Youtube Pilot and her dad perish in TN

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dmspilot said:
It's not CFIT.
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In all seriousness, if I fly into a mountain or the ground, both are unintended and terrain, and it’s not a UAV, so manned and controlled. It was incorrectly controlled but controlled. If the C in CFIT has to be properly controlled, then wouldn’t the pilot, avoid the terrain? If I can’t pull up in time is that not CFIT or is it only CFIT if the mountain or ground sneaks up on me?

Flying a perfectly good airplane into the ground.
 
dmspilot said:
I thought the following comment, apparently from YouTube (but I don't know which video) and quoted on PPRUNE was interesting:
"In my opinion, its not the actual mis-trimmed control forces that can't be overcome as much as the extreme distraction and confusion such a situation causes. I believe pilots misdiagnose the problem as "I can't disengage the autopilot" when in reality the autopilot is disengaged. The remaining high control forces from an out of trim aircraft causing them to put all their efforts into finding a way to disengage the autopilot, which is of course fruitless."
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This happened to me pre checkride, CFI wanted to demonstrate the G1000 AP. I guess it tried to attain set altitude in a hurry without sufficient power and pitched up! It did it twice and took considerable force to nose down with one hand to roll the trim wheel in a C172. I disengaged the AP but was still way out of trim, making me think it was still on! The second time I felt the trim wheel speed along my leg! It was terrifying. The CFI didn’t know why I was fighting the plane and he asked for the controls to feel the pressure. It took several rolls of the wheel to take nose up pressure off. That’s why I follow this story so close is because her accident happened right after that happened to me. I’m pretty sure I’m stronger than her. If she was trimmed that much DOWN! Holy ****, she was scared.
 
cowman said:
I've never flown a Debonair but even with too much down trim shouldn't she have been able to pull the nose level?
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out of trim elevator forces can get pretty heavy… @Bell206 looked it up in the regs, and 75 pounds of pitch force is acceptable.
 
darthanubis said:
In all seriousness, if I fly into a mountain or the ground, both are unintended and terrain, and it’s not a UAV, so manned and controlled. It was incorrectly controlled but controlled. If the C in CFIT has to be properly controlled, then wouldn’t the pilot, avoid the terrain? If I can’t pull up in time is that not CFIT or is it only CFIT if the mountain or ground sneaks up on me?

Flying a perfectly good airplane into the ground.
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No. Unless it was a murder-suicide, it was a loss of control.
 
darthanubis said:
If the C in CFIT has to be properly controlled, then wouldn’t the pilot, avoid the terrain?
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FYI: You'll find in the established definitions of CFIT the pilot or crew is in positive or complete control of the aircraft with most definitions including a qualifier of "with the pilots unaware of their position until too late."
 
I really don't think the comments here have been all that harsh, in general. Maybe a couple.

Most of all of the posts I've read are stating things as they are - possible scenarios, guesses, speculation. To me this has been mostly a discussion to try to understand the different possibilities, all as possibilities. I don't see too many assumptions stated as fact, if any.

As to the control forces, from the postings above they potentially large, and I'll bet lunch money that those forces would go way up if the aircraft was past Vne. Because nobody would have tested and then published numbers for forces beyond which the aircraft was demonstrated to be safe to fly. That thing may have been full down, and maybe she figured out it was the trim not the autopilot, but by the time she realized it, and got half the trim out, it was too late. The other is that she may not have realized or remembered to pull the throttle. That's not a slight on skill, it's that very few people think as clearly during an actual really bad situation as they do during normal times.
 
Jesus you all taking this way out in the woods.

I am unwilling to condemn the CFII as the video is edited and things they discussed before not known.
 
4RNB said:
Jesus you all taking this way out in the woods.

