Youtube Pilot and her dad perish in TN

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Thing is I dont think she even knew that she was incompetent. I read a comment somewhere saying 400 hr going to 10. Well, there are lots of those guys/gals out there. There is a pilot I know with 100s of hours. Finally got to solo. Went up and did 2 touch n goes and called it quits because he scared himself. Some of these people think you just buy gadgets to do what you want and they have no clue about how any of it even work.

Saw one of her videos with the CFI. They are inside the FAF in IMC. She asks how low can we go? Hea says Hmmm let me see and he starts to go through his phone to pull up the plate. Are you freaking kidding me?
 
Perhaps she was competent in her Cherokee, barely, and then upgraded to this Debonair which ultimately killed her. Did her insurance require any additional training, dual hours? Did a CFI have to check her out in the Debonair for insurance purposes? Did no one tell her that the plane was too much for her at this time/experience? And obviously she failed to learn the Debonair well enough...

She made some comment that the purchase experience for the Debonair was horrible, I wonder if that was because of an insurance requirement?

Unfortunately, she never recognized/took responsibility for being behind the plane, always, and apparently no one told her. Ultimately, that and the system, failed her.
 
FPK1 said:
Perhaps she was competent in her Cherokee, barely, and then upgraded to this Debonair which ultimately killed her. Did her insurance require any additional training, dual hours? Did a CFI have to check her out in the Debonair for insurance purposes? Did no one tell her that the plane was too much for her at this time/experience? And obviously she failed to learn the Debonair well enough...

She made some comment that the purchase experience for the Debonair was horrible, I wonder if that was because of an insurance requirement?

Unfortunately, she never recognized/took responsibility for being behind the plane, always, and apparently no one told her. Ultimately, that and the system, failed her.
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At ~400 hours: yes, the insurance company would require additional training hours. When I bought my Lance I already had 500 hours retract time and the insurance required 10 hours dual training before I could solo.

And shortly after I soloed I figured out why. There were a few near incidents due to being naive about flying a high performance complex airplane. They don't slow down when you pull back the power like a trainer does. It took me about another 200 hours to really master the airplane.

It's also not a matter of hours. It's a matter of time. If you do 1000 hours in one year it's not the same kind of experience that you would have if you flew 10 years at 100 hours per year.
 
rickgn said:
It's also not a matter of hours. It's a matter of time. If you do 1000 hours in one year it's not the same kind of experience that you would have if you flew 10 years at 100 hours per year.
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Thar reminds me of a line from Anthony deMello’s “Awareness”:

”Frequently, in the life of a priest, fifty years’ experience is one year’s experience repeated fifty times.”

I think here you could easily substitute “priest“ with “pilot”.
 
She was not offering flight instruction and I did not see where she claimed to be a great pilot.

I like the way she edited her videos and found her charming.

I had not seen her videos until her accident.

It appears she was good enough to pass the private pilot practical test.

I suspect most people with her flying challenges will survive the learning process.

I am disappointed that someone didn’t insist that she learn to use the auto pilot and understand how it worked.

I am saddened by her death and the death of her father.

There are many times in my aviation adventure where my ignorance could have killed me.

There are many times I imagined I had skills that I did not poses.

I often make mistakes.

Not all of the flight instructors I have flown with helped me to be a better pilot.

I am amazed at all the people here who had better flight instructors and are apparently better pilots who don’t make mistakes.
 
Vance Breese said:
I am disappointed that someone didn’t insist that she learn to use the auto pilot and understand how it worked.
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She probably didn’t run across anybody who knew how it worked, nor anyone who knew how to read the supplement to learn it. In my experience, it’s extremely common for instructors‘ avionics knowledge to be limited to what someone taught them.
Vance Breese said:
I am amazed at all the people here who had better flight instructors and are apparently better pilots who don’t make mistakes.
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Better flight instructors, evidently. Nobody is claiming not to have made mistakes. But most pilots here do seem to be able to recognize when something needs correcting.

I spent two hours this morning working with a pilot who kept making the same mistakes over and over again without recognizing the fact that a 1700 ft/minute on 1/2 mile final is the result of starting out of MDA too late. Explaining it to him didn’t work. Telling him to leave MDA at a specific point didn’t work. Demonstrating it didn’t work. it took 7 approaches today to get 2 that were satisfactory, having worked on it already for the past two days. He then proceeded to botch landing out of an ILS twice (previously proficient), with a debriefing in between. When I told him I couldn’t sign him off for the checkride since he wasn’t proficient, he asked twice if I would sign him off anyway. And this was a “professional” pilot who has passed this same checkride several times already in his career. Some people just shouldn’t fly.
 
