"Failed stunt causes crash" ...

[IO540]

I really don't know what % of pilots would be regarded as "showing off" but it does feature a lot in fatal crashes, both fixed wing and rotary.

However, I would think somebody doing large scale logbook forgery, flying without the papers, etc, is going to have to restrict his showing off to when he is in the air, and keep a very low profile on the ground, in terms of his exposure to people who might suss him out.

The Walter Mitty types who make the mistake of posting silly stuff on a forum get sussed fast, and I think the same would happen to somebody in a crowd of pilots. Earlier this year I was at a big pilot meeting abroad, and one chap made an amazing claim about hundreds of flights between certain two countries. The group went very quiet, a few seconds later looked at each other, smiled, and that was it. No more was said, since it isn't really anybody's business to take it further. But this chap's credibility went to zero.

Anybody forging perhaps 90% of his logged time, while flying illegally, must have a weird motive. Perhaps he was doing it to impress non-flying friends / prospective passengers?

I must admit the trick of starting a fresh logbook is a good one as it avoids having to invent a lot of flights and I would have never thought of that myself

Some might ask why should anybody care. I personally would not care if somebody was doing this in a G-reg and without passengers. The CAA doesn't normally do ramp checks so presumably they aren't bothered. I would definitely care if somebody was doing it in an N-reg, because the repercussions to the whole FAA licensed community here could be significant if something really nasty happened.

I too am interested in the Graham Hill case - primarily because it appears to be one of the few documented cases of an insurer not paying out to third parties as a result of 'technical irregularities'. This will be another case of interest (assuming there actually was insurance purchased) as the level of 'irregularity' is alarmingly high.

The report is here. It doesn't deal with the post-crash litigation and neither do the few aviation accident publications in which the topic came up. My guess is that since passenger liability (Civil Aviation Act) depends on the pilot being found negligent, this is what happened, resulting in his estate being stripped by the passengers' estates. But I never came across anybody who knew any details for sure. It is always interesting and educational to see what kinds of stuff causes insurers to not pay out, but I think this one is not only very old but also exceptional in the extent of the missing paperwork.

[Justiciar]

an old Cherokee is a pretty cheap aircraft to run at around £50 an hour

Wonderful. Bose-X: do you know where I can buy one? There I was thinking that C of A aviation was so much more expensive. I woul be very interested to see how £50 per hour breaks down

[IO540]

Well, one way would be to fly hundreds of hours a year but only log 20 of them, and maintain as per the logbooks

Or not maintain at all. Deals with all this Part M nonsense nicely!!

Mogas (as reported) also helps. I gather the stuff at Sainsburys gives a good operating ceiling - at least FL180. If you get bubbles, just turn on the electric fuel pump. And you get the Nectar points which you can use off your next shopping bill. Flying over 200hrs/year, gosh, that's a lot of Nectar points. I reckon you would get free food for the whole family off that.

[S-Works]

Quote:
an old Cherokee is a pretty cheap aircraft to run at around £50 an hour
Wonderful. Bose-X: do you know where I can buy one? There I was thinking that C of A aviation was so much more expensive. I woul be very interested to see how £50 per hour breaks down

There is a syndicate that operates from our place that charge £50 and hour and about £150pm. That was the example I was using. They seem to make it work OK. I have no idea how it breaks down, not my business.

[Pace]

Bose

It always amuses me how we only see the charges we want to see. Maybe its for the wives benefit

There is a syndicate that operates from our place that charge £50 and hour and about £150pm. That was the example I was using. They seem to make it work OK. I have no idea how it breaks down, not my business

The above is £1800 per year standing charges 20 hrs a year adding up to £140 per hr and at 40 hrs £95 per hour not quite the £50 indicated

Pace

[S-Works]

Pace, I have absolutely no idea of the inner dynamics of the group so can't agree or debunk your figures.

But at 200hrs a year the standing charges are £9 an hour. You can manipulate the figures to whatever number you want. But as I said it works for this group.

[smarthawke]

No doubt an old Cherokee could be run for £50/hr if it was 'maintained' in a similar fashion to the incident machine...

[Crash one]

Originally Posted by BUDGIE

Ermmmmm the amount of crashes caused by pilots showing off is a good starter for 10. Not sure your in a position to talk about my experience in aviation. Time in age does not all ways = time in experience. For all we know you have a lapsed med and licence hence your so up tight.

