King Air at Gillam, MB

[corethatthermal]

The learning point is, how do you react when you discover your error?

Do you bypass a diversion airport in the hopes that you can make destination on fumes and not have to admit your error? (Low probability of success, but a desired outcome, common pilot choice)

Or do you divert, gas up, confess your error and take a delay as well as possible punishment? (High probability of success, but with consequences, uncommon pilot choice)

That pretty well sums it up! They likely flew over 20 miles of LANDABLE lake ice and dragged it in ( Instead of coming in high and circling so that they would have options ) only to finally do injustice to the A/C,,,, Comedy of errors I say! Perhaps someone can ask a few locals HOW good the lake ice was for landing. I bet if you touched down and left no imprint on the ice, it would be fine for landing!

[Illya Kuryakin]

The learning point is, how do you react when you discover your error?

Do you bypass a diversion airport in the hopes that you can make destination on fumes and not have to admit your error? (Low probability of success, but a desired outcome, common pilot choice)

Or do you divert, gas up, confess your error and take a delay as well as possible punishment? (High probability of success, but with consequences, uncommon pilot choice)

That pretty well sums it up! They likely flew over 20 miles of LANDABLE lake ice and dragged it in ( Instead of coming in high and circling so that they would have options ) only to finally do injustice to the A/C,,,, Comedy of errors I say! Perhaps someone can ask a few locals HOW good the lake ice was for landing. I bet if you touched down and left no imprint on the ice, it would be fine for landing!

A comedy of errors? Where exactly is the COMEDY here? Two pilots hopped into an aircraft with insufficient fuel to make the trip. Pretty basic here kids.....do we got gas?..and off they go, risking every life on board.....comedy of errors my ass. If you're one of the people in the back of this airplane....and you're reading this....call a lawyer. It's called criminal negligence. You could easily have died here.
Illya

[PT6A]

The learning point is, how do you react when you discover your error?

Do you bypass a diversion airport in the hopes that you can make destination on fumes and not have to admit your error? (Low probability of success, but a desired outcome, common pilot choice)

Or do you divert, gas up, confess your error and take a delay as well as possible punishment? (High probability of success, but with consequences, uncommon pilot choice)

That pretty well sums it up! They likely flew over 20 miles of LANDABLE lake ice and dragged it in ( Instead of coming in high and circling so that they would have options ) only to finally do injustice to the A/C,,,, Comedy of errors I say! Perhaps someone can ask a few locals HOW good the lake ice was for landing. I bet if you touched down and left no imprint on the ice, it would be fine for landing!

A comedy of errors? Where exactly is the COMEDY here? Two pilots hopped into an aircraft with insufficient fuel to make the trip. Pretty basic here kids.....do we got gas?..and off they go, risking every life on board.....comedy of errors my ass. If you're one of the people in the back of this airplane....and you're reading this....call a lawyer. It's called criminal negligence. You could easily have died here.
Illya

To top it off, two pilots jumped in and it was two Captains flying together.

[C.W.E.]

To top it off, two pilots jumped in and it was two Captains flying together.

A couple more candidates for T.C. to hire.

[mmm..bacon]

Maybe they both thought that it was the f/o’s job to check the fuel?

[Daniel Cooper]

To top it off, two pilots jumped in and it was two Captains flying together.

The second hole in the cheese.

[C.W.E.]

The second hole in the cheese.

How many holes does it require to be incompetent enough to finally wreck an airplane?

They didn't teach me about cheese when I learned to fly.

[digits_]

2 captains? Hmmm.... Looks like we are about to find out how severe this pilot shortage is....

[Crsaviation]

That pretty well sums it up! They likely flew over 20 miles of LANDABLE lake ice and dragged it in ( Instead of coming in high and circling so that they would have options ) only to finally do injustice to the A/C,,,, Comedy of errors I say! Perhaps someone can ask a few locals HOW good the lake ice was for landing. I bet if you touched down and left no imprint on the ice, it would be fine for landing!

A comedy of errors? Where exactly is the COMEDY here? Two pilots hopped into an aircraft with insufficient fuel to make the trip. Pretty basic here kids.....do we got gas?..and off they go, risking every life on board.....comedy of errors my ass. If you're one of the people in the back of this airplane....and you're reading this....call a lawyer. It's called criminal negligence. You could easily have died here.
Illya

To top it off, two pilots jumped in and it was two Captains flying together.

