Video and Discussion - Burley, ID accident. Was "Gryder"

LesGawlik

LesGawlik

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Love him or hate him, I think he has served a good purpose here. This is about Ms. Infanger. I think we all assumed she just messed up. Looks like she may have done nothing wrong. The approach may have been incorrectly designed or not maintained properly.

I think this work is brilliant. It doesn't hurt that she was gorgeous.

 
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Just my opinion. But, this is all anyone not involved in the OFFICIAL investigation needs to know at this point: NTSB# WPR22FA151
 
Pretty in depth analysis there. If his assertion about. The plant lying about their tower height to two govt agencies is true that’s a pretty big deal.
 
Re: Gryder, nope, not a fan for a few reasons, some of which he illustrated in this video like:

  • Stealing material involved in an open accident investigation.
  • Operating in IMC without a clearance.
  • Letting a VFR pilot try and maintain straight and level while he videos.
  • Always knowing what the accident pilot saw and did. - Wish I had his psychic abilities...

Re: The accident, very sad and illustrates that a lot of loopholes can potentially lead to an accident. Hopefully some of those loopholes get closed...
 
So, help me put this in perspective.

The approach requires leveling off well above the tower height, and you cannot descend further until the runway environment is in sight, with at least 1-mile visibility. At the point you begin descent below MDA for landing, it should all be visual...not on the guages any more. Should the tower have been seen by the pilot, even if it was not charted?

I'm not disputing that there may have been something wrong with the approach plate/notams/etc...just wondering how reasonable it is to think the tower should have been seen and avoided. Thoughts?
 
idahoflier said:
Re: Gryder, nope, not a fan for a few reasons, some of which he illustrated in this video like:

  • Stealing material involved in an open accident investigation.
  • Operating in IMC without a clearance.
  • Letting a VFR pilot try and maintain straight and level while he videos.
  • Always knowing what the accident pilot saw and did. - Wish I had his psychic abilities...

Re: The accident, very sad and illustrates that a lot of loopholes can potentially lead to an accident. Hopefully some of those loopholes get closed...
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Agreed. im pretty agnostic on the whole youtube cult of personality either way, but this guy is a clown with the recurring amateur accident investigator shtick. I love me some good conjecture, but the matter of factness with which he peddles his low information bulls-- is uncanny.

The ad hoc special VFR request was such the treat. I love how tower disregarded his rambling request for validation (you can almost hear tower thinking it: these two are gonna pork it) and just sent him on his way. You couldn't write this script if you tried lol. The mammoth irony of two elmer fudds confusingly staring out that lawnmowers window while going to recreate an accident flight route, did not escape me in the least. All they were missing were trapper hats, and the scene would have been set. Lol
 
All that and music effects too.
 
idahoflier said:
  • Operating in IMC without a clearance
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Yes, it was obvious IMC occurred with the passing clouds outside, period concentration on instruments due to IMC, and “there is the earth again” (paraphrasing) comment. The video should be preserved as evidence it was IMC without a clearance. Either he didn’t give it much thought or he didn’t care. That segment was not a good example of recreating the flight or demonstrating the approach.
 
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LesGawlik said:
Love him or hate him, I think he has served a good purpose here. This is about Ms. Infanger. I think we all assumed she just messed up. Looks like she may have done nothing wrong. The approach may have been incorrectly designed or not maintained properly.

I think this work is brilliant. It doesn't hurt that she was gorgeous.

Click to expand...

Gryder is a douchebag.

And if she was a 300 lb man, your perspective on the crash would be different?
 
What caught my attention is the possibility that some dooshy company lied about a stack being BOTH higher AND shorter than it really was?

WOW

See? THAT is scary.

Another point kinda glossed over is that it’s totally normal to follow some rinky dink GPS glide path over PROPER procedures from the FAF to the runway?!!! WOW

A VDP is NECESSARY to help a pilot? WOW.

A visual glide path is NECESSARY?

Color me stupid, but I thought you were supposed to see the runway, and EVERYTHING between you and it, and just go land safely or go around.

Like ALL mishaps, a bunch went wrong here. As is common, the pilot has been held accountable far further than the morons on the ground who LIED, or FEDS that knew towers were out of limits AND DID NOTHING (that’s guilty by omission).

Also, tell me again why dive and drive is so hard? I thought constant airspeed descents were in the PRIVATE ACS. Pretty sure calculating descent rates given a thousand variables and conditions to the nearest 1FPM while the gage marks are a 1/16” for a HUNDRED aren’t even in the ATP PTS... just sayin.
 
