Youtube Pilot and her dad perish in TN

Status
Not open for further replies.
Bonchie said:
... 99.9% chance that if she had just turned the stupid AP off, which she had been fighting in previous videos and during the last hour of her final flight, and left it off, she'd be alive and well.
Click to expand...
Agreed, but that means one has to be able to fly the airplane. I get the impression that her training focused on operating the airplane automation systems, rather than flying the airplane with basic stick & rudder skills.

Albany Tom said:
Am I the only one who reads through this one, especially the post above, with an even mix of sadness and anger, just in general?
Click to expand...
I feel the same way and catch the same drift in many of the responses here.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
I think the popcorn smiles are a touch distasteful.

To frame this comment I’m a self proclaimed butthole with no filter.

In regards to this lady. She’s in the find out portion of the F around and find out chart now.

The videos posted indicate a possibility of instructor incompetence but she owns this in my opinion. Her decision making was bad with the wrong set of priorities.
Click to expand...

Many of the videos remind me of myself as I was trying to get my IR rating. Not in the aspect of chewing gum, belittling ATC, changing instructors, playing with my hair, but in that I was blind to things that I just had to beat my head into a wall over and over before things got better. Watching videos would not have helped me, insight would not have come from within. My checkride failure made me a better pilot.

www.pilotsofamerica.com

Training today sucked

I need to change something, not sure what to do or if I am capable. Perspective and insight desired. I have about 200 hours now. Did all IFR stuff at a school, was getting close to testing when I just needed to improve a little more for cfii sign off. His schedule was changing, my home needs...
www.pilotsofamerica.com www.pilotsofamerica.com
 
Albany Tom said:
Am I the only one who reads through this one, especially the post above, with an even mix of sadness and anger, just in general?
Click to expand...
Yes. There’s the human element of tragedy, and unnecessary loss. But there’s also several other things at play, at least for me.

Frankly, selfishly, it is a pile-on effect with the incidences that people outside the industry are noticing (in this always-connected world) and using to bash aviation, GA in particular, never-mind the actual statistics, which are ignored. This is just used as ammo by NIMBYs (and their real-estate developer antagonists), fraidy-cats, anxious spouses, anti-authority ranters, pro-authority ranters, class warfarists, sportos, motorheads, geeks, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, di*kheads.

And while some of the discussion, when you can kinda/sorta vet who is posting, is useful, much of it is anonymous dreck that adds to the noise. In the end, GA in the US is an amazing privilege that most other countries don’t enjoy (at least not with the same level of freedom). Every accident that makes headlines and ramps up that noise is another strike toward the eventual upending of all of it.
 
dmspilot said:
Her second instructor didn’t want her to film her training flights. Her third instrument instructor was a more experienced, older gentleman who was having her do some more fundamental maneuvers to help her get back on track with instrument training.
Click to expand...
Sounds like she ditched her second instructor (after ditching the young guy) because he didn't want cameras in the cockpit. I'm begging all YouTubers to draw that line and not cross it. Your training is more important than your videos.
 
Lots of comments on the YT and video presence. Whatever the creator puts out there is the part of the story they want to tell. I tried watching two separate videos and determined the story she was telling was one of struggling as a pilot. Her narration, in my limited exposure, was horrible and conveyed a sense of defeat, confusion, and/or resignation.
 
Bill said:
I don’t really think she was incompetent skills wise, she just had very poor judgment. She put her attention on the wrong things, looking at and playing with toys and automation and ignoring basic instrument scan and flying the plane. Maybe the autopilot had trouble, maybe it was her understanding of function of the A/P, or maybe it was even manufactured drama to generate clicks. In any event, it’s evident in her videos that she didn’t pay enough attention to the basics of flying the plane.

Hell, there’s been times when our 40 year old A/P has done bizarre things in flight, just push the big fookin red button, hand fly, and trouble shoot the sucker when you’re back on the ground. But that produces boring vids….
Click to expand...
Except that scan, division of attention, and correcting deviations are all skills that it appears she was lacking.
 
We're kinda mixing things here. YouTube likely had nothing to do with her crashing.

I do think there is a lack of self-awareness however when making a decision to put some of that particular content out there.

If I ever had video of myself not knowing how an instrument worked or trying to figure out something complicated and not getting it or whatever I certainly wouldn't put it out there.

As far as cameras it's real easy to not touch them. If someone wants to seriously capture what they're doing you get big SD cards and run battery packs and they'll film for hours and hours and hours you never have to touch them in flight.

