JFK Jr.’s crash[0] clearly shows the accident chain beginning on the ground. He’d injured his ankle in a snowboarding accident a few weeks prior and was wearing a boot that may have interfered with operating the rudder. His magazine was in rough shape, and his marriage wasn’t much better. They’d intended to leave during the day, but his wife and sister-in-law didn’t arrive at the airport until close to dark. His instructor had offered to fly with him, but Kennedy turned him down. Flying at night over open water, especially on a moonless night, can create the black hole effect. Although it’s technically VMC, you’re really flying by instruments. The accident airplane had a working autopilot that he knew how to use, but it wasn’t engaged. Kennedy had some instrument training but not the rating. He passed tens of airports on his way where he could have stopped. He’s a Kennedy and could have summoned transportation.
The common belief is he became spatially disoriented and entered a graveyard spiral without realizing it. Without outside visual reference, our senses can play nasty tricks on us and that instrument pilots train to ignore.
The sad part is it was all preventable: he had so many opportunities to break the accident chain that was forming.
All do have an artificial horizon. Your attitude indicator has that.
Making autopilot mandatory would make a huge amount of GA pilots unable to fly due to cost. And I’m not sure It would help. JFK JR’s plane had one. (level 5 is not even available for GA, though auto land just launched, but it would be six figures. )
The problem is you don’t know when you’re spinning in the first place without visual reference. Pilots get disoriented (the g force from the spin can feel a lot like normal gravity) and get overwhelmed.
That particular incident was an overly confident, poorly skilled pilot doing something risky that most pilots simply wouldn’t
The accident airplane had both, although steam gauges and not a HUD. The pilot has to know how to use the gadgets and actually do so.
Scheduled airlines, FAR Part 121, are much safer for several reasons: pilots have much more training and at least 1,500 flight hours, they’re all instrument rated, they have mandatory recurrent training, companies drill Standard Operating Procedures, two pilots: one flying with the other monitoring, a dispatcher on the ground is pitching in too, flying IFR, talking to ATC, often making stable straight-in approaches. In short, mucho redundancy means one person’s bad decision won’t immediately imperil the flight.
Like the accident chain, the fix has to start early in primary training. Pilots need to be taught to have a healthy respect for the weather and hazards like airframe icing. Pilots have to make humble, conservative decisions and be willing to tell ourselves and our passengers or even ATC no. Frank, critical self-evaluation is not a skill we’re born with either. We have to be taught and remind each other to be on guard against the five hazardous attitudes (invulnerability, impulsivity, macho, anti-authority, and resignation). We have to continue cultivating a culture of safety that encourages good aeronautical decision making rather than foolish or brash risk taking. We have to look for opportunities to create redundancy in our own personal SOPs.
Aviation hardware is absurdly expensive. Not only do you get to pay an A&P to install it but the gadgets are silly expensive. Think we were quoted almost $1800 to add a USB charging port to a C180.
The common belief is he became spatially disoriented and entered a graveyard spiral without realizing it. Without outside visual reference, our senses can play nasty tricks on us and that instrument pilots train to ignore.
The sad part is it was all preventable: he had so many opportunities to break the accident chain that was forming.
[0]: https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2010/july/pilot...