How do you know who the crew is? I can't find any disclosures on the crew

[shimmydampner]

It's all well and good to sit here with a smug sense of self satisfaction about correctly predicting what was a likely and obvious cause of this accident but I for one still have questions. Regardless of .'s pooh-poohing of the Swiss cheese idea, and Ilya's insistence that you don't need an accident like this to learn that departing with insufficient fuel is a very bad idea (fair point), I think there could potentially be other more subtle but still important lessons to be learned. For instance, if it's true it was two captains flying together, was it normal for FOs to deal with refueling and complacency made neither of them think about it? Did just blindly regurgitating checklists by rote cause them to not actually look at what they were meant to be checking when the inevitable bit about fuel quantity came along? Were the fuel indicators working properly? Did the fuel guy screw something up? Was there some sort of weird company culture at play here? At what point in the flight did they realize they were in trouble? Was it top of climb during fuel checks or were they too complacent to do those and didn't realize until much later? When they did realize, did they not have other options or did they do some math and think they'd be able to just squeeze it in and save the embarrassment? Could they have diverted? Could they have tried long range cruise? Could they have gone to an extreme of shutting one down in cruise to save fuel if there were no diversion options?
This accident is more interesting to me beyond just the simple reason there was a dual flameout. That part is elementary. I'm much more curious to know how two presumably qualified pilots ended up in this situation. I don't get any satisfaction out of their public flagellation by the crowd here, and I don't believe that writing it off as simply a case of "look how stupid these guys were" is the best we can do as professional aviators. Surely we're capable of more imaginative and nuanced thinking. Like the saying goes: learn from the mistakes of others as you'll not live long enough to make them all yourself. Dumbing this down to just one mistake of "departed with insufficient fuel" doesn't allow for real examination of the likely many little mistakes before and after the wheels came up that ended with a 200 balled up on a runway in northern Manitoba.

[C.W.E.]

Well maybe I do not think in the Swiss cheese mode of accident prevention but I do believe in never flying an airplane ahead of where I want it to go.

That is accomplished by decision making based on my and the airplanes limitations.

Win lose or draw for me it has worked for the past sixty six years and over thirty thousand hours of flying accident and regulatory violations free.

If that is a

smug sense of self satisfaction

so be it.

[corethatthermal]

This accident is more interesting to me beyond just the simple reason there was a dual flameout.

I think we ALL would love to read a small book that would answer all your questions!

Will TC provide us with all we request? Not a chance!

Will the pilots offer all the information to a journalist for the sake of all of us? Not a chance!

Will they lawyer up?

The bits and pieces will come through word of mouth, filtered by biases and fear of exposure.

In the absence of transparency and an industry that is heading towards a legalistic 3rd world environment, please forgive us little pee-ons for being a little absent in the altruism department!

Just look at what i did ( throwing out possible landing options ) and I get thoroughly flamed for it!

[digits_]

It's all well and good to sit here with a smug sense of self satisfaction about correctly predicting what was a likely and obvious cause of this accident but I for one still have questions. Regardless of .'s pooh-poohing of the Swiss cheese idea, and Ilya's insistence that you don't need an accident like this to learn that departing with insufficient fuel is a very bad idea (fair point), I think there could potentially be other more subtle but still important lessons to be learned. For instance, if it's true it was two captains flying together, was it normal for FOs to deal with refueling and complacency made neither of them think about it? Did just blindly regurgitating checklists by rote cause them to not actually look at what they were meant to be checking when the inevitable bit about fuel quantity came along? Were the fuel indicators working properly? Did the fuel guy screw something up? Was there some sort of weird company culture at play here? At what point in the flight did they realize they were in trouble? Was it top of climb during fuel checks or were they too complacent to do those and didn't realize until much later? When they did realize, did they not have other options or did they do some math and think they'd be able to just squeeze it in and save the embarrassment? Could they have diverted? Could they have tried long range cruise? Could they have gone to an extreme of shutting one down in cruise to save fuel if there were no diversion options?
This accident is more interesting to me beyond just the simple reason there was a dual flameout. That part is elementary. I'm much more curious to know how two presumably qualified pilots ended up in this situation. I don't get any satisfaction out of their public flagellation by the crowd here, and I don't believe that writing it off as simply a case of "look how stupid these guys were" is the best we can do as professional aviators. Surely we're capable of more imaginative and nuanced thinking. Like the saying goes: learn from the mistakes of others as you'll not live long enough to make them all yourself. Dumbing this down to just one mistake of "departed with insufficient fuel" doesn't allow for real examination of the likely many little mistakes before and after the wheels came up that ended with a 200 balled up on a runway in northern Manitoba.

