Bo down Pembroke Pines, FL

[PaulS]

2 dead, RIP. Definitely wasn't fuel exhaustion.

A plane crash kills two near North Perry Airport in Florida | Miami Herald

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Seems like very little analysis and a lot of ranting in Gryder’s video. Does not seem like the sort of person who is comfortable with uncertainty of knowledge and conclusions.

I agree the pilot should have had a different and better plan.

OTOH, this whole turn back debate continues ad infinitum precisely because the real answer is “it depends” on a lot of factors. I suspect there may be some truth in generally discouraging the turn back given that people need to know what they are doing and have explicitly thought about altitudes and there is a strong natural desire to want to try and save the aircraft.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Gryder's point is that this stuff starts and really ends with training. Working through this stuff, in a chair on your own, in the air and in the air with an instructor before it happens. A flight with an instructor every 2 years isn't enough.

I agree with the analysis basically. I just think Gryder comes across as being more certain of things than he should be. This is usually a sign of actually fairly limited knowledge. Maybe it is just showmanship in his case - don’t know.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

GA is a somewhat risky activity, about 1 fatality per 100,000 hours of flight. People do it because they perceive what they get out it as worth the risk.

Certainly my goal in flying is to fly as safely as reasonably possible. But it is not to expend the amount of effort it would take to reduce that risk 100 fold with present technologies.

I sometimes get the feeling that people like Gryder think the goal should be to expend whatever effort is necessary to reduce the risk to 0. This sort of very high effort to reduce the risk ever lower and lower is appropriate to commercial airline flight, and has largely been successful. I don’t think the same calculus necessarily applies to people flying for recreational purposes, or that the same trade offs need to apply to all GA pilots.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

To steal from Garrison Keilor - Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the pilots are above average.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

To illustrate my point, let's look closer at this situation. Note that SW 9th Street is directly lined up with runway 10L.

Nice analysis. I have looked generally at my home airport in the past, but with Google Earth, I think we could all do this in more detail at out home drones.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Also potentially of interest, as well as his video on this subject -
https://www.mentorlive.site/program/20.html https://mentorlive.site/program/PossibleTurnWorksheet.pdf

And this article - https://mentorlive.site/program/PossibleTurn.pdf

I suspect his criteria are rather conservative.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I’ll try it tomorrow in a C150 (at 3000’), a totally different animal, and post how it works in a trainer.

When I was lasting testing power off stalls in a C150 a few weeks ago, man did that thing want to spin to the left.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I think a fallacy we can easily fall victim to is called “hindsight bias”. In other words, we know how things turned out, but are free to speculate on alternatives while the actual outcome is set in stone.

Imagine if he had gone straight, or nearly so, and skidded across a schoolyard full of kids, or hit a school bus while trying to land on an E/W road. Then we might have been speculating that a turn back to the runway could not have turned out any worse.

That said, much of my flying and instructing was done from E/W runways at N. Perry and Opa Locka. Neither has many options when taking off to the east, though Opa Locka did at the time have at least some open areas - a truck training area and flea market parking.

That said, I think my training in that scenario would have me going straight ahead or turning no more than about 30° to find the best available bad option. But in times of stress, as Warren Zevon sang, “You’re a whole ‘nother person when you’re scared”.

Post #148 above looked at these possibilities in some detail for this airport.

Particularly if the run up was at all questionable, this pilot should have been briefing what to do in the event of failure below a specific altitude. Fundamentally made two errors. Ignored results of run-up and did not properly brief take-off.