I was at a dinner a while ago and was introduced to a chap who was taking flying lessons. As you might imagine, first question, I asked him how many hours he had, and when he replied 46, I said fabulous, you must be nearly finished. I wasn’t quite sure what to say when he told me hadn’t yet gone solo – he then asked me if I thought the flying school was taking the piss. I knew the school who did my son’s PPL, so I told him pretty flatly that I very much doubted they were. I the tried to have a serious conversation with him to say that being a pilot isn’t for everyone, which of course was an insult to him. I spent quite a bit of time – at a nice dinner I might add, so in my head I was being spectacularly generous – talking him through some stuff and basically said save your money and your life and give up. He was in marketing and branding, and in one minute told me flat that the £250k we’d just spent rebranding was a complete waste of time as the agency we used was well known for being ridiculously expensive. So that conversation ended that.
A year later and another dinner and we cross paths again. At least this time it was all done and dusted in less than sixty seconds.
He is still…. Still……. Flying, but, yes, you guessed it, not gone solo. He said the school were trying to dissuade him from continuing but he wasn’t having any of it and was going to another school
Anyway I gave him the great news that the rebrand was the best money we’d ever spent, and that when the accident report comes in I’ll at least be able to read between the lines.
What can you do.
Pig wrote:
he replied 46, I said fabulous, you must be nearly finished. I wasn’t quite sure what to say when he told me hadn’t yet gone solo
I would always start a conversation at that point and never assume anything. I went solo rather late in hours, which was mainly due to the fact that I decided not to strictly follow training syllabus, but fly whenever possible – even if this meant to not have training counting as ad initio hours. In the end I passed my license on a quite high number of flight hours, but already spent over 20 hours in weather conditions my fellow companions did not do any flying. My philosophy was to get up even in ugly weather with an instructor, be it with or without being solo myself – better train with a experienced FI in marginal weather then trying to learn it by myself later ;-).
But I am with you in talking people out of pilot license – if they really have no talent to be an airmen, or a pilot, or not even for being an aircraft operator …
I have known several people who were pretty well totally non technical and as a result do not understand avionics, to the point where you ask whether an LCD display is showing something produced by the instrument and they cannot tell you enough to work out whether the instrument is even switched on.
And they probably can’t navigate (beyond the trivial local), can’t deal with a fuel totaliser, can’t program a route into a GPS, etc.
But they can fly the plane in the sense of being able to manipulate the yoke and not crash.
A lot of PPL holders are OK with good wx local flying and no more.
The accident pilot appears to have been doing IR training, and that is a whole different game. Nevertheless she must have passed a PPL checkride, somehow. If done in a simple plane, no real avionics, it is possible.
In a US checkride, the DPE is entitled to ask for a demo of all installed equipment. Obviously at an appropriate level so e.g. not setting up LPV in a PPL checkride, but loading a route into a GPS, definitely. This is badly missing in Europe but that’s another topic… This is why I think her checkride was done in something very basic.
In the US, to fly the Bonanza, one needs to hold at least a private pilot ASEL rating and have complex and high performance endorsements. There is no requirement for type specific training in the regulations, but it is highly recommended and the real regulators, the insurance company, will insist on it.
As far as requiring use of the AP on an instrument check ride, it is required if it is installed.
From the current ACS:
To assist in management of the aircraft during the practical test, the applicant is expected to demonstrate automation management skills by utilizing installed equipment such as autopilot, avionics and systems displays, and/or a flight management system (FMS). The evaluator is expected to test the applicant’s knowledge of the systems that are installed and operative during both the oral and flight portions of the practical test.
It is also required during the conduct of an IPC.
This is much worse of not be knowledgeable or proficient with a specific non essential component. She was strugling to fing her way out, on a simple and basic exercise of a right turn after T/O and follow a 92 degree heading. After she was completely behind the airplane, no engine management. On another video that I saw on her accident report, she didn’t even know how to use the trim wheel, trimming on the opposite direction (which could be a cause for her accident).
