Youtube Pilot and her dad perish in TN

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A few days before the crash, one of my friends had pointed her videos out to me. She was having issues recovering from a stall in an unfamiliar plane and a couple of people pointed it out to her, saying she needed to get more training. At first she replied saying they didn't know what they were talking about, but that only caused others to comment that she was wrong. She deleted all of the comments and I don't see the video today, so I'm assuming she removed it.
 
Flying Keys said:
What I see in way too many videos is people being overly encouraging when poor airmanship is on display. “You’re doing so well!” “You got this.” “I love watching your videos.” Etc, all made by people who are obviously not pilots.

And the comments in which pilots/CFIs weigh in with constructive critique often get downvoted or are subject to defensiveness from the original poster.

Some people need a large dose of humility and if they happen to be receptive of that, they’re sure not making it known.

Either way, I clamp a GoPro to the ceiling, over my shoulder. My videos are for me only, to review and learn from any mistakes (and for insurance, like a dashcam). I hit go and forget about it until the aircraft is shut down. I have caught several things that I’ve since worked to improve.
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Too true.

And there's way, way too many cases of this in her videos.
- The "ATC: Do you need assistance" video where she's 900 feet off from the right IFR altitude, gets her clearance cancelled and vectors away, and her CFII has an overly cavalier attitude. That's a big mistake on both their behalf's.
- The windy landing video where she might even have a wheel off the runway on touchdown, then saying she feels pretty good about the landing :oops:; it seriously looks like she's about to crash.
- Or the YT short of a "beautiful landing" where it's a divebomb with 2 whites on the VASI 'til it drops out of view, and touch down is like more than halfway down the runway.
- The VFR flight into smoke and haze where she says "I can't see anything" and as PIC she still dilly-dallys debating about whether to continue

All areas where the immediate feedback should have been: "we gotta work on this, that wasn't good" but wasn't.

This isn't to beat up on the deceased, but just illustrates the potential danger in having undeveloped skills combined with a feedback mechanism that never gives you the criticism you need.
 
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ArrowFlyer86 said:
Too true.

And there's way, way too many cases of this in her videos.
- The "ATC: Do you need assistance" video where she's 900 feet off from the right IFR altitude, gets her clearance cancelled and vectors away, and her CFII has an overly cavalier attitude. That's a big mistake on both their behalf's.
- The windy landing video where she might even have a wheel off the runway on touchdown, then saying she feels pretty good about the landing :oops:; it seriously looks like she's about to crash.
- Or the YT short of a "beautiful landing" where it's a divebomb with 2 whites on the VASI 'til it drops out of view, and touch down is like more than halfway down the runway.
- The VFR flight into smoke and haze where she says "I can't see anything" and as PIC she still dilly-dallys debating about whether to continue

All areas where the immediate feedback should have been: "we gotta work on this, that wasn't good" but wasn't.

This isn't to beat up on the deceased, but just illustrates the potential danger in having undeveloped skills combined with a feedback mechanism that never gives you the criticism you need.
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Glad you reviewed all that so others don't have to. The more I hear, the more outrageous it gets. What oversight existed of her CFI I wonder?
 
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The video approaching to Gatlingburg using the AP, and it brings her:oops: into a stall
 
Feh said:
The video approaching to Gatlingburg using the AP, and it brings her:oops: into a stall
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Our friend 'DG' says failure to recover from autopilot trim stall & spin finally killed her. Starts at 31:45 in his latest video. Surprisingly restrained in his commentary this time.
 
Lawson_Stone said:
So has anyone analyzed the ATC recordings of this tragic accident?
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I searched a few frequencies on LiveATC and couldn’t find the flight. Not a lot of coverage on the more obscure Center frequencies in rural areas. She did have a squawk code and ATC was looking for her, so ATC has tapes.
 
TrueCourse said:
Is an “autopilot trim stall spin” considered a word salad?
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Nah, just paraphrasing and garnished with an ampersand for taste. You can probably describe it better. Watch the video if you like.

