Today's Wall Street Journal contained two aviation articles.
The first, with a teaser atop the front page, is written by Scott
McCartney (a partnership owner in an SR-20). I thought it was pretty
well written, containing subtle critique of the Cirrus problems, pilots
and general aviation.

THE MIDDLE SEAT
By SCOTT MCCARTNEY



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Inside the Mind of a Weekend Pilot
October 17, 2006; Page D1

Why do people fly?

The tragic death of New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight
instructor last week raised many questions and stirred many fears. Mark
Dunkerley, chief executive of Hawaiian Airlines, was in a meeting when
he received a message on his BlackBerry: A plane has crashed into a New
York building. "You can imagine how frightening that is," he said. An
industry flashed before his eyes.

The crash turned out to be a very human accident that killed two young
men. And, in many minds, it raised a question of why a father and
husband with a lucrative career would risk his life by flying a small
plane into challenging airspace.
[The Middle Seat]

I fly the same plane that Cory Lidle flew -- a Cirrus Design Corp. SR20.
The one I share with some partners is about a year older, but otherwise
not much different from his Cirrus. It's a sleek, speedy airplane built
with lots of innovative safety features, including a parachute for the
plane. And yet it has been involved in 21 fatal crashes since Cirrus
started selling them in 1999. That says far more about private pilots
than about the airplane itself.

It's hard to explain to people who haven't done it what the joy of
soaring into the sky is really like. Flying a small plane transports you
to a peaceful world -- there is nothing I've found on the ground to
match the calm and serenity of flying. Gerard Arpey, the chief executive
of AMR Corp.'s American Airlines and a private pilot, says that flying
is a perfect stress escape since when you're at the controls of an
airplane, you can't think about anything else.

For private pilots, there is a tremendous sense of accomplishment at
mastering a new skill. It's a fantastic hobby for many; a fundamental
business tool for some. Small planes are a vital air link for towns
abandoned by airline service. They transport organs and surgeons in the
middle of the night. Many pilots, including myself, volunteer to fly
cancer patients free of charge. I helped to evacuate people from
Louisiana a few days after Hurricane Katrina when Angel Flight received
permission to begin relief flights Labor Day weekend.

All the fatal crashes of the Cirrus investigated by the National
Transportation Safety Board so far have been blamed on pilot error. Two
had contributing factors -- one an avionics failure on board and the
other a problem with air-traffic controllers.

But many of these accidents were examples of inexperienced pilots,
perhaps with an exaggerated sense of their ability or too much
confidence in their plane's capability, getting themselves into
situations they couldn't handle or flying places they had no business
being. They flew themselves into mountains, into icing or into clouds
when they weren't trained for instrument flying. It may be the trap of
too much cool technology, or simply over-confident, financially
successful people feeling invincible and getting themselves over their
heads. Cory Lidle may prove no different once investigators figure out
what led to the crash.

In aviation, we tolerate different levels of safety. Regulations set up
by the federal government are far stricter for professional pilots than
for weekend flyers, for example. As a matter of public policy, we are
far less willing to tolerate airline crashes than small-plane crashes.

With private pilots, we give them responsibility for their own safety.
That makes sense -- airline operations are different simply because
other people are putting their lives in their trust. Serious pilots know
you have to fly regularly to stay sharp, and weekend fliers should train
with flight instructors more regularly than the once every two years
that the Federal Aviation Administration requires. Most fly with great
caution: in 2004, there were 1.2 fatal accidents for every 100,000 hours
of flying.

My family, none of them as wild about flying as I am, expects me to be
paranoid, and honest about my skill limits. If I'm planning a long trip,
I have an airline ticket in my back pocket so I don't feel pressured to
fly into bad weather. But the problem is that too often private pilots
aren't taking that responsibility seriously enough. They do dumb things.

Over the years, there have been numerous examples of newly minted pilots
crashing near their own homes. Why? They get a license, get in a plane
and start flying circles over the homestead to let everyone know of
their accomplishment. Then while focusing too much on the house, they
lose control of their plane and crash.

In 2004, nearly half of the 290 fatal accidents in the U.S. with light
airplanes had pilots with less than 100 hours of experience in the
airplanes they were flying, according to the Air Safety Foundation.

Cirrus, which delivered 600 planes last year, has addressed the problem
by stepping up the training program for new pilots and stiffening
requirements for instructors trained in Cirrus airplanes. An association
of Cirrus pilots sponsors training programs across the country. We don't
yet know what happened to Mr. Lidle and his instructor, Tyler Stanger.
We do know they were sightseeing around Manhattan and flew up the East
River essentially into a box canyon. The airspace they could use was
narrow, capped above them at 1,100 feet above sea level, and blocked in
front of them by the La Guardia Airport airspace, which extends down to
the surface when you get toward the north end of Manhattan.

Pilots can either turn around or request permission to fly through the
La Guardia restricted airspace. We know that Mr. Lidle was not an
experienced pilot, but he had the common sense to take along a flight
instructor. But his 26-year-old flight instructor, who flew in from
California to help him fly his Cirrus to the West Coast, was reportedly
not very familiar with the local airspace. The two might have carefully
plotted their flight and studied navigation charts before takeoff,
perhaps only to have something unexpected happen. Or they might have
just jumped in the plane and headed out for some fun -- a short buzz
around the Big Apple before rain moved in that afternoon.

The Cirrus is a very stable, forgiving airplane capable of tight turns.
You do have to pay attention, however. It has huge windows all around
both pilots -- even a rear window that lets you see the rudder. There's
no doubt that a look to the left before making the turn and the
apartment building that the plane hit would have been clearly visible.

My guess -- and we're all guessing until investigative reports are
released -- is that either they turned too sharply and lost control of
the plane, or they never looked out the left-side windows. Both pilots,
worried about busting the La Guardia airspace, could easily have had
their heads down studying the big moving map in the center of the Cirrus
cockpit and they turned into the building without looking before it was
too late. Another possible indication of distraction or loss of control:
Radar showed the plane descended from 700 feet to 500 feet shortly
before the crash. Planes want to descend during a turn -- pilots have to
take action to stay at the same altitude.

There could be lots of reasons behind the crash, and we may never know
exactly what happened, except that they flew their plane into a
building, much as pilots crash planes into mountains. They may simply
have flown too far into a canyon and not been able to escape. They could
have made a mistake -- a left hand U-turn without first looking.

If there is a lesson to be learned from Mr. Lidle's crash and changes to
be made, it should be this: Pilots need to work harder at keeping
themselves safe.

Write to Scott McCartney at 1
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