How not to do mountain flying

[CpnCrunch]

[GUMPS]

Can this get moved to the video section. This video is old..

[CpnCrunch]

Can this get moved to the video section. This video is old..

Yep, it may be old but I just came across it today and thought it was interesting. Lots of people apparently haven't got the message as people end up doing this every year. I posted it in the accidents section because it is an accident.

[Beefitarian]

A fatal one. Just so people who are not into rotten dot com are aware.

The end of the clip is probably the pilot's last words as he spins the plane into the trees.

[1000 HP]

I've never seen that one before. Chilling for sure. I could not stop watching it. You could sure hear that stall warning going off..

But the video is definitely appropriate. A good watch for the living. I fly across the mountains and several times have been tempted to "Drop Down for a visit" but never have yet. At least not lately. Many years ago (1986) I rented a Cherokee Warrior and flew into Kananaskis. I got into dead end valley with rising terrain. The valley floor ahead was bathed in sunlight and looked inviting. It was a tough job for a 200 hour pilot like me at the time to turn it around but I did. I guess I learned from that..

Many years later in Northern Quebec I flew commercially in the little mountains (they are fairly big and hard actually), but that was on the job. It's a little different when you are flying to a trap-line and picking up a wounded little old lady or dropping drums of heating oil off at a camp.

[Beefitarian]

True it's pretty tame but definitely erie. Sensitive crowd around here, probably best to alert them. I thought he was too close around 4:30. I'm pretty conservative. More so around tall terrain.

[GyvAir]

Forgive me if I'm asking the obvious, but did they simply fly into a valley too narrow to turn around in and too steep to outclimb?
Watching it, I get the impression that they are near the right side of the valley to start with before turning to the right and that turning left wouldn't have required an immediate climb.

[old_man]

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief ... 0670&key=1

Basically he reached the service ceiling of his plane. The whole time he was in a climb and probably didn't even knowing it leading to the assumption he still had some performance left. He didn't. This may have been caused by a false horizon illusion caused by looking at upslope terrain.

It mountain flying it is very important to keep a good scan of your instruments. Fly at accurate airspeed and altitude. Then by noticing how much power your are using and how fast the terrain 'appears' to be closing in on you you should then know what you are getting yourself into. Just don't set a arbitrary power setting and try to fly a visual height above mountainous terrain.

[Siddley Hawker]

Stupid question, could he have saved the bacon by doing a stall turn?

[old_man]

What's a 'stall turn'?

[CFR]

Stall Turn, is a hammerhead stall, an aerobatic maneuver. Basically you pull vertical until you nearly run out of airspeed (the actual speed is different for different aircraft) and then pivot the aircraft around its C of G by use of rudder until you are facing straight down again. You can reverse direction in a very small space if you have the speed to go vertical. He likely could not as he could not build enough airspeed to properly execute it. As well in a flat bottom winged aircraft unless you have practiced it a fair amount there is the possibility of simply falling over backwards if you do not maintain a correct up line.

I think turning downslope much sooner than he attempted was the correct exit maneuver. Once he knew he was going to crash, his best bet was to get the nose down and aim between trunks, crashing under control is always better then spinning in.

[GyvAir]

Thanks, old_man. I remember briefly watching that video years ago and wondering what it was that got them into trouble with no apparent warning.
I think by the time they turned, they were out of options... out of airspeed and altitude above terrain, therefore no room to recover from any fancy stalling maneuvers. Is a "stall turn" another name for one of the procedures described in this article?:

http://www.pilotfriend.com/safe/safety/canyon_turn.htm

(I see CFR already answered as I was writing)

[sky's the limit]

Not this again.

Guys, mountain flying is NOT about semi, or actual aerobatic manoeuvres done at the last moment (Usually a moment full of seriously eroded airspeed and altitude, or bad weather btw). It's about solid decision making within the context of your skill set - which for the VAST majority of pilots, is severely lacking in the mountain environment.

Please, look at this video and think about when the turn around decision SHOULD have been made, not fantasizing about last minute hero moves that the same 99% couldn't do with any precision on a clear day at 5000agl anyway. There are many threads about this subject here already, but once again, the state of mountain training in the FW world in Canada is horrendous as there just isn't any to speak of. Commercially there are so few guys and girls in the nitty gritty of it that they end up being trained in their companies by the people who know, and/or figuring it out themselves. It was a bit of both for me if FW, far better training in rotary, and then many, many, thousands of hours experience.

So again, PLEASE, do not look at this video through any other lens than the poor decision making one. To understand how this guy got here in the first place is the lesson here, not some potential aerial gymnastics to extricate himself well past the point of no-return.

stl

[CFR]

Thanks, old_man. I remember briefly watching that video years ago and wondering what it was that got them into trouble with no apparent warning.
I think by the time they turned, they were out of options... out of airspeed and altitude above terrain, therefore no room to recover from any fancy stalling maneuvers. Is a "stall turn" another name for one of the procedures described in this article?:

http://www.pilotfriend.com/safe/safety/canyon_turn.htm

(I see CFR already answered as I was writing)

I didn't see it in the articles, but I seem to remember when I was taught this many years ago, my instructor said to keep my feet on the floor, no rudder helped avoid the stall/spin. Does that make sense?

[sky's the limit]

my instructor said to keep my feet on the floor, no rudder helped avoid the stall/spin. Does that make sense?

I want to shoot myself right now. No. That makes ZERO SENSE. Please keep your limbs attached the controls at all times.

Please see above post.

[CFR]

my instructor said to keep my feet on the floor, no rudder helped avoid the stall/spin. Does that make sense?

I want to shoot myself right now. No. That makes ZERO SENSE. Please keep your limbs attached the controls at all times.

Please see above post.

Thanks for confirming what I suspected. Sorry to hear you are considering self injury over it.

[sky's the limit]

my instructor said to keep my feet on the floor, no rudder helped avoid the stall/spin. Does that make sense?

I want to shoot myself right now. No. That makes ZERO SENSE. Please keep your limbs attached the controls at all times.

Please see above post.

Thanks for confirming what I suspected. Sorry to hear you are considering self injury over it.

Haha... was talked out of it.

It just boggles my mind what some "Instructors" are telling people...!

[Beefitarian]

my instructor said to keep my feet on the floor, no rudder helped avoid the stall/spin. Does that make sense?

If you're close to stall and use aileron the plane might spin the opposite direction. That's part of why you use more rudder to keep straight in slow flight. Somewhere in the flight training forum there are a few really great discussions about that.

That may have even been what happened at the end of the video here.

Did the pilot try to pull up and turn right, attempting to fly away from the trees causing the plane to drop the left wing and spin into them?

[CpnCrunch]

my instructor said to keep my feet on the floor, no rudder helped avoid the stall/spin. Does that make sense?

I want to shoot myself right now. No. That makes ZERO SENSE. Please keep your limbs attached the controls at all times.

Please see above post.

I think you should just aim to keep the ball centred at all times, and that way you avoid spinning. But as STL says, he left it far too long before realizing that he needed to turn around.

I myself prefer to have my altitude before entering a valley, rather than climbing over rising ground.

[cloudrunner]

Basically he reached the service ceiling of his plane.

or perhaps a downdraft coming over that massive rock in front of him?