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TrueCourse said:
Is an “autopilot trim stall spin” considered a word salad?
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I haven't watched the video, but the stall part of that sounds like something you could get if you don't pay enough attention to maintaining appropriate power settings while flying on autopilot. The spin part of it implies that the plane was also being flown uncoordinated.
 
Piperonca said:
Our friend 'DG' says failure to recover from autopilot trim stall & spin finally killed her. Starts at 31:45 in his latest video. Surprisingly restrained in his commentary this time.
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3:20 - Notice her altitude is around 3200ft when she starts messing around with her 430 and iPad,
4:14 - Plane has been pitching up slowly and she's completely unaware the glare shield is above the horizon and she's already 3,700ft. and still climbing slowly. Later plane starts yawing left and right as if she got real slow.

Damn.
 
Feh said:

3:20 - Notice her altitude is around 3200ft when she starts messing around with her 430 and iPad,
4:14 - Plane has been pitching up slowly and she's completely unaware the glare shield is above the horizon and she's already 3,700ft. and still climbing slowly. Later plane starts yawing left and right as if she got real slow.

Damn.
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Avionics fixation?
 
Feh said:

3:20 - Notice her altitude is around 3200ft when she starts messing around with her 430 and iPad,
4:14 - Plane has been pitching up slowly and she's completely unaware the glare shield is above the horizon and she's already 3,700ft. and still climbing slowly. Later plane starts yawing left and right as if she got real slow.

Damn.
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Dang. I winced at that foreboding lurch at 4:35 when she disconnects the A/P. Despite the A/P being broken (or possibly used incorrectly), she continues to rely on it flight after flight. It wouldn’t have taken me more than two instances to pull the breaker and placard it inop until I could get it into an avionics shop.
 
May they rest in peace. Watching some of those videos, her basic aircraft control crosscheck as depicted on said video was below average even for PPL ACS, as was her inability to task manage at the level required for single pilot operations. In fairness to her, she was self-reflective enough in her own commentary. I didn't see a big case of hubris here. She seemed humble enough, just obviously very slow to react and behind the airplane to a degree I wouldn't be comfortable issuing a certificate to operate single pilot aka PP-SEL. Do we know how long she had been a PPL? Was complex training being combined with instrument rating training here?

I can see that deficiency being problematic to her progress if an instrument rating was being sought. It's not insurmountable of course, but her bag of luck ran out before she could get on the step. It's tragic, and these case studies are more archetypical than outliers, which drags the statistical average down for this hobby quite a bit. I still encourage neophytes to get into it, we were all in her shoes experience wise at one time. Mentorship and supervision failed here. Not suggesting there's anything legally the instructor cadre omitted with willful intent, just morally failed imo.
 
hindsight2020 said:
. Do we know how long she had been a PPL?

I can see that deficiency being problematic to her progress if an instrument rating was being sought.
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She has videos celebrating 400 TT. Idk how far beyond that she got.

At least 1 of her videos are at least titled and staged to be from the perspective of a student about to take an instrument checkride....
 
Velocity173 said:
I noticed her instructor seems more concerned about looking at his phone instead of making sure his student is within standards. Should’ve been all over this.

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Honestly not surprising. In this video he doesn't notice nor seem to really care that they're 900ft off altitude while flying IFR.

 
I watched part of two different videos. In one, she asked her father to "watch the airspeed". That didn't make much sense to me then, but given that she knew there was a problem with the autopilot it does now. The casualness of that comment seemed strange. I don't take it as arrogant, either, she just didn't know what she didn't know.

When I was first learning, I had the luck to have instructors that focused on the basics. Some people are drawn to try to do and learn everything at once, and see that as pushing themselves. Put that person with an inexperienced CFI that's trying to get someone their cert as quickly as possible, and it seems easy to see how the fundamentals don't get the work they deserve. Just speculating.
 
Her father was a DPE? He should have taught her more in these videos and not just been a passenger. I hope he wasn't the one who signed off her PPL...?

One of the articles stated "On her site she describes her father as having 'years of flying experience.' "

And someone should have told her she needs to improve her flying skills VFR before she pursues IFR. Hard to believe she had 400 hours!

