Today's WSJ...aviation articles 1/2

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



DOW JONES REPRINTS
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order
presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients
or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article
or visit:
www.djreprints.com.

€ See a sample reprint in PDF format.
€ Order a reprint of this article now.

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
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116104543845294604.html

Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1)

john smith wrote:
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

copy of article removed

It's a nice article, but was there any reason to violate Mr.
McCartney's and the WSJ's copyright? Please just post a link or point
people to the article, perhaps inserting an excerpt. Interested
parties will find it.

rps wrote:

It's a nice article, but was there any reason to violate Mr.
McCartney's and the WSJ's copyright? Please just post a link or point
people to the article, perhaps inserting an excerpt. Interested
parties will find it.

The article appears to require a paid subscription to the site.

--
Peter

"Peter R." wrote in message
...
The article appears to require a paid subscription to the site.

Even more reason to respect the copyright (as unfortunate as the
consequences of doing so may be).

I didn't entirely agree with the WSJ writer. Though I'm glad he can
afford a Cirrus (not on his salary, surely!), I think he's wrong to
exculpate the plane entirely. It does seem that just as the Bonanza
gained the reputation in California as the Doctor Killer, there is
something about the Cirrus that makes it dangerous to pilots. For the
number built, there are just too many dang crashes. It may even be the
parachute. (The NYC pilot was quoted as boasting about that great
safety feature.) People (perhaps especially men) are prone to
'consume' part of each safety or money-saving feature in additional
speed, hours of use, etc. We never get the savings out of fluorescent
bulbs that the statistics promise, because we leave the lights on
longer; nor do we get the additional safety from side air-bags,
because we driver faster or more recklessly. It may well be that that
fabled parachute contributed to the East River crash, by giving the
pilot and his CFI (a young man, after all) just a wee bit greater
feeling of invulnerability.

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:30:18 -0400, "Peter R."
wrote:

It's a nice article, but was there any reason to violate Mr.
McCartney's and the WSJ's copyright? Please just post a link or point
people to the article, perhaps inserting an excerpt. Interested
parties will find it.

The article appears to require a paid subscription to the site.

That's correct, or if a subscriber to the print edition, one can fetch
articles within the past seven days.

I see nothing wrong with posting the article here. I've done it myself
in the past. It serves a public service, and it's good publicity.

Indeed, I have a WSJ posted on my website. I wrote the author, and he
basically said: it's fine by me, and there are two ways you can go
about it: just post it, or ask for permission and hope you get an
answer. I took the hint and just posted it.

WSJ is the best and second-largest daily paper in the US (second only
to USA Today, which in my judgment is hardly a newspaper at all). The
more people who hear about it, the better.

There's actually a portion of the Copyright Law called "Fair Use" that
allows a person to reproduce portions of a copyrighted work for the purpose
of commentary, education, even satire.

From http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

"Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the
reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as
criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining
whether or not a particular use is fair:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of
commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

the nature of the copyrighted work;

amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the
copyrighted work as a whole; and

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the
copyrighted work."

I think it would have qualified if he hadn't reproduced the article in its
entirety. But I'm not a lawyer...

Cubdriver usenet AT danford.net wrote in
news
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:30:18 -0400, "Peter R."
wrote:

It's a nice article, but was there any reason to violate Mr.
McCartney's and the WSJ's copyright? Please just post a link or point
people to the article, perhaps inserting an excerpt. Interested
parties will find it.

The article appears to require a paid subscription to the site.

That's correct, or if a subscriber to the print edition, one can fetch
articles within the past seven days.

I see nothing wrong with posting the article here. I've done it myself
in the past. It serves a public service, and it's good publicity.

Indeed, I have a WSJ posted on my website. I wrote the author, and he
basically said: it's fine by me, and there are two ways you can go
about it: just post it, or ask for permission and hope you get an
answer. I took the hint and just posted it.

WSJ is the best and second-largest daily paper in the US (second only
to USA Today, which in my judgment is hardly a newspaper at all). The
more people who hear about it, the better.

"Cubdriver" usenet AT danford.net wrote in message
...

I didn't entirely agree with the WSJ writer. Though I'm glad he can
afford a Cirrus (not on his salary, surely!), I think he's wrong to
exculpate the plane entirely. It does seem that just as the Bonanza
gained the reputation in California as the Doctor Killer,

Only in California?

When I was a kid (1963 or so, about 8 years old...no smart ass remarks,
please) our family doctor, his wife and two kids disappeared without a trace
over Lake Michigan in his Bonanza while enroute home to Denver from a
vacation.

Our family doctor now has a very nice Baron E55, so were keeping our fingers
crossed.

