Can an aircraft be made too easy to fly?

[Cacophonix]

The recent death of US baseball star Roy Halladay in a crash of his Icon 5 amphibous aircraft and the loss of two other Icon aircraft this year due to what appears to be pilot error does raise many questions, but one that bothers me is simply, is it possible to make an aircraft so easy to fly that pilots (whatever their experience level) are tempted to take risks in an aircraft that they might not normally take, particularly one that requires additional judgement and skills required to fly safely, like a sea plane!

The Icon 5's target market is the wheel heeled pilot in search of some sea plane flying fun and makes a virtue of its ease of flying and "car like" familiarity! Halladay was a low hours pilot and he was described as "showboating" just before the aircraft hit the water at what was described at "high speed". Earlier this year an Icon 5 was involved in a CFIT accident that killed respected Icon test pilot Jon Murray Karkow (ex Scaled Composites pilot) and his passenger.

https://www.iconaircraft.com/jonkarkow

Co-incidence or the beginning of a trend...? Perhaps it is just to early in this type's history to tell?

[bbvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ElP2v1_pbQ[/bbvideo]


https://www.iconaircraft.com/home


It is surprising that many aircraft that are designed to be simple or simpler to fly have accident statistics that are no better than supposedly more complex aircraft in their class e.g. the Cessna Skymaster...

https://www.avweb.com/news/features/ces ... 566-1.html

https://airfactsjournal.com/2012/05/dic ... us-pilots/

Caco

[Pontius Navigator]

Make them even easier. Look at modern cars, lane keeping, parking assist, proximity warning, adaptive cruise control, automatic lighting and so on.

These innovations could all be incorporated into an aircraft. Imagine arriving at destination, your lane assist aka terrain avoidance gets you safely to the gate. Parking assist aka autoland gets you down. Adaptive speed control aka autothrottle controls your speed on the ground. Your aircraft then self drives to the parking slot.

Or does that take all the fun out of flying?

[Cacophonix]

Make them even easier. Look at modern cars, lane keeping, parking assist, proximity warning, adaptive cruise control, automatic lighting and so on.

These innovations could all be incorporated into an aircraft. Imagine arriving at destination, your lane assist aka terrain avoidance gets you safely to the gate. Parking assist aka autoland gets you down. Adaptive speed control aka autothrottle controls your speed on the ground. Your aircraft then self drives to the parking slot.

Or does that take all the fun out of flying?

My gut feeling that is over automating aircraft takes the brain out of flying and thus the pilot out of the loop, which is just inviting trouble. Pilots flying the electronic magenta line, not looking out, relying on automation and electronics when flying nous, planning and airmanship are also required...

The Icon A5 takes the driving metaphor to another level with a decidedly non standard primary flying instrument setup...

icon1.JPG (200.13 KiB) Viewed 680 times

The AI is a case in point... (Angle of Attack Gauge used by fighter pilots, yeah, yeah!)

Icon2.JPG (111.37 KiB) Viewed 680 times

No obvious vertical speed indicator! Also I don't see a turn and slip or a turn co-ordinator but who cares about that when overbanking in a slipping condition close to the stall when turning onto final because the aircraft is "spin proof" and the ballistic parachute will "save" you when you screw up!

http://cdn.iconaircraft.com/v2/explore- ... et_v02.pdf

No obvious DI or whisky compass either but who needs that when you have a GPS that never fails just when you need it.

Clearly this is a sport aircraft, not designed for IFR or for serious touring (although the range at 427nm with 45 min reserve isn't bad for such an ugly duckling) but what I don't see in that cockpit makes me uneasy. Maybe I am just an old conservative!

Caco

[Stoneboat]

Was there any wind when the guy went into the water? If there wasn't then glassy water rears its ugly head. On glassy water there is no depth perception, so it's easy to fly the airplane into the water with predictable results. Again, if he was over open water there could be two foot swells and there would be no way he'd know about them unless he could see a shoreline someplace to gauge the wave action. Did he even have a float endorsement. If not, what was he doing fcuking around in an amphibian.

[Cacophonix]

Was there any wind when the guy went into the water? If there wasn't then glassy water rears its ugly head. On glassy water there is no depth perception, so it's easy to fly the airplane into the water with predictable results. Again, if he was over open water there could be two foot swells and there would be no way he'd know about them unless he could see a shoreline someplace to gauge the wave action. Did he even have a float endorsement. If not, what was he doing fcuking around in an amphibian.

