NetJets crash in Laredo TX

[DropTank]

Compared to whom? You can’t just cite part 91 numbers and say that. That lumps us with every weekend warrior out there flying single pilot in a PC12 they have no business being in.

Separating private owned jets with a professional crew and you start to get safety numbers a lot closer to 135/121.

You could cite the Biffle crash as starting point, but that pilot was….shall we say….more airline than corporate. And that wasn’t a professional crew. That was him and his illegal copilot.

121>135>91>>>>>>>>>>>owner operators

Yeah there are 91 ops with well trained pilots, SOP's and additional "standards" like ISBAO, WYVERN, ARGUS, etc but the cowboy ops brings down the averages.

....then there are the owner operators (yikes!)

NetJets is likely as good as it gets in 135 (and 91)

 

[Fixtur]

Idle speculation: fuel contamination / filter blockages?

Indication of contamination/blockage and then divert to an airport >400 miles away?

That doesn't make any sense either.

 

[Richman]

I have to hand it to Cessna, they nail together good birds. And NJ is the definition of quality ops.

Sad for all involved.

 

[milleR]

I'm a little confused by all the "400 miles away" comments. They were SJD -> AUS, correct? LRD looks like a perfectly reasonable field to divert to with fuel/power issues on that route to me.

 

[Wardogg]

121>135>91>>>>>>>>>>>owner operators

Yeah there are 91 ops with well trained pilots, SOP's and additional "standards" like ISBAO, WYVERN, ARGUS, etc but the cowboy ops brings down the averages.

....then there are the owner operators (yikes!)

NetJets is likely as good as it gets in 135 (and 91)

I’ll put my 91 operation over any south florida 135 any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

While somewhat tongue in cheek I’d put any 91 management company up against any 135 numbers. The numbers are close enough to be equal all things considered. The stats support this. If you’re a management company with owners and you crash an airplane I’d bet the rest of your clients aren’t going to be clients any more.

 

[Fixtur]

I'm a little confused by all the "400 miles away" comments. They were SJD -> AUS, correct? LRD looks like a perfectly reasonable field to divert to with fuel/power issues on that route to me.

I don't know where I picked up the notion, but I was under the impression that they requested the divert somewhere over west central Mehico.

 

[milleR]

I don't know where I picked up the notion, but I was under the impression that they requested the divert somewhere over west central Mehico.

It wasn't just you, I saw one or two other comments like that. This doesn't look unreasonable to me, especially with a descent from FL400 or higher which I assume they'd be at.

 

[bp]

Interesting. Have not heard any details abt why they were diverting but going to LRD seems reasonable for a wx divert and looking for a field with customs.

 

[Brian29]

Not that I think its worth much given the source but I landed in LRD a few hours after the crash and our driver said his son called him all worked up after seeing the plane fly over with what appeared to be an engine on fire.

 

[NovemberEcho]

That's not good.

A couple weeks ago out of Paris, there was a QS jet having all sorts of unspecified problems, stayed low, slow, very non-specific with LFFF about 'running checklists' and not being able to climb or accelerate, box patterns and then ended up on the tracks later on.

That was…. interesting.

I remember telling my first officers: "Man, if we're running abnormal checklists with some sort of control surface or HLD issue I'd head back to the airport and tell maintenance 'Here ya go!'"

I'll have to see if LiveATC has the audio from that.

Literally yesterday I had some corpie, don’t remember the callsign, declare emergency on departure and said they had to return to TEB. Then they said they needed to burn fuel, then they said they needed to hold to run checklists, then they said nope no emergency we’d like to continue on to our destination.

 

[MikeD]

I never understood the folks who are secretive with ATC about what’s going on. I’m laying it all on the table. This is what’s happening and what I need and what’s going to happen .

This is what helps ATC to help you. The pilots who get secretive or can’t make a decision or don’t want to declare an emergency earlier rather than later, are the ones that ATC can’t do as much for when all of that info is either pried out of the flight crew finally, or the flight crew dumps it on ATC at the 11th hour and expects instant results that are usually too late to make happen.

 

[MikeD]

Sometimes less is more. Instead of telling ATC something nuanced that they might not even understand, just tell them what you need and focus on flying the airplane.

The problem is this for many pilots. No, ATC doesn’t need detailed system academics on what is going on with the plane, just a general idea of what the issue is. The telling ATC what you need and making an early emergency declaration if necessary, is what many pilots fail to do and just waffle around and tap dance around the issue, which doesn’t help ATC to be able to help them.

