On Jul 12, 10:56 pm, "David Wright"
wrote:
Interesting that a "Go Around" is considered here as an "unfamiliar
manoeuvre" - and that the pilot was "put in a situation beyond his
experience" - okay he only had 15 hours of flying time

I have now read the (comprehensive!) accident report, and as I
expected, it was important to do so because the BBC article doesn't
give anything like the whole truth.

Here is my attempt at boiling it down to the essence...
1. The pilot was a 16 year old new-solo student on his second solo
after a checkride with instructor. During the flight preceding the
accident it was apparent that he wasn't entirely comfortable with
radio communications outside of the "normal" circuit procedures.
2. The airport is fairly busy catering for both fast guys and club
and student pilots in C150s etc.
3. The ATC units operating at the time of the accident appear not to
have been aware the pilot was a new solo.
4. The C150 was on fairly late final and had been cleared #1.
5. A faster aircraft (Malibu) was coming in on basically a straight
in approach from outside the circuit.
6. ATC decided to put the Malibu in first and get the C150 out of
the way (remembering here that the C150 as the aircraft in front, on
final should have had right of way).
7. An instruction was given to the C150, however, the phrasology was
bad, it started out requesting a go-around "maintain centerline", then
in the same transmission said to "disregard" and "just do a left turn
and fly north, I'll call you back in later", he was also told there
was a fast aircraft behind him
8. the C150 pilot read back the left turn instruction
9. the C150 pilot proceeded to turn to the reciprocal (west of
north) of the base leg, indicating the sense of "constrainment to the
circuit" the student felt.
10. at the same time it seems likely the workload was high, and he
would be looking out for other aircraft in the sometimes busy circuit,
not to mention the "fast aircraft behind"
11. lack of confidence, and experience, and the workload and perhaps
confusion all contributed to the pilot not cleaning up the aircraft
(or climbing to circuit altitude) and it remained in the low power,
low altitude, approach configuration through the turn
12. when called by ATC that he could return to land the pilot
initiated a turn, but in the process a stall-spin eventuated and it
was all over rover

The ultimate cause of the accident at the end of the day was that the
pilot forgot to fly the plane, he appears to have been confused and
overwhelmed by the non-standard turn of events and the break-away from
the "circuit procedures with possible go-around" for which he had been
trained.

The go-around was not called for properly, standard phrasology is
required by the rules, and the procedure is also standard - clean up,
climb up, and move to the right of centerline. "Turn to the north"
from late in the final is nothing like that (to the student).

The potential for *exactly* this accident sequence had been identified
by the ATC unit at that very airport in the 90s and instructions were
given at the time that would have avoided it basically that ATC should
only ever tell club/student pilots to "go around, say again, go
around" which is the offical phrase and procedure for which students
are trained. New ATC personell having joined the unit after this
instruction was promulgated were not made aware of it. The
instruction has subsequently been re-issued.

I think what should be learned from this is that especially low-time
students still circuit bashing have very set procedures they are
following in thier minds, and any break-away from those procedures can
quickly lead to confusion and over-workload situations. Combine that
"procedural break" with it being at low altitude, low speed, approach
configuration, and you are asking for trouble. A standard "go around,
say again, go around" would have been fine, because the student would
have known exactly what was expected of him.