This was back in 1996. A recently released National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report puts a modern twist on pilots showing off. It turns out we don’t need Mom, Dad, or a Tomcat jet fighter to bend our safety sense. We don’t even have to do anything that feels extreme.

It was May 17, 2021. The weather in Michigan was good. Summer felt close. A 23-year-old pilot departed the Clare Municipal Airport (48D) in a Cessna 182, flying low and slow for two hours. He had a passion for aviation, already logging more than 600 hours aloft. The week before he had obtained his commercial multiengine rating, taking another step closer to his goal of becoming an airline pilot. He landed at the Romeo State Airport (D98) in Ray Center, purchased fuel, and departed from there at noon. An hour later, cruising at 500 feet, suddenly, with no warning and no radio call, the Cessna crashed into a dirt field.

He was flying pipeline patrol. This is a big business. There are loads of commercial pilots in high-wing planes flying above oil and gas pipelines. They are looking for leaks (apparently you can see changes in the vegetation around the leak) and right-of-way encroachments (such as construction activity, trees, or repetitive riding of ATVs causing erosion). Sometimes they fly with an observer, sometimes solo. On this day, the accident pilot was alone in his employer’s 182.

The 1965 Cessna 182H with a 230 hp engine had been flying for the pipeline patrol company for years. NTSB postaccident examination of the wreckage “did not reveal any evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure that would have prevented normal operation of the airplane.” Likewise, autopsy results showed no medical issues for the deceased pilot. And the accident wasn’t tied to a metrological event. Ten miles away, the official observation was 74 degrees, scattered clouds at 5,500 feet, visibility 10 miles, wind 210 degrees at 5 knots. But the reason for the crash was obvious. It was even marked on the sectional chart.

Close to the field with the main wreckage was a 1,049-foot-high radio tower. The left wing and left cabin door were found by the tower’s base. The NTSB determined the probable cause for the accident to be “the pilot’s failure to maintain adequate visual lookout to ensure clearance from the radio tower and its guy wires.” Radar data shows the Cessna maintaining about 450 to 500 feet above ground level tracking the pipeline northwest. He had been maintaining the normal position, to the right of the pipeline. That’s standard operating procedure for airplanes and helicopters following roads or pipelines. Then he turned a little left, coming out of position and crossing over the pipeline. He wasn’t where he should have been. This was the side with the radio tower.

He saw it too late. The Cessna suddenly pitched up, climbing at 1,500 fpm. But it still collided with a tower support guy wire. The left wing separated from the fuselage at the wing root, falling almost straight down. The rest of the plane impacted in a field, a third of a mile from the tower.

That’s the “how” of the plane crash. But why did the pilot come off track? Why didn’t he see the tower earlier?

After the accident, the NTSB found that “it is likely the pilot was distracted while he used his mobile device in the minutes before the accident and did not maintain an adequate visual lookout.” Managing distractions is an airmanship task, requiring taking charge of our attention. And, down low, attention must be outside the cockpit. The mobile device the NTSB referenced was a smartphone, and this pilot wasn’t just texting or snapping photos, he had an audience. He was posting videos on Snapchat.

• READ MORE: Handheld Avionics

For those who don’t know, Snapchat is a social media messaging, photo, and video sharing platform popular with younger generations. Its defining feature is immediacy. Content is only available for a short time before becoming inaccessible, and after 24 hours it’s automatically erased. Several people were watching the pilot live on Snapchat. They were following his progress on the app’s map. Shortly before the accident, a video reportedly depicted the terrain ahead of the airplane’s position, including wind turbines and cornfields.

By the time the NTSB investigator in charge found out about the Snapchats, the platform had already deleted the footage. The agency was able to obtain screenshots of the Snapchat map, showing the pilot’s position as a jaunty, red biplane, and interviewed two people who had been watching online.

The last post was likely sent 35 seconds before the accident. He was 1.5 miles southeast of the tower, heading right toward it. If you’re playing with your phone, you’re not flying the plane. The NTSB concluded that “contributing to the accident was the pilot’s unnecessary use of his mobile device during the flight, which diminished his attention/monitoring of the airplane’s flight path.” He was too busy showing off.

Airline pilots impose a “sterile cockpit” below 10,000 feet, where phones are put away, and they don’t even talk about anything other than the flight. My glider club bans GoPros in the cockpit for the first month of the season. Professional YouTube pilots have assistants and set up multiple cameras that need no attention in flight.

Hollywood pilots extensively plan film shots and use professional aerial videographers.

After that F-14 crash, an NTSB investigator told me: “The most dangerous thing for an airplane is a camera.” Maybe pilots trying to be social media influencers should ponder this question—who is their camera really influencing? 

The post After the Accident: It’s Not Worth Showing Off appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

The accident occurred on a cloudy, cold February afternoon in 2021. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released its final report, and it contains some clues to the pilot’s thinking. There are no surprising mechanical or meteorological findings. No unexpected revelations. Instead, it was as it initially appeared—a normally functioning airplane flown below the published approach minimums out of the clouds and into the ground.

