NOTAM - A notice to present day airmen (and women) from an old and timid aviator.

I am an eternal student pilot and here are two of the main things I have learned: (1) no one is exempt from the laws of physics and (2) attitude is everything. Ernie Gann believed that the outcome in flying was largely controlled by "fate."  I only agree with that partially; we also quite often make our own luck.

I have been a pilot for many years (still a student though).  I started flying as a teen in the mid to late 1960s, and gained the first of my civil licenses in 1975.  Although I do not fly anymore,  I have something to say that is relevant.  If you fly, this is for you.  I survived my mistakes (often through dumb-luck) and I learned how to keep from bending aluminum and shearing wings off on trees. I never landed gear-up, mostly because I learned from others that it can be difficult to taxi back to the ramp once you do that…

From the beginning, back in the late 60s, what causes aircraft crashes has been of interest to me because foremost, I saw that many crashes happen for the same reasons over and over again.  There isn’t much new under the sun when it comes to human nature and physics, although we do still get surprised occasionally.  I love to fly and while I understand the risks, meeting my death doing so was never in my plans.  In examining the circumstances and errors of those air men and women who have augered flying machines into the ground, or rocketed straightforwardly into the cumulo-granite, we might avoid the same fate. 

Others agree with this basic approach; this is why the FAA and the AOPA sponsor Aviation Safety Seminars; this is why we pilots practice our flying skills repetitively.  Back in the good old days, I used to make it a matter of religiosity to read the MASS report first page to last, every single month (a summary of NTSB crash investigations). I’ve still got ‘em around here somewhere, along with all my old textbooks on flight physiology, of which I was a devoted student for about thirty years.

We drill, we fly simulators where we can set up emergency scenarios and aircraft failures of almost unlimited varieties, and learn how to extricate ourselves safely from the deep, dark pit of air-crash smoking-hole despair while there is still blue sky below.  We do this (study and drill) so our responses are correctly ingrained when mere seconds count. The worst advice ever given to a pilot whose “engine was on fire, hydraulic gone, gear won’t budge,” was "just wing it.”  While we make jokes about that, and about what a “good landing” is, these jokes are left behind when it’s wheels-up time because bouncing is not standard operating procedure for landings.  Aviating is serious business and should be undertaken only by those who can think, not only quickly but correctly.

From a time shortly after the Wrights first flew from a North Carolina beach, flight into adverse weather has been killing us.  Neophytes and experten alike have suffered this untimely demise on regular intervals through the years. It results from hubris, it results from get-there-itis, it results from ignorance. It results from thinking that because you have a “hot” and capable aircraft, you are somehow exempt (or more exempt) than the “other” guy.  Sometimes we think because of our immense load of piloting skill that we will somehow recognize impending doom and through those superior skills, think and act on the fly, in time, and survive.  This is the pilot the government’s flying manuals many years ago used to call “Ace Manymotors.”  Ace was the bad example.  Ace was an oblivious idiot.  Ace was, once or twice, or three times, me.

Uh..  no go?

Now that I’ve set this up for you, let me get to the point.  When it comes to weather, I learned early on what “go” and “no-go” was, sometimes almost by mistake.  Light general-aviation aircraft are what I am talking about. High-performance aircraft operate in a different world and they blast through yours in a hurry, if you're a GA pilot.  They have their own set of problems.  But if you are flying something with limited ceiling, in which group I include anything under FL250, you live and breathe as an aviator in an often stormy, dangerous world.  You need to learn what go and no-go is, visually. Those who do, survive.

I was lucky enough to survive my encounters with Jupiter Pluvius and his bastard off-spring (and in some instances, luck was all it was).  But you, if you are young or green, might never have seen what “no-go” is.  Go flying with, and listen to, the more conservative greybeards in your hangar (but not the crazy ones). Don’t be ashamed not to risk it.  If you are not sure, stay on the ground if you can’t give bad weather or poor visibility a wide-berth.  Don't just rely on the meteorologists either - they can get it terminally wrong.  Most of them work in basements with no windows and they haven't looked out there for hours.  It's true, I wouldn't lie to you.  Do you know when the last totally accurate weather forecast was?  It was when God told Noah...  Really, get all the information you can, but be sure to use your own eyes; there's no substitute.  A pilot has always been taught that he or she is responsible to collect all the available information concerning any proposed flight - and nothing is more important.

A couple of times, here in the intermountain west, I looked ahead to clouds and thunderstorm activity and thought, “I can make it through that, look, there’s light at the end of that tunnel," only to soil myself from "excitement" shortly thereafter -  when said storm threatened (or succeeded) to engulf me while I was scud-running.

In December 2013, a “good” pilot flew his beautiful Beech single into a rocky tree-covered ridge, after flying into and losing his engine (and his lift) in “known icing conditions.”  I’m not being facetious about his flying skills; I didn’t know him, whether he was a cautious man or a risk-taker and I don't know what was in his mind.  I only know that he was reported by others as a competent aviator.  Still, I wonder who didn’t teach him that storms like he was facing in the northern Rockies that day are no-go?

This pilot had just overflown a primitive back country airstrip, when, with rising terrain in front of him he reportedly picked up a load of ice. He not only had structural ice, but induction ice as well. The aircraft had a mechanism to clear the induction ice, but the pilot may not have followed procedures to accomplish that (that mechanism was determined to have been functional by the NTSB crash investigators).  It's also possible that the ice was so heavy that it overwhelmed the aircraft's capability to clear it.

He was apparently attempting to get back to that field he had just overflown. If you take a look at the approach to that field [Yellow Pine, ID] in clear weather, it is in the bottom of a narrow valley, almost a gulch, with high ridges on both sides. There are "YouTube" videos of the twisting approach to it; take a look at them. This is a tricky approach even in VFR conditions.  It was impossible in bad weather, with a load of ice and no power. He flew into a situation where he had zero chance.  Unfortunately, by the time he realized that desperate fact it was too late. 

From where I sit...

From the safety of my armchair, I can tell you that looking right in front of him and knowing the reported weather, he had to know this was a risky day for flying in a light single, IFR or not, even a high-performance one, and yet he took four others of his family with him.  His judgment that morning was definitely flawed.  At the risk of being preachy, what is it about nasty weather that we don't "get?"  Bad weather can kill you no matter who you are, and it will.  He deliberately flew into it, he quite predictably suffered the worst possible set of circumstances and failures, and he ended up without any options.  We never think it can happen to us, but it does happen on a regular basis.  It happens so frequently that some almost consider it normal.  So until you know what go or no-go is definitively, don’t guess. The plains, the forests and the mountain-sides are liberally scattered with the wreckage of those who did. Some of them were my friends.  

I wish "rest in peace" to the victims of this mishap.  Even more, I wish peace and comfort for the wide circle of friends and family these fine people left behind.  But these deaths were preventable and I find that excruciatingly sad.

[The NTSB's report on this incident cited continued flight into known icing conditions as the primary cause of the crash.]