Tools said:
Another point kinda glossed over is that it’s totally normal to follow some rinky dink GPS glide path over PROPER procedures from the FAF to the runway?!!! WOW
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Unfortunately this is becoming more normal all the time.
 
Tools said:
What caught my attention is the possibility that some dooshy company lied about a stack being BOTH higher AND shorter than it really was?

WOW

See? THAT is scary.

Another point kinda glossed over is that it’s totally normal to follow some rinky dink GPS glide path over PROPER procedures from the FAF to the runway?!!! WOW

A VDP is NECESSARY to help a pilot? WOW.

A visual glide path is NECESSARY?

Color me stupid, but I thought you were supposed to see the runway, and EVERYTHING between you and it, and just go land safely or go around.

Like ALL mishaps, a bunch went wrong here. As is common, the pilot has been held accountable far further than the morons on the ground who LIED, or FEDS that knew towers were out of limits AND DID NOTHING (that’s guilty by omission).

Also, tell me again why dive and drive is so hard? I thought constant airspeed descents were in the PRIVATE ACS. Pretty sure calculating descent rates given a thousand variables and conditions to the nearest 1FPM while the gage marks are a 1/16” for a HUNDRED aren’t even in the ATP PTS... just sayin.
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I've wondered if Mr. Gryder has loose screws and working rivets in the flying department, let alone personality. And being out of the game for decades, I haven't felt qualified to judge. However, this thread reinforces my suspicions that he is making things up and operating under his own rules of flight. Some of it's good, but some of it's out there.
 
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Oh look, another creepy guitar/banjo interlude while he recites lyrics to the deceased.
How to say 'look at me' without saying 'look at me'
He's at master at saying a lot but communicating very little.

That special VFR flight had me raise an eyebrow. Wasn't expecting that.
 
Piperonca said:
I've wondered if Mr. Gryder has loose screws and working rivets in the flying department, let alone personality. And being out of the game for decades, I haven't felt qualified to judge. However, this thread reinforces my suspicions that he is making things up and operating under his own rules of flight. Some of it's good, but some of it's out there.
Click to expand...

It's casual low-value entertainment content by yet another former working pilot/retiree with too much time on his hands. Pre-2005 the medium didn't exist so you wouldn't have heard much of him during or after his stint with pro flying. He's not the only one on that demographic; there's plenty of youtoob chaff out there of equally cringe or worse to be honest. Take it for what it is, right up there with funny pets or car crash videos.
 
I couldn't get past the finger snap thing when he needed a tape measure. He knows more than I'll ever know about flying so I'll give him that. I just don't want to watch his videos if he thinks he's being clever after the tragedy of a plane crash.
 
hindsight2020 said:
….Take it for what it is, right up there with funny pets or car crash videos.
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Oh hellz no. Funny animal videos are about the only thing that cracks me up hysterically laughing. People are stoopid. Gryder is stoopid. Animals are fargin funny.

Also, I don’t think for one second about any of gryders videos….until they’re repeatedly brought up here about how stupid they are. Otherwise I’d have zero to do with him.

(ppsssttt…….STOP POSTING ABOUT GRYDER VIDEOS!!!!! Ignore him and maybe he’ll go away)
 
Help with my naiveté; for when I look at this accident the only thing I see is:

The pilot (I say this with respect) left MDA without adequate visual reference.

If this had not happened, the airplane would not have crashed.
I think everyone knows not to trust, or follow an advisory G/S.
 
Upon reflection, I think this reinforces the point drilled in during instrument training that below the MDA, there is no obstacle protection, and advisory glide slopes are advisory, no matter how much the box they are displayed on costs.

On the other hand, many people get their IR without ever having seen the inside of a cloud. When you reach minimums and the instructor says you can remove your foggles, the runway appears in blindingly bright sunlight in a perfectly clear sky, with a VASI/PAPI beaming GS information right at you. May it ever be so.

The smokestack she hit was producing smoke or vapor, which could have obscured it in the immediate vicinity of the stack. She could have correctly thought she had legal criteria to land, and discounted the localized vapor as a wisp which did not invalidate her otherwise acceptable view of the runway environment. The marking light which could have shown through the mist and illuminated the stack was improper or inoperative. She had no ground-based GS information available to her. She was in a rough spot.
 
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He repeatedly referred to an Advisory Circular and said the approach was not in compliance with the AC. He may have said the approach was illegal but I'm not sure and I'm not going to watch it again.

Is an AC regulatory?
 
luvflyin said:
Only in reference to doing it with the Twin Falls altimeter. The Visibility Minimum was increased to 1 1/8, up from 1.
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NTSB final report on this one will be worth reading. As Sgt. Joe Friday used to say, “All we want are the facts, ma’am.”
 