Also really beneficial to do it that way because you only have to sync them one time in your edit. there's no reason to be stopping and starting and touching cameras because it does interfere with flying and also it's an absolute nightmare when you get it into your editor.

My commercial training I filmed and for the most part the cameras were started before the instructor even got in the plane and my multi was filmed by way of doing it with Dan Millican so he was placing cameras in there and doing the recording. I didn't film my private or my instrument training.

I think I'd be a little embarrassed if I had an instructor in a plane and at one point so Hold on just a second I have to start all these cameras.

Early on I might have fussed with them a bit but nowadays I'm pretty strict about it.

If you can't figure out a way to not let them be a distraction then they probably shouldn't be in the plane.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
We're kinda mixing things here. YouTube likely had nothing to do with her crashing....
Click to expand...

yes and no. the act of turning a camera on or off clearly didn't cause the crash (well, probably not, anyways). but the history of her videos shows the trend of her caring more about the filming/editing/likes/views/subs than, um, what was it again, oh yeah, that's right, BEING A GOOD PILOT. pretty much all her videos (or the bits and pieces I've unfortunately watched) show a low level of basic pilot skills/understanding. I think the general consensus is if she had put 1/4 the effort into becoming a good pilot as she did youtubing, maybe she would still be alive.
 
MauleSkinner said:
No. Your guesstimating needs work.
Click to expand...
:oops: LOL. I'll have to brush up on my angular velocity math formulas. I'll take that as a homework assignment.

Reports from on the ground (although not scientific) stated it looked like the airplane was 50 degrees nose down and full power on.
 
We're kinda mixing things here. YouTube likely had nothing to do with her crashing.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but does document possible causes, that were broadcast to anyone who had an interest in watching.
 
eman1200 said:
yes and no. the act of turning a camera on or off clearly didn't cause the crash (well, probably not, anyways). but the history of her videos shows the trend of her caring more about the filming/editing/likes/views/subs than, um, what was it again, oh yeah, that's right, BEING A GOOD PILOT. pretty much all her videos (or the bits and pieces I've unfortunately watched) show a low level of basic pilot skills/understanding. I think the general consensus is if she had put 1/4 the effort into becoming a good pilot as she did youtubing, maybe she would still be alive.
Click to expand...
Okay I get that. That makes a lot of sense I tried to watch some of her videos and it certainly seemed like she was more of a passenger and less of a pilot. She doesn't come off as very competent in the plane.
 
So since she assumed the Century 2000 AP was not working appropriately (when it could have been working as intended), she had the plane totally out of trim, then as she disconnected the AP master, the plane did a forceful/very abrupt nose down and didn’t know how to correct?
 
Mxfarm said:
Agreed, but does document possible causes, that were broadcast to anyone who had an interest in watching.
Click to expand...

Yeah and I wonder if people in her comments ever told her she appears to be struggling or if anyone ever tried to intervene. One of these days when Wagner goes in and there will be a large online chorus of we told you so
 
Feh said:
So since she assumed the Century 2000 AP was not working appropriately (when it could have been working as intended), she had the plane totally out of trim, then as she disconnected the AP master, the plane did a forceful/very abrupt nose down and didn’t know how to correct?
Click to expand...
I suspect the opposite. I bet it did a full nose up trim and she didn't know how to get out of a spin.

I'm probably shouldn't say that. I wasn't in the plane. But that's where my mind went
 
Palmpilot said:
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.
Click to expand...
One thing that I noticed in more than one of the videos I watched is that she seems to run at very low power settings, or her power seems to back off while she’s distracted with other things. Juan Browne called attention to this in one video where she‘s sorting out the autopilot, and says out loud “we’re approaching stall speed” followed by a shot running 15” MAP in cruise (but it didn’t seem she was aware of that). I couldn’t believe that the next thing to happen wasn’t lowering the nose or increasing the power or both. I’m not sure about the cause of the crash, but these videos demonstrate lots of bad habits enforced by downright terrible instruction. It’s upsetting to watch.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I suspect the opposite. I bet it did a full nose up trim and she didn't know how to get out of a spin.

I'm probably shouldn't say that. I wasn't in the plane. But that's where my mind went
Click to expand...
It didn’t spin. It was the lawn dart varity of accident.

There could have been an untimely but related failure of some component above and beyond what we have all been considering regarding the AP. Or, an unrecoverable out of trim nose down.