Reading the Icon A5 blurb it seems you need to have a Light Sport Airplane Single Engine Sea plane endorsed licence to fly the aircraft.

SPL/Sport Pilot License
The Sport Pilot License (SPL) is a new type of pilot certificate designed to get you safely and easily trained for recreational flying in Light Sport Aircraft. By restricting recreational flying for sport pilots to daytime, good weather, below10,000 feet MSL, and in uncongested airspace, much of the complexities and difficulties of learning to fly have been removed. 95% of the US Airspace below 10,000 MSL is open to sport flying.

Hmmh!

Caco

[Cacophonix]

As the results of the pilot's autopsy are released, the details are upsetting and point towards narcotics use by the pilot! What is very sad is that he effectively drowned and was not killed outright in the crash and that nobody hurried to try and save him.

There was certainly plenty of finger pointing after the accident, some focused on Halladay’s flying habits, some on Icon for marketing efforts that seemed to encourage low-level maneuvers exclusive of landing or takeoff.

More distressing, though, were the details contained in the autopsy released yesterday to Flying. No surprise that Roy Halladay — his given name was actually Harry Leroy Halladay — suffered from multiple broken bones and internal organ damage when the aircraft hit the water. Even at the relatively low speeds associated with an Icon A5, slamming into the water at nearly any angle is like hitting concrete. Halladay was a relatively new private pilot having logged just over 700 hours, of which 51 were in the Icon A5.

What was unknown until the autopsy surfaced was that Halladay was still breathing after the accident, perhaps while people stood on the deck of nearby boats shooting videos after witnessing the crash. No one jumped in the water to help, to see if the pilot was still alive. The autopsy said contributing to Halladay’s death in addition to the blunt head and chest trauma was “foamy fluid in the larynx and airways,” meaning a contributing cause of the MLB star’s death was drowning.

If the details of the multiple traumas to Halladay’s body were not insult enough, the Pasco and Pinellas County Coroner’s report discovered the former ball player had enough mood-altering drugs in his system to confirm he shouldn’t have been driving a car, much less flying an airplane.

Halladay’s blood report listed zolpidem, amphetamine, free morphine and ethanol, while the urine test uncovered cotinine, dihydromorphone, fluoxetine, hydromorphone, morphine, morphine metabolities, nicotine and zolpidem. A physician/pilot I spoke to about the results said there was no doubt Halladay was “soused,” when he crashed. He also said some of the drugs, most of which are not on the FAA’s list of approved medications, were essentially contradictory, like zolpidem, a generic name for Ambien, a sleep aid, and amphetamine and Adderall a medication to perk people up and is often used to treat ADD. Fluoxetine was another strange addition to this medical cocktail of Halladay’s. Fluoxetine is a generic name for Prozac used to treat depression.

As to the mentions of morphine, our source didn’t think that seemed strange for a retired baseball star who might be coping with the aches and pains of who knows how many injuries he’d suffered over the years … but certainly morphine didn’t belong in his system while he was flying.

What the autopsy could not tell us was exactly how soon before his flight Halladay ingested this cornucopia of medications. In the end, however, there’s little doubt that many things were troubling Roy Halladay on the day he crashed his Icon A5.

The real question is how we talk to new pilots about the risks they add to each flight with these kinds of medications in their system.

FlyingMag Report...

Caco

[Sisemen]

Maybe I’m old-fashioned as well but I’m with Caco here - it’s what’s missing that raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The test pilot crash was, according to the NTSB, due to misidentifying the canyon he flew up, ending up in a steep, dead-end. Nothing to do with the aircraft type.
Do remember the instruments on, say, a Tiger Moth. Nothing inherently wrong with an ASI that is a metal plate on a spring out on a wing strut. Such instrumentation does, however, require a pilot to have been trained thoroughly in basic handling.
I flew up Loch Etive once at dawn, it was flat calm and absolutely impossible to judge height - the water was literally invisible. I had the benefit of a radalt and altimeters on the exact pressure setting.
That many drugs, Jeez. Words fail.

[Cacophonix]

The test pilot crash was, according to the NTSB, due to misidentifying the canyon he flew up, ending up in a steep, dead-end. Nothing to do with the aircraft type.
Do remember the instruments on, say, a Tiger Moth. Nothing inherently wrong with an ASI that is a metal plate on a spring out on a wing strut. Such instrumentation does, however, require a pilot to have been trained thoroughly in basic handling.

