Flying Responsibly

This is one of the most difficult topics I have covered, but I feel it needs to be covered. In May of 2011 (I believe it was on the 19th) our sport saw the third fatal trike accident in Hawaii in 12 months.  All three operators were new comers to the islands, and while the accidents are still under investigation, aircraft failure is not believed to be the direct cause of any of the crashes at this point.  Aircraft failures are rarely the cause of accidents.  Usually the weakest link in the safety chain is the pilot.

Accident Causes

Accidents by their very nature are unforeseen -- at least by the people involved in them.  But they are not always unforeseen by outside observers.  Often times the pilot may be the last one to recognize an accident in the making.  Let's look at the common causes of accidents and ask ourself if unforeseen automatically means unpreventable.

Engine failure

It is an axiom in aviation that there are two catagories of pilots: those who have had an engine failure and those who will have an engine failure.  I guess I fall into the later group though I have had to make two precautionary landings (one in a Cessna 172 and one in an AirBorne XT-912) due to falling oil pressure.  In both cases had I not recognized the problem and shut the engines down right away they would have failed in 1-2 minutes anyway.  In both cases I was high enough and close enough to be able to glide to a runway, so neither I nor the aircraft were damaged.  Altitude was the difference between a notable event and an accident.

There are many causes for engine failure but the most common is fuel starvation.  Often times this is brought about by the pilot either forgetting to put enough fuel in before beginning his trip or mismanaging the fuel while in flight.  In trikes we don't have to "manage" our fuel in flight since we only have one tank (airplanes usually have two or more).  We just need to be sure we have enough.  So in most cases, engine failure resulting in an "accident" falls into the preventable category.  When I see a pilot hop into his aircraft without first doing a thorough preflight, which includes checking his fuel, I foresee an "accident" in this pilot's future.

Weather

Weather is another leading cause of accidents for trikes.  We are flying light aircraft, so we must consider weather and wind producing weather very carefully.  No matter how good you are the greater the wind the greater the risk associated with the flight.  I used to fly in anything that was 15 knots or less -- the limits of my aircraft capabilities and my skills.  But one day I took off at 15 and when I came back an hour later it was 23 knots.  Fortunately, it was right down the runway (I was drawing heavily on my luck bucket that day).  But I learned something that day.  If I fly at the edge of either my capabilities or that of my aircraft, I have no margin of safety left if conditions worsen unexpectedly.  Now I don't fly unless the wind is 10 knots or less.  That means the wind can increase up to 15 knots before I begin to move into danger territory. Your limits may be higher or lower, but be sure you know them and build in a safety margin.

Maneuvering Low to the Ground

Another common cause for aircraft accidents including trikes is flying/maneuvering too close to the ground.  This is dangerous for a number of reasons.  First, if you stall too close to the ground you may not be able to recover.  Often times when pilots are this low their attention is on the ground (many times on the audience they are trying to impress) rather than on their flying.  When I was learning to fly radio control airplanes my instructor told me that unless I was willing to lose the airplane I should always fly at least one mistake high.  I think this is good advice for pilots too.

The second reason flying low is dangerous is because you are liable to run into something.  I had a customer a number of years ago tell me that unless he had grass in his landing gear he was flying too high.  One day he picked up more than grass; he picked up a barbed-wire fence that was only four feet off the ground.  Thankfully he has fully recovered but his accident was both foreseeable and preventable. While how low is to low may subjective, and the definition may differ among pilots, I think we would all agree that anyone who hits something anchored to the ground was flying too low.  All these accidents fall into the preventable catagory.

Finally, and this gets back to being at least one mistake high, altitude is your friend.  If you run into a problem and you are a thousand feet high, you have a lot more options than you have if your altitude is 25 feet.  I try to fly high enough to always be within gliding distance of an emergency field.  But if I cannot practically fly high enough to glide to an emergency landing, then I at least fly high enough to be able to use my BRS.  I know that there are trike pilots out there that think this is rediculous.  Three of these pilots used to fly in Hawaii -- all three are now dead.

Accident Summary

In all of these accident cause catagories the accidents are either preventable or survivable provided the pilot acknowledges these causes and takes steps to mitigate the risk.  Another aviation axiom is concerns aviation's three most useless things: the runway behind you, the altitude above you, and the fuel you left behind. This axiom developed over time in response to preventable accidents. And this leads me to pilot responsibility.

