistake", or "it's a bad design flaw of the airplane" or "the controller should have recognized a problem and done something!", etc, etc.

People make mistakes, people screw up. Sometimes it cost them their lives.
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It really started to get bad when ambulance chasers were allowed to start advertising years ago. The message is quite clear from them, if you've been injured you deserve to be compensated.....
 
airdale said:
Two people are dead. The NTSB will probably attribute it to pilot error. But no one will ever know why.
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We will see but I doubt NTSB will say anything given absolutely no data. By the way responsibility with this investigation rests with Jamaica not with the NTSB.
 
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He had enough money to have hired a safety pilot, familiar with this new model . Obviously he did not have much time it this new model which may have caused the accident. Total flying time? Total time at altitude? Total time in this particular model? Hours flown in the last 12 months? Maybe it will be found and salvaged, but probably in such condition that not a lot can be determined.
 
The pilot was the President of the TBM Owners (Group?) Association (sp) with tons of 850 time...



Jimmy cooper said:
He had enough money to have hired a safety pilot, familiar with this new model . Obviously he did not have much time it this new model which may have caused the accident. Total flying time? Total time at altitude? Total time in this particular model? Hours flown in the last 12 months? Maybe it will be found and salvaged, but probably in such condition that not a lot can be determined.
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Do these new TBMs have any sort of CVR or DFDR on there to record data for this sort of purpose? I'm assuming not as it's not required, but it would likely help figure out what happened.

I don't think I hear people disagreeing that the pilot screwed up. Of course, lots of pilots have screwed up, and there's been a lot of effort to change systems to help prevent the opportunity for screwing up.

Example: Henning's gear up. He stated no gear warning horn in his 310D. The 310N I fly has a gear warning horn that goes off when the throttles are pulled back to idle. On the 310R, not only is there a gear warning horn with throttles at idle, but it will start blaring if you select flaps full down and still have the gear up. Yeah, pilot error, but you can design the plane with human factors in mind to help reduce the probability of a human error.
 
Kelvin said:
The pilot was the President of the TBM Owners (Group?) Association (sp) with tons of 850 time...
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Tons? How much? How many in this model? President of the owners means that he is really proficient? With all that knowledge he still did not declare an emergency and get down quickly.
 
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