--
Matt
---------------------
Matthew W. Barrow
Site-Fill Homes, LLC.
Montrose, CO (MTJ)

"Matt Barrow" wrote in message
...

"Cubdriver" usenet AT danford.net wrote in message
...

I didn't entirely agree with the WSJ writer. Though I'm glad he can
afford a Cirrus (not on his salary, surely!), I think he's wrong to
exculpate the plane entirely. It does seem that just as the Bonanza
gained the reputation in California as the Doctor Killer,

Only in California?

When I was a kid (1963 or so, about 8 years old...no smart ass remarks,
please) our family doctor, his wife and two kids disappeared without a
trace over Lake Michigan in his Bonanza while enroute home to Denver from
a vacation.

Our family doctor now has a very nice Baron E55, so were keeping our
fingers crossed.

Hardly a California only concept. Growing up in Arkansas the saying was "The
two most dangerous forms of transportation were a doctor in a Bonanza and
certain persons in a pulpwood truck."

"Cubdriver" usenet AT danford.net wrote in message
...

I didn't entirely agree with the WSJ writer. Though I'm glad he can afford
a Cirrus (not on his salary, surely!), I think he's wrong to exculpate the
plane entirely. It does seem that just as the Bonanza gained the
reputation in California as the Doctor Killer, there is something about the
Cirrus that makes it dangerous to pilots.

IMO, that ought to read:

....there is something about pilots that makes them dangerous in Cirrus
(Cirri?)

A "Bo" doesn't know (or care) if the butt in the left seat is a Doctor or a
Plumber and a Cirrus doesn't know how many hours the person in the left seat
has flown. Unless there is proof Cirrus are flawed, it will still come down
to the responsibility of the PIC.

Should relative newbie pilots be flying Cirrus planes? Maybe Not...
Should they be flying them in the same manner in which you'd fly say, a C150
or 140hp Piper? (ie Day / VFR Only / Low / Slow / etc... ?) IMO, No.

You don't drive a Lamborghini or Ferrari in the same way you'd drive a VW
Bug.

But in that same vein, if someone drives a Lamborghini or Ferrari, "$
Because They Can... $" and they wrap it around a pole and kill themselves
(or God forbid, kill someone else in the process) you don't hear people
saying it's the fault of the car or that the car was inherently dangerous.
You might hear people say that they were driving something out of their
league...and why should it be different with aircraft?

For the number built, there are just too many dang crashes.

"Per this, per that" is to me, irrelevant. You have to look at each
incident on it's own merits. Multiple attempts to shoot an ILS to minimums
is no less foolish in a glass cockpit than it is with steam gauges.
T-Storms can smack down composites just as easily as aluminum. The East
River Corridor is just as tricky for a C182 if you aren't in the right
place, not paying attention or don't fly with a smart plan.

SA is the responsiblity of the PIC. Doesn't matter if he's getting his info
from a TAC or twin 12" LCDs.

It may even be the parachute. (The NYC pilot was quoted as boasting about
that great safety feature.)

Irrelevant. The chute is meaningless when you hit something moving
horizontally.

People (perhaps especially men) are prone to 'consume' part of each safety
or money-saving feature in additional speed, hours of use, etc.

A rather blatant generalization, don't you think? A sexist one at that...

We never get the savings out of fluorescent bulbs that the statistics
promise, because we leave the lights on longer;

??? WTF does this have to do with the price of tea in China? The savings is
in the "per kilowatt hour used" not on the overall life of the bulb. 100
lumens at 40W instead of 60W is a constant. If the flourescent bulb goes TU
and you replace it, there's no change in the kW/H savings...you're still
getting 100 lumens from 40W instead of 60W. All you're out is the cost of
the bulb and they do last longer than traditional filament-type bulbs
whether you burn them one hour a day or 24.

nor do we get the additional safety from side air-bags, because we driver
faster or more recklessly.

How many people do you think even know they have side-impact airbags
installed or not? Autophiles who would really care are probably already
prone to driving with a bit more "enthusiasm" to begin with. Tail wagging
the dog.

It may well be that that fabled parachute contributed to the East River
crash, by giving the pilot and his CFI (a young man, after all) just a wee
bit greater feeling of invulnerability.

Pure Speculation. The only facts a
- A Cirrus
- Owned by a Private Pilot with roughly 80 hours total
- With a CFI (was he a CFII?) on board who, IIRC, was not a local...he was
from CA.
- Hit a building in NYC
- Both are dead

AFAIK, in the instances where the chute was deployed within parameters and
in the manner in which it was intended, it has worked and worked well.
Lives have been saved.

Jay Beckman
PP-ASEL
Chandler, AZ