Usually the cause of such accident is the one that looks obvious from the very beginning rather than some wild theories on PIC incapacitation, instruments malfunctioning, or autopilot failure. And what’s pretty obvious is that he took the wrong turn. Planned initially for take off from 23 which will be followed by right turn, he changed the runway to 05 but kept the right turn in his mind instead of changing to left turn after take off. I don’t know whether the investigation will be able to confirm this but I seriously doubt they’ll find any other reason. Regarding the legality of take off itself, I believe we know required conditions (horizontal visibility 1500m) and investigation will probably be able to confirm whether it was met or no.
I guess if VIS was >1500m, a take off at LOIH and subsequently flying IFR in IMC would have been legal according to EU NCO / SERA regulations?!
Is that not mixing up 1500m for VFR (i.e. a non IR holder) with the fact that an IR holder is entitled to IR privileges all the way from the surface?
If you state that 1500m vis is required then you need to also specify the point at which is it no longer required.
One cannot have both at the same time.
Can you depart/arrive on uncontrolled straight-in in Austria, specifically LOIH
Most likely; AFAIK only one country I know of has that bizzare circling requirement which is/was highly ambiguous anyway, and applies to arrivals, not departures.
if an IFR return using own IFR procedure is legal
Not relevant; there is no requirement for returning to the departure airport.
Would the G500TXI imply some sort of synthetic vision would have been available? And certainly, the GTN’s have terrain warnings. More and more confusing.
Yes – very strange. I think the most common explanation for that sort of thing is that the option wasn’t installed, or the pilot didn’t know how to use it.
ok.
i think discussion as to wether takeoff was possibly legal and clearing up ifr/instrument aspects
brought some very claryfying arguments and facts.
there are some strong indications that visiblity was below 1500m, though.
look at the picture from the tower of the plane taking off.
then again:
how did a seemingly smooth and regular ascent to the east southeast happen
when we could exclude a vfr flown turn by the pilot or an effort of an emergency return
in practically zero visibiliy?!
(see my last comment above)
the area of impact is very steep. a ground warning would have come oviously too late.
….and on my behalf: please have a little patience with an almost too old flying fart who
would like to get some grip on this tragic event.
I think the most common explanation for that sort of thing is that the option wasn’t installed, or the pilot didn’t know how to use it.
When you look at moving map on takeoff it’s completely red then becomes yellow and finally (hopefully) green in direction of your flight. So it’s not very informative at the beginning of the flight and anyhow in IMC hand flying one is more concentrated on AI, ASI and altitude. Being sure about previously planned turn and heading, not checking terrain (because of not expecting any issue on imagined path), focused on primary instruments, I can easily imagine CFIT.
or an effort of an emergency return in practically zero visibiliy?!
In private ops there is no requirement for this
a ground warning would have come oviously too late.
IME, AFAIK, the Garmin boxes project current track for 2 minutes and warn TERRAIN AHEAD on that basis. 2 mins is a very long time. Today I flew past this at ~900ft and got the warning from my Aera 660 – which I would argue was spurious. But basically if the feature is working at all, then you would definitely get a warning on the accident flight, by the time you were on a heading of about 140. But all sorts of things are possible – including that the installation didn’t have audio terrain warnings connected up. Perhaps @wigglyamp might know whether this is even possible (without an obvious loss of other functionality).
if the trigger was an emergency. why was he steadily climbing?
in an emergency he wouldnever have turned east toward the mountains.
a loss of orientation flying vfr is also very improbable.
i knew the pilot well. it was his home terrain and living room.
he would not confuse 05 and 23 doing the wrong turn to the right.
Peter wrote:
IME, AFAIK, the Garmin boxes project current track for 2 minutes and warn TERRAIN AHEAD on that basis. 2 mins is a very long time. Today I flew past this at ~900ft and got the warning from my Aera 660 – which I would argue was spurious. But basically if the feature is working at all, then you would definitely get a warning on the accident flight, by the time you were on a heading of about 140. But all sorts of things are possible – including that the installation didn’t have audio terrain warnings connected up. Perhaps @wigglyamp might know whether this is even possible (without an obvious loss of other functionality).
Or the warning was not intuitive, first reaction to terrain warning is stop descending and start a climb, that is not an option as the climb is already established, it might even cause some confusion while your trying to figure out if you are indeed climbing as expected if you already have a very certain idea in your head that your supposed to turn onto such and such, because you just left a very certain place. i.e. the runway. Its my experience when someone is totally confused, it takes a while to recover from that state.
if you may learn something from this thread than it is that you have to be VERY careful with what you are so sure of that you accept it as fact!
I do not mean to scold you, but it has happened to me a number of times, so I know what I am talking about. It ends up being frustrating as well as embarrassing to figure out that what you “knew” was so damn wrong.
The only fact you can be sure of right now is that you knew the pilot and that he crashed. Everything else is assumtion.
Many pilots I knew well who died in the end did stuff which I would NEVER, not in my wildest dreams, thought them subjectable to. Neither did they. But my lesson learnt from way too many such cases are that what appears right often is not and what appears inconceivable may well be the place to look at.
And by now I’ve known way too many really experienced people to kill themselves in totally crazy accidents that in my book, neither experiece, nor being a local, nor being a close friend you respect counts at all in such a case. In fact, if you knew the guy, you should consider taking a big distance to this accident as you can never ever be objective.
by all means hang around and let us know if you get real information.
the hypothesis that he did a right hand turn on autopilot/ifr
Possible, but most likely only in ROL mode. If he programmed some waypoints (NAV mode) the AP would have followed those (and not hit the terrain unless the route was totally wrong too). In HDG mode, more possible, although you would need to rotate the heading bug to the right without looking at what heading you are setting.
He had about 1-2 mins to spot the mistake.
because earlier programmed for 23 and by some error not corrected
@cpt_om_sky you sometimes see crew set the heading bug on the initial departure heading, instead of using initially the heading bug to maintain runway track, and then lead the departure turn with the heading bug. Not sure what prompts this, but seems to be a virus amongst some crews. As the usual after take off flow includes yaw damper AP ON, this practice can lead to an early turn before safe altitude to turn, and potential loss of situational awareness.
IR ATOs tend to treat the departure brief as an emergency RTO brief, and not spend sufficient time on the environmental and TEM aspects of the brief, which would be customary in a multi pilot environment.
This topical article was just published in Air Facts Journal
