Cirrus Watch

[Deleted member 27505]

Family of 4 killed in plane crash in rugged terrain near Glenwood Springs
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/family-of-4-killed-in-plane-crash-near-rifle

First, RIP.

Second, Really?! What are people thinking? What is it about some people that allows (encourages?) them to do this kind of thing? A single engine aircraft... over rugged mountainous terrain... at night... in perhaps sketchy Wx (it was snowing in WY yesterday)... and oh, yeah, let's load up the family, 'cause, you know, we've got a parachute.

I don't FB, but can you post your plane crash to your wall, owtfic, and get lots of thumbs up? Is that the deal?

WTF, over?

 

[BobDDuck]

I don't see the issue with single engine at night over terrain, as long as the plan is kept up well and the pilot is skilled enough to handle it. So what that they was an entire family in there? Sure, it's devastating, but people load their entire family up in a car all the time and think nothing of it.

Don't get me wrong. It is very sad things like this happen but I don't see any poor judgment or what were they thinking going on (not knowing the pilot's skill level and the weather).

 

[atpduck]

I think there is a certain demographic that is attracted to Cirrus airplanes that have characteristics that can be dangerous in an airplane. One is the highly successful person who is used to getting what they want and are willing to push limits and bend/break rules to achieve what they desire. Second is the person who has strapped on way too much airplane and relies too heavily on the aircraft systems and automation. Most pilots who fly a cirrus are not like the two types mentioned above. But these two types drive negative perceptions in pilot community and the general public as well.

The laws of physics don't care if you are a successful, driven person. The laws of physics don't care how technologically advanced and "safe" the airplane is. These rules can't be bent or broken.

The key to preventing as much tragedy as possible is making people understand how "real" flying an airplane is, especially into challenging conditions. The only thing that keeps pilots and their passengers safe is the thing between the pilots shoulders. A well trained pilot and a outstanding airplane like a Cirrus is an amazingly capable and safe combination.

I know the unfortunate truth is we can't save everyone, but we can all try to influence and look after those in our sphere of influence.

 

[denverpilot]

I don't see the issue with single engine at night over terrain, as long as the plan is kept up well and the pilot is skilled enough to handle it.

KGWS isn't "over terrain" it's down in it.

Depending on what the time of departure was Friday evening, it was either "suicidal" (judging by the ground winds in the evening at KRIL on Friday) increasing to "bad idea", having flown up there all my life.

From about 2PM on Friday the weather was an absolute no-fly for performance and winds up there. After dark (remember it gets dark down in the valley sooner than on flat ground) the winds mellowed a little bit, but I wouldn't mix those winds with a heavily loaded single at night.

In the afternoon and evening, peak wind at Rifle was 330 @ 38! You don't fly singles in the mountains in that.

https://www.ogimet.com/display_meta...17&mesf=09&dayf=16&horaf=20&minf=59&send=send

None of the articles give the departure time or the time of lost radar contact yet, that I've found.

 

[NovemberEcho]

it was either "suicidal" (judging by the ground winds in the evening at KRIL on Friday) increasing to "bad idea", having flown up there all my life.

Just wondering who hurt you that "bad idea" is worse than "suicidal"?

 

[denverpilot]

Just wondering who hurt you that "bad idea" is worse than "suicidal"?

Increasing in chances of survival from suicidal to bad idea. In other words, it never made it to "good flyable weather".

 

[z987k]

KGWS isn't "over terrain" it's down in it.

Depending on what the time of departure was Friday evening, it was either "suicidal" (judging by the ground winds in the evening at KRIL on Friday) increasing to "bad idea", having flown up there all my life.

From about 2PM on Friday the weather was an absolute no-fly for performance and winds up there. After dark (remember it gets dark down in the valley sooner than on flat ground) the winds mellowed a little bit, but I wouldn't mix those winds with a heavily loaded single at night.