I am unwilling to condemn the CFII as the video is edited and things they discussed before not known.
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You obviously didn’t watch the video where her CFII is playing around with his phone when ATC canceled her clearance for the approach because she was 900‘ below the crossing minimum altitude. The controller even asked if they needed assistance because they were so low! His answer was something like, um, yeah, we’re okay, just doing some approach work, I guess we were a little low. Seriously?
 
4RNB said:
Jesus you all taking this way out in the woods.

I am unwilling to condemn the CFII as the video is edited and things they discussed before not known.
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You can't edit what is spoken or seen on the clips you choose to publish. That's all we have to go with. Since she didn't edit out her prepping the cameras or checking on them or making mistakes during her flying, I doubt she went out of her way to edit out a lot of positive things.

In her videos I've seen no less than five CFIs between the primary training and the most recent training, and this excludes a sixth one that didn't want to be filmed. There may have been others. One of the five CFIs I didn't watch much because I stopped watching the video. A second CFI impressed me. He was, in a professional manner, actively coaching or providing constructive feedback. The others? No further comment in this post.
 
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Five degrees nose-down trim in a the Debonair isn't a whole lot of force to pull back, even for someone of slight build. Of course, if you aren't attentive and expect it to fly level, you can get out of hand in a hurry. Still hard to believe you'd let it get out of hand in visual conditions if you were minimally competent.
 
nauga said:
What your analogy misses, as does much speculation, is that there is a wealth of evidence available, but you and others in this thread just don't have access to it.
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I feel very confident that if the NTSB had evidence that there were problems with the plane or the people in it, that they would have mentioned that. But they didn't. Everything that they could test after the high energy impact was consistent with mistakes in her previous videos.
 
172andyou said:
I feel very confident that if the NTSB had evidence that there were problems with the plane or the people in it, that they would have mentioned that. But they didn't. Everything that they could test after the high energy impact was consistent with mistakes in her previous videos.
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The NTSB doesn’t “mention” evidence related to an accident, other than factual data…they found two image recording devices intact; the elevator trim was at this angle. Anything related to problems with the plane or the people in it will not be released until the final report.
 
flyingron said:
Five degrees nose-down trim in a the Debonair isn't a whole lot of force to pull back, even for someone of slight build. Of course, if you aren't attentive and expect it to fly level, you can get out of hand in a hurry. Still hard to believe you'd let it get out of hand in visual conditions if you were minimally competent.
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I wonder how far out of trim it would have to be for the autopilot to throw in the towel and disconnect itself. That could leave a pilot somewhat startled.
 
Albany Tom said:
…I had an instructor who would add "way off trim" to the unusual attitude recovery drills. No idea if that's normal or not. But it was interesting. The first time he did that there was some swearing, and it took a couple of seconds to figure out what was going on.
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I had an instructor that would do this as well…to me it was a very bewildering thing to experience…more so (again, to me) than suddenly entering clouds when IFR, more so than turning my head while in the clouds, etc…it was a weird sensation, like something was wrong with the controls. And the plane we were doing it in didn’t have an autopilot, which I think has the potential to greatly add to the confusion.

I’ve watched a couple of this woman’s videos…my take is she’s a passenger more than a pilot. She almost never looks out the windows! She constantly has her head down, fiddling with the iPad, autopilot, etc. She doesn’t make decisions; asks her non-rated dad what she should do.

Those that think that last meek radio call was a sign of CO poisoning…from previous video examples, would you expect her (and I mean her personally) to call any different if she wasn’t affected by CO?
 
The NTSB does look for carboxyhemoglobin in the post mortems when they think it could have been a factor which would tell if there was CO impairment.
 
MauleSkinner said:
The NTSB doesn’t “mention” evidence related to an accident, other than factual data…they found two image recording devices intact; the elevator trim was at this angle. Anything related to problems with the plane or the people in it will not be released until the final report.
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Correct, there was no factual data listed to support the prior hypothesis, pulled from thin air, that it might have been a medical issue. There is, however, a lot of interpreted data, in the form of months or years of videos, showing the PIC to have trouble controlling her airplane. And this isn't Monday morning quarterbacking either. Many people commented on this possibility in advance of her accident.