Vance Breese said:
I am amazed at all the people here who had better flight instructors and are apparently better pilots who don’t make mistakes.
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It might have helped if the young lady had a better flight instructor at the beginning, absolutely.

Every human being makes mistakes, even pilots. I tremble to think about some of the close calls I had during during my flying days. The point was I tried to learn from them, and not repeat various follies. Particularly if one is doing it for a living, and carrying innocent passengers. Keeping an attitude of professional growth was a priority. I didn't see indications of responsibility on the lady's part--it was always somebody else being grumpy, or that pesky autopilot.
 
rickgn said:
At ~400 hours: yes, the insurance company would require additional training hours. When I bought my Lance I already had 500 hours retract time and the insurance required 10 hours dual training before I could solo.

And shortly after I soloed I figured out why. There were a few near incidents due to being naive about flying a high performance complex airplane. They don't slow down when you pull back the power like a trainer does. It took me about another 200 hours to really master the airplane.

It's also not a matter of hours. It's a matter of time. If you do 1000 hours in one year it's not the same kind of experience that you would have if you flew 10 years at 100 hours per year.
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Hey! Another Lance guy! Welcome!
 
Vance Breese said:
I am amazed at all the people here who had better flight instructors and are apparently better pilots who don’t make mistakes.
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I can't speak for anyone else, but it wasn't my intention to be preachy at all. And thinking about it, maybe one of the reasons this whole thing bugs me so much is purely selfish. That in the back of my head I'm wondering "ok, so what don't YOU know that might come back and bite you later?"
 
dmspilot said:
She did an "okay" job flying the Cherokee. I am more interested in who signed off her complex endorsement. Whoever it was really did her a disservice.
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The fact that there's more HP and a lot more speed certainly compounds the issue. But I wouldn't be sure it was only the complex signoff that's the issue. A Bonanza, especially a short-tail Bo, handles way different than a Piper. The fight controls in a Beechcraft are much more sensitive (it's a "pilot's airplane") and you can't really take your eyes off it for very long. IMO Pipers are much more forgiving.

So I would also point some blame at whoever advised her to buy that specific aircraft type. She clearly wanted something modern with gadgets and automation. She bought a 1960's short tail hotrod that requires some attention and finesse to fly properly and say... a bit more maintenance than average.
 
rickgn said:
The fact that there's more HP and a lot more speed certainly compounds the issue. But I wouldn't be sure it was only the complex signoff that's the issue. A Bonanza, especially a short-tail Bo, handles way different than a Piper. The fight controls in a Beechcraft are much more sensitive (it's a "pilot's airplane") and you can't really take your eyes off it for very long. IMO Pipers are much more forgiving.
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Agreed, I should have said Complex and High Performance endorsements, and I imagined that they would have been done in her Beechcraft such that they also would have been conglomerated with a make/model checkout.
 
I had happened to watch one of her videos before I heard about her accident. I remember her talking about nearing a checkride and I also remember her saying she was working on her IR but based on her flying, I really thought she hadn't gotten her private certificate. She seemed to have difficulty with basic airmanship. I was rather surprised at the seeming lack of concern from both her and her instructor that a controller had to say anything much less make several comments about heading or altitude on the same training mission supposedly close to a checkride. My guess would have been she had closer to 40 hours than 400. She obviously had no business trying to use an autopilot without understanding how it worked and I have to blame the instructor for allowing her to mash buttons when it should be obvious he hadn't read the manual either.
 
Vance Breese said:
She was not offering flight instruction and I did not see where she claimed to be a great pilot.

I like the way she edited her videos and found her charming.

I had not seen her videos until her accident.

It appears she was good enough to pass the private pilot practical test.

I suspect most people with her flying challenges will survive the learning process.

I am disappointed that someone didn’t insist that she learn to use the auto pilot and understand how it worked.

I am saddened by her death and the death of her father.

There are many times in my aviation adventure where my ignorance could have killed me.

There are many times I imagined I had skills that I did not poses.

I often make mistakes.

Not all of the flight instructors I have flown with helped me to be a better pilot.