Neither are listed in the FAA pilot database...

May they both rest in peace!
 
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can an immediate next-of-kin/spouse legally be the issuer of a federal certificate?
 
Of her videos that I watched, I started but didn’t finish the Training with My Dad video. Was her father really a DPE or is that just speculation?

No thanks, I’ll skip the DG video.
 
Do they remove your information after a fatal flight? 400 hours without any cert seems unlikely. Otoh maybe she claimed 400 but it was much less
 
dmspilot said:
That's the worst one I've seen yet. Not only is the CFII not teaching anything but his SA is as bad as the student's.
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The incompetence shown in this video is really scary…

However it contains valuable information and food for thought for the NTSB and the FAA likewise.
 
years ago, at a WINGS seminar, an NTSB investigator mentioned that as more and more people were using video cameras in the cockpit, their job of determining probable cause(s) of crashes was becoming more easier. And this was before the proliferation of gopros and the boobtube and such.
 
Velocity173 said:
I noticed her instructor seems more concerned about looking at his phone instead of making sure his student is within standards. Should’ve been all over this.

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I stopped watching at 45 seconds, as they’re both furiously typing the departure clearance into their phones. Call me old fashioned, but I still like having a kneeboard and a pen. Quick to jot down, no phone fumbling.
 
So sad. I’ve only watched one video so far, with her dad on approach to Gatlinburg (I think).

I agree with a lot of the speculation and observation so far. Lots of links in the chain.

But what stood out to me is something I’ll assign an acronym to: TMS. Stands for Too Many Screens.

I’m far from a Luddite, and an iPad may be a valuable tool in the cockpit when used properly. But in this case it seemed a hindrance, distracting her from basic aircraft control. It may be the case whereby a moving map is a huge boon to positional awareness, a second moving map is nice as a backup, but add in a third and I think any pilot would need a lot of discipline to stay focused on his or her main job, which is fly the damn plane.

If she had been my student, we’d have ditched the iPad and focused on properly programming and utilizing what I think was the Garmin 430 she kept futzing with. As a contributing factor is the rather klutzy user interface on the 430 that takes a lot of time to get and maintain proficiency with. Subsequent flights would focus on the autopilot, and so on, before integrating all the elements into a whole, but stressing at all times a basic instrument scan and basic attitude instrument flying. In short, go back to building blocks and get rid of distractions.
 
Ms. Blalock’s main focus was on videos, forgive the expression. Aircraft control was a lower priority. She and her enablers failed to remember that century-old truth:

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Piperonca said:
Ms. Blalock’s main focus was on videos, forgive the expression. Aircraft control was a lower priority. She and her enablers failed to remember that century-old truth:

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If you notice in just about every video she adjusts the GoPro in front of her off to her right.

Got her private in May 2022 and now over 400 hours? That doesn't compute with her flying skills...

RIP
 
Considering that this was a Bonanza, it makes you wonder just how typical is this when you consider the old "doctor killer" reputation.
 
Can never “tell” anybody, anything. I’m certain my threshold of scary is WAY higher, I usually let students scare themselves, or make sure that they do.

Fixes lots of problems, including self aggrandizing humility.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Considering that this was a Bonanza, it makes you wonder just how typical is this when you consider the old "doctor killer" reputation.
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Actually a Debonair, which originally was much lower powered. I don't know what engine she had, but the early Debonairs were about 210 or 215 hp I think.
 
Tools said:
Can never “tell” anybody, anything. I’m certain my threshold of scary is WAY higher, I usually let students scare themselves, or make sure that they do.

Fixes lots of problems, including self aggrandizing humility.
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It does, if they realize the seriousness of the predicament they have put themselves in. I’ve run across some students/pilots who are so clueless that they don’t recognize that they could have hurt or killed themselves.

I’ve also observed that there is a personality trait that many (but not all) pilots possess that seems to restrict their ability to do a proper self critique of their true skill level/abilities. I wouldn’t be surprised if 100% of the YouTube pilots possess this trait, to some degree.
 
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