Hagey St. Mary's crash factual
- Thread starter Roger Roger
- Start date
alaskadrifter
Landing gear operator
I think you are going confusing 91 and 135 SVFR.
Edit: Maybe I'm confusing things, but I don't see how you get away with it, in reference to 135.203 & 205.
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ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
Probably not more than one or two at most.
Capt. Chaos
Well-Known Member
Operating in controlled airspace, under a ATC clearance for the purpose of takeoff or landing.
alaskadrifter
Landing gear operator
In other news I heard that Medallion might be raising their SVFR requirements to 600' & 2.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
That's effectively zero change.
Capt. Chaos
Well-Known Member
I heard that was being floated around at Air Carriers.
So you can still legally go between two non surface area airports at 500' & 2.. makes sense.
The big discussion was making hard routes between airports with mins for each route and a bunch of wx criteria that needed to be met if you had to deviate off the route.
ASpilot2be
Qbicle seat warmer
If I remember correctly, I had to have seven miles visibility if the ceilings were less than 1000 feet. Ryan was crazy restrictive. I liked it.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
This is the right answer, honestly. "Pre-defined route at a pre-defined altitude" is the key to not hitting things and not crashing airplanes up north.
z987k
Well-Known Member
So... IFR.
z987k
Well-Known Member
Yes being IFR would have prevented this 100%. You go flipping missed when you don't see the airport because you forgot the lighting and try again. Everyone lives.
Also the missed approach doesn't go into the side of a hill. Or even in that direction. So - YES.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
Ideally yes. For the places where the route structure is insufficient, if the weather is anything less than great, it's still better to go at a pre-defined route and altitude where you won't hit anything, and make sure your pilots are trained to fly on instruments for when they box themselves into a corner (which they will do eventually, no matter how good your risk assessment procedures are). That's my take on it. 500' and 2SM or 1000' and 1 SM is BS and anyone who's ever actually flown "VFR" in those kinds of conditions knows it, and the FAA has not done enough to propagate low altitude IFR gps routes "to the masses." We can do better - we have the technology, we need to use it.
alaskadrifter
Landing gear operator
But what about the sled drivers that make up most of the traffic?
z987k
Well-Known Member
If they can't fly IFR, lets not have them fly airplanes. The IFR route network around Bethel is really good. LPVs everywhere.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
A pre-defined route at a pre-defined altitude and a good sharp instrument scan is your friend. But sometimes, a sled is not the best tool for the job.
And with Capstone Phase II that would look like this:
In my view, the problem then becomes what happens to all those 1,000 hour wonders when they're halfway between JNU and GST, or perhaps BET and RSH and the magic goes dark.
z987k
Well-Known Member
The same thing as anyone in imc with a nav failure. Jnu to gst, or even alaska isn't that damn special.And with Capstone Phase II that would look like this:
In my view, the problem then becomes what happens to all those 1,000 hour wonders when they're halfway between JNU and GST, or perhaps BET and RSH and the magic goes dark.
And yet I can recall two fatal accidents by air carriers in the last few years along that very route, in supposedly VFR conditions.
While I am in agreement with @ppragman that a low altitude enroute system is in everyone's best interest, the problem I see with it is soon enough you'll have pilots that lack the skills to get themselves out of a bad situation when it presents itself.
z987k
Well-Known Member
I have no idea what those two accidents have to do with complete loss of navigation in imc.
I mean you could say the same thing about airline pilots. They fly IFR all the time, what happens when all 6 CRTs blank?! They can't fly VFR anymore! Um ok, so the 1 in 400 million chance of that happening is good enough reason to not increase everyone's safety by having ifr navigational facilities?
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
And with Capstone Phase II that would look like this:
In my view, the problem then becomes what happens to all those 1,000 hour wonders when they're halfway between JNU and GST, or perhaps BET and RSH and the magic goes dark.
Carry a handheld (or iPad for that matter) and keep a spare attitude indicator in clear view of the pilot (not over on the right hand side out of the way). 51AK was set up that way and it was great. Problem solved (for the most part). It's also important to train guys how to extricate themselves from those types of situations - even if they're 500hr pilots in 207s. As usual, the solution to these problems are better equipment and better training.
The big thing to keep you from hitting terrain is to be on a pre-defined route at a pre-defined altitude, that's why IFR works. If you can't do that IFR for whatever reason (i.e., limited equipment, limited route structure, etc) you should have a way to do it VFR. In an ideal world, the way to do it would be to build a "company route" that gives you minimum safe altitudes to fly on a particular segment that are not to be deviated from. If possible, make them into pretty maps that the pilots can carry with them in the cockpit to become familiar with the local terrain (not really a problem in BET, but that would be super useful elsewhere, especially for the new guys), and design the routes so that at any point the pilot flies into the clouds, he's able to make a 180° turn safely to fly back to where he came from. Combine this with a training program that emphasizes weather decision making, teaches the 500hr VFR guys how to actually fly in the clouds if they end up in them, and then spend the money to do recurrent training every 6 months with the guys until they are able to upgrade out of the sleds and into Caravans where they actually will be flying IFR, and a lot of the CFIT problems will likely go away. Additionally, build up the idea that silencing the TAWS or GPWS or TAWS-B or whatever system is installed is a terrible idea. Train that a terrain alert is an emergency condition and they should react accordingly. I have only ever worked one place where we actively trained for avoiding a CFIT and had a specific procedure that we trained and checked on every six months. It was freaking brilliant - "Pitch and Power, Trim and Turn, Avoid the Thread, Protect your Power." I can still remember it and I haven't worked there in a year and a half.
If you want to save lives, give guys the tools they need to not hit the ground. The FARs are wildly inadequate to protect guys in this regime of flying; you need more than the bare minimum. You need better equipment, better training, and institutional policies that take the guesswork out of rock-dodging. I remember plodding up the Casement in flat light and crummier weather than I planned on exploring it in, wondering just exactly how accurate the terrain map was. That shouldn't be the standard - the standard should be a "route" that is religiously used when the weather is lower than some metric. "Oh, yeah, we are always on the company route unless the ceilings are better than 3000', and the vis is greater than 5 miles, then we can go direct as long as we can do it at 2500 AGL, if the ceilings start getting close to us at 1000' AGL, we turn around." Is a lot better than, "well, I dunno, it looks a little iffy. Maybe if I drop down here to 500' I can pick my way through it. I bet it will lighten up as I get closer to Canue Pass, still, it's pretty misty...is that 2 miles? Well, can't turn around now, I'd just have to slog back through all this garbage." Take the guesswork out of it, and the job becomes a lot easier - which is safer.