I flew up Loch Etive once at dawn, it was flat calm and absolutely impossible to judge height - the water was literally invisible. I had the benefit of a radalt and altimeters on the exact pressure setting.
That many drugs, Jeez. Words fail.

While I agree that neither the test pilot's crash nor Halliday's accident can be blamed on the aircraft per se, I still question the notion of simplification ad absurdam. The point being, as you say, "Such instrumentation does, however, require a pilot to have been trained thoroughly in basic handling" is that flying such an aircraft (sea plane with non standard instrumentation) actually needs enhanced skills, which is not what the marketing and advertising ethos at the company has projected!

Caco

[ExSp33db1rd]

Agree with Caco.

At the risk of being reviled as one who is suggesting that inventing the wheel was a mistake, I don't even like flying the modern "Glass cockpit" digital displays ( Nb. never had to professionally, I'd retired before the Magenta Line was invented. Q - is it some sort of cousin of the Maginot Line ? I do know about that !

One of our club Microlight/LSA's is equipped with such an "improvement" - akcherly its empty weight is higher than a similar "round instrument" model, funny that, but I find that I can't fly it straight and level, or climb/descend at a constant, target speed to a level of competence that satisfies me With round instruments the lag in response time of the needle is sufficient to ensure that I'm not "chasing" a speed, or height, but with the glass cockpit aircraft - Christ, I'm supposed to be holding 80 knots and I'm doing 81 ! now 78 ! or I'm supposed to be flying at 2000 ft, not 2001, or 1998. The now constantly moving digits are a distraction. I will accept that one must eventually get used to it, just that I haven't, yet

Many years ago I was reminded by a colleague that some of the WWII pilots that we started to fly with couldn't fly an instrument let down to save their lives - literally ( some of them ) yet pop out of cloud too high, too fast, not configured for an approach, and say ... "The runway's over there, Sir. " ( never forgetting the Sir ) and they would straighten up and fly a magnificent visual approach to an immaculate touchdown. My friend went on to say, "but the wheel has turned full circle, these young guys, brought up on a surfeit of Microsoft Flight Simulator or the like, that we are now training can fly an instrument let down to approach minima better than we ever could or ever will, but pop out of cloud at 400' on approach and have to put a real aeroplane down on the real Earth, and they lose it" So what are they going to do when the auto-pilot/auto-throttle/auto-land gadgets fail and they have to do it. Maybe the San Francisco accident a couple of years ago, when the pilot hand flew it into the ground short of the runway, is an example. e.g. he "thought" he had engaged the auto-throttle, but in fact hadn't, and just let the speed decay to a point where it was too late to save the situation.

Last year I was flying with a friend in his Cessna 172 over Southern California. He handed control to me whilst he "consulted" his i-Pad, to ascertain the latest weather, Notams and other likely information that I personally doubted had changed much since our departure, but which he felt had to be confirmed. He gave me a second iPad and just told me to fly what I guess was a representation of the much mentioned Magenta Line, but I felt most uncomfortable not being able to glance at a chart which showed the whole route from start to finish, and be satisfied that that hill, or that town, was where it was supposed to be relative to the line drawn by hand before departure - had it been. Only seeing a small portion of the present section of the route displayed on the i-Pad, and not being at all familiar with the local topography, made my very uneasy. Of course my friend was familiar with the terrain and locality and we had no problem, but it made me think- what if ?

[Cacophonix]

Agree with Caco.

Last year I was flying with a friend in his Cessna 172 over Southern California. He handed control to me whilst he "consulted" his i-Pad, to ascertain the latest weather, Notams and other likely information that I personally doubted had changed much since our departure, but which he felt had to be confirmed. He gave me a second iPad and just told me to fly what I guess was a representation of the much mentioned Magenta Line, but I felt most uncomfortable not being able to glance at a chart which showed the whole route from start to finish, and be satisfied that that hill, or that town, was where it was supposed to be relative to the line drawn by hand before departure - had it been. Only seeing a small portion of the present section of the route displayed on the i-Pad, and not being at all familiar with the local topography, made my very uneasy. Of course my friend was familiar with the terrain and locality and we had no problem, but it made me think- what if ?

