TransPac Deer Valley Plane Crash

[ScorpionStinger]

Something I learned from college. Public perception is GOLD, even for a great company that suffered accidents prior to the internet. But in the age of Google, branding is everything in terms of company survival. All it take is a Google search of the company for services and the results are damning. Simply due to the nature of the business (flight training) in a publicized industry (aviation). Google can do the brand more harm than a sensationalized, crazed feeding frenzy news media who reports it on T.V today, but the damaging documents stay online forever.

• Caused ValueJet to become AirTran which is now Southwest.

• Accelerated TWA into Bankruptcy now part of American Airline, which is now American Airline Group.

I understand this is only a flight school/academy. But how often is a flight school publicized for accidents?????? ATP for example search results in loads of advertisement (drowns out any negative publications). In this case, a research results is no bueno to the public (domestic). They could careless of the circumstances.

So how else can the damage to a brand be reversed beyond changing the name? Only other ideas i can think of is 1. Merger. 2. Split name for domestic and chinese. 3. Advertise domestically, flooding Google with Ads.

 

[skypilot6]

@Dphoenix If the president is the same as it was when I was there 08-2011 that statement made about the PB midair wouldnt surprise me one bit.

 

[Dphoenix]

Scorpion, unless you're a prospective chinese airline, I'm not sure they care that much about your perception. The school had about 1 to 2 domestic students to every 100 international I'd guess. @skypilot6 - same president/CEO, Stephen Goddard. And yes, that was his PB midair comment.

 

[GX]

......

When I was looking at TP and WW comparing the 141 programs, the same guy heard I was a Navy vet and introduced himself to me with, "Hi. I'm Commander Stephen Goddard, former F-18 pilot." Smile and nod. Smile and nod.

 

[ScorpionStinger]

Scorpion, unless you're a prospective chinese airline, I'm not sure they care that much about your perception. The school had about 1 to 2 domestic students to every 100 international I'd guess. @skypilot6 - same president/CEO, Stephen Goddard. And yes, that was his PB midair comment.

I get your drift, I do. But I'm pretty sure they care about public perception. Granted the Chinese is their target customer.

When the POLITICIANS are receiving complaints about Aeroplanes dropping out sky,noise, not feeling safe, and the chinese not speaking proper english. The FAA will feel the pressure from the public and politicians to act.

Doubt any business can operate efficiently with the FAA breathing down their neck. #Avantair

 

[ndakcfi]

There's $$$$ to be made, bro. The FSDO has been, at the very least, complicit in the dealings with the 2 flight schools on the field. Two of the losses have been mid-airs, and one was a night time CFIT in the practice area (an area the CFI had been flying in since she was a Student Pilot, IIRC), to boot. Not sure if mid-airs hold any more significance, but... something to think about.

My dealings with that FSDO left me with the impression that unless a flight school is crashing into school buses full of blind orphans on a regular basis, the FSDO is unlikely to do anything meaningful until there's a high profile accident that forces them to get involved.

That said, the ASI's I dealt with there were all great people and very competent, but a combination of a massive workload, budget shennanigans (they had almost no travel budget for a while) and questionable management meant that there was a lot of stuff getting overlooked.

 

[rockman2343@aol.com]

Fortunately everyone made it out ok, There have been way to many fatals in the valley over the past 2 years. From what I hear Trans Pac may not be around for much longer.

 

[derg]

Nah, they'll be fine.

Hell, if my mechanic neighbor started a flight school that can crank out pilots, he'd probably have three or four contracts from Asia to do such.

 

[ScorpionStinger]

I think Asian gov't agency's like CAAC appreciate the military style, disciplined flight academy's. Just their culture.

@Derg this neighbor mechanic of your, is he Asian? I ask because he'd probably make more money out there teaching future Asian mechanics. Or starting a Mechanic school. Less risky. Lower possibility of premature graying.

 

[Deleted member 27505]

DergNote: *sigh* — that tail looks altogether "too familiar". Luckily no one got hurt bad this time.


From: http://www.azfamily.com/news/Plane-crashes-at-Deer-Valley-Airport-243541231.html?

View attachment 26778

Gregor said local authorities reported that there were three people from TransPac Aviation Academy on board the plane. They said one person suffered a minor injury and the other two were not injured.

The good news is... they were ALL logging PIC.
Too soon?

 

[CoffeeIcePapers]

Scorpion, unless you're a prospective chinese airline, I'm not sure they care that much about your perception. The school had about 1 to 2 domestic students to every 100 international I'd guess. @skypilot6 - same president/CEO, Stephen Goddard. And yes, that was his PB midair comment.

If they keep killing off Chinamen, then they will go somewhere else.

 

[Deleted member 27505]

Four total losses in four years? Plus who knows how many other incidents? Even back when I was a CFI that would at the very least get you an extremely thorough and unpleasant visit from the FSDO...

My old school once logged 4 totaled hulls in 1 1/2 years. And it was NOT because the planes were broken. Quick, de rigueur visits from the Fizz, Doh!

 

[Deleted member 27505]

From what I remember when working there, they don't have insurance. If they crash, they fix em up and eat the cost. Good luck with this one.