I am amazed at all the people here who had better flight instructors and are apparently better pilots who don’t make mistakes.
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I’m equally surprised by the number of people that don’t want to admit she just ****ed up and ultimately with 400 hours in her log book this is 100% her fault.

She had enough experience to know better and made decisions that put her in that field.

She had the opportunity to have an experienced instructor but made the choice to fly with a ****ty one because he would let her create content.

All choices that ultimately killed her.

Nothing I said means I don’t make mistakes. What’s different is I learn from them and I’m not a narcissist.
 
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Tarheelpilot said:
She had the opportunity to have an experienced instructor but made the choice to fly with a ****ty one because he would let her create content.
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Is that a fact backed up by evidence or are you speculating? She posted a rather small number of her flights, I doubt she deliberately chose a bad instructor because he let her put up cameras and the others didn't. There is this comment thread on a video where she complains about being milked, she also complained in another video about feeling like a puppet instead of a pilot.

Screenshot 2023-12-14 at 4.57.03 PM.png

I don't disagree that the accident was her fault. I do disagree with the attempted character assassination.
 
dmspilot said:
Is that a fact backed up by evidence or are you speculating? She posted a rather small number of her flights, I doubt she deliberately chose a bad instructor because he let her put up cameras and the others didn't. There is this comment thread on a video where she complains about being milked, she also complained in another video about feeling like a puppet instead of a pilot.

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I don't disagree that the accident was her fault. I do disagree with the attempted character assassination.
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OR, another jerry wagner type where everything that she did wrong was someone else's fault.
 
eman1200 said:
OR, another jerry wagner type where everything that she did wrong was someone else's fault.
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Fair, I'm not a mind reader, I don't know if that was her attitude or not. Jerry's attitude is less ambiguous IMO.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
Is anything you are referring to factual? It all may be bad information but I have no way of determining. Do you?
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Uh, I quoted her and posted her comments.

I’m doing the same thing you are and relying on information from her channel.
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What information says she choose a poor CFI after firing a better CFI because the better CFI wouldn't let her make videos?
 

dmspilot said:
Uh, I quoted her and posted her comments.


What information says she choose a poor CFI after firing a better CFI because the better CFI wouldn't let her make videos?
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I honestly can’t remember which thread I read about her hiring and firing of instructors. I’m following three separate conversations about this topic on different platforms.

As far as the statement about the quality of her current instructor I based that on watching her video content. The dude was terrible.
 
Tragic. Condolences to her friends and family.
I am glad she shared her videos and her stoke. If cameras are fixed and editing post flight, with the proper attention in flight, later posting to the interwebs is fine and may benefit others.
I haven’t watched her vids, based on comments, videoing for YouTube may have been a distraction for her
 
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Tarheelpilot said:
I honestly can’t remember which thread I read about her hiring and firing of instructors. I’m following three separate conversations about this topic on different platforms.
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You don't remember where you read it, but you are sure you remember it accurately?
 
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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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On the ground, pre departure, wouldn’t most students be expected to make initial radio call, write and read back the instructions?
 
Velocity173 said:
I always did. And like @Bill stated, I thought paper was the easiest form in copying an IFR clearance.
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Friend of mine ran a large corporate flight department for many years. I met him once at an airport where he was waiting for the management pax to do their business downtown. He gave me a tour of his very well equipped Hawker and lo and behold clipped neatly up on the glareshield were three freshly sharpened #2 pencils with a paper pad down on the console. Same way I copied clearances for decades, with yellow #2 pencils on a kneeboard.
 
This has little to do with high tech… simply priorities. Had a PPL student who used an electronic notepad for atis and such… FLAWLESSLY. Absolutely knew how to use it as efficiently as us geezers use pencil and paper.

How and why the priorities are so out of whack, is a good topic of discussion.
 
It’s useful to us, to review accidents such as this one. We should be as objective as we can be as to mistakes, potential and actual consequences, and how we can prevent those and improve.

But it’s important to do so with respect for those who died, and their loved ones.

A debonair destroyed? One can buy one on trade a plane today.

Two souls?

Peace, goodwill towards all men. May your Hanukkah candles brighten the darkness.
 
Again, I didn't find her particularly "obstinate" when it came to her deficiencies. She made a fairly self-owning video regarding her obvious deficiency in what us flight training practitioners file under the maneuver item of "task management".

