Scary Icing ATC tape

The controller was so relaxed during the whole thing.
"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
This is the audio tape of a Fed Ex Caravan pilot who tangled with some
severe icing conditions.

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photoga...78L-Mayday.mp3

(It's a good-sized .mp3 file, so be patient while it downloads...)

This was given to me by our local FAA safety guy, to share with our
airport user's group. The stark terror in her voice is chilling, and
really points out how quickly things can go bad.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I suppose hindsight is 20/20, but her comments of "I just dropped at
2000 feet per minute with uncommnaded rolls.... I have no idea what
happened..... let's continue 2.5 hours to Bangor" don't really seem to
make much sense to me.

If a plane did that and I didn't have any idea why, I'd lean towards
getting it on the ground ASAP.

I suppose at some point, she must have realized that the ice was
coming off...

--Dan


On Feb 2, 2:51 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
This is the audio tape of a Fed Ex Caravan pilot who tangled with some
severe icing conditions.

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photoga...-26_N1278L-May...

(It's a good-sized .mp3 file, so be patient while it downloads...)

This was given to me by our local FAA safety guy, to share with our
airport user's group. The stark terror in her voice is chilling, and
really points out how quickly things can go bad.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Hey, that MP3 sounds very familiar... oh, yeah - Another LiveATC.net member
and I were the ones who compiled the clip for LiveATC.net last year.

It's a small world, in cyberspace.

I often receive "new" videos, submitted for inclusion on our video
webpage, that came straight from my site -- two years ago.

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

GDBholdings writes:

Msxmanic does have a point in the fact that if you panic and/or get
hysterical during a in-flight emergency there is a good chance that you will
lose total control and crash. However in this case I didn't feel that the
pilot was in panic mode but rather was VERY concerned about the fact that
she couldn't maintain altitude or airspeed and communicated to ATC that she
did indeed have a serious in-flight emergency. I myself think she did a very
good job of keeping control of the aircraft.

She repeated herself a lot and kept telling ATC about something that
ATC could not help with. Then she hogged the frequency a bit with
long reports about what she had done, what she was doing, and what she
intended to do, even though none of these were relevant to ATC.

She says "6500 and descending many times," but if she were truly
descending, she wouldn't remain at 6500 for subsequent reports.

The big surprise is that she was a commercial pilot. I'm glad it was
FedEx, which implies that nobody else was at risk.

Doesn't surprise me at all, just because someone has a commercial license
doesn't mean that they are immune to panic. Training for emergencies is the
best way to survive an in-flight emergency but training is training and I
feel doesn't have the same impact as the real thing.

The most successful pilots and controllers are those who remain
emotionless even in dire situations. If you listen to tapes of many
accident situations, veteran commercial pilots often sound as though
they're having tea rather than trying to overcome an emergency. And
ATC is famous for its constant "Houston center" calm, even in the face
of the worst emergency. People like this are people who survive in
emergencies.

It surprises me that she's a commercial pilot, supposedly with
considerable experience in this aircraft and in flying generally, and
she doesn't seem to understand the risk or reality of icing. ATC has
to suggest it to her, and even then she doesn't seem to get it.

Having said all that I am happy that she survived the ordeal and hopefully
will come away from this a better more experienced pilot!!

Maybe. But personalities don't change much, and if she handles one
emergency poorly, she'll probably handle them all poorly.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

If a plane did that and I didn't have any idea why, I'd lean towards
getting it on the ground ASAP.

I suppose at some point, she must have realized that the ice was
coming off...

I agree.

She's a tough cookie -- I'd be landing ASAP, to change my shorts.

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Aluckyguess writes:

The controller was so relaxed during the whole thing.

The controller was behaving like a professional, unlike the pilot.

The only reason she survived is that the ice started to melt--no
thanks to her, since she didn't seem to even be considering ice,
although the controller clearly had some good ideas.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

On 2 Feb 2007 13:51:44 -0800, "Jay Honeck" wrote:

This is the audio tape of a Fed Ex Caravan pilot who tangled with some
severe icing conditions.

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photoga...78L-Mayday.mp3

(It's a good-sized .mp3 file, so be patient while it downloads...)

This was given to me by our local FAA safety guy, to share with our
airport user's group. The stark terror in her voice is chilling, and
really points out how quickly things can go bad.

Was it just me, or was the controller excessively blase about the
Mayday call?

Dan writes:

I suppose hindsight is 20/20, but her comments of "I just dropped at
2000 feet per minute with uncommnaded rolls.... I have no idea what
happened..... let's continue 2.5 hours to Bangor" don't really seem to
make much sense to me.

If a plane did that and I didn't have any idea why, I'd lean towards
getting it on the ground ASAP.

I suppose at some point, she must have realized that the ice was
coming off...

It's not clear that she ever even thinks about ice; I don't recall her
ever mentioning it. Only ATC talks about that.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Nathan Young writes:

Was it just me, or was the controller excessively blase about the
Mayday call?

Being calm and collected is a lot safer than yelling and screaming.
The controller was doing his job. Additionally, the pilot said very
little that would allow ATC to do anything. ATC cannot prevent the
aircraft from icing up, and cannot control the aircraft remotely. She
called a mayday but there really wasn't anything to request from ATC.
Apparently she just wanted to talk to someone.

What would you have the controller do?

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

The controller was so relaxed during the whole thing.

He is obviously not the one at 7500 ft with an out of contol aircraft.

Mike Alexander
PP-ASEL
Temecula, CA
See my online aerial photo album at
http://flying.4alexanders.com