Does anyone known of any Century 2000 failure where the DN button remains activated and keeps punching the nose down or is it fail safe in that regard? I know its a one push let go button. At least i do now after reading the manual.
 
clarkmueller said:
One thing that I noticed in more than one of the videos I watched is that she seems to run at very low power settings, or her power seems to back off while she’s distracted with other things. Juan Browne called attention to this in one video where she‘s sorting out the autopilot, and says out loud “we’re approaching stall speed” followed by a shot running 15” MAP in cruise (but it didn’t seem she was aware of that). I couldn’t believe that the next thing to happen wasn’t lowering the nose or increasing the power or both. I’m not sure about the cause of the crash, but these videos demonstrate lots of bad habits enforced by downright terrible instruction. It’s upsetting to watch.
Click to expand...
The repulsion is universal. Any self-respecting pilot gets a gag reflex watching her videos. The system failed, and the individual failed. The thing I want to know is whether her father was a pilot himself. I've seen opposing assertions of that.
 
Feh said:
So since she assumed the Century 2000 AP was not working appropriately (when it could have been working as intended), she had the plane totally out of trim, then as she disconnected the AP master, the plane did a forceful/very abrupt nose down and didn’t know how to correct?
Click to expand...
The Bonanza family of airplanes can get to some pretty extreme elevator forces with only about 3 seconds of electric trim running. How much airspeed change without trimming would result in those same elevator forces, I don’t know, but I can certainly imagine exceeding that with the lack of airspeed control being discussed in this thread.
 
So the Century 2000 A/P she had didn’t have auto trim. If the control forces from the elevator become sufficient, will the force release the main servo clutch as it does when a pilot applies overriding force to the yoke?
 
dmspilot said:
There are some interesting comments on Juan Browne's video:

@chapdoc Thank you for this in-depth look at Jenny’s crash. Jenny was a friend of mine and we shared our training experiences together as we were going through instrument at the same time, but in different locations. She and I talked a great deal about her frustrations with her first instrument instructor and I’m glad she decided to fire him. He often commanded the radios, programmed in navigation and approaches, and even made adjustments on her aspen - reaching across her to get to the equipment. At one point he asked her to take some videos down because he was afraid it would make him look bad and negatively impact his move to the airlines. Her second instructor didn’t want her to film her training flights. Her third instrument instructor was a more experienced, older gentleman who was having her do some more fundamental maneuvers to help her get back on track with instrument training. She hated her autopilot and was getting that changed out with the Garmin suite avionics package: G3X, Garmin 500 autopilot, GTN650. I talked with her about an hour before she and her dad took off … never heard back from her. Found out about the crash morning of 8 Dec.​
​
And

@davidmangold1838 Hi Juan. Good analysis. Jenny and I were very close friends. She studied hard, for knowing her Debonair and the autopilot. I know she must not have understood and committed to memory, all that was in the a/p manual. Maybe the autopilot always acted up, but contributing factor was she wasn’t 100% conversant in its operation. She was taking the plane in for autopilot upgrade (maybe a new gps too?). She wasn’t fully competent with the interface, if the Aspen 1000. Why she couldn’t just fully disconnect the a/p, and hand fly!? I told her several times, she had to be able to do 100% of everything, when hand flying (also when using a/p and during her instrument training). Her young CFII was coddling her, by helping her too much. He left for a regional airline. She found 3 months ago, another more seasoned CFII (also corporate pilot). He didn’t permit go pro filming. They did lots of very good training! I offered to fly to Knoxville, and go with her on THIS flight. She decided to just take her dad. I regret that I wasn’t onboard, as with my 55years’ flying experience, we probably could have avoided this. I’m in shock and grieving​
​
Juan says he saw a post-firing video with her new instructor where she had trouble doing simple vertical-S maneuvers. Video must have been removed.
Click to expand...
@dmspilot as I said earlier my heart and prayers go out to the family and friends of the pilot we lost. We are a small community. Any loss is a big loss, especially when it's someone we know.

It seems that many of the comments are not intended to be directed at Jenny personally. She seemed like a really sweet person. IMO the reason to have this conversation on a forum is so that we can all learn and live to fly another day.

I watched over a dozen of her videos. There are several incidents recorded and published of things that you would not expect to see from a 400+ hour pilot; at least not so many issues. Unless maybe that pilot was flying "the big video game" as commercial airline pilots do. And every issue's cause seemed to be directed at something else, not claiming responsibility for her actions. Complaining about "grumpy pants ATC" or "my autopilot is malfunctioning" or "I stopped on an active runway because my iPad crashed" makes for great clicks and likes on YouTube. There is a clear pattern that should have been addressed in training of some kind.

