Air Safety

I Learned About Flying From That …

I was the captain of a C-130A crew when the following chain of events occurred. The trip was reasonably straightforward: day one – position at Fairbairn, ACT for loading and task to Carnarvon, WA; day two -position at Pearce, WA for loading and task to Nowra and Richmond in NSW. It was one of my first en route captain trips. I had more command hours in the circuit as local captain than en route command hours, the copilot was relatively new but reasonably switched on technically though a bit short on general copilot experience. The engineer and loadmaster must have come with the original purchase order of C-130’s, and the two navigators were both long in Flight Lieutenant increments and experience. One nav was on his annual route check. It was typical brass monkey weather at Fairbairn and the crew dispersed as planned: loady to 5 Sqn to check on the loads, eng to single point refuel as arranged, copilot to 34 Sqn to look up acquaintances while the navs and I made a bee line for the heater in Operations to flight plan.

The terminal weather at Carnarvon was fine and warm. En route significant cloud but plenty of headwinds. Following an ‘in depth’ conference, we settled on FL205 and I left the navs to it whilst I checked Notams, etc. There was a lot of mumbling and computer flexing over in the navs’ corner but finally they dropped a plan on the FPO’s desk. “Ah-we’re only going to get there with 4,800Ib (squadron min 5,000Ib), but the weather’s fine and beaut and being as cold as it is outside, the engineer’II get 34,000lb in the refuel instead of 32,000lb -so we’ll be right”. “Well, I don’t know. I think we should put a bit more over the wing” sez I. “Oh cripes! You can see down there that they’ve finished fuelling and the tanker’s gone. Besides, it’s getting close to doors close time if we want to make our ETD”. “Well, maybe we could go via Edinburgh?” “Ah well-it’ll take time to replan and the route from Edinburgh to Carnarvon goes through Woomera airspace – we’d never get a special clearance at such short notice”. “Well, what if we use Long Range Cruise (LRC)?” “Oh-we shouldn’t have to use LRC – single point will be OK – we’ll make up fuel from our 10% variable”. Anyhow, the aircraft was eventually loaded (after a slight delay) and we climbed aboard, eager to get the air conditioning turned on to full heat. At top of climb the initial fuel graph plot is a bit below the line. “Hey eng – did you manage to pump in a bit extra at refuel? “Well no – I had to go to the toilet so I gave the duty crew instructions on how to cut off the pumps at the single point quantity. They’re new to C-130’s and unfortunately they shut the valves off a bit early and we got about 300Ib short of 32,000 requested. When I got back they’d already taken the tanker away”. So we’re now 500lb short of terminal minimum requirements! Now the nav chips in – “Ah . . . the wind’s a bit stronger than planned, we’ve got 95k on the nose instead of 80k”.

“Then we should be doing LRC!” “Oh, just wait a while. When we leave these latitudes they may ease off”. We pass abeam EON and the fuel graph doesn’t look good. I’m carrying out my own howgozit and keep a worried kink in my neck as I strive to see the doppler ground matter how often I twiddle my computer, the picture still looks bleak. By this stage the nav is worried enough about his projected fuel graph to delve into his performance graphs again. “Er-skipper, (Note: first reference to who’s boss!) what if we try FL245 and drop our fuel flow?”

“Good idea! Copilot, do the right ATC things; nav, watch the doppler while we climb through the altitudes”. To cut a long story short, there was no reprieve at any level for a fuel flow improvement.

I had two choices.

