ECA says:

ON SAIL PLANES…COOOL

FRAGaLOT says:

Holey shit!

smartalix says:

THink about it – it is very very hard for sailplanes to fly in formation as they are non-powered and therefore much more at the mercy of the winds. Great piloting. As for the stuntman, I’d love to see one of you guys walk along a pair of 2 x 10 boards without falling off.

smartalix says:

Bobbo,

Well for one thing, you can’t just goose the engine to speed up to keep place. Do you know how a sailplane accelerates? Do you think it involves flying in a straight line?

smartalix says:

I thought I did. If you want to nitpick, you are obviouisly just being a killjoy. This isn’t an easy trick, period. Anything beyoind that is bitter-grapes armchair quarterbacking.

You surprise me, Bobbo. Such pettiness is beneath you.

bobbo, everything new is old says:

I just watched the video again. What impresses me is the piloting in that after the wing walker transfers the lead pilot then flies inverted directly over No 2 sail plane. That is very unusual and not something often done or very easy==hanging upside down in your seat straps.

Also, many pilots have an automatic reaction to pull back on the stick if anything goes wrong–a bad situation if either of the pilots did such a thing when canopy to canopy 5 feet apart.

I can see the “utility” of being able to transfer a passenger from one sailplane to another. I don’t see anything to recommend flying upside down on top of another airplane.

I must be a killjoy.

bobbo, everything new is old says:

SmartAlix—quit making me look like a dick. but I digress: I disagree.

“Doing the right thing under pressure is one of the definitions of ……..BEING PROPERLY TRAINED.”

I doubt the people you don’t trust to buy cigarettes have years of training and annual reviews to assure that they can fetch cigarettes.

“Hero Worship” is not a good thing. You make them up if they aren’t around and it gets transfered to our political servants all too often as the Republitards so often demonstate here.

No. what do I expect of a pilot as his airplane is crashing? Performing the pre-crash checklist just as the crew was doing.

Its really the converse of the old saying to the effect of a hero is someone who is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Its the same reason fire fighters, policemen, EMT’s, Rescue Workers, etc are not heroes. They are trained professionals doing the job they were trained for.

I respect the competency and am proud of the country/organization that enforces the rules so that the competency is reliably there. Otherwise, you get the bank failures we see today. Were was the training, oversight, testing against standards?

All gone down the rathole.

yankinwaoz says:

Hmmmm…. I wasn’t aware the glider wings were strong enough to hold a human.

bobbo, int'l pastry chef and Red Baron says:

Well Bubba–I was wonderin’ and hopin’ you might respond. Without any interest in making false argument for arguments sake – – – I think you are WRONG.

Training is by far the biggest determinant of outcome. Why do you think the military trains its pilots for a year before going to their selected aircraft?

Irrelevant as you suggest? I think not.

but of more interest—why such an overpowering desire for hero worship, or in your case, perhaps the desire to think yourself so special? You aren’t. I aren’t. We aren’t. Just shaved apes doing the best we can.

False idolatry of a pernicious kind. You have the training but don’t even recognize its benefits/effects. You prefer to think you are self made.

So silly these shaved apes.

MORE==so, what is this “Invention on the Spot” when you are going thru and applying a CHECKLIST for Christ’s sake?

And let me ask you this===how many high time commercial pilots do you think would have crashed the plane in the Sullenberger scenario? I Wagged it at .1%.

As a man of science, your logic skills are faulty. No one said training could save every accident==what was said was that pilots perform according to their training, not individual heroics. Silly to conflate/screw the pooch the way you have. Must be emotionally based.

Whats exactly wrong with knowing/understanding/relishing the fact that training makes you better at what you train for??? Kinda the whole point in becoming an expert don’t you think?

Put a real hero with no a/c experience in the Sullenberger situation and what would happen? The a/c would crash. Where is the invention on the spot??????

Silly on so many levels, revealing too. Why are you so silly Bubba?

bobbo, int'l pastry chef and Red Baron says:

Hey Bubba—I’m just yanking your chain as hard as I can===because you pulled it out.

Just watched my recording of tonights “Nightline” about the volcano ash over England. Interview of the pilot 20 years ago who lost all 4 engines while overflying the volcano in Indonesia. The reporter voices over that the pilot “Heroically got a few of the engines started just before crashing.” 30 seconds later the pilot says: “We were just following the checklists trying to get the engines started, and two of them did.” ((Paraphrasing.))