There were too many gadgets and distractions. Complex avionics, autopilots that don't auto-trim, cameras all over the place, etc. I'm not sure that installing a sophisticated Garmin system was going to fix the problem. Maybe it would push the issue down the road, and maybe it would make the issue worse. This pilot (nothing personal) needed more hand flying experience (and one could argue that so do I, and I will probably do more after this discussion thread). Turn off all the gadgets. Turn off the cameras. Turn off the autopilot. Just fly the airplane.

So again, my reaction is: "who let this happen"? I'm frustrated / angered by what I see. @dmspilot apparently you tried. That's great you were trying to be a friend. Maybe she was extremely strong willed and didn't want people's help. Maybe there were some enablers. I didn't know her so I can't speculate.

And again, I'm truly sad about a loss of a member of the flying community. I just don't want to see anyone else making the same mistakes - either intentional or unintentional. Awareness is the first step.
 
rickgn said:
So again, my reaction is: "who let this happen"? I'm frustrated / angered by what I see. @dmspilot apparently you tried. That's great you were trying to be a friend. Maybe she was extremely strong willed and didn't want people's help. Maybe there were some enablers. I didn't know her so I can't speculate.
Click to expand...
Wasn't me, those are comments on YouTube from people that claim to have known her. I knew of her channel but never watched it prior to the accident. Would have been glad to provide constructive feedback had I known she was struggling so much.

I've watched a few more of her videos today. She did an okay job flying the Cherokee, average for her number of hours. Definitely below average flying the Beechcraft and nowhere near proficient. Her double-I Aaron was terrible, and probably did more harm than good. Hands all over the cockpit with no boundaries, he leans the mixture for her, extends her landing gear and flaps for her, grabs the yoke randomly, etc.
 
rickgn said:
@dmspilot …
So again, my reaction is: "who let this happen"? I'm frustrated / angered by what I see...
Click to expand...
Fundamentally, she chose her own outcome. If you want to be frustrated or angry with someone, focus it on the mishap pilot; she’s the only person who could have effectively grounded herself.
 
There are some interesting comments on Juan Browne's video:

“She and I talked a great deal about her frustrations with her first instrument instructor and I’m glad she decided to fire him. He often commanded the radios, programmed in navigation and approaches, and even made adjustments on her aspen - reaching across her to get to the equipment. At one point he asked her to take some videos down because he was afraid it would make him look bad and negatively impact his move to the airlines.”

And

“Her young CFII was coddling her, by helping her too much. He left for a regional airline.”
Click to expand...

I believe this is the same instructor being discussed by two different people. “Don’t let the airline see how I’m instructing.” Maybe he should have done a better job instructing.

Attention anyone wanting to be an instructor as you eye the airlines: The responsibility you hold as a CFI or CFII is significant. Don’t be irresponsible with it.
 
Watching parts of a couple of her videos, I couldn't stomach more, I get the impression that she just didn't "get it"... wasn't in tune with the aircraft, didn't understand its systems or flight characteristics, didn't know what was important to focus on. Passing her private checkride may have been like the student who crams for the test and passes, but the knowledge never really sinks in and is forgotten. And the silly popups in her videos just looked like a lack of the maturity needed to be a safe pilot.
 
Lawson_Stone said:
If I ever realize my dream of getting my PPL and owning a plane, I think I'll start a YouTube channel of routine flights where nothing much happens.
Click to expand...
Don’t ! Read, study, discuss and aviate. Leave Youtube on the ground and your attention on the plane and weather, systems, use your God given talents to the best of your ability. You’ll get that license to learn and the aircraft to fulfill your dreams. 42 years into this adventure and getting to be one of the old guys, so listen !
 
I don't think not using the video cameras would have changed the outcome. Was that a distraction? Yep. But seemed to me to be minor compared to playing with the autopilot, playing with the GPS, rather than flying.

I don't understand how she didn't know the risks she was taking. I don't understand how that wasn't conveyed to her by any of her instructors. Maybe they tried.

I don't understand the preoccupation with the autopilot. I don't understand how no one on a mock instrument checkride said "Autopilot is INOP. Fly the f**ng airplane." I don't understand how any instructor worked in a VFR environment where both people were seemingly eyes down all the time.

If the autopilot stalled the aircraft, I don't understand how a certified pilot in VFR weather couldn't recover that.

I do understand why a pilot wouldn't listen to negative youtube comments. I've seen too many videos in various fields where there are negative comments about perfect examples of something. But maybe she listened to positive comments from random people on the Internet, and non-flying friends, and ignored the CFI's she had?
 