Firstly, I could continue and refuel at Meekatharra, but that required pavement concessions, and thoughts of what OAFS might have said about that little diversion had I let the fuel situation deteriorate to such a level ran through my mind. The second choice was to return to EON, refuel and head off again. This would put us oul of crew duty time and necessitate overnighting at EON, thus delaying the two tasks. All this just because I’d (a) not added more fuel, (b) not routed via EON, or (c) not carried out LRC from top of climb. At this stage, I experienced that twitchy feeling in one’s seat that indicates arrival of the point in the flight where the crew realizes that the man in the left seat is finally going to accept the buck. I had now to make a critical decision because of numerous smaller omissions. We tried all levels between 185 and 245 but to no avail. That left me no option other than closing down one e·ngine to LRC on three at FL125. I did a double check on all the figures (the answers matched) and left the crew dumbfounded. There was much consternation, back pedalling and all sorts of comments from the rest, but I’d finally made a decision and stuck to it. So we closed down No 1, let the aircraft settle to FL125 and you could almost see those fuel gauges make fuel. About an hour out of Carnarvon, we had enough fuel to continue the journey on all four, so we sat back and enjoyed the higher groundspeed with that fourth prop going around just like the others. Everyone breathed easily again and, seeing as how I had had enough after nine hours flight, we didn’t do circuits at the other end to burn all that saved fuel. That night, in bar talk, it came to light that both navigators had never performed an LRC before, and were reluctant to show ignorance on the subject, especially the checker to his subordinate, as well as vice versa. None of the other crew members had experience of LRC; while I’d done only one four eng LRC on my captaincy check. On the ‘A’ model, three engine LRC was not an emergency procedure and rarely used in the squadron; thus nobody was too familiar with the technique. I learned from this! Several times I’ve recalled that trip and gone through every aspect step by step, looking at all the small errors and how they’d been compounded. The errors that I, as aircraft captain, made are glaring. The crew individually also made errors, major and minor. I can see them – can you?

Mishap With a Moral – Tragedy in Paradise

The operative work is “cross-check” in this needless airline crash.

Not very far below the equator, the island of Bali forms one link in the long chain of Indonesian islands. Rugged peaks jutting as high as 10,000 feet offer mute testimony to the archipelago’s primeval volcanic origins.

Bali, a name that conjures up visions of a lush tropical paradise, friendly natives, unspoiled expanses of sandy beaches, and exotic food and souvenirs. Bali . . . “a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t like to live there”, most of us would probably say. Most of use wouldn’t want to die there either, but 11 crew members and 96 hapless air travellers had no choice the night their PanAm 707 jetliner tore itself apart against the side of a 4,000 foot mountain on the north west side of the island.

The ill-fated flight was a routine scheduled run from Hong Kong to Sydney, with a quick stop at Bali. Everything proceeded normally in every respect during the first four hours of the journey, and about 20 minutes out, the crew contacted Bali Control with a revised ETA of 1527 – three minutes ahead of their original flight plan estimate. They were cleared to descend to flight level 120 and a minute later were informed that runway 09 was the active. During the descent, eight minutes ahead of their latest ETA to Bali, one of the ADF needles swung. Shortly thereafter the crew reported over station and turning outbound. (The planned approach was to make a right hand turn at the airfield beacon, track out on a heading of 263 at 1,500 feet for two minutes and then make a procedure turn inbound over water for the final approach to 09).

Acknowledging the 707’s reported station passage and turn, Bali Control (a non-radar facility) instructed the crew to contact Bali Tower. As soon as tower came up, they granted the crew’s request for a lower altitude by clearing the big Boeing to 2,500 feet. The 707 drivers reported “level, 2,500” at 1523 and confirmed that they would “check inbound” when they had the runway in sight. Their last transmission attempt was made at 1526 when the pilot in command called, “Hey, tower, what is your visibility out there now?”

Tapes from the air traffic control voice recorder indicate the Bali Tower never heard the captain’s call, but it wouldn’t have made much difference at that point had they been able to tell him the visibility was clear and eight miles. Within seconds of the attempted request for information, the 707 was reduced to scattered scrap aluminium as it plowed into the dense jungle terrain 3,000 feet up the side of a ridge running between Mount Mus and Mount Lokbadung.

From all indications, the approach would have been a good one except for one small problem: the pilot was executing it next to a mountain range nearly 40 miles north west of where he thought he was and should have been.

How he got there traces back fairly easily to the apparently erroneous beacon station passage indication at 1519. The whys of his being there don’t resolve so easily, however. Why did the captain and his crew trust the ADF needle that swung in error rather than the one that still pointed ahead correctly to destination – especially when they were eight minutes early on their most recent ETA? Why didn’t they wait for the second needle to swing? Why didn’t they cross-check their position against other navigational aids?