 

[pwttogfk]

Aviate, navigate, communicate. When I'm working a problem I'll use all available resources and ask for what I need, but ATC frequently becomes a burden with "helpfulness." The last issue that I had requiring a divert worked quite well just telling ATC we needed to go back due to a radio issue. Explaining that we had all kinds of weirdness and lost an entire bus would've turned into 20 questions when we were below landing weight, VMC, and just needed to get on the ground for the shop to fix what they broke.

I had one time where we had a gear unsafe indication in initial descent. We changed destinations to someplace with a service center and slowed to below Vlo/Vle in case the gear dropped suddenly. When asked for the reason for the diversion we were honest. That turned into a game of telephone with each subsequent controller thinking it was worse and worse and having fire trucks at seemingly every taxiway intersection when we landed. I remember as we were taxiing in hearing one of the truck drivers ask "how far out is our emergency aircraft?" Our workload was far higher getting pretty much the same emergency questions from each controller, answering all kinds of non pertinent questions, and briefing pax on final approach to not worry about the trucks. If controllers would listen and pay attention (I say tongue in cheek because of the number of times I've heard them scold pilots to do this) and not get spun up like that I'd be more inclined to give full detailed descriptions as time allows. But my goal is to get what I need from ATC to get a safe conclusion to the flight.

 

[NovemberEcho]

If controllers would listen and pay attention (I say tongue in cheek because of the number of times I've heard them scold pilots to do this) and not get spun up like that I'd be more inclined to give full detailed descriptions as time allows. But my goal is to get what I need from ATC to get a safe conclusion to the flight.

This is almost always a result of incompetent supervisors asking for more info and then failing to pass it on down the line. Sometimes it’s just controllers not knowing • about planes, but either way that info should be passed on after you give it once. Sometimes even when it is passed on the person it was passed on to failed to disseminate it in time. Hell I had a supervisor once roll the trucks because someone was returning to TEB because the pax forgot their wallet, but rolled them just because they were a returnee.

The quality of supervisor and management in general is at an all time low right now because the good controllers from busy places couldn’t get deviations approved to become supervisors so instead you have people from low level towers now being management at centers and tracons with no radar experience and are not required to become certified in the facilities that they’re supposed to supervise. For example, one of ours Operations Managers came here from MMU tower. They don’t even have a certified radar display. He is an Ops Manager at a level 12 Tracon and has never radar identified an aircraft in his life, let alone vectored anyone.

 

[Minuteman]

For example, one of ours Operations Managers came here from MMU tower. They don’t even have a certified radar display. He is an Ops Manager at a level 12 Tracon and has never radar identified an aircraft in his life, let alone vectored anyone.

Running government like a business.

 

[DropTank]

I’ll put my 91 operation over any south florida 135 any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

While somewhat tongue in cheek I’d put any 91 management company up against any 135 numbers. The numbers are close enough to be equal all things considered. The stats support this. If you’re a management company with owners and you crash an airplane I’d bet the rest of your clients aren’t going to be clients any more.

EEK!
That's setting the bar pretty low.
The 134.5 SoFlo ops lowers the bar a LOT for 135
As much Owner Operators lower the bar for 91's

Then there's Alaska...

 

[derg]

Literally yesterday I had some corpie, don’t remember the callsign, declare emergency on departure and said they had to return to TEB. Then they said they needed to burn fuel, then they said they needed to hold to run checklists, then they said nope no emergency we’d like to continue on to our destination.

Ooof. Work it out on the ground.

 

[NovemberEcho]

Running government like a business.

This issue is not new, but has been exacerbated the last few years by staffing getting worse at more and more facilities.

 

[averettpilot]

121>135>91>>>>>>>>>>>owner operators

Yeah there are 91 ops with well trained pilots, SOP's and additional "standards" like ISBAO, WYVERN, ARGUS, etc but the cowboy ops brings down the averages.

....then there are the owner operators (yikes!)

NetJets is likely as good as it gets in 135 (and 91)

There’s a lot of 91/135 operators out there that are lucky modern jet engines are so reliable. My anecdotal experience with them would suggest a lot more accidents than there already are if they weren’t. Poor standards, sketchy maintenance, cowboy pilots, and shady owners/managers. Would never put my family on a 91/135 aircraft unless I knew the pilots personally.

 

[flyingpotato]

Lots of vagueness and confusion on 91/135 tiers. Take the top 20 companies in the world with revenues higher than the GPD of most countries: 91 departments. They're not cutting corners with executive transport and often supplement their departments with reputable fractional and charters. Yet the assumption still remains that 91 and 135 equals cowboy, lol. Cannot speak too specifically but take for example a nuclear engineering firm with contracts all over the world. Their SMS system would, let's say, be very rigorous.