On April 2, 2024, a training aircraft from Sault College landed hard on a runway at Sault Ste. Marie Airport. As a result, emergency crews had to respond and the runway was closed. The trainer and trainee pilot were injured and taken to a hospital. The aircraft, identified as a single-engine Zlin with the registration code C-GERR, sustained significant damage
Hey man, I'm a student at Sault College & I figured I'd give you some context for GERR's crash, if you'd like to add it to the description.
When tower said "whiskey approved" that's them allowing us to do a simulated engine failure on the go. (Instead of being cleared for the option we have specific procedures so tower knows what we're gonna do) So what happened is as they were on the climb-out, the instructor pulled power & they attempted the nose-over for the simulated engine out landing. However, as this pushover (usually up to 0G) happened, the wind cut out & they stalled at roughly 50'. Both the nose & left main gear collapsed. Both student & instructor are okay although pretty banged up. We used a wheel loader & tow straps to carry it back to the hanger.
If you do choose to add/paraphrase any of that, I'd like to remain anonymous.
Remember, stick and rudder skill isn't important any more. It's all about button-pushing. You're a "systems manager" now.
Engine failures after takeoff simply aren't something we need to train for any more.
It’s been a long time since I was there, but I do remember that between the high-ish wing loading and piles of drag those Zlins glide like a crowbar. No excuse for bending one when you don’t have to but when I was there they didn’t have any build up to the engine failure on departure. When you pull power on the climbout the speed drops fast and you have to push the nose a looooong way down to recover it. I wish they’d get their pilots well familiar with the sight picture and amount of pitch down required at altitude so that the response is a lot more comfortable down low. It’s hard to get a training program to change for some reason, though.
I suspect the Zlin is like any other aircraft in that the pitch attitude will naturally seek the trimmed airspeed.
If you’re flying along in a Zlin and you reduce the power 500 RPM the nose will drop. If you increase the RPM 500 the nose goes up.
I strongly suggest one of the pilots onboard was pulling back and wouldn’t let the nose drop to where it needed to be, to seek it’s trimmed airspeed. I’ve seem this before giving spin training. They don’t even know they’re doing it. They instinctively want to go up and their instincts are wrong.
Remember the genius 4 bar on AF447 that held the stick all the way back for 3.5 minutes, doing a falling leaf into the sea, killing everyone.
The wind wasn’t the problem here. Respectfully I don’t think the airplane was the problem here.
The problem was between the pilot’s ears. But people don’t like to admit that.
I did four landings yesterday with -3000 FPM on a continuous base to final. That’s what happens in a Pitts when you reduce the power to idle on downwind abeam the numbers. You let the nose drop. It tries to maintain the trimmed airspeed, unless the pilot tries to stop it from doing so by pulling back.
All of the above seems obvious and you explain it on the ground but when something happens in the air, pilots don’t process it through their frontal lobes, they react instinctively and their instincts are wrong.
How many times have you explained to a student on the ground, during a stall don’t pick up a dropping wing with aileron? You explain adverse yaw, ask him questions, he nods his head and you go flying. And during the stall a wing drops, he tries to pick it up with aileron and into the spin you go.
His instincts are wrong. The pilot did the wrong thing. This is very hard for people to admit but as long as people are in denial that there is a problem, it won’t get fixed.
Tailwheel training is entirely about teaching new, correct instincts. Multi-engine training requires that the nose be lowered considerably after an EFATO. No pilot wants to lower the nose, close to the ground. He instinctively pulls back. He wants to go up very very badly and his instincts are wrong.
Yes to all of that but I posit that the place to first become familiar with the sight picture is in the practice area and not immediately after takeoff. I hesitate to suggest more training be added to an already time-bloated syllabus but the reality is there was shockingly little guidance on making training make sense back when I was teaching; most were happy to just tick all the boxes in the PTR. I doubt it’s changed.
All this is just me criticizing the system, not the individuals who cycle through it.