In the afternoon and evening, peak wind at Rifle was 330 @ 38! You don't fly singles in the mountains in that.

https://www.ogimet.com/display_meta...17&mesf=09&dayf=16&horaf=20&minf=59&send=send

None of the articles give the departure time or the time of lost radar contact yet, that I've found.

He was flying from Ft Collins to Moab. The crash just happened around glenwood springs.
Have to read more than the title.

 

[mrivc211]

I'm pretty confident in my judgement and skills, but a couple of years ago, when I flew someone in a SR22T from SNA to RNO, they asked me to drop off a friend of theirs in SJC and come back to RNO and pick him up. On the way back from SJC it was dark. Approaching RNO, I was pretty dang nervous of losing the engine being night, rugged terrain out there. Single engine piston flying at night in mountainous terrain is just asking for trouble. I've been tricked enough times looking at the metar in KPSP and seeing winds calm thinking its gonna be a smooth flight only have have 50 more white hairs flying through there from all the nasty turbulence coming off the peaks. No thanks. been there done that. Never again. I've takin off in that turbulence in a Cessna, a Turboprop, and a jet. In the piston it was more like, we ain't going. In the TP I just tightened my seat belt and figured I'd be out in a few minutes, in the jet I'd hold max climb and be out of it in 2 minutes.

 

[denverpilot]

He was flying from Ft Collins to Moab. The crash just happened around glenwood springs.
Have to read more than the title.

Not really. The pattern is repetitive and consistent.

Doesn't even require a Cirrus to become someone who gets pulled out of our mountains in a body bag every year.

The weather doesn't care what you're flying. Nor do the rocks. Night VFR in marginal VMC and high winds and thunderstorm remnants in the mountains is suicidal.

So I dug around and see that the "large debris field" is on Baxter Peak... and the crash was around 10PM local.

Baxter is nearly directly north of the town of Glenwood Springs and is a slightly higher hump in the ridgeline there. Very rugged terrain on that ridgeline.

Baxter is also on a GPS direct path between FNL and CNY.

One might think they'd follow V-8 which is slightly north of that line by about a mile and, of course, can give a specific amount of terrain clearance if you're at 13,400 on the airway, minimum.

The peak is shown as 11,188 on the sectional and I bet the megenta line is right where they hit, and I bet that's how the search folks found it that quickly, launching out of GWS. Track search.

Maybe they did wait long enough that the thunderstorms that delayed the GWS high school football game Friday night had ended. Maybe not. I don't have any historical radar data available.

But Rifle shows an overcast varying from 7500 - 10000 pretty much all night, once the winds calmed at the surface, which would put the broken layer at 15,000.

It appears the pilot was freshly certificated as a Private pilot with no instrument rating in March 2017. And whether confirmation of the previous theory about personality types, or not, was a successful owner of an HVAC company in Ft Collins.

There's at least three no-go items for that flight in my mind now that I have a time of day and the weather. Nope. This sort of accident statistic and shattered lives is almost always the result of breaking those.

Don't know if he had attended the Colorado Pilot's Association Mountain Flying course in the late summer, but if not, I sure wish he had.

Ran out of altitude, distance to the clouds, visibility, and options for an "out"... breaking the number one rule of mountain flying... always know what your "out" is. If you don't know your "out" in that airplane you could climb... but non-instrument rated, he had nowhere to climb to.

The mountains demand respect. When they're not respected they often exact their toll in fatalities.

RIP and condolences to the family.

 

[Nark]

I'm confused.
How does the terrain overflown impact your flight, during night flying ?

I'm pretty sure a corn field will kill you just the same a valley wall will, during an engine failure, at night.

 

[denverpilot]

I'm confused.
How does the terrain overflown impact your flight, during night flying ?

I'll assume that's an honest question, and expound on it a little.

- Need O2 to fly over most corn fields? Need it to even activate the rods in your eyes well below the FAA mandated O2 altitudes, especially when fatigued?