Nobody will every know why an airline captain with nearly 20,000 hours and a seasoned aircrew got themselves into such a situation. Why they did it really isn’t the key factor in making a ‘Monday morning quarterback’ assessment of the accident though. The moral in this needless tragedy is that the captain and his crew should have been suspicious when items like ADF needles, station passage swings and ETA’s disagreed significantly. If they had bothered to cross-check and make absolutely certain of their whereabouts, they would have been permitted, along with their fellow crew members and passengers, the option of briefly sampling the offerings of an exotic tropic isle and moving on . . . instead of having to remain there for eternity.

A Hard Act to Follow . . .

or just another case of airshows!

Displaying an aircraft to its best advantage is an acquired skill. It takes a particular attitude on the part of the pilot to make the display exciting and yet safe. The aircraft must be flown close to its limits and yet there must still be a margin for error. There must always be an escape route.

And I mean must be. It is simply not acceptable to fly to the limits close to the ground and in front of a crowd. It is inevitable that one day the limits will be exceeded and . . .

In the case of newly developed aircraft, it is tragic not only for the friends and relatives of those killed, it is just as tragic for all the people who worked day and night on the project – who have invested part of their lives in it. It deserves to be a success and it does not deserve to be written off for the sake of some momentary demonstration of ‘skill and daring’.

I remember strapping into an aircraft some years ago just as a display pilot started a practice sequence for an air display. It was not a major public affair but the pilot was a keen and very capable fighter pilot and wanted to show the aircraft to its best advantage. I also believe he was trying to show himself to his best advantage in front of a very select group of operational pilots – his fellow squadron members. Obviously the display had to be more than just noise, speed and smoke.

The aircraft, a Mirage passed over the flight line and pulled up into a very tight loop. The Mirage could be looped comfortably in 8,000 feet of altitude and tightly in 6,000 feet. This loop was considerably less. The loop was followed I recollect, by a wingover- again very tight with full afterburner. The aircraft recovered over the waiting aircraft and looked as if it wasn’t going to make it. Several people cried out and an airman nearly fell off the ladder.

The aircraft flew low over the tarmac and. then rolled into what appeared to be a Derry turn before it then tucked and. rolled into the ground. The fireball was not far from the Base married quarters.

The display was the subject of much debate in the bar and was certainly impressive by the tightness of all the manoeuvres. We concluded that the aircraft must have been flown to its angle-ofattack limits throughout the sequence to keep it so tight. There was no room for error and the tight manoeuvring meant that the aircraft was progressively losing energy due to the enormous induced drag of the delta wing.

And it’s not just military aviators and test pilots who exceed the limits in display flying . . .

• While making a demonstration spray run at an air show, a Pawnee turned left and flew into a tree.

• A glider pulled up from a low altitude, high speed pass and turned downwind. The pilot selected dive brakes instead of flaps, landed short and hit a fence.

• A Tiger Moth was doing a flour bombing run at an air show. The aircraft failed to recover completely from the 20° dive and crashed heavily into the ground. It cartwheeled 60m to a stop.

• A Pitts Special was doing low level aerobatics at an air show. At about 500 feet it entered a spin. It completed one turn to the left followed by a half a turn to the right and dived into the ground.

• A Pitts Special was conducting a low level aerobatic display over a lake. Towards the end of the display, the pilot completed four flick rolls which was to be followed by a steep climb and stall turn. The aircraft finished the last roll at a height of about 150ft and pulled up into the stall turn. When he tried to recover from the subsequent dive, the pilot stalled the aircraft and it impacted the water.

Test and display pilots are by nature ‘prima donnas’. They like to show their skills. They like public attention. There is probably an element of that in all of us. The temperament of the display pilot though is critical. He must combine his or her flair with a reserve of caution and must choose a display sequence which is good and consistent but which does not unduly risk the aircraft, the crew or the crowd.

It is fairly easy to impress the public with an exciting display of noise, speed and smoke. In fact it is usually the most popular form of display. However, impressing other pilots is another matter. To me, the display that impresses most is the last of a series of safe, consistent and capable manoeuvres which attracts customers and which promotes aviation as an exciting yet safe form of sport or transport.

You will have read or seen of the Buffalo crash at Farnborough, the Tu-144 at Paris, the Fouga Magister of the FAF display team and the USAF A-10, also at Paris, the Red Arrows collision, the Tigershark, the Aerostar that broke up, the F-18 in the US and very recently, the A320 Airbus. What a waste. . .