An excellent point (I agree with everything in ExSp33d1brd's post actually) and one that was reinforced for me last year when flying at low level (very "ahem") up the Great Glen with another pilot sitting in the right hand seat with his face buried in his i-Pad watching SkyDemon while I flew with a chart strapped to my knee. I climbed back up to 1000 feet at the neck of a loch and my companion looked up from his electronic reverie and asked me what I was doing and I pointed at the wires below us, strung from one side of the valley to the other, that I had seen on the chart well before we got there as well as being clocked visually by me and which had not appeared with his current terrain magnification on his screen and had not been seen by him!

Go figure!

Caco

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

All marketing of luxury goods is aimed at those who are rich, insecure idiots. The seaplane company appears to have an excellent marketing department, as indeed do Apple.

[Ex-Ascot]

Said it before and will say it yet again. We do not train pilots anymore we train system operators. And, the company SOPs do not allow you to touch the stick or the throttles on the approach.

My company encouraged it but we were 50% ex-RAF including the chief pilot.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I flew for a large airline training school in the US back in the 1990's who also still taught proper handling. There also, all the senior people were proper pilots, generally ex-military, except one guy who'd been a DC-10 test pilot and one guy who'd flown for Air America. I think the principle died out not long after.

[ExSp33db1rd]

Said it before and will say it yet again.........

Don't know what you're worried about Ladies and Gentlemen, nothing will go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong ...

But when it does ???

[om15]

In the immediate aftermath of this accident we were discussing the possible causes (before the inquiry took place), one of our training Captains (A300), a German who had previously trained in one of the big German airlines, stated that the cause was obvious, pilots were no longer being trained to fly aircraft and who could be surprised as the result.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Air_Flight_072

This was 20 years ago.

[Ex-Ascot]

One of the bush pilots from here joined Qatar. Met him recently. Apparently they hand fly. Also the company doesn't throw a wobbly if you fill the aircraft with fuel half way up the windows for the feel comfortable factor. Interesting.

[om15]

Not just pilots, engineers are not being trained to understand their trade. As an apprentice, and later when taking CAA AMEL exams I was expected to be able to display knowledge of materials, heat treatments, be able to form and make structural parts, carry out in the field repairs and incorporate good standard practices into the repairs, the CAA published very good informative guidance leaflets on how to do this, the CAA publication CAIPS was our bible in fact.
Under EASA engineers are only permitted to fit parts that are manufactured by the Part 21 manufacturing organisation, no longer can we look at some damage, draw out a sheet of L72 from stores and using guillotines, benders, ovens and so on make the part that we need.

Possibly the advances in design and technology of modern aircraft have made the skills of both pilots and engineers obsolete in normal circumstances. Certainly the regulatory changes in oversight are marked, the CAA would only issue an AMEL after written and oral exams, many failed these and took resits or simply gave up, therefore the CAA enforced a regime whereby only properly competent people gained a licence, once granted any type ratings were only issued after a stiff oral exam.
The present system under EASA is different in that the exam is an American "vote for Joe" paper, no oral exam, and a type rating issued after a course, these courses are very expensive and a pass is guaranteed in the price. Consequently it is possible to almost buy a licence, no oral exams, no weeding out of the unfit.

I think the culture has changed in that all those professionals who worked in aviation either were trained in the Forces or were trained in large organisations that had their roots in military backgounds, or at least the people running these organisations were ex military.

Now everyone goes to training schools aiming to get you through exams rather then instilling the basics, and every so often this bites us.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

When the US pilot exams went Vote For Joe, and then ALL the questions were published (thanks to a lawyer), the exams no longer represented any measure of genuine knowledge. As a consequence, examiners for the Commercial flight test switched from a few quick questions to doing what amounted to a 2 hour 'oral' exam, with W&B calcs, etc, in order to establish whether the student actually knew anything.
From my experience of the latest training design, the objective is very rarely to measure genuine knowledge, but to easily and cheaply satisfy a legal requirement. One example, discovered by the Home Office, was that a group of foreign factory workers in the UK had all "passed" the safety training, delivered in English, despite the fact that over half those interviewed could not understand anything but Polish. Nothing was done about it.

[TheGreenGoblin]

NTSB Report Offers Disturbing Details of Halladay Accident. Baseball player’s bloodstream was full of disqualifying drugs.


Details of crash and NTSB finding...

Report here...