I mean, seriously guys, it's all good to want to give benefit of the doubt (and not be Dan Gryder), but when you see someone stumble out of a bar, get in a car, drive erratically, go around a corner, over correct and hit a tree; most people connect those dots and don't jump to, well, maybe there was a mechanical issue with the car. Only takes one on the jury though...
 
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172andyou said:
Correct, there was no factual data listed to support the prior hypothesis, pulled from thin air, that it might have been a medical issue.
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So you’re simply reinforcing your disagreement with the medical theory by pointing to the fact that the NTSB doesn’t release that information at this stage In an investigation?
 
kmacht said:
Yes she was behind the airplane in many videos and yes she had autopilot issues but way too many of you are all too quick to just jump to that as the cause. How do you know her dad didn’t have a heart attack and slumped over blocking the controls? How do you know that there wasn’t a physical problem with the plane? Electrical fire? CO poisoning, etc. Too many of you just want to crucify her for the only reason that she posts YouTube videos. Is this how you want people to act if you perish in an airplane? Would you want your friends and family reading a similar thread about you?
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Posts in which the respondents discuss the obvious video evidence of deficient training and poor piloting skills don't "jump to that as the cause" of the mishap, they are considered positions that have ample and correct reasoning behind them. No one is expressing extreme opinions to "crucify her." It wasn't "autopilot issues" that caused the deaths of these two individuals, it was a pilot that didn't have the training or skills to fly the airplane in the manner which she attempted.

Repeating what I've said in my earlier posts, the death of these two people is sad, and moreso because multiple instructors failed to properly instruct her in developing pilot skills and demand she perform to the level required to safely fly an aircraft under routine VMC conditions before proceeding to instrument training. Her demonstrated basic skills level in the videos was below what I've seen in students with 40 hours, much less 400.

What we see in the videos are the results of CFIs that seem to have decided since she owned an airplane with certain capabilities, they were going to skip over learning to fly and proceed with exploiting those capabilities and engage in advanced instrument training. While there were no videos that directly showed it, it's painfully obvious she didn't have the skills to hand fly the aircraft in IMC. What in the hell were the instructors thinking when they proceeded to training her to use the autopilot?
 
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I am trying to learn from her Videos as a flight instructor and wondered what I would have done differently.

When I have a learner who is having trouble with some device on the aircraft I have them read the manual before flying again and I make certain I know how to make it work so I can find out if they know how to make it work before we fly again.

I have almost always found not rated passengers a distraction.

I wondered aloud why would someone take a flight with a non rated passenger and attempt to get an autopilot working that appeared to be not working as expected.

My wife who is not a pilot and loves reality shows shot back; "more and better drama."

I am saddened by the loss of life and would like to learn something from the loss.
 
MauleSkinner said:
I suspect my dad did that once in a Twin Commander…he wasn’t big on proper use of checklists, but checking trim before takeoff ALWAYS happened.
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I DO religiously use checklists, and still fell victim to a very out-of-trim takeoff.

I had work done on my Sky Arrow, and the mechanic wanted to ride along on the test flight. After the runup and Before Takeoff checklists were done, the mechanic attempted to broadcast our intentions and we couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t transmitting. I took over and began the takeoff roll. It took a LOT of back pressure to get in the air, and it turned out I was fighting full nose down trim.

What had happened was the mechanic mixed up the PTT and the nose down trim buttons on the stick. The PTT is on the front, nose down trim is on the top front. So each time he tried to transmit he was cranking in more nose down trim.

On my Light Sport the forces were manageable, but I thought it was a valuable lesson. We all know, and I taught, that any problem on the takeoff roll and the takeoff should be aborted. But, in practice, it can be agonizingly difficult to break off one’s commitment to fly once one is rolling down the runway.
 