I saw Sully interviewed by Katie Couric. She kept trying to put the hero label on him and he kept demurring. “Did you pray?” No–I kept following the checklists. “Were you worried about your life and those of your passengers?” No–I kept following the checklists. “Are you a hero?” No–I just kept following the checklists. (sic)

I’ve said why I am pulling your chain in several different ways hoping some iteration might make sense to you: we are all of the same mold. Nothing heroic. Nothing individualistic. No LIEBERTARIAN self made men rising above our fellow men. Hubris and delusion to “think” that way. Creates tyrants and bad social policy.

I’m not “griping.” Just presenting my view of things for those that wish to see a point of view I think is more insightful than the pop culture regurgitated by all too many. No Tony Robbins for me.

If I want to juggle balls in the air, I practice. If I want to learn to fly an airplane, I practice. If I want to learn to think insightfully/inductively, I practice.

Try it. When’s the last time you had a “new” idea? I desire derogatory remarks regarding my own performance when they are backuped with analysis==whether that analysis is ultimately right or wrong. Such learning opportunities only make me better.

Deserved? Heh, heh. Given the issues and arguments and examples provided that you fail to address, that would be a yes.

I have faith you can even be better than you already are, but you gotta stretch.

xxxxx

MORE: You tellingly say: “It bears saying again. I don’t care how much training you’ve had, if you can’t invent new techniques and procedures and utilize that training in new and different different ways on the spot when you are in trouble, you’re not going to make it.” /// Total BS. “I was occupired with running the pre-crash/engine restart checklist.” What is this mystical leap you imagine??? How many different ways can you restart an engine?????

Yes, the training is essential. /// Ok–“why” is it essential?? How many heroic pilots came up with something new to save the day? What new insight did you have to “rescue” your aircraft???? Did you publish those insights so the rest of us could benefit from your learning experience????

But there are a lot of pilots with a lot of training that bite the big one every year. /// There are??? BS. I grant there are a lot of doctors and lawyers who can’t make a level 180 degree turn to return to takeoff point, but they are not highly trained. Want to stick with apples???

And I’ve known a few with thousands of hours of experience that just couldn’t cut it. They’re taking a dirt nap right now. /// A few??? I’ll give you that even though I assume the examples you are thinking of are mostly irrelevant. What was it they couldn’t “cut?”

Fascinating couple of new series on tv these days about “Seconds Before Disaster” and “Air Emergency” and so forth. Not a single show yet about a pilot that couldn’t cut it. Maybe ONE approached the issue==that low time male/female crew about 6-8 months ago that iced up and crashed their commuter plane while they were gabbing about whatever. Key Finding=====LACK OF TRAINING.

So–you have a group of pilots and you want the safest service possible. Do you put your money into training and testing the pilots or do you put it into personality testing for the more imaginative creative heroic more patriotic types?

Hmmmmmm????

bobbo, int'l pastry chef and Red Baron says:

Yea, saving the a/c however it is done is an invigorating and memorable experience. In every one I have experienced, I evaluated it to see how to avoid it in the future. Not possible with a broken fuel pump, but what about that “20 feet of runway left” situation? something to be avoided as unsafe and to be planned against, or something to ignore in the “heroic” frame of mind??

So, because you survived, you say ignore the manual/the training and just land the a/c even if only 20 feet of runway will remain?

Well, If I had been in that situation, I might well conclude I fucked up and only by the will of the gods did I survive. Next time go around and land safely like the manual says.

Regarding contaminated fuel, that is “supposed to be” observable on the ground check but its easy to miss or not be indicative. I say it was your years of experience and training that when the check list did not work you played with the fuel mixture=====just like any competent high time pilot would do.

Sorry, you are no hero. Just a competent pilot doing what he has been trained to do.

A compliment in every way I can think of—just no apotheosis.

bobbo, int'l pastry chef and Red Baron says:

Thanks Bubba – as you surmise, I don’t have much/any time in twin pistons. I did google the 310 enough to read it is supposed to be able to climb out on a single engine. No access to a take-off/climb out performance chart, but 105 degrees is not unusual. You already had altitude and speed so I assumed from what little I read that a return to the airport for emergency landing “should be” possible. Sounds like you were terribly overloaded then? I’d have to know more—still, with the limited info you provide, 20 feet from failure make the return to airport sound like at minimum “an even bet” not subject to a 20 foot margin of error.