LesGawlik said:
The smokestack she hit was producing smoke or vapor, which could have obscured it in the immediate vicinity of the stack. She could have correctly thought she had legal criteria to land, and discounted the localized vapor as a wisp which did not invalidate her otherwise acceptable view of the runway environment. The marking light which could have shown through the mist and illuminated the stack was improper or inoperative. She had no ground-based GS information available to her. She was in a rough spot.
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If smoke was obscuring the stack, it would have been a "cloud" and would likely have obscured the runway environment...flying through it would not be allowed.
 
Yes, this (obsolete) approach design and the dive and drive actions are of most importance in this accident. The guy with the video and all his antics are another.

It’s interesting to see the way Jeppesen presents the path. They depict the 3.75 degree descent angle starting .5 miles after HIKLO (FAF), which honors the JAMID step down. The FAA chart doesn’t. Both are dated pre-accident. I don’t recall, did the video guy say even if the 3.75 angle was followed correctly the smoke stack would still be clipped?

I don’t know about the Garmin 1000, but other avionics give you the ability to modify the glide path angle when you have a non-standard path and are shooting a visual at night. If I was honoring a path indicator after a FAF and after a step-down it suddenly jumped, showing me too high, I would not have confidence things are normal.
 
From one of the articles on the Kythrynsreport.com website , her dad says:

He says Brittney flew to this airport all the time and was well aware of any obstacles.

“There’s a 60-foot chimney sticking out of the top of the food processing plant — no lights on it, dead center — straight across the runway. So whenever you come in, you have to fly over the top of this and drop down,” he says.
 
TrueCourse said:
Yes, this (obsolete) approach design and the dive and drive actions are of most importance in this accident. The guy with the video and all his antics are another.

It’s interesting to see the way Jeppesen presents the path. They depict the 3.75 degree descent angle starting .5 miles after HIKLO (FAF), which honors the JAMID step down. The FAA chart doesn’t. Both are dated pre-accident. I don’t recall, did the video guy say even if the 3.75 angle was followed correctly the smoke stack would still be clipped?

I don’t know about the Garmin 1000, but other avionics give you the ability to modify the glide path angle when you have a non-standard path and are shooting a visual at night. If I was honoring a path indicator after a FAF and after a step-down it suddenly jumped, showing me too high, I would not have confidence things are normal.
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upload_2022-5-15_15-41-54.png
 
TrueCourse said:
I don’t recall, did the video guy say even if the 3.75 angle was followed correctly the smoke stack would still be clipped?
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Do we know that? How tall was the stack she hit? It would have to be 4,344msl to intercept a 3.75 gradient with a 40foot TCH. She was below 4,200 feet when she hit the thing. That stack was at .38NM from the runway edge. That would make it 191feet above airport touchdown zone elevation. Again I don't know how tall the thing was.
 
luvflyin said:
View attachment 106873
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I like the Jeppesen depiction a lot better if the goal is a constant rate descent....however....

If you trace the 40' TCH backwards at 3.75 degree angle to the stack (2632 feet) that puts you at 4364 MSL. The stack is supposedly 100 AGL (if you believe the FAA data) and the ground is 18 ft higher than TDZE at the stack (according to google earth), so it would be at 4269 MSL. That gives only 95 ft clearance if you follow the dotted line on the Jepp chart.

If I did the math right, a 2.1 degree glide slope angle would put you into the stack.
 
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The video guy covers the calculations and draws a diagram, I just can't bring myself to watch it again. I don't recall what he specifically says about following the correct v-path as depicted on the jepp chart, but he does say if you follow the g1000 depicted path it will fly you into the stack.

EDIT: So, I watched the diagram part again and he does say if you fly the (unpublished / G1000) path of 3.59 from the JAMID to RW20 you might actually hit the stack. He mentions 3.75 is not applicable due to the VASI being decommissioned years ago. However, does a published VDA really need working VASI to be valid? The VDA merely references the runway touchdown point, does it not?

The FAA's Chart User's Guide for the Profile View information reads:

"A VDA and TCH may be published on non-precision approaches....The VDA is strictly advisory and provides a means to establish a stabilized descent to the MDA. The presence of a VDA does not guarantee obstacle protection in the visual segment. If there are obstacles in the visual segment that could cause an aircraft to destabilize the approach between MDA and touchdown, the profile will not show a VDA and will instead show a note that states “Visual Segment-Obstacles”.
​
That last obstacle note is not on either the Jepp or FAA chart, maybe because if the 3.75 published is flown, it would not cause an aircraft to destabilize?

