Recreational Pilot Permit

[fleet16b]

NTSB Identification: NYC99MA178
Date:16 July 1999
Location: Vinyard Haven, MA
Aircraft:Piper PA-32R-301 (Saratoga), registration: N9253N

John F. Kennedy, Jr. obtained his private pilot certificate in April 1998. He received a "high performance airplane" sign-off in his Cessna 182 in June 1998 and a "complex airplane" sign-off in the accident airplane (Piper Saratoga) in May 1999. Although he completed the FAA's written airplane instrument examination about four months before the accident, he did not possess an instrument rating. His estimated total flight experience, excluding simulator training, was about 310 hours, of which 55 hours were at night. The pilot's estimated flight time in the accident airplane was about 36 hours, of which 9.4 hours were at night. Approximately three hours of that flight time was without a certified flight instructor on board, and about 0.8 hour of that time was flown at night, which included a night landing.

In the 15 months before the accident, Kennedy had flown about 35 flight legs either to or from the Essex County/Teterboro, New Jersey, area and the Martha's Vineyard/Hyannis, Massachusetts, area. Over 17 of these legs were without a flight instructor on board, including at least five at night. The pilot's last known flight in the accident airplane without a CFI on board was several weeks before the accident, on May 28, 1999.




Prior to the accident flight, he obtained weather forecasts for a cross-country flight from Caldwell, NJ to Hyannis, MA with a stop in Martha's Vinyard, MA. The forecast indicated visual flight rules (VFR) conditions with clear skies and visibilities that varied between four to 10 miles along his intended route. The pilot then departed at about 8:38 p.m. local time, about 25 minutes after sunset and about 10 minutes before the end of civil twilight.




According to radar data, about 34 miles west of Martha's Vineyard Airport, while crossing a 30-mile stretch of water to its destination, the airplane began a descent that varied between 400 to 800 feet per minute (fpm). About 7 miles from the approaching shore, the airplane began a right turn. The airplane stopped its descent at 2,200 feet, then climbed back to 2,600 feet and entered a left turn. While in the left turn, the airplane began another descent that reached about 900 fpm. While still in the descent, the airplane entered a right turn. During this turn, the airplane's rate of descent, eventually exceeded 4,700 fpm, and the airplane struck the water in a nose-down attitude. Airports along the coast reported visibilities between 5 and 8 miles. Other pilots flying similar routes on the night of the accident reported no visual horizon while flying over the water because of haze.

The NTSB determined that the probable causes of this accident were the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident were haze, and the dark night.

[Shiny Side Up]

The relevance of the JFK incident here is somewhat limited because he'd had lots of training. It shows that at least in some cases, lots of training still isn't enough and doesn't guarantee competency - a point with which we all agree.

The problem being that quality of the training is often what's questionable here. A good portion of PPLs just have wasted time for instrument flying. A favoured tactic is to "knock it off" on the way to the practice area. This means the student never gets a full hour of continuous hood time to open their eyes. All their time will be in .3 and .5 bits, and I know one instructor who used to pencil whip the instrument time. Instrument practice is often hideously boring for the instructor, but the student is often very busy. Most students will get progressively worse the longer they are under the hood or in cloud, but that endurance gets longer the more they do. My personal favorite tactic is I just have them fly in a square, all turns one way, do it for about 20 minutes, a turn every five minutes. Then reverse direction. Some students will handle it (though you can usually still see them fighting not to continue to turn in the wrong direction) suddenly the practice becomes harder for most.

Another thing that helps get the point across is doing a fam demo of instrument flying, give them the hood, and just have them fly, zero precursor. I think in all the time I've been instructing, only one person didn't adhere to the 178 seconds. Some of them were startlingly quicker to lose control, every one of them were in a spiral between 30 seconds and 5 minutes. I think only one person kept it right side up, and they might have had prior experience.

[photofly]

This means the student never gets a full hour of continuous hood time to open their eyes. All their time will be in .3 and .5 bits, and I know one instructor who used to pencil whip the instrument time. Instrument practice is often hideously boring for the instructor, but the student is often very busy. Most students will get progressively worse the longer they are under the hood or in cloud, but that endurance gets longer the more they do. My personal favorite tactic is I just have them fly in a square, all turns one way, do it for about 20 minutes, a turn every five minutes. Then reverse direction. Some students will handle it (though you can usually still see them fighting not to continue to turn in the wrong direction) suddenly the practice becomes harder for most.

Given that the training for a PPL is towards the goal of being able to (accidentally) fly into a cloud, turn around, and fly out again, is there a goal-related benefit to 40 minutes of flying in squares? If our goal is as I suggest, repeated practicing the transition to instruments by having more short instrument flying segments sounds appropriate to me.

Shouldn't we leave the hour-long IMC flights for the instrument rating training?