I think Dana sums it up pretty good. I just watched the video of her departing Rockwood and not understanding what the 430 and autopilot were doing. She let the plane fly in at least three circles around the airport because she couldn’t figure out what the autopilot and 430 were doing, even though she knew she simply needed to go east to get home. Then turns the 430 volume knob too far to the left and turned it off and couldn’t figure out how to turn it back on. And they just kept climbing for no good reason. I’m at a loss for words.

In spite of all this, two souls are gone and friends and family are morning. It didn’t have to turn out this way.
 
MRC01 said:
I get the impression that her training focused on operating the airplane automation systems
Click to expand...
And that training was done by a guy that didn't know the how to operate the automation systems either
 
It continues to boggle how people can be so self deluded they film themselves and post videos of their own incompetence without a clue. And yet there's sycophants commenting and cheering on this behavior. Neither aware of the potential repercussions.

Any pre solo student pilot should know better than this woman, her father, and her cfi. She never learned the phrase "my controls".
 
Racerx said:
And yet there's sycophants commenting and cheering on this behavior. Neither aware of the potential repercussions.
Click to expand...
A good general rule of the internet is that if you're a moderately attractive woman posting literally anything in aviation (or most male-dominated areas), there will be no such thing as criticism or negative feedback in the comments section.
If any of those one-in-a-million comments does happen to slip through -- the offending heretic will be castigated, and the comment safely downvoted and swept aside by other male users trying to earn her favor.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Yeah and I wonder if people in her comments ever told her she appears to be struggling or if anyone ever tried to intervene. One of these days when Wagner goes in and there will be a large online chorus of we told you so
Click to expand...
I will throw out the gender bias relating to female pilots in Videos. I have seen videos of this quality flying, some even worse. And the guys get on the comments praising them for doing such a great job. Like they have a chance of getting a date. Videos of male pilots not doing as bad, all the other male pilots out there pile on and nitpick everything done wrong. There are too many white knights trying to impress the girls with their support of weak flying skills.
 
That's absolutely true about the Internet, but it doesn't or shouldn't explain lack of accurate feedback from CFI's. It also doesn't explain, to me, how the disconnect happens to someone in their 40's who's a business owner. Did the CFI's not get it, did they not explain it, did she hear it and not believe it?

I'm not an instructor. I fly for fun. In my field, I sometimes see people who have all the 'checkboxes'. They have the education, they have the certs, but they just don't have a grasp of the fundamentals...and sometimes they don't see that themselves. Is that what this is? There's a thing with flying that if things happen that you're not prepared for, you can get into a situation that you can't get yourself out of with your current knowledge and skill set. Do some pilots make it to PPL without knowing that?

I think all of this bugs me because I hate when people walk into risks that they're not aware of. You're an adult, you want to fly a plane, ride a motorcycle, do your research, have at it, risk on you. Do goofy stuff on the Internet to show of? Fine with me, just don't hurt anybody else please. But this just reads like someone taking their Dad up on a flight as a shared experience, didn't know what they didn't know..that they should have. I've read them the other way, where Dad takes up one of the kids, and it ends up being tragic, and it's chalked up to a simple mistake, they forgot the flaps or whatever, and it could happen to anyone. But maybe it was collectively the aviation community let them down. Maybe the right person didn't give some feedback on what was going on. Or maybe they did, and it just bounced off for whatever reason.

I need to let this one go. Sorry to ramble!
 
Some people want to look the part and play the role, not actually do the hard work. If they have the means, nothing and no one can stop them from doing such. Her means exceeded her skill.

I've seen motorcyclist with thousands of miles under their belts, but couldn't maneuver in a parking lot. They could afford more motorcycle than they could handle. They looked the part, but never practiced the basic skills to be a safe motorcyclist. They'd proceed to ride outside their envelope pretty quickly, or panic in an emergency and stomp on the rear brake, etc., some times carrying a passenger. There are ppl like this in all hobbies.

In one video SHE asked the CFII to "get the flaps for me". REALLY?!? She was dismissing CFIIs who didn't want her to make content. She was entitled with the wrong priorities. If it was AP, it was going to be something. She had no interest in being a pilot other than the great YT content it could produce. Her radio work was .....Forget it.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
If you can't figure out a way to not let them be a distraction then they probably shouldn't be in the plane.
Click to expand...
The only problem....with cameras you are always "acting" or performing to them. Its a distraction most of us weekenders could do without. No matter how hard you say, I won't do this I won't do that, human nature will take over and you will. Millican is a great example as is Wagner. Always talking to the camera. Stopped watching both months ago.
 
I wish there were more gray hair instructors.

Perhaps some of the illuminati on POA (sycophants?) need to get their CFI/CFII and give back.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top