As someone else mentioned, this is only an LNAV approach, so it is either dive and drive or correctly apply the VDA if flying a constant descent. This VDA is published from the step down fix. The AC 120-108 the video guy quotes reads:

"However, in some cases, the VDA is calculated from the stepdown fix altitude to the TCH. In this situation, the VDA is published on the IAP following the associated stepdown fix (see Appendix 1, Figure 5, Instrument Approach Procedures with Controlling Stepdown Fix). In most cases, the descent angle between the FAF altitude and the stepdown fix altitude is slightly shallower than the published VDA for the segment between the stepdown fix and the runway. Operators should determine how they would like their pilots to fly the approach."​

So, other than the FAA not noting the start of the VDA as clearly as the Jepp chart does and both still reference a VGSI which is not functional, is there really anything "illegal" about this approach? Maybe the video guy should be more wound up about a) why Garmin allows the presented vertical path to change mid-approach as it does or b) why the airplane was flying the Garmin derived 3.59 degree path to the runway, if in fact that is what the pilot was actually doing.
 
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Don’t like the guy, don’t care to give him a click. I’m sure he’s got it right in his own mind.
 
TrueCourse said:
The video guy covers the calculations and draws a diagram, I just can't bring myself to watch it again. I don't recall what he specifically says about following the correct v-path as depicted on the jepp chart, but he does say if you follow the g1000 depicted path it will fly you into the stack.

EDIT: So, I watched the diagram part again and he does say if you fly the (unpublished / G1000) path of 3.59 from the JAMID to RW20 you might actually hit the stack. He mentions 3.75 is not applicable due to the VASI being decommissioned years ago. However, does a published VDA really need working VASI to be valid? The VDA merely references the runway touchdown point, does it not?

The FAA's Chart User's Guide for the Profile View information reads:

"A VDA and TCH may be published on non-precision approaches....The VDA is strictly advisory and provides a means to establish a stabilized descent to the MDA. The presence of a VDA does not guarantee obstacle protection in the visual segment. If there are obstacles in the visual segment that could cause an aircraft to destabilize the approach between MDA and touchdown, the profile will not show a VDA and will instead show a note that states “Visual Segment-Obstacles”.
​
That last obstacle note is not on either the Jepp or FAA chart, maybe because if the 3.75 published is flown, it would not cause an aircraft to destabilize?

As someone else mentioned, this is only an LNAV approach, so it is either dive and drive or correctly apply the VDA if flying a constant descent. This VDA is published from the step down fix. The AC 120-108 the video guy quotes reads:

"However, in some cases, the VDA is calculated from the stepdown fix altitude to the TCH. In this situation, the VDA is published on the IAP following the associated stepdown fix (see Appendix 1, Figure 5, Instrument Approach Procedures with Controlling Stepdown Fix). In most cases, the descent angle between the FAF altitude and the stepdown fix altitude is slightly shallower than the published VDA for the segment between the stepdown fix and the runway. Operators should determine how they would like their pilots to fly the approach."​

So, other than the FAA not noting the start of the VDA as clearly as the Jepp chart does and both still reference a VGSI which is not functional, is there really anything "illegal" about this approach? Maybe the video guy should be more wound up about a) why Garmin allows this new vertical path to change as it does and not calculate based on the JAMID stepdown fix or b) why the airplane was flying the Garmin derived 3.59 degree path to the runway, if in fact that is what the pilot was actually doing.
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Can't speak to the garmin advisory flight director thing, but the 3.75* gradient depicted post-JAMID, would have kept her clear of the stack in question, if the stack is only as tall as indicated by open sources. The VASI being inop is immaterial. Thing is, the transition below the MDA is predicated on being able to visually clear your path to the runway. So even the published gradient here is immaterial. If you have slant range visibility to the runway threshold compromised, you have no business continuing to press further below the MDA. I don't see anything illegal about the way this approach is charted.

The problem here as we are finding out, is that stack was a cloud maker right in the extended centerline of that runway approach. If the plant was operating, it's very likely there was some moisture-related obscuration below MDA as a result of that stack blowing steam all over that approach corridor. She struck that thing well below MDA.

We don't know if the early altitude excursion from MDA was purposeful (scud runnish early transition out of MDA and thru the man-made wx cloud) or as a result of stress-induced/instrument cross check loss of altitude awareness relative to the runway distance-to-go. Honestly, we will never know that part of the accident chain decision. A distinction without difference though, afaic.

All that said, spade a spade: the placement of that potato plant makes that approach corridor sporty. That city needs to get their priorities straight. Want freight dog service? Clear the damn corridor, and deal with your "job creators" on the ground. No free lunch in this life.
 
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