I haven't talked to him since we both moved but he used to own a hangar down the
row from me, where he kept a gorgeous red Stinson. Good stick, smart guy, Waterloo
engineer, I think he retired from General Dynamics in Bells Corners?
He knows all this stuff. Probably has a lot more than my trifling 3000 hours of dual
flight instruction given by now. It would be interesting to get his take on this but of
course he can't.
It’s been a long time since I was there, but I do remember that between the high-ish wing loading and piles of drag those Zlins glide like a crowbar. No excuse for bending one when you don’t have to but when I was there they didn’t have any build up to the engine failure on departure. When you pull power on the climbout the speed drops fast and you have to push the nose a looooong way down to recover it. I wish they’d get their pilots well familiar with the sight picture and amount of pitch down required at altitude so that the response is a lot more comfortable down low. It’s hard to get a training program to change for some reason, though.
I don't know anything about this accident, but I doubt the sight picture was the issue. I would guess the initial climb out was a bit slower than what was common during normal flights. If you're slower, and then dive for the same sight picture, you'll likely end up slower than you want. It would also explain the perceived headwind change.
Or perhaps the initial nose down response happened a second later than normal, causing the same problem.
One thing you learn from doing decades of aerobatics is that airspeed and
pitch attitude and weight don't actually matter.
They are just proxies for angle of attack, which is the only thing that matters.
It is very important to me to keep the wing happy, under very high G or very
unusual attitudes. Nothing else matters except AoA. The wing has no eyeballs,
it does not get scared or frightened like a skittish horse.
Straight and level pilots lecture me, for example, on the evils of bank angle.
Because I use all kinds of bank in the pattern, that must make me an evil
person. Got that.
I ask them, let's say you turn downwind to base with 80 degrees of bank
with the accelerometer reading zero in any aircraft. What is your stall speed?
Hint: Vs(g) = sqrt(g) x Vs(1g)
Remember, there are no singularities in the pattern. Infinite G is rarely attained
at 90 degrees of bank. Heck, my kid and I used to fly formation at 90 degrees
of bank.
Is Skip experiencing infinite G at 90 degrees of bank, in the above, like your
flight instructor taught you? Of course not. In fact, his wings are providing
absolutely no lift whatsoever - they are symmetrical and are at zero A0A.
I don't know anything about this accident, but I doubt the sight picture was the issue. I would guess the initial climb out was a bit slower than what was common during normal flights.
The student was put in a spot where they had to go from big nose up to big nose down, all with the ground right there.
Bad people like me teach pilots new instincts which keep them alive.
AF447. Four bar pulls back all the way on the stick for 3.5 minutes and everyone dies.
Colgan 3407. Four bar lets speed bleed off in icing. When the column shakes, he pulls back so hard he does +2G snap rolls into the ground and everyone dies.
I have only been flying accident-free for over half a century but his instincts were wrong. Most pilots suffer from that. Flip them upside down on final, they pull back to go up.
Note that as a result of Colgan 3407 Chuck Schumer passes legislation requiring two ATPs up front part 121 which of course 3407 had. Never let a good crisis go to waste, Chuck says.
I don't know anything about this accident, but I doubt the sight picture was the issue. I would guess the initial climb out was a bit slower than what was common during normal flights.
The student was put in a spot where they had to go from big nose up to big nose down, all with the ground right there.
The previous messages seemed to hint this was a common training exercise, given that the tower had a special codeword for it. Either way, it doesn't matter what the student was doing or not doing. The instructor was in charge. If it was indeed a common exercise, then they shouldn't have been fazed by being close to the ground. Then it's interesting to analyze why it went wrong this time. Since the instructor likely knew exactly from what altitude the exercise can be completed, I find it more likely the airspeed was lower than expected. Even 5 kts can make a big difference when climbing out. Depending on the instrumentation, that can be relatively easily missed.
But again, pure speculation. If you know more, I'm eager to learn!
