Woah there.... I think your reading comprehension is a little emotionally charged. I don't think your quite getting the points I made or you just didn't fully read and decided to just react. No one is saying our radar is better then yours. All I said was it is more updated then may be believed and is generally accurate at showing what it's supposed to. Which is a general picture of precipitation areas that has limited altitude stratification. That combined with pireps and a pilots more specific view on his radar WORK TOGETHER to provide information to be used by you guys to make a decision. The general calls of weather even if we know it's not going to affect you are a now stressed and required coverall because of ga guys who regardless of weather called and advised of decide to truck on through and end up killing themselves. As someone who has watched the tapes and listened to an event that happened in my facility not that long ago I guarantee you there is plenty of caution when I am working anyone around weather. Now as far as my "pilots doing what they want" that you quoted, no where did I say that pilots should just fly through things they're not comfortable with. In fact I stated the opposite. My point in reference to the op was the pilot then supposedly was upset that he couldn't fly all the way around queens to get to ewr. That's my point. I certainly get not going anywhere near the weather and honestly are fine that you don't. After you make that decision I still have to do my job. The whole point of my post was to highlight that everyone is better off if both sides realize they are on the same team.
horrific storms
- Thread starter ian
- Start date
Woah there.... I think your reading comprehension is a little emotionally charged. I don't think your quite getting the points I made or you just didn't fully read and decided to just react. No one is saying our radar is better then yours. All I said was it is more updated then may be believed and is generally accurate at showing what it's supposed to. Which is a general picture of precipitation areas that has limited altitude stratification. That combined with pireps and a pilots more specific view on his radar WORK TOGETHER to provide information to be used by you guys to make a decision. The general calls of weather even if we know it's not going to affect you are a now stressed and required coverall because of ga guys who regardless of weather called and advised of decide to truck on through and end up killing themselves. As someone who has watched the tapes and listened to an event that happened in my facility not that long ago I guarantee you there is plenty of caution when I am working anyone around weather. Now as far as my "pilots doing what they want" that you quoted, no where did I say that pilots should just fly through things they're not comfortable with. In fact I stated the opposite. My point in reference to the op was the pilot then supposedly was upset that he couldn't fly all the way around queens to get to ewr. That's my point. I certainly get not going anywhere near the weather and honestly are fine that you don't. After you make that decision I still have to do my job. The whole point of my post was to highlight that everyone is better off if both sides realize they are on the same team.
D
Deleted member 27505
Guest
I've often wondered how many GA accidents (and I'm including 135 ops here) are the result of purely batguana crazy stuff done intentionally out of ignorance or vanity.... which of course would be the pinnacle of copped attitude / ego. Stuff happens, sure, and we all screw up from time to time. But at the end of the day, if you're planning ahead, and continually making sound decisions (like not intentionally flying the airplane far outside its operational envelope), piloting an airplane just does not seem as inherently susceptible to catastrophe as the GA record would suggest. I think the NTSB is usually correct... i.e. "pilot error", though perhaps "pilot gross negligence" might be a better term in many cases.
If i remember right, the guy in my story left to Bethel, AK to fly 207s then 208s.
D
Deleted member 27505
Guest
Around that same time, I was up on the Seward Pennisula. A new pilot showed up at one of the bush "airlines" servicing the villages around Nome. He'd washed out of AF training and was flying a beat out Navajo. I flew into Nome with him (as a Pax) from a bush village. Got to Nome and had dinner with some friends (the usual bush suspects: doctors, teachers, wildlife biologists). I told them about my crazy flight to Nome. A few folks perked up and we all started comparing notes about this dude. One of the nurses and several other Pax had been returning from Savoonga to Nome (~150nm over the Bering Sea) when this Sierra Hotel Cowboy decided to do rolls out over the ocean. Yes, we all did write a collectively signed letter to his employer. Maybe the same guy? As I recall, he found new employment where he eventually augered in.
Hammertime
Well-Known Member
Well said.
I was looking down through the first few posts, and there was a lot of piling on, with not a lot of trying to see where he was coming from, and that's where my frustration came from. I get tired of the guys I run across that are trying to be Harrison Ford in Air Force One. I just was hoping to bring some perspective...
PhilosopherPilot
Well-Known Member
Someone did rolls in an airplane with paying customers, and got away with it for a while?
Boris Badenov
This is no laughing matter.
It was Alaska in the early 90s. Probably not even the most dangerous thing that happened to them that day. Maybe you're too young to remember Northern Exposure?
Roger Roger
Bottom of the list
A book written about that time period is called "Map of my Dead Pilots"
PhilosopherPilot
Well-Known Member
I remember.
D
Deleted member 27505
Guest
Yup. The rolls are hearsay to me. But given what I experienced when flying with the guy and having confidence in what my registered nurse friend and others told me about their experiences flying with the guy, I have little reason doubt it's true.