Agreed!

[C.W.E.]

Will they lawyer up?

There is a reasonable chance they may have to.

I know for sure if me or any of my family were a passenger on that airplane they would need a lawyer.

[Illya Kuryakin]

It's all well and good to sit here with a smug sense of self satisfaction about correctly predicting what was a likely and obvious cause of this accident but I for one still have questions. Regardless of .'s pooh-poohing of the Swiss cheese idea, and Ilya's insistence that you don't need an accident like this to learn that departing with insufficient fuel is a very bad idea (fair point), I think there could potentially be other more subtle but still important lessons to be learned. For instance, if it's true it was two captains flying together, was it normal for FOs to deal with refueling and complacency made neither of them think about it? Did just blindly regurgitating checklists by rote cause them to not actually look at what they were meant to be checking when the inevitable bit about fuel quantity came along? Were the fuel indicators working properly? Did the fuel guy screw something up? Was there some sort of weird company culture at play here? At what point in the flight did they realize they were in trouble? Was it top of climb during fuel checks or were they too complacent to do those and didn't realize until much later? When they did realize, did they not have other options or did they do some math and think they'd be able to just squeeze it in and save the embarrassment? Could they have diverted? Could they have tried long range cruise? Could they have gone to an extreme of shutting one down in cruise to save fuel if there were no diversion options?
This accident is more interesting to me beyond just the simple reason there was a dual flameout. That part is elementary. I'm much more curious to know how two presumably qualified pilots ended up in this situation. I don't get any satisfaction out of their public flagellation by the crowd here, and I don't believe that writing it off as simply a case of "look how stupid these guys were" is the best we can do as professional aviators. Surely we're capable of more imaginative and nuanced thinking. Like the saying goes: learn from the mistakes of others as you'll not live long enough to make them all yourself. Dumbing this down to just one mistake of "departed with insufficient fuel" doesn't allow for real examination of the likely many little mistakes before and after the wheels came up that ended with a 200 balled up on a runway in northern Manitoba.

Wow. I'm impressed. Look at all the writing old Shimmy did here. My my. How positively eloquent. But, when the dog and pony show comes to a close, you have two (Captains?) pilots who threw the saddle on the horse and rode off into the sunset before the horse was fed. These guys (Swiss cheese or not) need to be unemployed, and probably sued.
Shimmy....just between us girls.....professional pilots don't run out of gas. At least, not because they didn't check.
Illya.

[C.W.E.]

Dumbing this down to just one mistake of "departed with insufficient fuel" doesn't allow for real examination of the likely many little mistakes before and after the wheels came up that ended with a 200 balled up on a runway in northern Manitoba.

Maybe they could hold public safety sessions to answer questions and better educate us on just what all those

many little mistakes

were and how they missed identifying them before they wrecked their airplane.

That would in my opinion be the professional pilot approach to this issue.

[Illya Kuryakin]

Will they lawyer up?

There is a reasonable chance they may have to.

I know for sure if me or any of my family were a passenger on that airplane they would need a lawyer.

ABSOLUTELY.
If a family member of mine was on board.....I'd OWN that airline.
Illya

[C.W.E.]

Illya K, is this Swiss cheese thing the new age escape language for these screw ups or is it just a touchy feely way to evade responsibility?

[Illya Kuryakin]

Illya K, is this Swiss cheese thing the new age escape language for these screw ups or is it just a touchy feely way to evade responsibility?

Yes my fine feline friend. It's a politically correct term used to hide behind when you can't face the simple inescapable fact that you POOCHED IT !
Illya

[Illya Kuryakin]

The interesting part here is while many accidents are the result of a chain of events, some are just screw ups. In my book, leaving the gear up for landing, or leaving your fuel back at base are YOUR screw ups. It's that simple. No cloak and dagger. No skullduggery. YOU pooched it! What I'm having a hard time with, is the number of you making excuses for these guys. Would YOU want these guys flying members of YOUR family around? Not I.
Illya