Page 16 - June19 Twin and Turbine

So, it’s no surprise when most of us learned to fly, including me in the early 1980s, aerobatics was not a part of our private or commercial pilot cur- riculum. It’s only a recent development that Certified Flight Instructors (CFI’s) are required to have a modicum of spin training. I’m sure I wasn’t unusual that in the back of my mind I wondered, “What if?” What if I get into a spin? What if I encounter wake turbulence? Will I know what to do?
Here are some sad and disturbing statistics:
• Loss of control – mainly preceded by stalls – accounts for the largest number of fatal accidents across the board in all facets of aviation;
• In the last 10 years, LOC-I has ac- counted for almost half of all fatalities in commercial aviation and general aviation (GA) worldwide;
• Between 2008 and 2016, there were about 1,000 fatal LOC-I acci- dents in GA;
• In2017,therewere86generalaviation LOC-I accidents with 146 fatalities;
• 40percentofcorporateandbusiness flying accidents over the last decade were due to LOC-I;
• Most LOC-I accidents are fatal. Loss of control is usually preceded by an “upset.” If an upset isn’t counteracted with proper control inputs, the airplane is likely to stall and can lead to LOC-I. The FAA defines an “airplane upset” as an airplane in-flight unintentionally exceed- ing the parameters normally experienced in line operations or training:
• Pitch attitude greater than 25 de- grees nose up;
• Pitchattitudegreaterthan10degrees nose down;
• Bankanglegreaterthan45degrees;
• Within the above parameters, but fly- ing at airspeeds inappropriate for the
conditions.
The leading causes of airplane “up-
sets” are environmental (e.g., weather related, turbulence), pilot induced (e.g., distraction) and system anomalies (e.g., instrument failure).
Can we blame the pilots of two of the truly tragic (and ultimately unnecessary) LOC-I accidents over the past few years – the high-profile Air France 447 and the Colgan Air crashes? I don’t believe so. How can you blame pilots who haven’t received enough training in the basics of Angle of Attack (AOA), deep stalls and the concept of unloading a wing to recover from a stall? After all, they flew with government-issued pilot certificates.
So, what is happening? Are airplanes just falling out of the sky? In my mind, loss of control conjures a pilot in a per- fectly good airplane f lying along and all of a sudden the airplane tumbles out
of control – which I would add, a cer- tified airplane cannot do. Under FAA Airplane Certifications FAR’s 23 and FAR 25, misbehaved airplanes are prohibited. Airplanes must have a “downward pitch- ing motion when stalled.”
A stall – what is it? Why does an air- plane crash when it’s subjected to this mysterious “force?” A: It is simply a loss of lift when the wing exceeds its criti- cal angle of attack. A: Pilots have been doing it since the Wright Brothers. A: In a certified airplane, the stalled wing and its effects have been explored quite thoroughly. A. The recovery for a stalled wing is reduce the angle of attack and the wing will fly again. We do this by placing the elevator to the neutral or forward position. In other words, “Stop pulling back on the yoke.”
To the inexperienced pilot, the nose dropping in a stall – subjecting the pilot to half-G or even 0 G – causes a “startle” response, which is to pull back on the yoke to get the nose back up. Because this is often followed by a large aileron input to counter any roll, the airplane transitions from an “upset” to a “stall- spin-crash-burn.”
Let’s talk about the startle factor; it’s a universal human response. We have been walking around the planet earth a long time at 1 G. To a human, any sensa- tion that is less than 1G equals falling. We don’t like to fall. This response is so ingrained in humans that infants just moments old startle when subjected to less than 1 G. If the baby is held in the palm of the hand and gently dropped down, it will startle. It has a medical name – the Moro reflex. This is some- thing a pilot must experience and be sen- sitized to while training in the cockpit. It cannot be experienced in a simulator.
What is the difference between Upset Prevention and Recovery Training (UPRT) and Aerobatic Training? While both types of training will train a pilot to recover from unexpected situations, the differences are in the focus, effi- ciency and length of training. Aerobatic training focuses on completing aerobatic maneuvers with precision and putting maneuvers together into a sequence uti- lizing energy management. Aerobatic training can last a lifetime. You can learn a lot in five or 10 hours, but trust me,
There are unintended consequences in everything we do. Flying was meant to be safer with spin resistant airplanes, autopilots, thorough instrument training, and later, glass cockpits. But alas, pilots are still getting into trouble and Loss of Control In-Flight (LOC-I) is the number one cause of fatalities in aviation today.
14 • TWIN & TURBINE / June 2019