What's maybe more disturbing is that flying in the bush back then was so sketchy that many of the Pax probably simply thought this kid doing rolls was just a goofy pilot showing off rather than a completely outrageous and flagrantly illegal action.
mrivc211
Well-Known Member
I don't agree with all of what you said. I don't think your attitude helps with keeping things cool with controllers. Without them we can't go places so no reason to make enemies.
bucksmith
Did you lock the doors?
god I loved that show!
as far as this thread goes, didn't OP clear up half of these responses in the first page??
I can't post good. please FF to 3:25 for my comedic affect. thank you.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
Oh the stories I will one-day tell.
Rolls in a Navajo is bad, adding passengers adds a level of stupid to the mix, but that's not even surprising at all, hell, it's tame compared to some stuff out west. Laughably tame, and honestly probably not even THAT unsafe when compared to some of the other adventures people have been known to have. It's unacceptable, but not even the sketchiest stuff I've seen.
I'll even add to this, because why the hell not. I flew with a guy who had never been missed other than training and checkrides. He had (at the time) around 17,000 hours. Think about that for a minute. He was an excellent stick and rudder pilot in his defense (other than the whole "get-er'-dunnnn thing), and knew every single rock and bump within 20 miles of every airport he flew to; he used every available resource - to include painting islands and rocks with the weather radar, and was practically monastic in his devotion to learning about the weather and terrain...but still...think about that...he had never gone missed...
Rolls in a Navajo is bad, adding passengers adds a level of stupid to the mix, but that's not even surprising at all, hell, it's tame compared to some stuff out west. Laughably tame, and honestly probably not even THAT unsafe when compared to some of the other adventures people have been known to have. It's unacceptable, but not even the sketchiest stuff I've seen.
I'll even add to this, because why the hell not. I flew with a guy who had never been missed other than training and checkrides. He had (at the time) around 17,000 hours. Think about that for a minute. He was an excellent stick and rudder pilot in his defense (other than the whole "get-er'-dunnnn thing), and knew every single rock and bump within 20 miles of every airport he flew to; he used every available resource - to include painting islands and rocks with the weather radar, and was practically monastic in his devotion to learning about the weather and terrain...but still...think about that...he had never gone missed...
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ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
Engineers cut, you mean? To be fair the weather with the Little Ace accident was good, I know the "full story" on that one. They basically just lined up on a really long final somewhere they shouldn't have.
I'm not talking about stuff like that...
Like I said, a roll in a Navajo is pretty tame.
mrivc211
Well-Known Member
A review of FAA and National Transportation Safety Board records revealed that on August 15, 1990, the captain failed the oral portion of his DC-9 type rating examination. He was retested and subsequently passed. On September 15, 1990, the captain failed the entire flight test portion of his DC-9 type rating check ride. He was retested and subsequently passed. On January 28, 1994, the captain was involved in an air carrier incident in which he lost control of a DC-9 during a takeoff roll in adverse weather conditions. The takeoff was aborted and the airplane departed the runway onto a grassy area. On July 5, 1994, the captain was involved in an air carrier accident in which he was in command of a DC-9 that encountered moderate convective turbulence during climbout, causing a flight attendant to suffer multiple leg fractures.
After the May 7, 1998, accident, the captain was reassigned as a first officer.
WOW
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
For example, the guy is dead now (natural causes not airplane related), but early in my career I was flying back pt 91 when I heard a ton of mic clicks over the radio. An instant later our company's Lance went right over the top of me with E in it, he did a victory roll, then peeled off to head back up into the clouds to find other company airplanes to harass.
On another occasion I tried to follow him on a charter out to Larsen Bay to pick up some people. I was behind him by about a mile or two and we were being pushed down by low ceilings flying using "pilotage" and a Garmin 296. It got worse and worse, and he got lower and lower, and eventually I found myself desperately trying to see his beacon as I chased him around the rocky Kodiak coast.
Finally I lost his beacon as the visibility had plummeted to somewhere less than one mile, I was flying around 200' or so in and out of the goo. At this point (which was way later than I should have) I said, "this isn't working for me dude, I'm going back to town," to which he replied "suit yourself, this is probably more than you can handle," and pressed on to pick up the passengers. The implication being that I was a • for not pressing on.
E later came to me and said, "Young man, 'A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid the use of his superior skill.'" I have no idea why he said that to me given the circumstances.
I learned several valuable lessons that day as a low time guy - one, make your own decisions and don't let the guy you're following make a decision for you. Two, being down low in bad weather is stupid - you're much better off on a pre-defined route at a pre-defined altitude than driving around going from rock to rock to tree in mist with rain on the windshield. I should have known this before; I was 19, and invincible, and frankly too stupid to see the danger through how much fun the work was.
