The AOPA Air Safety Foundation released its annual Nall Report during the final weeks of 2006. For those not familiar with this work, it is a review and analysis of general aviation (GA) safety for the preceding year. The 2006 Nall Report therefore covers the general aviation accidents for the year 2005.
The trend is not good. Both the GA accident rate and the (GA) fatal accident rate are each up about 10% from the previous year. The most dramatic increase in fatal accidents was in "maneuvering flight". This type of accident accounted for 29.2% of the GA fatal accidents in 2004 and increased to a whopping 39.5% in 2005. That means that more than 1 out of every 3 fatal GA accidents resulted from something going tragically wrong during "maneuvering flight".
So what is this phenomenon known as "maneuvering flight"? Is it buzzing the neighbors house or the girls on the beach? Yes, but it's also making that early turn after takeoff because a jet is rolling for takeoff right behind our Cessna 172. It's also every turn from base to final. It's practicing stalls for a rating or recurrent training as well.
Some of these maneuvering accidents resulted from pilots making poor decisions about low flying for various reasons. Others involved instructional flights where flying near the edge of the envelope is often necessary. Arguably, all had to involve loss of situational awareness to some degree.
So 2007 will undoubtedly be a year of hand-wringing and numerous initiatives from AOPA, FAA, and the aviation media to fix the problem. Yep, I'll be on my soapbox too.
But let's be cautious so that the cure isn't worse than the disease. I've been in the training business long enough to have seen some disastrous cures. In the 1960s light GA multiengine airplanes such as the Piper Apache and Cessna 310 were newly popular and a few accidents involving engine failures on takeoff had occurred. The FAA mandated that checkride for a multiengine rating would include an engine failure on the runway at near takeoff speed. Instructors naturally started training for the checkride by doing all sorts of creative things such as turning off the fuel to an engine at the start of the takeoff run. This would, hopefully, cause a surprise engine failure just prior to rotation. Sometimes things didn't work out as planned. Sometimes the student (and/or the instructor) reacted inappropriately and an accident resulted. The result of the fix to the problem actually caused many more accidents than would have occurred as a result of actual engine failures during this critical phase of flight. Eventually the FAA realized the error of their ways and completely changed course. They now frown on any actual engine shutdowns in multiengine airplanes below 5000 feet AGL.
Here we go again. The January 2007 issue of one of the most prolific aviation magazines has a column where an experienced pilot and flight instructor recommends a practice that is potentially dangerous. He inherently recommends taking a couple of rear seat passengers plus baggage and going out for some stall practice. He details a flight in which he took four people plus baggage in a Cessna 172. He states that the airplane was at maximum allowable gross weight and that the CG was at the aft limit. He also states that an airplane is not as docile when it is heavy and the CG is at the aft limit. He adds that it has different stall characteristics and that it is easier to stall. Dangerous, very, very dangerous!
If the airplane has different stall characteristics isn't it more likely that the stall or its recovery might not be handled exactly right? I think so. What is a foreseeable outcome of a botched stall or recovery? I think it might be a spin. If the airplane has different stall characteristics guess what it will do in a spin? It will be much harder to recover from a spin with an aft CG. In fact, recovery might be impossible if the spin goes flat.
In fairness to the author, he didn't specifically recommend that every pilot go out and practice stalls with the airplane loaded this way. But, he did detail the fact that he had done it as a means of demonstrating stall characteristics to a less experienced instructor. He also didn't say that practicing stalls this way could be dangerous. If I had read that same article as a new flight instructor thirty-four years ago, I would have been out the next day taking aft passengers along on training flights so that my students could have better stall training.
Practicing stalls is engaging in "maneuvering flight". As a group, we pilots need to work toward decreasing the number of accidents that are a result of maneuvering flight. But let's be very careful that the recommended fixes that will inevitably come forth over the next year actually make sense and don't make a bad situation even worse.
Please keep an eye on my web site for my approaches to dealing with maneuvering flight and other kinds of accidents.
Please give me your thoughts by sending me an email at gene@genebenson.com or by clicking here for a secure comment/inquiry form.
Copyright © 2007 Gene Benson
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