MauleSkinner said:
So you’re simply reinforcing your disagreement with the medical theory by pointing to the fact that the NTSB doesn’t release that information at this stage In an investigation?
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No, I'm pointing out that it was a theory invented out of thin air when the predictions turned out to completely line up with the NTSB report. We might as well say "aliens" if we're just inventing alternate theories with no evidence to back them up. Heck, we know aliens can be exceptionally good long term planners. They might have been messing with her avionics all along. We learned from War of the Worlds that they are willing to play the long game, why shouldn't we believe that they crashed this plane as a way to hide that she and her father have been abducted!
 
172andyou said:
No, I'm pointing out that it was a theory invented out of thin air when the predictions turned out to completely line up with the NTSB report.
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As has been pointed out, "the NTSB report" is the NTSB preliminary report. They recognize that they have not completed data gathering and analysis, even if you don't.

Nauga,
sidestepping the rush to judgement
 
172andyou said:
No, I'm pointing out that it was a theory invented out of thin air when the predictions turned out to completely line up with the NTSB report. We might as well say "aliens" if we're just inventing alternate theories with no evidence to back them up. Heck, we know aliens can be exceptionally good long term planners. They might have been messing with her avionics all along. We learned from War of the Worlds that they are willing to play the long game, why shouldn't we believe that they crashed this plane as a way to hide that she and her father have been abducted!
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ok, well, I’ll just point out that nonsensical statements don’t further your argument.
 
nauga said:
As has been pointed out, "the NTSB report" is the NTSB preliminary report. They recognize that they have not completed data gathering and analysis, even if you don't.
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If that's how it came across, then I should have been more careful. I'm not claiming to make final judgement and will be happy to reanalyze when/if more data becomes more available. What I'm claiming is that today there is only data that is entirely consistent with pilot error and that there is no data to imply otherwise despite a great deal of data being included in the NTSB report.
 
172andyou said:
Correct, there was no factual data listed to support the prior hypothesis, pulled from thin air, that it might have been a medical issue. There is, however, a lot of interpreted data, in the form of months or years of videos, showing the PIC to have trouble controlling her airplane. And this isn't Monday morning quarterbacking either. Many people commented on this possibility in advance of her accident.
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There wouldn't be factual data at this stage even if there was a medical issue. That's not how a preliminary report works. Short of a radio transmission saying "medical emergency" we wouldn't know if there was or wasn't. Her being a bad pilot may or may not be the only factor.
 
172andyou said:
What I'm claiming is that today there is only data that is entirely consistent with pilot error and that there is no data to imply otherwise despite a great deal of data being included in the NTSB report.
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You don't have access to all the data that are available.

Nauga,
underprivileged
 
nauga said:
You don't have access to all the data that are available.
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Jesus. Ok.

All the publicly available data supports the pilot error conclusion. There is no publicly available data supporting anything else. Also, those inventing the medical theory out of thin air also don't have access to all the data. For all we know the NTSB may well have evidence of aliens and they just aren't sharing it. It would be a massive rush to judgement to dismiss that possibility. Why narrow the speculation to just a medical issue!?

dmspilot said:
There wouldn't be factual data at this stage even if there was a medical issue. That's not how a preliminary report works. Short of a radio transmission saying "medical emergency" we wouldn't know if there was or wasn't. Her being a bad pilot may or may not be the only factor.
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I mean, sort of? She was struggling to control the plane for 30 minutes prior to the crash. She was on the radio several times during those 30 minutes. She never mentioned a medical issue. That's not nothing. Yes, there are medical issues that can cause problems that she might fail to recognize in herself, but the possibility of that gets smaller and smaller the more you look. For example, her transmissions were coherent and unslurred. That eliminates a bunch of possibilities right there. And she had a track record of failures to control documented in youtube. So this is consistent with those, without the need for a medical issue. etc, etc...

MauleSkinner said:
No, I mean the NTSB statement is nonsense.
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Sorry, lost the bubble. How so?
 
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