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Weather Related Incidents

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Head in the clouds

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 11, 2012
Messages
1,981
Location
Gold Coast, East Coast of Australia
I was going to post this in either 'pilot error causes most incidents/accidents' or 'There I was when suddenly' but it may be better in its own thread if my thoughts about it are valid -

In respect of whether most accidents/incidents are pilot error - I've been giving this a lot of thought in the last little while, not so much whether aviation 'events' are usually pilot error or not (I believe that an analysis of the statistics would suggest that the very large majority of them are) but what type of pilot error?

And - following on from a list of my own 'exciting moments' that I made for the 'There I was when Suddenly' thread, where I noticed that most of mine had one causal factor in common - weather conditions.

So I got to thinking - am I just too maverick about pushing the boundaries in worsening weather, or is there some other explanation? Around 80% of my airtime has been in commercial helicopter operations and that has two aspects which I think may have contributed to my willingness to mix it with bad weather. One is that when you are in a helicopter you have the great advantage of being able to slow down to a crawl if necessary and the other is that you can always find somewhere to land and let the weather go through unless you are over water or dense forest. Even so I've got caught a couple of times in helicopters and just got away with it, one I described in the 'when suddenly' thread and the other was when I was performing an emergency medivac of a snake-bite victim. Taking a risk in the latter was justified in my opinion since the snake was one of the world's deadliest and so I understood that a life was in the balance and two ambulances that had set out were bogged in mud on unsealed roads.

But when flying fixed wing I have also been trapped in bad weather and on one memorable occasion it was only good luck that saved me.

I believe I am a lot more cautious these days than I was but I am prompted to pen this at the moment because we are waiting nervously to hear the outcome of what appears to be yet another weather related incident, with one of our local and highly experienced flyers missing in an area which had low cloud and rain yesterday afternoon, and I have frequently experienced that area's sudden and all-enveloping conditions.

Des Porter is 68 and when he was 10 he was involved in a crash in a DH84 (1930s twin-engined passenger biplane, 12 seats). His father was the pilot and his brother was also on board, they were both killed. Des has been flying his immaculately restored DH84, one of only 4 left in the world, for a fair while now and was conducting joyflights yesterday, to raise money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. They didn't arrive back at Caboolture (Sunshine Coast, just north of Brisbane) in the afternoon. An ELT was activated and they have been searching since, there is no mention of why they can't go straight to the signal except continuing bad weather but they have been using a full IFR locator aircraft equipped with FLIR. There are six PoB.

The area is where I had my 'only good luck saved me' incident, I was in a Drifter flying from Yeppoon (Central Qld coast) to SW of Brisbane, about six hours flight time, in around 1987, and to avoid CTA you need to track south along the coast for the first half of the trip and then go inland up a wide valley, cross the Great Dividing Range and then continue southwards inland. The valley I chose for the crossing starts out barely noticeable and narrows as it climbs the range, reaching a saddle at about 1500ft with high ranges each side. Over the saddle is a small town called Kilkivan. It is tiger country from half way up the valley and for half an hour on the other side.

While I was climbing the valley I watched behind as a typical (for the area) bank of cloud followed me up the valley and began to rain torrentially. Before I reached the saddle cloud had come in from all sides and flowed over the ranges, getting ever lower and I guessed it would come below the saddle before I got there. I turned around and tried to break out of the valley again, through the heavy rain. I was completely blinded and the pain from the stinging rain on my face and arms was agonising, at least on a motorbike you can slow down... I became disorientated and had to turn back into the valley and planned to try and land but there wasn't anywhere that wouldn't damage the plane (and me) but the saddle was still clear so I went for it. It was obscured before I got there and I ended up very stressed turning ever tighter circles to avoid cloud or rock-faces. Gladly a tiny gap opened after a few minutes and I could see Kilkivan through a hole in the cloud. Vne was then the last of my concerns!

It was a typical trap for young players of course, but I still think it was an easy one to fall into and I know of several since which haven't ended up with a happy outcome. Des is very experienced so we wait, albeit very anxiously, for good news...

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