Accidents - How much do you want to know

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Fairy Flycatcher
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Accidents - How much do you want to know

Postby Fairy Flycatcher » Sat Sep 10, 2005 1:12 pm

Accidents are a part of flying. More often than not it hurts the wallet more than the body, but the fatal accidents seem to get all the attention, while we don't seem to learn enough about all accidents.

The CAA accident reports I find a bit shallow, and although "Aviation and Safety" GW's new mag, does a great job of giving more info on accident, they are not microlight related.

How much do you want to know about the accidents that occur, and how soon? Speculation always start after a serious accident, do you want to hear some of the theories of what caused an accident as soon as possible? Or do you want everyone to keep quiet until there is some sort of agreement on all the details. (sometimes months)

What about mode of failure during an accident? Do you want to know the step by step sequence of what happened? Or do you just want to try and ignore it as much as possible or just get the basics to try and avoid the situation yourself?

Who would you like to give the accident feedback? CAA / MISASA /
Manufacturer / local club notice board?
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Postby RV4ker (RIP) » Sat Sep 10, 2005 3:30 pm

The more info the better. Up to individual to use/ignore as he chooses. CAA takes a bit long and I find statements by manufacturers (understandably) vague possibly to prevent any sort of liability claims :?:

Speculation is bad, but we could learn what can go wrong in what (often) seems to be a "normal" situation. I often wonder why we see certain types of incidents repeating themselves time & time again. Mostly attributed atributed to Pilot error... Maybe if more pilots where exposed to these they would not fall into that trap?

Learn from other mistakes - Life's too short to make them all yorself :wink:
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Postby DarkHelmet » Sat Sep 10, 2005 9:52 pm

I am with JCVB - Personally though I almost had a close encounter today, will elaborate later - tooooooo tired now after a day of flying for 6 hrs....

Thoughts and comments and suggestions for prevention would always be helpful. What I fear though is a he/she did this wrong finger pointing blah blah situation!
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Postby RV4ker (RIP) » Sat Sep 10, 2005 10:02 pm

DH

6 hrs from klip to FAVV and back???? :?: :?: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

PS
Agree on the finger pointing issue. But we all make mistakes and as long as no UBER pilots/instructors (whatever that means :?: ) we will all grow together. I challenge he(her?) who has not made a mistake (and got away with it) to raise his/her paw. To that Man/Woman I say Bravo :>> :>> :>> :>> :>> -xX ##

Communication is the Key. Keep the faith and share your mistakes. (annonimously if that floats your boat)

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Postby DarkHelmet » Sat Sep 10, 2005 10:33 pm

Need I say more?

Image
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Postby RV4ker (RIP) » Sat Sep 10, 2005 10:50 pm

Practising missed approaches at FAPY.

Must have been fun. Awesome day for it. I did hr (FAVB to FAGM), but was great day for flying.. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Postby DarkHelmet » Sat Sep 10, 2005 11:13 pm

Not exactly JCVB - see this post... http://microlighters.co.za/viewtopic.php?t=732
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Postby Wart » Mon Sep 12, 2005 7:49 am

I think it can be dangerous to try and second guess what has happened too soon after an accident / incident is brought to our attention.

It may be useful to hear from any eye-witnesses, the actual pilot involved etc., who would be in a position to relay some of the facts. If the facts aren't at hand then I am a firm believer that we should stay silent until they are.

As for finger pointing, particularily when it is "pilot error", I feel that we should all be humble enough to admit that we are not infallible and, if we haven't yet, we may also at some stage in our flying careers make a mistake!

May we all learn from these unfortunate occurances in order to make us more aware of our limitations and thus better prepared as pilots.
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Postby Morph » Tue Sep 13, 2005 9:11 am

I believe we need to know as much detail about the accident as possible. I'm not talking about indepth knowledge of the pilot's/pax injuries, but specific to the actions and failures that resulted in the crash. The more detail we have the more we can learn from it. Keeping the human dignity intact we should also analyse the pilots actions if PE was to blame. Even if this might seem ruthless, this is the only way we are all going to get safer.
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Postby ACE » Tue Sep 13, 2005 9:19 am

I agree that we need to learn from any accident, to do this we have to see the facts and findings.

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Postby RudiGreyling » Tue Sep 13, 2005 9:47 am

In my opinion it should be done in a fashion to promote safety and make people aware of any potential problems ASAP, without any gruesome details.

I would like to hear about the accidents ASAP after they have happened.

I'd like to know 1 or 2 possible causes ASAP but only from a reputably source, no speculation, bull-twang and bar talk.

