Do passengers understand the risk?

Steve6443 wrote:

However I refuse to believe he didn’t know how to operate the equipment – he had an IR and more than 600 hours on SR22s; it doesn’t matter whether they were all on the earlier or later model, both had twin GNS430s and STEC55x autopilots so the principles to fly both would have been the same.

He had a GNS430, the AP and his PFD, yet he was unable to set the ILS properly and obviously unaware he still had his AP working too and actually needed to use it to have autotrim. He definitly lost the plot totally when the MFD failed, but that does not explain how he could not set even the inbound course of the ILS properly.

But again, this is OT so let’s leave it at that.

Cobalt wrote:

While we are at it, let’s ban motorcycling passengers – as clearly no adult can be trusted to judge the risk of being passenger on a motorcycle.

Having discussed the aviation passenger topic at some length, including fatalities, maybe a light hearted story in relation to the original post is in order. The first time I spent more than a couple of hours with my now-wife was when I arrived from the other side of the world to take her on a multi-day motorcycle ride in the Alps… She suffers from motion sickness, but didn’t tell me. And off we went, riding at least six hours a day for the next several days, on alpine roads. How do you think that went?

She found that she doesn’t suffer motion sickness on a motorcycle unlike every other kind of vehicle, God knows why. She’d done her research with friends to determine I was part of a proficient group of riders and probably wouldn’t kill her. She did the risk evaluation and it worked for her. She does have to put up with me now (poor woman) but seems reasonably happy regardless.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Another bit which is interesting. This was the 2nd SR22 the guy owned, the first one had had conventional instruments. They never found out whether he was retrained on the new plane.

What should he have been retrained in? It was an Avidyne Entegra glass cockpit, not Garmin G1000 or Perspective so the move from a conventional steam cockpit with Avidyne MFD to a full Entegra glass cockpit is extremely easy. I remember when our club got it’s Archer with a glass cockpit, it was so simple to operate, I LOVED it, especially as it made climbing / descending to a given altitude much simpler than setting up and using the old altitude preselects seen with some STEC 55 autopilots.

However I refuse to believe he didn’t know how to operate the equipment – he had an IR and more than 600 hours on SR22s; it doesn’t matter whether they were all on the earlier or later model, both had twin GNS430s and STEC55x autopilots so the principles to fly both would have been the same. In any case,, after 20 hours in the Cirrus I could enter an ILS / RNAV and have the autopilot fly it, if I wanted to. My belief is that he was so used to flying / navigating via the maps page on the MFD, when that went blank, the lizard brain took over….

Concerning the SR20 driver who crashed on his way to Du Page – I will never understand why he didn’t decide to fly to Executive and land there, where the field was VFR? Yes, he would have had to have paid for a taxi for his daughter but better that than paying with their lives…..

I wonder whether there is any correlation between the aircraft available for the publicly advertised flight sharing, and the condition of the aircraft.

My view, just looking around the GA scene over 17 years, is that the better stuff is likely to be less available for public transport (yes I know that phrase has a different meaning but not everyone would agree ) – simply because these (mostly) owner-pilots are in less need of a contribution.

If that is true, the availability is likely to correlate with lower-time pilots. I realise that the principal hope behind the relaxation of flight sharing advertising is to increase GA activity and thus improve pilot currency, but the early adopting passengers are going to be at a higher risk.

If you cannot handle the aircraft manually, you simply are not current.

I agree of course but (a) that belongs to a different thread e.g. one like this and (b) using an autopilot effectively frees the pilot for better management of everything else, leading to a much safer flight. But as I say that is for a different thread.

EuroFlyer wrote:

Any VFR pilot even if not IR rated should at least practice approaches into IR fields as much as possible and should know how to activate the autopilot if there is one. I was stunned the other day when I heard that many people fly planes (i.e. chartered or from clubs) they don’t fully understand. There are a couple incidents here in Germany where people crashed after VFR into IMC when they just could have activated the autopilot.

I would turn this around. Any pilot should be able to hand fly whatever aircraft he is flying. Relying on the autopilot to sort things out (due to low currency? flying IFR in general, or that particular aircraft) sounds completely wacko IMO.

I’m more and more becoming a believer of not flying a more complex aircraft than you can handle. A rather obvious thing maybe, but with increasingly more complex instruments and systems, the sheer amount of information needed to digest also increases dramatically. Thus the line between manageable and too complex becomes hard to spot, it could also be different from situation to situation.

What we need to fly is stick, rudder, throttle, ASI and alt. Everything else is secondary, even flaps, gear, radio and so on (except needed avionics for IMC). If you cannot handle the aircraft manually, you simply are not current. You are very, very far from current.

Passengers understand the risks if we – the pilots – explain them what they are. Which means a little bit of honesty comes in nicely.
I haven’t yet met anyone who didn’t ask about the potential dangers…. usually it starts with the well known "ah, these small planes, they’re constantly falling down’.
Upon which I explain all the common dangers, and usually tell them, the biggest risk is the pilot. If they then still decide to fly with me (no drop outs yet), I guess I have done what I could do.

Alexis wrote:

There was a very similar Cirrus accident, with a CFI (!) on board in Florida where the pilot tried to force the airplane onto the centerline and pulled … both dead.

There was another one in Germany, also when a pilot tried to maneuver tightly. I don’t know if the Cirrus is particular to this, but they write in the report that from the PFD Data that the final turn was done at about 100 kts at 60° bank which was below stall speed at the weight and configuration. According to this, he was still 50 kgs above MTOW when the accident occurred.

Ok, let’s cut this discussion about this accident now, but I think the relevance for this thread is that here we have passengers who flew with their boss, probably not for the first time. They appeared to trust him, but did not have the knowledge to judge on his actual performance.

And those passengers probably did not have much choice if they were ordered on a business trip.

Indeed!

Actually that can be a grey area if the passengers include people who work for a different company e.g. a customer or supplier of the aircraft owner/operator.

Please keep this thread on-topic of passengers understanding the risk, otherwise use e.g. this thread.

Peter wrote:

How were the “paying passengers” (mentioned earlier) acquired?

My bad. The pilot was the company owner/director and the passengers were his employees. Just re-read the report, that information is available on page 9.

So this one also kind of makes it a subject of the business owner/pilot thread. And those passengers probably did not have much choice if they were ordered on a business trip.

Another bit which is interesting. This was the 2nd SR22 the guy owned, the first one had had conventional instruments. They never found out whether he was retrained on the new plane.