The implication of what you post is that the ops manual/(proverbial checklist) should say to never load your aircraft the way you did. So–like those high time pilots you mention who bought it===sounds like you almost did too because you DID NOT follow the checklist?

One error experts do make is thinking they can finesse a situation==and twins crashing after losing one engine is common because they are flown where a single engine shouldn’t go==especially being overloaded.

If we both take a step back==there is nothing mystical about flying, nothing magical about the “will” of the pilot involved==its all physics and engineering (maintenance), something you should professionally agree with. Interesting your hobby attitudes overtake your professional ones. Will heroics focus your telescope on some galaxy or only knowing the coordinates? Which controls in what you do for a living–imagination and luck, or preparation, training, and knowledge?

It would be “fun” to really deconstruct what happened that day but I don’t have the knowledge base in type of craft and you don’t sound like you have the objectivity (sorry!).

Yes, people who get insulted when their authority is challenged, when they are called names by people of no consequence, often are not good pilots. Too much ego. Physics and engineering don’t care about ego. Quite a jolt for those who can and do will themselves against the interests of others.

If you care, based on your superior knowledge of facts, circumstances, and aircraft==should Cessna provide more info in their performance charts, are their charts wrong, or did you do something just a little bit wrong before you did everything heroically thereafter????

MORE==since you make some point of it, I chose not to respond to your underlined material as I thought it was mostly irrelevant. But lets turn a nitpickers eye to it now.

“YOU try going around in a fully loaded 310 on a 105 degree day when you can barely get to 500 ft. in a downtown area with tall buildings and mills, then let me know how it works out. /// Well, you tell me==whats the limiting factor here? The a/c performance?? My google says the Cessna will climb out on a single engine. You post as if you cannot maintain altitude. You could be wrong and negligent, not providing all the info needed, or got some fact wrong? Were you fully loaded, or over loaded? Do the performance charts show a limitation on weight for your TO conditions? If the a/c was incapable of “going around” (sic–not accurate in an initial take-off scenario) why did you choose to take off anyway? Are you really claiming that at 500 AGL that terrain avoidance was a “real” concern?” ((It could happen at a few airports.))

As you know, and I know you know, the real expertise of an experienced pilot takes place before he gets into the cockpit. Why did you takeoff to begin with?

So–“something” is missing including easily something in my own knowledge base. I understand you may not want to take the time to go over all the details and ground school issues that are relevant.

Amusing, the more I admit to what I don’t know, the more evident it is that heroics played NO ROLE in your experience, that expertise based on experience and application of training actuality did==and with 20 feet remaining, luck too.

Good pilots don’t rely on luck, don’t take comfort from luck. They eliminate luck from the equation. Have you modified your flight planning based on this experience or are you subject to it again? If you did learn from this experience, will you need the same kind and amount of luck if the same situation happened again, or do you have a “checklist” of what to do next time?

See how “high time experienced competent” pilots should become nearly UNIFORM in their reactions to situations. Not heroes requiring luck to succeed. Merely the competent application of knowledge and training.

But – isn’t flying fun?

So–two very different issues unnecessarily being entwined==defining training, defining heroics. I think I defined training fairly well although you avoid its importance while doing not much more than evidencing it.

BubbaRay says:

Bobbo, the manual states the plane will climb, albeit at a very slow rate (<60 fpm) fully loaded at a lower density altitude than what I experienced on that day. The plane was loaded with full tanks, no luggage, and only 2 souls on board, well within weight and CG limits. The density altitude was higher than the manual states the plane will climb out on the critical engine. The manual also doesn’t take into account traffic and tall buildings in the way. Turn and bank burns altitude or airspeed as you should well know, so dodging buildings is a tricky affair. The only safe choice was an immediate landing, which I accurately judged could be safely implemented, rather than a lengthy go-around behind slower traffic or dodging structures trying to make it to Carswell Air Force Base. Also, when one engine goes, you’re not real confident about the other one lasting long enough to do much of anything, especially if it’s contaminated fuel that caused the problem.

I executed the proper maneuver with a little room to spare and avoided damaging anything.

Skydivers says:

Very cool… video