- When winds aloft are high, ever get much mechanical turbulence greater than the aircraft's maximum climb capability from a corn field? (Rocks in a stream. Wind was out of the north all afternoon and night... that's a warning in and of itself up there... normal flow is westerly... shear... turbulence... not fun...)

- Ever flown a course over a corn field that a couple miles off of centerline there's a wall of sheer granite wall standing in the corn field at your altitude? (Large towers aside, but they're lit usually... at night... check those NOTAMS.)

Of course there's stuff that is the same...

- Ever flown under an overcast over a corn field at night and couldn't find a horizon of any sort, making it an IMC flight?

And that leads to stuff that's different...

- Ever had the horizon be angled at significant and multiple angles from your perspective backlit by the only lights for miles down in a valley a few miles ahead?

Basically it comes down to this...

If you've never been at max throttle and Vy or Vx going down 2000 f/min or more in the daylight in the mountains, and you're making your nose down turn to escape down valley into your "out" you pre-planned to take if you couldn't cross the ridgeline...

You don't have enough mountain experience to be making a go/no-go for a night VFR flight under an overcast that's only 2000' above the peaks in the area.

The weather description made that an IMC flight. And single engine IFR at night, in the mountains, in real weather, on O2, staying well above MEA, likely in turbulence, and up and down drafts, tired, wife, kids and DOG on board (that's also confirmed). is already very problematic. Better bring your A-game. And an instrument ticket and good instrument proficiency. Still not "fun".

The searchers weren't able to fly until almost noon the next day, due to low clouds and visibility in daylight. That also says something. What the METARs say and what's happening at ridegelines are often quite different things. (I haven't figured out a way to use that historical METAR site to pull up the Mountain AWOS sites located on the peaks by the CO Division of Aeronautics, but I bet the conditions reported just southwest of GWS by the Sunlight Ski Area AWOS are mentioned in the final report a year or so from now. That station sits on a peak that's just about 12,000 MSL.)

I love flying in the mountains. Been doing it since I was 19, so I've got a quarter century of doing it under my belt. Learned from some very old mountain pilots who'd been doing it for decades, too. I can't think of a single one of them who'd recommend launching on that flight, IFR. I wouldn't. This pilot appears to have done it VFR.

The pattern repeats, over and over and over. I've seen this accident before. Whether from poor planning or engine failure, or anything else inbetween, there's less margin for anything, and the rocks simply don't care that you're out of options or didn't notice you'd set yourself up for CFIT on a black overcast night where there's no difference between the black of the mountain ahead and the black of the sky.

 

[Nark]

You kind of answered my rhetorical question.
The granite doesn't care about your engine. Neither does the corn. That's my point.

All the other factors you listed weren't part of my question, by design. Route selection is important, absolutely. However an engine failure at night, you're screwed regardless of the terrain your over.

 

[AAPalmTree]

Thought this thread was going to be about this

 

[Boris Badenov]

However an engine failure at night, you're screwed regardless of the terrain your over.

Eh, we had a couple of guys deadstick 210s at night when I was at flx. One of them on to alligator Alley! Don't think they would have made it over the Rockies.

 

[Boris Badenov]

However an engine failure at night, you're screwed regardless of the terrain your over.

Eh, we had a couple of guys deadstick 210s at night when I was at flx. One of them on to alligator Alley! Don't think they would have made it over the Rockies.

 

[mshunter]

You kind of answered my rhetorical question.
The granite doesn't care about your engine. Neither does the corn. That's my point.

All the other factors you listed weren't part of my question, by design. Route selection is important, absolutely. However an engine failure at night, you're screwed regardless of the terrain your over.

Nor does a sky scraper or a neighborhood. I've never understood it either. If the airplane has the capability, and you do too, I see no issue with single engine piston, at night, through the mountains. If you're afraid of the mountains at night, why aren't you afraid of them during the day too?

