Attempting flight in one of those flying contraptions, an aviator should
have some basic belief that they can start and finish the adventure. Why
else would we make the attempt. Every takeoff will require a landing, hopefully
a smooth one. Many pilots
tried to fly across the Atlantic Ocean but we only hear about that
“Lucky Lindbergh” man who completed the task. Nowadays we only talk about
the flights that do not get completed as planned. In 1901, Wilbur Wright
stated that, “Carelessness and over
confidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks.”
What is inter-esting about this statement is that it was made two years
BEFORE the brothers' histori-cal flight at Kittyhawk. Still in this day
and age we find people over confident with their abilities and their airplanes
equipment abilities, to boldly take them where no man (or woman) should
go. Yes it happens, probably daily. It so happen this day for a very experienced
Lancair test pilot. His experience showed him a Commercial single and multi-engine
ticket with 2312 hours flight time. 620 hours were flying in this Lancair
company demo aircraft. His last instrument flight was Feb 1992, seven years
before the accident. He did fly an Instrument Competency Check in December
1998 with a flight instructor onboard. Two weeks later this man found himself
flying towards a deteriorating weather situation of 300 foot overcast and
1 mile visibility. His overconfidence showed when he told the controller
that he would prefer VFR (Visual Flight Rules -3 miles minimum) but could
“shoot any approach”. Well the weather at the airport was NOT VFR- but
the pilot continued. The weather minimums for the runway 10L ILS at Portland,
Oregon was a ceiling of 450 feet with 1 mile visibility. A Cessna 182 in
front of the Lancair stated that the weather was BELOW landing minimums
for runway 10L and requested the ap-proach for runway 10R. The Lancair
pilot never picked up on that bit of info. This leads one to believe that
he did not have an approach chart for this runway, probably relying on
a GPS navigation radio for navigation data. Later we see that the pilot
has trouble tracking the localizer inbound which later turns into trouble
tracking the glideslope. The last radar hit had the airplane one mile
from the end of the runway with the airplane on a 056 degree heading (40
degrees left of course) and 100 feet above the ground. He landed in the
river. It would seem that the overconfidence in one's ability and maybe
over-relying on GPS and autopilots, can
place people in a place where no man should go. The lack of recent
instrument flying experience plays a big role because your instrument flying
skills must be practiced and honed. I was once asked how many times I would
shoot an instrument approach to a
runway? This statement came to mind. INSANITY = the repeated attempts
at a process and expecting different results. I would say two times. Yes,
the first approach we might be a little nervous and rushed. The second
approach we know what to expect- ragged cloud base, runway lights to the
left of the center windshield because of the cross-wind,…. Shooting the
third approach will have us full of get-there-itous. This is when bad things
happen, like ducking under the glideslope, so you can FIND the ground,
so you can FIND the airport, so you can FIND the runway. Sometimes though,
the ground FINDS you.
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