[Shiny Side Up]

The goal is to make them know that instrument flying isn't a walk in the park. If they believe its easy, or something that's not important to spend time on, they're more likely to go put themselves into IMC, at least in my experience. You're right, the main goal is to make sure they can turn around and get out, but I think its a good idea to make it so they will turn around to get out. Negative re-inforcement if you will.

But that's just my opinion, based upon what I've seen people do over the years. It does depend somewhat on the student, and I believe in tailoring training to what their goals are. There are some fools who are going to end up in clouds. I'd rather they be prepared than dead.

Personally in the now two decades of flying, I've never ended up in cloud and didn't know it was coming, and the and entering it was a deliberate decision. I'm not sure why many others have a hard time, but I have my suspicions.

edit: One should also say that in typical instrument practice with students, the transition is an artificial one, the student knows its coming, there's the whole taking control while they don their vision limiting device, and its generally considered bad form to hand the student control with the airplane not in straight and level. So more transitions of this type I don't feel are beneficial, given that its the transition that's often the killer. That lesson is in the Unusual attitudes where you will hand them control when its not level, and sometimes you have them close their eyes before taking control to be suitably surprised by what the instruments show.

second edit: further thought, there's also plenty to do with instruments that one can make five full solid productive hours out of it.

[photofly]

There's a tension between showing someone how difficult something is so they don't try it without further training and showing them how to do it so they're tempted to try, isn't there?

[Shiny Side Up]

One of the tough things about instructing. I've always been of two minds when it comes to the instrument training, I feel it's worthwhile, but I hate the idea of giving someone just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

In the end the main thing I try to encourage with the process is that it is deserving of dedicated practice, as well as recurrent practice.

[HiFlyChick]

And we've been talking about 5 hrs instrument training....

There was an accident around here that was similar to JFK jr's - guy and his brother had a fatal CFIT at night. He had the required night rating, so the req'd 10 hrs, but the airfield was a little one in the middle of nowhere and it was an overcast night. There would've been absolutely no external horizon, and they just drifted it down into the trees on take-off.

In conditions like that, you're essentially the same as if you were IMC, but I can't think of any way for TC to put any reasonable sort of restrictions on night flying that would prevent accidents like that. Reasonable being the operative word....

I've been thinking about this scenario a fair bit because I have a fairly newly licensed friend who I was talking with about the night rating. He is very hesitant because he is aware of the black hole risk and doesn't want to be a statistic. I told him that he should peck away at his IFR (he has his own aircraft) and then he'd most likely be safe at night, although not necessarily in IMC without frequent practice.

[New_PIC]

The thought that so many of you put into threads like this is really appreciated. Like HiFlyChick's friend, I'm fairly recently licensed, with a night rating, my own plane now, and a similar desire to avoid becoming a statistic. I went PPL over RPP partially because I first started lessons long before the recreational permit was an option and continued with it when I resumed training for an number of reasons including hopes of flying to the US. Whether the extra training provides wisdom or over-confidence is going to depend on the individual pilots and instructors.

[fleet16b]

Getting back to main topic of this thread, I spoke with an FAA Inspector and he stated that there would be no issue with an RPP Pilot flying into the USA as long as the RPP was a T/C issued document and the Rec Pilot held a medical equivalent to the LSPP which is a valid drivers license.
He further stated that he could see no reason to find a Canadian RPP Pilot in violation of any FAA rules.
That being said I do not have a written statement.
I also spoke with a Transport Canada Inspector and he has advised me to submit a query thru the CAIRS system which I have now done
Will be interesting to see what the response is.

The FAA Inspector was great and stated he also would look into the matter further

[AirFrame]

Sounds like another case of the local FSDO not knowing (or looking) at what the head office directives are on the matter. Reminds me of the Owner-Maintenance aircraft issue (one nearby FSDO has issued "permits" for them so they can fly into the US, in violation of the FAA head office directives).

[fleet16b]

Sounds like another case of the local FSDO not knowing (or looking) at what the head office directives are on the matter. Reminds me of the Owner-Maintenance aircraft issue (one nearby FSDO has issued "permits" for them so they can fly into the US, in violation of the FAA head office directives).

I agree this could be the case.
One problem is that the Light Sport Category has now thrown a wrench into everything
The rules are now outdated as the medical requirements have changed. The RPP medical requirements are more somewhat more strict than the LSP medical. This cancels out the original FAA concerns.
The legislation needs to be adjusted for this just as it is being done for the US PPL which is also going to use the valid drivers license as the medical document. (thus far TC is pushing back on doing this in Canada)

This is very similar to the Ultralight situation. An Ultralight Instructor can fly an Ultralight into the US but a regular UP pilot cannot. However many do anyway and have never been violated etc as it is very rare to encounter a ramp inspection( a few TC people I have spoken with state that there is not enough manpower available to go around doing ramp checks)
One thing being overlooked is Insurance , I am sure that you will not have coverage if an incident happens while you are flying illegally in another country