Beyond that, it's a lot easier to turn around early in the flight than it is later - or ideally, don't launch until you know the conditions are such that you'll be able to go hassle free.
That's not even close to the sketchiest thing I saw, heard of, or otherwise in my career up here, but it is certainly one of the most memorable events for me because of how far outside my element I allowed myself to get.
On another occasion I tried to follow him on a charter out to Larsen Bay to pick up some people. I was behind him by about a mile or two and we were being pushed down by low ceilings flying using "pilotage" and a Garmin 296. It got worse and worse, and he got lower and lower, and eventually I found myself desperately trying to see his beacon as I chased him around the rocky Kodiak coast.
Finally I lost his beacon as the visibility had plummeted to somewhere less than one mile, I was flying around 200' or so in and out of the goo. At this point (which was way later than I should have) I said, "this isn't working for me dude, I'm going back to town," to which he replied "suit yourself, this is probably more than you can handle," and pressed on to pick up the passengers. The implication being that I was a • for not pressing on.
E later came to me and said, "Young man, 'A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid the use of his superior skill.'" I have no idea why he said that to me given the circumstances.
I learned several valuable lessons that day as a low time guy - one, make your own decisions and don't let the guy you're following make a decision for you. Two, being down low in bad weather is stupid - you're much better off on a pre-defined route at a pre-defined altitude than driving around going from rock to rock to tree in mist with rain on the windshield. I should have known this before; I was 19, and invincible, and frankly too stupid to see the danger through how much fun the work was.
Beyond that, it's a lot easier to turn around early in the flight than it is later - or ideally, don't launch until you know the conditions are such that you'll be able to go hassle free.
That's not even close to the sketchiest thing I saw, heard of, or otherwise in my career up here, but it is certainly one of the most memorable events for me because of how far outside my element I allowed myself to get.
Cptnchia
Dissatisfied Customer
And the kicker, when AirTran sent another plane and crew to pick up the passengers, he pressured the original crew to continue the flight.
D
Deleted member 27505
Guest
Why wait?! We want to hear them now.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
Why wait?! We want to hear them now.
Statute of limitations isn't up on all of them.
But as a "snap shot" of that world, I once (now almost a decade ago) heard a captain say, "it's not busting minimums, I'm simply accepting lower terrain clearance minimums than TERPS requires."
To be fair, that dude had like, well over 30,000hrs doing that job and just like the other guy had a practically photographic memory of the terrain around. He knew exactly how low he could go before it was "really scary" in a wide variety of places around the state.
Most of those guys are getting ready to retire now. I am glad that the culture is changing in a lot of ways, but in other ways it'll be sad to see the guys who were really good at that stuff go - despite all their flaws in "airmanship" from the "modern" standpoint, they had a lot of wisdom to share about how not to run into anything, how to get yourself out of trouble when trouble finds you, and were really good stick and rudder pilots. A lot of these guys built their own approaches to places - some of them eventually even became published procedures. A lot of these guys knew every rock and stump and bend in the river west of the Alaska Range - of course a lot of them died trying to prove how well they knew it - but even E - I hated that dick - had some things that are worth passing on. You remember that charting change to NOS charts with the stupid snowflake symbol? The old timers were talking about that years ago. You know the world of "free flight" the FAA has been touting? That has been tested in IMC with VFR airplanes for well over a decade. There's more than that, but again, I risk incriminating some really good people if I get too specific - and some not so good people, lol.
Part of the problem is that you can't really teach the good stuff in there without the bad, and unlike the lower 48, the rules as they are published will not protect you. When I flew down south, the GOM and the FARs were totally plausible to follow. There's approaches and long runways everywhere, not only that, you can get fuel everywhere. When was the last time you had to cancel a charter because even though weather was good at your destination, the nearest fuel was impossible to safely get to? That used to happen practically daily when I flew charters. It's just a totally different world up here. Here's an example of a "interesting scenario." You fly across the mountains IFR and pick up some ice - you land at say...
This airport? There's no way to deice here - except by hand? How do you do it? Perhaps flying VFR wasn't such a bad idea after all - but that exposes you to CFIT risks. So you end up in this limbo where, while it may be safer to fly IFR, the FAA says if there's so much as a snowflake on the leading edge you're going to crash your airplane prior to rotation? How do you make that work from an operational standpoint? We carried bug sprayers for awhile - that was pretty good, but the FAA thought that was hazmat, then they didn't...
By the way - the airport in this picture wasn't possible to fly to IFR for YEARS because despite having an awesome instrument approach, we didn't have an AWOS on the field, so despite having good, safe, course guidance... we had to fly to another airport multiple miles away then scud run under the weather.
For a long time, that's where the old pirates were really helpful, because they had already made a lot of bad decisions and were still alive - you could learn from them.
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