Cessna 441s are workhorses—this one powered by two 715 hp turboprop engines—and they are popular with charter operators. This 1978 model Conquest II had two pilots in the cockpit. One was a professional 18,000-hour airline transport pilot (ATP), the other a 770-hour pilot with a commercial certificate who had recently retired. It’s unknown who was in what seat, or who was flying at the time of the accident. What we do know is the more experienced pilot had been thinking about the instrument approach at their home airport for hours.

At 9:24 a.m., the ATP-rated pilot called Leidos Flight Service for a weather briefing. The plan was to fly from Belvidere, Tennessee, to Bowman Field Airport (KLOU) in Louisville, Kentucky, on to Thomasville Regional Airport (KTVI) and then return. It was “severe clear” at the destination, but closer to home a cold front was passing overhead. Right away the briefer talked about possible icing, as conditions were conducive for ice to form on wings and propellers in a cloud layer aloft. The briefer said, “The only trials and tribulations you have this morning [are] going to be punching through that layer as quickly as possible, minimizing the time in the clouds.” Asked if he had anti-ice or deice equipment on the Cessna, the pilot replied, “Yep, uh-huh. But I don’t like to use it.” The briefer calculated the icing layer was about 3,000 feet thick, and the pilot wouldn’t be in it long if he climbed at a good rate. The forecast for hat afternoon was for improving weather.

When heading back to home base, the pilots found the weather had not cleared. When they started the approach, the ceiling was 800 feet overcast, visibility 9 sm, with the ground temperature right at freezing, light rime icing conditions in the clouds, and tops of the clouds at about 4,000 feet. But for a Cessna 441, that’s well above the minimums published on the RNAV GPS RWY 36 straight-in approach of 400 feet and 1¼ sm. The final approach track has several altitudes, crossing the fixes at YOKUS at 4,000 feet, and WETSO at 3,000 feet, and with the LNAV/VNAV minimum altitude of 1,367 feet. The runway elevation is 979 feet.

The Cessna correctly crossed YOKUS at 4,000 feet and started a descent. It did not stop as prescribed at 3,000 feet but continued gently descending. At 2,300 feet, the radar data ends, at 2,100 the ADS-B data ends. The airplane hit trees close to the WETSO intersection at an elevation of 1,880 feet. It rolled inverted, hit the ground, and caught fire.

There was no distress call, and no medical or other unusual factors. The NTSB concluded the probable cause to be “the pilot’s failure to follow the published instrument approach procedure by prematurely descending the airplane below the final approach fix altitude to fly under the low ceiling conditions, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain.” It added, “the pilot likely attempted to fly the airplane under the weather to visually acquire the runway.” This might not be as rare as we’d like to think. While staying at published altitudes is a basic safety rule for instrument flying, a 2020 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University peer-reviewed research study found compliance approaching the runway to be remarkably poor.

In fact, 96.4 percent of the 114 pilots descended below their stated personal minimums on a simulated ILS approach by an average of 303 feet. And 81.5 percent descended below the published federal minimums (by an average of 43 feet). The researchers noted, “These values are highly concerning.” The authors concluded that “pilots are knowingly or unknowingly accepting additional risk during a very critical phase of flight… A simulated (i.e., cash bonus) manipulation designed to mimic external pressures had no effect on pilots’ lowest altitude flown.”

The accident pilot had a possible motivation to descend below instrument altitudes. It’s not discussed by the NTSB, but this incident mirrors a fatal airline accident from December 1, 1993, at what is now called Range Regional Airport (KHIB) in Hibbing, Minnesota. A 19-seat twin-turboprop was on the localizer back course approach to Runway 13. Like other similar aircraft, the Jetstream 3100 was susceptible to tailplane icing. So a technique had evolved among line pilots to minimize their exposure to icing conditions. The NTSB report said the pilot’s “probable intention was to descend at higher than normal rates of speed to minimize the time in icing conditions.”

The Jetstream crew started the approach a little high, above the clouds, and descended at 2,200 feet per minute once on the final course. This high rate of descent inside the final approach fix was against written company procedures, partly because, when leveling out, it leaves little time or space for correcting errors. The airplane quickly descended below the minimum altitude and crashed into woods 4 miles from the airport—at about the same relative runway position as the Cessna 441.

In both accidents, the pilots were trying to manage the threat of airframe icing in the clouds with anti-ice or deice equipment they didn’t completely trust. They were trying to fly safely. And while minimizing time spent in cold, wet clouds is a valid general strategy, rapid descents inside the final approach fix is a dangerous practice. In both cases, no actual airframe icing was observed by investigators.

In trying to avoid icing, the pilots ignored basic instrument flying rules. Good pilots work hard to minimize threats, but sometimes risk management can be like holding too tight to a balloon. Push hard enough in one place, and it blows out somewhere else.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine. 

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