 

[deadstick]

Eh, we had a couple of guys deadstick 210s at night when I was at flx. One of them on to alligator Alley! Don't think they would have made it over the Rockies.

I remember the one going from MKC-CPS who landed on I-70. One big difference: all of y'all at Fright Express had over 1200TT, a CPL, and an Instrument Rating.

Twenty-six years ago while getting my IR, I came across this quote and taped it to the inside of my log book. It's just as applicable at this point in my career as it was back then. "An Instrument Rating signifies that the pilot has received the necessary training to know when to stay on the ground."

 

[denverpilot]

You kind of answered my rhetorical question.
The granite doesn't care about your engine. Neither does the corn. That's my point.

All the other factors you listed weren't part of my question, by design. Route selection is important, absolutely. However an engine failure at night, you're screwed regardless of the terrain your over.

Not always. There's been a number of night engine outs to roads and such. Depending on time of year and weather, there's a measurable difference in temperature, too... and closeness to other humans and rescue, which makes the chances if you survive the off-airport landing of dying of exposure much lower.

Most of us who do day mountain flying carey some way to make both shelter and fire. The average amount of time for a rescuer to get to you is roughly a full 24 hours in the backcountry. Not so much if you plant it in or near your hypothetical corn field. Which usually has a road, at least one farmer, and at least a volunteer fire department close enough to it to factor significantly in your hypothetical.

It's all risk management, and one risk of flying over someplace uninhabited is that it's horses, four wheelers, or technical rescue climbers to even get to you in much of the Rockies, with a night time temperature below the point of simply being "uncomfortable" for a night.

Mick Wilson, formerly of the Denver FSDO, used to do a safety seminar called, "How to crash an airplane and survive", that discussed much of this. He had examples of survivors in the mountains who aimed for the aspen trees rather than the pine forest, as a real world response to your hypothetical if you add daylight or a very good sense of SA.

In your farm/cornfield hypothetical, there's somewhere/something relatively flat to land on, nearby most corn fields. Not so much over a national forest.

Even in this real world flight, let's say our intrepid seven month rated Private pilot recognizes he's in trouble and pulls the infamous Cirrus chute, and everyone including the dog, is intact. It's about 35F at night at those altitudes now, and over the next couple of months that will fall below freezing and stay there all winter. Better have some way to keep four humans and a dog warm for 12-36 hours on board, or you just expire of hypothermia after surviving the crash.

Worst rescue time I've ever seen for a "corn field" rescue was 6 hours. Unfortunately the occupants died because they didn't buy retrofit shoulder harnesses for their aircraft. The crash was utterly survivable and the aircraft was completely intact. Their faces hit the instrument panel and they died of blunt force trauma and brain injuries.

 

[tomokc]

A buddy was flying a piston single at night with three commercial passengers aboard. As he was switching from Center to Approach and starting his letdown, he smelled electrical smoke and declared. The controller vectored him to the nearest airport while he shut down all non-essential electrical loads. With the airport in sight the smoke grew worse, so he lined up on a straight, flat section of interstate highway that happened to be underneath. Starting his flare he flipped on the landing light just in time to see the overpass, pulled up and barely cleared it before landing and rolling out on the shoulder. A trucker saw him pass overhead and stopped traffic. The airplane was immediately consumed by fire after all four egressed. See how many things had to work in order to have a positive outcome?

 

[Roger Roger]

You kind of answered my rhetorical question.
The granite doesn't care about your engine. Neither does the corn. That's my point.

All the other factors you listed weren't part of my question, by design. Route selection is important, absolutely. However an engine failure at night, you're screwed regardless of the terrain your over.

False. Especially in something with somewhat modern crash survivability (shoulder harnesses and energy-absorbing seats), an engine failure over MN soybean fields at night is very much survivable even if you just trim for best glide and leave it there. Bonus points if you turn the landing lights on and start to flare when you see plants. With corn you don't even need lights, just flare when you hear the stalks hitting the gear.