Quote:
Originally Posted by DonDavis
I could never criticize a pilot at the controls of an incident that took lives. Not my thing.
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Nor mine. I haven't written a word about the pilot and won't.
In the accidents investigations I led, the hardest part was obvious pilot error.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DonDavis
I do crave an understanding of the circumstances a pilot is facing/processing when things go badly. But not in a morbid way, more of an attempt to grasp the mountain of data coursing through their brain.
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I had really bad spatial disorientation, vertigo, once in all my years of flying. I was in a Blackhawk as a LCDR at the Sikorsky Factory. It was at night and we were on an instrument flight plan shooting approaches into New Haven.
Remember, at the time I was current instrument pilot, instrument check pilot and I held a special instrument clearance...meaning I could take-off in 0/0 flight conditions. I had also been the East Coast NATOPS check pilot when I was at VX-1. I had about 3,000 hours at the time.
I was flying with a good friend of mine, the XO at the Factory. I meet him when I was an Ensign and he was a LT.
So, the night was actually clear of any weather and the air was smooth. Perfect conditions to practice.
On my third approach, Greg called a simulated wave-off at approach minimum, I called tower and executed wave-off the procedure.
In the climbing right hand turn I snuck a peak outside and got stuck between an instrument scan and a visual scan. With the climbing turn, the lights on Long Island Sound, the hills to my left with light and houses on Long Island itself caused a really eerie spatial disorientation, one I though about 10 seconds more than a should have. I needed to get back on instruments ASAP and failed to do so.
Gregg, doing his jog, called, "airspeed". I had lost my instrument scan as was slowing in a climbing turn. The combination of transitioning back to instruments from a visual scan really geeked me...I told Greg I was getting vertigo: he tried to talk me through it, which in those days was standard procedure. Called tower, wings level, concentrate.
I could not hack it and he took control of the Blackhawk. A minute later I was find, horrifically embarrassed but fine. We went over to Bridgeport Airport for some visual work and then I shot two more approaches at New Have with simulated wave-offs. Got back on the horse.
Pilots experiences extreme spacial disorientation and vertigo often compound the problem because they are simply not thinking, overwhelmed: The body senses and feedback cause distrust of the instruments and the rest is not pretty.
Just do a search "on vertigo as a pilot". Large body of information.