Without of course speculating on the cause, I can say they have a very intense high pressure mentality there that the mission needs to be done at all costs... safely. But that "... safely". part is always kind of thrown in as an afterthought, and in my opinion not truly considered operationally. I can think of plenty of times I cancelled flights with no backlash, but several other occasions where I did receive a lot of pressure to go flying anyway. And the way they scheduled your day, doing it the way they wanted without cutting a single corner was damn near impossible. And they didn't like hearing that, there was always this idea that you could be fired at any time if management didn't like you. It didn't used to always be that way, but financially they've faced a lot more pressure lately which has meant several periods of CFIs having to work 6 days instead of 5. A few years back, things were different. From what I understand, they had a cap of high-300-something students, and they were able to push them through and get the students done and out back to China in sometimes 6 or 7 months, thus opening cap space for new students and thus a new large payment from the airline. Two things happened. One, the CAAC said the students need to be on property for a year from the time they first fly. That means suddenly the cap becomes a major issue, and your profitability goes down a lot, especially since Transpac provides housing to them. If you consider 7 months per student instead of a year (and because they didn't fly immediately, that means even longer than 12 months), that's a 50% cut to throughput. Secondly, the airlines renegotiated their contracts - if you don't have outside customers, you're very beholden to the demands of chinese airlines trying to negotiate with you. That meant further reductions in profitability. When the whole thing is run by an investor group trying to maximize profits, that leads to a lot of pressure, and I feel like it's hard to ignore as a latent factor leading to their increase in accidents lately. Anyway, just one man's soapbox opinion...

They need to learn from the master. There is an "Asian" (not gonna specifry, wourdn't be pludent) school in NorCal where, I'm convinced, the owner makes more money off of housing, "language instruction", "rice fees", and vending machines than he does from aircraft rental or CFI raping.

 

[ScorpionStinger]

I think the appropriate thread header would be *Emergency Landing* granted not as catchy as "Plane Crash".

#JustSaying
#Sully

Nobody say's Capt. Sully crashed a plane into the Hudson.... do they?

Crash is uncontrolled right?

What differentiates a "Plane Crash" from say Emergency Landing?

In the water, or on the ground with plane on fire, and fire department nearby to put the fire out before it engulfed entire aircraft. Is it still a crash?

 

[Deleted member 27505]

Something I learned from college. Public laziness, apathy, and ignorance is GOLD, even for a great company that suffered accidents prior to the internet. But in the age of Google, laziness, apathy, and ignorance is everything in terms of company survival. All it take is a Google search of the company for services and the results are damning. Simply due to the nature of the business (flight training) in a publicized industry (aviation). Google can do the brand more harm than a sensationalized, crazed feeding frenzy news media who reports it on T.V today, but the damaging documents stay online forever.

• Caused ValueJet to become AirTran which is now Southwest.

• Accelerated TWA into Bankruptcy now part of American Airline, which is now American Airline Group.

I understand this is only a flight school/academy. But how often is a flight school publicized for accidents?????? ATP for example search results in loads of advertisement (drowns out any negative publications). In this case, a research results is no bueno to the public (domestic). They could careless of the circumstances.

So how else can the damage to a brand be reversed beyond changing the name? Only other ideas i can think of is 1. Merger. 2. Split name for domestic and chinese. 3. Advertise domestically, flooding Google with Ads.

FTFY.

 

[derg]

I think Asian gov't agency's like CAAC appreciate the military style, disciplined flight academy's. Just their culture.

@Derg this neighbor mechanic of your, is he Asian? I ask because he'd probably make more money out there teaching future Asian mechanics. Or starting a Mechanic school. Less risky. Lower possibility of premature graying.

Nah, he's from Ohio and owns a large automobile maintenance facility near Deer Valley.

He's already grey. I live in a neighborhood where where the youngest people by decades.

#captainhouse

 

[Deleted member 27505]

I think Asian gov't agency's like CAAC appreciate the military style, disciplined flight academy's. Just their culture.

@Derg this neighbor mechanic of your, is he Asian? I ask because he'd probably make more money out there teaching future Asian mechanics. Or starting a Mechanic school. Less risky. Lower possibility of premature graying.

Don't confuse "disciplined" with "scheduled". BIG difference.

 

[ahw01]

I hate to see such accidents, but for the 20th busiest airport for operations in the US, and given the fleets combined must fly around 200,000 hours per year, accidents are to be expected. (1 fatal per 100,000 hours = 2 fatals will happen per year). That doesn't mean we have to like it or not take measures to minimise them, and I agree training overseas pilots intensively does increase risk, but we have to holistically understand it and manage it.

 

[crazyjaydawg]

I hate to see such accidents, but for the 20th busiest airport for operations in the US, and given the fleets combined must fly around 200,000 hours per year, accidents are to be expected. (1 fatal per 100,000 hours = 2 fatals will happen per year). That doesn't mean we have to like it or not take measures to minimise them, and I agree training overseas pilots intensively does increase risk, but we have to holistically understand it and manage it.

A couple years ago I know that TPac flew 135,000 block hours. The GA accident rate usually hovers very closely to 1:100,000. The FSDO was there every week while I was instructing and everyone takes these accidents seriously, but in all honesty the safety in terms of numbers is better than a lot of flight schools around the country. The FAA can't really do much if the school is doing everything right and their numbers are better than everyone else. Unfortunately stuff happens in the world of piston singles and the best we can do is learn from it and try to mitigate the causes to avoid the same things from happening to us.

In the mean time I'll take my two turbine engines, pressurized cabin with lavatory and two flight attendants any day of the week.