3rd April 2023 Proserpine light aircraft crash.

[trailer]

Heartbreaking.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-03/small-plane-missing-in-bloomsbury-near-mackay/102178366

[WennyC]

so sad... hope to see police report for more details...

[turboplanner]

46 minutes ago, WennyC said:

so sad... hope to see police report for more details...

On GA Aircraft there will be an ATSB preliminary report in a few weeks which you can search here: https://www.atsb.gov.au/aviation-investigation-reports

[WennyC]

5 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

On GA Aircraft there will be an ATSB preliminary report in a few weeks which you can search here: https://www.atsb.gov.au/aviation-investigation-reports

Thanks!

[shafs64]

I live in the area and there has been low cloud and rain for the last few days.

[Student Pilot]

So sad. Pressing on into bad weather. If you positively have to get there....................drive.

[Carbon Canary]

A different angle on this tragic situation.  Who knows if there is any truth in this ?
 

https://au.news.yahoo.com/pilot-killed-alongside-pregnant-wife-may-not-have-had-licence-071037118.html

[WennyC]

what a pity, not sure if he finished the courses somewhere else...and even he has the flight licence, the nautical flight distance seems to exceed the limits: 

The club's president continued by saying the distance the couple intended to travel was 140 nautical miles — over 100 nautical miles more than Mr Kuhrt would be legally able to fly if he held his recreational pilot licence.

[shafs64]

There was some talk of this in a Facebook flying group. they were saying the courier mail was sniffing around the aero club looking for a story.

[turboplanner]

1 hour ago, Carbon Canary said:

A different angle on this tragic situation.  Who knows if there is any truth in this ?
 

https://au.news.yahoo.com/pilot-killed-alongside-pregnant-wife-may-not-have-had-licence-071037118.html

Well there will be an ATSB report on this one so we'll find out.

From the comments of the Club where he started training, it's possible, and the saddest part of that is that the later training covers the news areas not previously covered; Navigation and Cross Country Met.

If you do compressed training; getting a PPL in less than a month for example, including Navex, and the weather doesn't change in that period, it's easy to think Met is just a matter of checking Windy etc. 

[alf jessup]

Wouldn’t of mattered if the kid had his xcountry endorsement, he would have pushed on like many do and ended up with the same result.

 

[facthunter]

Plenty of  people will believe you  can always tell which way is DOWN and that risks of flying in clouds is a deliberate lie to get extra training money out of people.. You can't even ride a motorbike in THICK fog even if you have an Instrument rating and you are ON the  ground.. You have to put your faith absolutely in the Instruments.   You also have to know where the rocks are and where you are. Nev

Edited April 8, 2023 by facthunter
more content.

[BirdDog]

No distress calls etc.  😞  Sad.

[turboplanner]

1 minute ago, BirdDog said:

No distress calls etc.  😞  Sad.

That's quite common. There are plenty of ATSB reports to read, there used to be a batch of these in GA at the onset of every winter; disorientation and shock seems to take over quite early in the sequence.

[BirdDog]

Yeah... Says to me that whatever happened, happened pretty quickly.

Edited April 9, 2023 by BirdDog

[Blueadventures]

43 minutes ago, BirdDog said:

Yeah... Says to me that whatever happened, happened pretty quickly.

There may be efb track history available to answer some questions that family and others will have.

Edited April 9, 2023 by Blueadventures

[facthunter]

Loss of control can be very  rapid. You don't have much hope if you aren't trained for it. Some who have mucked around with simulators might fare a bit better if they trust the instruments and totally ignore the seat of the Pants inputs but don't risk it is the best advice. There's a CASA Vid called "178  seconds to Live" that came out a long time  ago and nothing's really changed since then.  Nev

[shafs64]

 

[Garfly]

 

There's a story behind  that 178 seconds notion which is told in this article:

 

Surviving VFR into IMC

VFR into IMC events have a distressingly high fatality rate. Here's why they happen and some strategies for surviving based on research into reports from pilots who successfully handled the challenge.

https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/technique/surviving-vfr-into-imc/

 

EXCERPT:

 

"Perhaps you’ve seen the widely distributed aviation video 178 Seconds to Live. The narrative starts: “The sky is overcast and the visibility poor. That reported five-mile visibility looks more like two and you cannot judge the height of the overcast. . .”

It continues: “. . . You find yourself unconsciously easing back just a bit on the controls to clear those none- too-imaginary towers. With no warning, you are in the soup. . .”

And then, dramatically, “You now have 178 seconds to live!”

 

Or do you?