When returning from CR with my new glass cockpit, GTN and AP, few hours late than expected and running against deteriorating weather, I did my first leg on green needle and every time I was switching to NAV, the AP would change to ROL mode. Took me all the way till Portoroz on HDG, screatching my head not able to identify the problem, and believe me I did read, study the manuals and saw all garmin and other users videos on the system. But I was aware of the situation and that HDG would do the job, not so smoothly. Only after Portoroz I did saw the light and the magenta line for NAV.
Probably I should have done a couple of hours with an instructor familiar with the AP (I do consider I was, despite never hadthe opportunity to fly it before, I saw all G3X, G500, G5, GTN 650 xi videos and had the manuals).
I might be mistaken and she paid with her life, but she had no situational awareness, and would fall easily behind the plane. The system failed to her.
You cannot protect people from themselves. A modicum of self-reflection could have saved her, but if YouTube views take that place and critical comments are disregarded as ankle biters, there is no helping anyone. This was simply waiting to happen. No regulation could have prevented this result once someone decided to sign her off.
Same with that buffoon who intentionally crashed his plane, the audacity to assume he gets away with that can only exist when employing a very narrow band reality filter. Not saying that every YouTuber has such issues, to the contrary, but this “small fame” does seem to feed that kind of disorder.
Re: the gum chewing, it may look like regurgitating, but maybe she just got air sick.
Inkognito wrote:
You cannot protect people from themselves.
Indeed. But, many b*heads of dubious mindsets in certain authorities try to do exactly that. One of the biggest contemporary threads – the stupid and lazy ones getting diligent only in forcing others in ideological justified short minded actions …
Back to the topic.
I have only seen this video about this accident (or her for that matter), and I think he hit the nail perfectly on the head:
Absolutely nonexistent SA (at her home field in perfect VFR conditions), and zero ability to recognize her own mistakes, even if she recorded all of them and discussed the situation on YouTube, without actually even touching into the real problem she had.
Peter wrote:
And they probably can’t navigate (beyond the trivial local), can’t deal with a fuel totaliser, can’t program a route into a GPS, etc.But they can fly the plane in the sense of being able to manipulate the yoke and not crash.
I have seen at least as many, if not more examples of the opposite during my “career” as an UL instructor and with PPL pilots wanting to fly ULs. Some people should simply stick to the C-172 with G1000 they took their PPL on. A C-172 because it literally flies itself, and a G1000 because anything else will confuse them. They have never learned proper stick and rudder seat of the pants flying, and have no clue about SA. A good similarity is perhaps a person who has only driven EVs (everything automatic, every single driver assist you can think of, and all of it works perfect all of the time), and then tries to drive a 1975 BMW with manual shift, rear end drive on snowy roads 
LeSving wrote:
I have seen at least as many, if not more examples of the opposite during my “career” as an UL instructor and with PPL pilots wanting to fly ULs. Some people should simply stick to the C-172 with G1000 they took their PPL on. A C-172 because it literally flies itself, and a G1000 because anything else will confuse them. They have never learned proper stick and rudder seat of the pants flying, and have no clue about SA. A good similarity is perhaps a person who has only driven EVs (everything automatic, every single driver assist you can think of, and all of it works perfect all of the time), and then tries to drive a 1975 BMW with manual shift, rear end drive on snowy roads
I think it goes deeper than that.
The part of the video of the earlier flight that really jumped out at me was not her knowing which direction they were heading shortly after departure. I don’t think this is a training issue, or even much to do with aviation. If someone cannot establish if they’re going east or west from first principles (what direction they were facing when they took off and how they’ve turned in the short time that has elapsed) backed up by things like the position of the sun and looking at the compass then really do they have the aptitude to be doing anything like this?
I would hypothesise that the training systems let through a number of people who get by on pure rote learning and don’t really understand anything that’s happening from first principles.
When I take off and make one or more turns to establish myself on the intended route, my principal navigational aid during those first few minutes of flight is the INS in my head, so to speak. I’m not sure that was something she was capable of.
I sometimes wonder how much of her demonstrated incompetence is part of her YouTuber ‘Damsel in Distress’ shtick. Ok, she ended up killing herself and her dad, so she was obviously deficient. However, after having done four FAA checkrides and numerous BFRs and checkouts I fail to see how she passed her PPL ride. Something doesn’t stack up here.