The real issue for her was her lack of self-awareness to the evidence (provided by her own content) that pointed to the notion she was not in a position to safely perform the role of PIC from a "basic aircraft control" line item. Which is problematic because this had nothing to do with instrument training; this was a loss of control in VMC. She was given a PPL certificate by someone, and a complex and HP endorsements by presumably a second set of eyes. Yes, I continue to remind the gallery I'm not suggesting there's any legal omission here by those eyes, and ultimately the grown woman perished on her own volition. I'm just saying the mentorship and supervision still failed here, and I do consider that a moral failing.
 
I decided to watch a few of her videos. The gyrations of the horizon as she is supposedly flying the plane are sad. The video of her instructor continually performing cockpit tasks and even radio work as she struggles with flying straight and level are even more so.

It was hard to process I was watching a pilot with 400 hours.
 
SFDukie said:
It’s useful to us, to review accidents such as this one. We should be as objective as we can be as to mistakes, potential and actual consequences, and how we can prevent those and improve.

But it’s important to do so with respect for those who died, and their loved ones.

A debonair destroyed? One can buy one on trade a plane today.

Two souls?

Peace, goodwill towards all men. May your Hanukkah candles brighten the darkness.
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I think a good take away from this other than the importance of general proficiency is avoiding task fixation. From an FAA seminar flyer:

"Task-saturation and its cousin Task-fixation. One is caused by having too much to do without enough time the other is telescoping your attention, sometimes to the exclusion of flying the airplane"

In this video the power looks to be set at about 17" or 18" and they are trying to climb with the autopilot unknowingly in 'attitude' mode (ATT vs ALT), passenger is holding down the 'up' (pitch up) button, with the 'trim up' annunciator light flashing.
1702651608628.png
Meanwhile the air speed is getting lower and lower.

at 3:53 in this video
 
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In her video posted a month ago "Training with my Dad" she highlights "DPE Dad Today" within the first few seconds... So it appears he was a pilot and DPE at some point! Yet I never hear him offer any advice...
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hindsight2020 said:
…ultimately the grown woman perished on her own volition.
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Eloquent and careful language you employ. I would add she also caused another person to perish. Finally, her incomprehensible lack of comprehension while fluttering about the controls of that fast moving airplane imperiled lives and property on the ground as long as she was in the air. To this I doubt she gave much thought.
 
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exncsurfer said:
I think that was a joke, as in, he is playing DPE for me today.
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If that's a joke, and her dad was not actually a pilot then that adds a disturbing element to this situation—the dad was pushing buttons, messing with parking brake, commenting on which runway to use, saying 3 miles at 3,000 feet is too high, etc. We don't know what happened off camera but maybe she was so used to her instructors helping her that she encouraged inappropriate input from a nonpilot. "Watch my airspeed if you don't mind" to a nonpilot while she plays with her iPad, really? :oops:
 
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Piperonca said:
Can’t shake the suspicion her dad was a lapsed pilot. Someone from East TN has to know.
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In the video where she takes him on his first flight with her after her private check ride, she comments on how he gets motion sickness and when he takes controls from time to time he does the double hand grip which you wouldn't expect from a pilot. Doesn't seem like a pilot or DPE to me.
 
dmspilot said:
If that's a joke, and her dad was not actually a pilot then that adds a disturbing element to this situation—the dad was pushing buttons, messing with parking brake, commenting on which runway to use, saying 3 miles at 3,000 feet is too high, etc. We don't know what happened off camera but maybe she was so used to her instructors helping her that she encouraged inappropriate input from a nonpilot. "Watch my airspeed if you don't mind" to a nonpilot while she plays with her iPad, really? :oops:
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Dad’s full name is James Marvin Blalock and does not exist in the FAA registry. There are 46 airmen with a last name of Blalock amd J in the first name. Two are a James M Blalock. Neither is a James Marvin.
 
dmspilot said:
If that's a joke, and her dad was not actually a pilot then that adds a disturbing element to this situation—the dad was pushing buttons, messing with parking brake, commenting on which runway to use, saying 3 miles at 3,000 feet is too high, etc. We don't know what happened off camera but maybe she was so used to her instructors helping her that she encouraged inappropriate input from a nonpilot. "Watch my airspeed if you don't mind" to a nonpilot while she plays with her iPad, really? :oops:
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... Last YT I'll post...
If he's not actually a pilot, which would make a lot more sense by how he acts, then it makes this video one of the scariest IMHO. First ~30s is what counts..
... Hard for me to imagine deferring to a non-pilot passenger about whether to proceed in IMC as a VFR-only pilot...
 
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