 

As a survivor of a Visual Flight Rules (VFR) into Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) incident that lasted a lot longer than 178 seconds, I often wondered about the veracity of 178 Seconds to Live. It certainly wasn’t true in my case. Where had this video come from? Was it a follow on to those old “scare ‘em straight” propaganda movies they fed us in high school? A post about the video on a social media site mentioned a “study with 20 subjects.”

 

I started doing research. The oldest reference to the phrase “178 seconds to live” in a VFR into IMC narrative I located was an article with the same title published in the January/February 1993 issue of FAA Aviation News. I then discovered that the “study” was really part of an experiment—the results of which had nothing to do with what eventually became 178 Seconds to Live. And, after the research I conducted into surviving a VFR into IMC encounter, I can’t help but wonder whether teaching that a pilot has but 178 seconds to live has caused fatalities because some who got into what is a frightening situation gave up rather than do what was needed to survive.

 

In 1954, the University of Illinois published a report entitled The 180—Degree Turn Experiment. The objective of the experiment was to see if 20 non-instrument-rated pilot subjects could be taught a technique for making a 180-degree turn and controlled descent in instrument meteorological conditions. In order to document the progress of the subjects, there had to be a baseline established for the abilities of each at the beginning of the project. Each pilot was evaluated on his or her ability to maintain control of an airplane under simulated instrument conditions. During his or her initial flight, each subject eventually placed the airplane into what the report referred to as “an incipient dangerous attitude.” The minimum time to reach an incipient dangerous attitude was 20 seconds; the maximum time was eight minutes. The average was 178 seconds.

 

178 seconds was the average of baseline measurements taken for the purpose of evaluating the results of an experiment.

I think it is also important to note that most of the subjects had little or no experience with the type of aircraft used in the experiment, a Beechcraft Bonanza, and that they were flying it with only a bare minimum of instruments—what we would call partial panel.

Over the years, that baseline measurement took on a life of its own. It morphed from being the initial evaluation of a subject’s ability to control a complex aircraft in simulated, partial panel IMC into an urban myth that an unwary pilot can survive for less than three minutes in an inadvertent IMC encounter. Variations of “178 Seconds to Live” have been promoted by the civil aviation authorities of both Canada and Australia.

 

Are pilots who encounter IMC on a VFR flight doomed as the video claims? Hardly. While they are seriously at risk, a look at the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System reports finds that pilots can and do survive VFR into IMC encounters ...  "

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 10, 2023 by Garfly

[facthunter]

Yeah they were pursued for scaring the Pants off people although it's ridiculously mild by some standards these days  The idea has been to DETER People from going into IMC conditions  and the vast majority of U/L students I've been involved  with are suitably reluctant to go into anything remotely resembling cloud. One of the most Careful Pilots I ever knew Flew His perfectly good twin Comanche into a cliff wall. I know other VERY high hours and long time IF pilots who have fallen out of the bottom of a  cloud and only survived because they ended up in a valley with enough clear air to recover.. Any simulator flight doesn't give the true forces you will encounter and a real one done under the hood with someone else there doesn't provide the panic situation you inevitably encounter either. Telling people they have a feasible chance of surviving is  a false hope if they haven't done a fair bit of training in it. You will tire quickly as it's ahigh workload especially on "Limited" panel where you need recent experience to do it well or at all.. I've had an A/H precess and roll as I lifted off on a pitch black night and would have followed it had I not looked over at the other TWO A/Hs. It would be all over in a couple of seconds not 3 minutes.  Nev

[Garfly]

 

BTW, the writers of that AVweb article (Surviving VFR into IMC) reckon that this US AOPA online-course is the best education aid on the subject they came across:

 

 

https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/online-learning/online-courses/weather-wise-vfr-into-imc

 

 

 

 

 

 

[facthunter]

You can't know TOO MUCH about the weather applying to your part of the world. Hard to get good practical info on that. Operational requirements are a very small part of that but a lot of emphasis is placed on it. THAT doesn't help understand it. Nev

[RFguy]

Many reasons above why I am studying for my Instrument Rating.... Seems to me to be the obvious next step in my training. I do accept there is a fairly steep cost associated with acheiving it, and this may be unreachable for some, and some would prefer to spend their $ elsewhere, or dont have  those specific aviation interests- IE horse for courses. For me- well the science/engineer side of me loves proceedure and challenges...

 

[pmccarthy]

Having an autopilot (one on button for alt hold and wings level) must be a major safety benefit for those caught in IMC. BTW a friend flew for nearly 30 minutes in IMC on a six pack (instruments, not beer) with no IFR training and he survived. But his wife refused to ever get in a plane with him again.

[RFguy]

I know one instructor that will not train IR without an autopilot fitted. He says you want to arrive at a possibly  difficult and technical, bumpy  IMC approach without already having had the workout the past hour just flying S&L....