Pilot Responsibilty

If we pilots are the weak link in the safety chain don't we owe it to ourselves, our passengers, and our sport to thoughtfully evaluate how we fly, particularly when someone is in the back seat, or we are flying near or over people?  For those of us who are instructors we need to understand that our students look to us as role models.  If we are flying too aggressively don't you think our students will strive to fly as aggressively as we do?  They think that is the type of flying good pilots do.

We pilots often times think more highly of ourselves than we ought too.  We see a skilled pilot and we equate that to "good."  But is skilled and good the same thing?  This last accident in Hawaii was foreseen.  The pilot had posted a video of his flying just weeks earlier, and when I saw it I knew he was not going to die of old age.  Several of us were even talking about it at Sun 'N Fun and dismayed at what we knew was coming, while many others praised his daring.  There is at least one other dare-devil trike pilot actively posting overly aggressive videos on the internet; he is a fatality waiting to happen (hopefully he will be by himself) and many of our peers rave about his prowess, stoking his ego, and enabling ever more dangerous behavior.  Where will it end.  Unfortunately, it will probably end in the accident many of us foresee; because, the pilot in question has been warned repeatedly but is not interested in changing his behavior (it has actually gotten worse).

As pilots we are ambassadors for our sport and we hold the lives of our passengers in our hands.  This is particularly true of those of us who are instructors.  We must discipline ourselves to fly responsibly.  Flying is and always has been about balancing risks.  Trike flying is thrilling and part of that thrill, at some level, is probably a result of the risk involved.  But there are things we can do to minimize the risk and tip the odds in our favor.  Some examples include:

• Check the weather.  Our aircraft are light and we need to be more attuned to the winds than heavier aircraft.
• Check your aircraft.  Do a thorough pre-flight.  Last fall a friend of mine was going to take me up in his powered-parachute.  It was a new chute powered by a Rotax 912.  He was doing a thorough pre-flight but being a pilot who is intimately familiar with the 912 there were a few things I wanted to check for myself.  One of them was the oil filter.  His came off in my hand!  I know him and I've seen him do his pre-flights, so I know he would have found it too.  But it was a reality check for both of us.  Had that filter come off in flight we would have had an emergency on our hands.
• Know your limitations in the aircraft you are flying. 
  • If you go to the airport and it doesn't feel right don't fly. I make my living giving flight instruction.  If I don't fly I don't get paid.  But part of my job is helping students become better decision makers.  They need to see me making no-go decisions as well as go decisions.  The lessons surrounding the no-go decisions may even be more important, in terms of safety, than the go lessons.
  • Set wind limits.  I know the maximum amount of wind I can handle (learned when I was stupid but still lucky) and have now subtracted 5 mph from the extreme limits as my new wind limits (I have different ones for morning and evening) and if the winds exceed those limits I don't fly -- period.
  • Set ceiling and visibility limits.  I have limits for both (I have one set for when I am remaining at the airport to do touch & goes and another set of limits for cross country flying).  If the ceiling or visibility fall below these limits I stay on the ground -- no exceptions.
• Resist the temptation to show off when you have an audience.  For many of us this is when we are most likely to get into trouble.  This is pride and it manifests itself in many ways.  Some examples I've seen or done myself (to my shame):
  • Flying when it is too windy because you don't want people to think you are a wimp.  "Other guys are flying; why aren't you?"  I hear this at airshows a lot.  It took me a while to build up the courage and the maturity to say "I'm sorry but for me the conditions are not safe."  Just because others are flying doesn't make it safe for me.  The other pilots may be better than I am.  Or maybe their luck hasn't run out yet.
  • Pushing our aircraft to their limits to put on a good show.  As responsible pilots we should stay away from the edges of the performance envelop; especially, if we are responsible for another human being.  I find that my intro flight customers wear bigger smiles when safely entertained than they do when they have been scared to death.
  • Flying too low.  We can't always be one mistake high or high enough to fly to an emergency field but don't make that risky altitude your normal altitude.  Flights with passengers should cause us to evaluate all of our altitude decisions in light of our passenger's safety.

Trikes are a wonderful way to satisfy the flying itch.  They are inherently safe and forgiving.  But you can only push them so far.  Do us all a favor and fly them responsibly. But if you don't then maybe you will live long enough to see the Feds shut us down.  Or if you are scooping from the bottom of your over-used luck bucket, maybe you won't.