The AOPA Air Safety Foundation presented a seminar on flying safety titled “What Went Wrong?” tonite in Milpitas.
There was an impressive turnout: the entire Embassy Suites ballroom was full (hundreds of seats.)
The speaker talked about the chain of events behind 4 fairly recent small aircraft accidents.
- Air Ambulance Cessna 414 on-airport crash after bad IFR approach in icing conditions in IMC and stall, killing pilot and a nurse at Pottstown, PA, 12/26/06
- Piper Malibu airplane crash of New Jersey family into downtown Sitka, Alaska house (igniting a fuel tank) after bad non-precision circling approach in IMC using GPS/RNAV in the shadow of a 3200′ mountain 2007-08-06
- Flight instruction crash of Cessna 152 into a closed runway due to stall/spin possibly exacerbated by carburetor contamination in Day VFR
- CFIT of Cirrus SR22 during night flight in IMC over Arizona mountains headed towards rising terrain to Las Vegas
Half involved botched instrument approaches with pax in high performance aircraft.
The slide show was excellent, with sharp photos, transcript readings and other aids that brought the situations to life.
The speaker’s emphasis was not on finding fault, just looking at various possibilities before and during flights for pilots to consider to avoid such incidents.
He also showed authentic cockpit footage of a pilot doing a successful turn back to the runway after an engine failure after takeoff. Very interesting. The pilot declared an emergency, said he’d be back on ground frequency, then concentrated on the turn back, selection of runway and landing.
He recommends that people interested in aviation participate in AOPA’s Airport Support Network to advocate for local airports. Also, just be a role model so that the public has a positive image of general aviation.
2 Dead In Johnstown Plane Crash
Four killed in Sitka plane crash