I do not want to see any pictures of the accident scene. A trike mangled up gets my stomach turning, and is not in good taste.
I do want to see a close up picture of the part that failed only.
I do not want to hear what state the bodies was in, that is too gruesome.

Finally I'd like to know the final outcome after the investigation, posted or linked to the same place where the discussion started to conclude it, and eliminate the initial possible causes that was not true.

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Postby C205 » Tue Sep 13, 2005 12:33 pm

Ok, in my profession I get to see a lot of mangled wreckage, bodies etc, so it does not bother me. However, I do realize that these tend to upset the general public. As previously stated 'my' publication does not publish these for that reason. (ducking at this point).

However, I want and need to know what exactly happened. The sooner this is made known while the general aviation is reeling from the shock the better I think because it has the greatest impact (pardon the pun) before pilots start getting blase again. Unfortunately the pilots' injuries (umpleasant as this is) are often part of the accident enquiry and can show a lot about the cause.

I have also seen that initial perceptions (and the many rumours that surround incidents) be proven totally wrong by a thorough and necessarily long investigation. What's the answer then? A speedy and thorough investigation.
Perhaps an initial finding and then a final report like the Americans do? This should be done by a recognised authority and not a group of lay speculators who all have their own theory.
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Postby ACE » Wed Sep 14, 2005 10:36 am

Now we will have to wait for the report on the Sasol Tiger accident, and now there's a Robbie R-22 that went to ground yesterday so there's another report .......... :(
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Postby ZU-JVR » Wed Sep 14, 2005 11:42 am

I'm now a bit older and no longer involved, but when I was a bit younger (The older I get, the faster I was ... ever heard that one?) I was involved in an "industry" where high-speed driving and some low-level flight activity outside of the norm was often part of a day's "normal" activity, as was frequently seeing the results of it (both from a general perspective, but also from time to time those of our own friends & colleagues), and so was learning from "what went wrong" as SOON AS the cause / result analysis could be declared scientific enough to be incorporated into a next learning process, where causes / symptoms / corrective actions where drilled into you ad nauseam.

This applies equally to flying, IMHO. I also happen to be married to someone who lost a parent in a flying accident, so it is fairly close to home. There are lots to be learnt without ANY apportioning of ANY blame. We cannot always predict or accommodate sudden mechanical or other failure, but quite often we can do the right OR the wrong thing to control the outcome - we too often do the wrong thing because we have not:

1. Been made aware of the right thing to do
2. Have not practised how to do the right thing
3. Have not practised how not to do the wrong (sometimes instinctive) thing
4. Therefore cannot do the right thing when it's needed. (quickly, at that)

I for one (again, IMHO) am an avid supporter of speedy formalised analysis of such events, and active application of potential corrective or preventative action as soon as humanly possible afterwards - if only to try and prevent one more such similar thing happening.

I have wondered if there's scope outside the SA CAA (maybe within the Aeroclub / SAPFA / I dunno ????????) for a small section that can devote some time & energy to this - even if we start by "borrowing" from our bigger friends out there - have a look at http://www.aopa.org/asf/ntsb/search_ntsb.cfm - I think it is quite useful - as a matter of fact I try to learn as much as I can from AOPA's ASF section - plenty of very useful articles and documents to be found there.

If this idea sounds possible to some folks who may be involved in a more active and direct fashion in some of the organisations that I mentioned (there may be more?) than what I am - I am willimg to volunteer my involvement in such activity / ies ...

JVR (and, yes, I have put my flamesuit on, just in case ...)
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Postby skybound® » Wed Sep 14, 2005 11:49 am

I have lost 2 very good mates to trike accidents - so please do not believe what I am saying hear is meant to be calous or disrespectfull.

The one irritation is that the accident reports take years to be released. By the time they do get released, everyone has almost forgotten about it and I question if they have much impact on our safety.

We all say - wait for the accident report and don't speculate, but can anyone here show me a single official report of a fatal accident in the past 3 years :?:

I think it is probably more in our interest to speculate - but do so with basis and not to add to the rumour mill.

Take for instance the report FF's hubie did on that one fatal accident (I think the pilots name was Craig ?) That was very usefull and albeit that it was not the official report (which is probably still not available) it did provide some insights and helped with some corrective action.

Can we really afford to wait up to 3 years for an official report? Just by quick inspection the last fatal accident report on micro's I could find was in 2003. Even then there are still other fatal accidents that I know of prior to that where there is still no report.

Maybe speculation could save someones life someday - surely it is worth it then?

And why does it take 3-5 years for an official report?

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