Not sure what experience or age has to do with anything here.
You refer to what seems to be "us" as "You" ** Show off too much.
This would indicate that you are not we. Am I clear?
Lapsed med/licence? why would that make me up tight, it's been done before?
Chill? yes I did, today was a nice day for it.
Why I am replying to this crap beats me.

DO
I think we should stop all flying not just GA, in fact let's stop everything & see just how much it would take to keep the nay sayers quiet.

[Vino Collapso]

A maintenance organisation (not saying who) once told me an aeroplane ages directly as a result of the hours you write in the log book.

For a machine with a 500 hour TBO such as we operated the temptation to 'lose' one in every four flights was quite forcefull.

Your figures will never get checked unless someone visits all the aerodromes possible and scours their movement logs for visits by the target aircraft. If you operate solely from a private strip there is virtually no check possible.

[englishal]

We diddled ourselves out of hours. For years we were writing hobbs on the tech log sheet, which then the group admin transcribed to the logbooks....the result is that for a short flight, about 1hr flight time = 1.2 hobbs....

Although realistically this only amounted to 20 or so hours as on logn flights the difference in time is much less.

[IO540]

A maintenance organisation (not saying who) once told me an aeroplane ages directly as a result of the hours you write in the log book.

For a machine with a 500 hour TBO such as we operated the temptation to 'lose' one in every four flights was quite forcefull.

Your figures will never get checked unless someone visits all the aerodromes possible and scours their movement logs for visits by the target aircraft. If you operate solely from a private strip there is virtually no check possible.

Very true.

With one addition: a plane ages in proportion to the "maintenance" done to it, by monkey-handed screwdriver men chewing things off it. A plane that's been hangared from new, and never maintained, will look brand new after 10 or 20 years (if washed). A plane that's been subjected to average maintenance practices will have cracks in all plastic parts, scratches everywhere, paint chipped off, etc, all within a year or two.

Anyway, small airfields don't keep movement logs, and a lot of the GA scene flies between strips that keep none. Anything is possible.

The issue is that many people will quite rightly say that a lot of required maintenance is pointless e.g. the EASA regime for mandatory replacement of "recommended-lifed" parts which are actually in perfect condition. Such regs merely play into the hands of those who want to skip on doing some stuff, which is entirely predictable.

OTOH, it amazes me why most owners maintain by hobbs time, when doing it by strict airborne time saves about 10-20% (on the average flight time). I think most of the time it is due to lack of mutual trust between renter/owner or shareholders, whereas the hobbs reading can't be tampered with.

[Saab Dastard]

I've split off the discussion about insurance to a new thread here:

http://www.pprune.org/private-flying...insurance.html

SD

[madlandrover]

Not so long ago a pilot at an airfield in the middle of the country came back into land with twiggs stuck in the wheels of his aircraft having made an approach to a main road he mistook for the runway.

If that's the one that happened about 10-11 months ago... Not quite telling the full story. Night approach to a road with 2 white, 2 red all the way down - shame they were moving. The twigs and dented left wing leading edge came from the next approach though, going through the top of a hedge on v v short final.

This particular case concerns a pilot who is known to have certain safety issues, but with no major incidents there is no room for enforcement action - innocent until proven guilty! He does however limit his flying hours by employing the local maintenance outfit on a fairly continuous basis...

[oscarisapc]

Not just the orphans who are victims

I don't want to minimise the plight of the two children left orphaned by this incident but there is now also a major problem for the pilot's wife who will find her husband's estate (and joint assets etc.) liable for the considerable damges payable. Quite apart from the fact that we don't even know whether the plane was insured since a pilot who had neglected his legal obligations may also have neglected other matters but it is likely that insurance is going to be invalid in any case as the flight was not lawful. Under UK law my understanding is that fault does not have to be proved for the owner of an airplane to be held liable for any damage caused by the plane - a fact which can cause anxiety in group ownership since all the members of the group are liable for the consequences of their aeroplane even if they were nowhere near it at the time.

The other point is that it may not be wise to carry both parents of dependent children as passengers at the same time. I don't know if this is still the case but the Queen always used to avoid flying in the same plane as Prince Charles so the monarch and the heir were not both at risk together. I certainly make a point of only carrying one parent as a passenger. The only time I broke my own rule was when I took my wife as a passenger. It was a beautiful day, our children were safely at school and we crossed from Bristol to Swansea for the usual £100 sandwich. On the preflight inspection before return I noticed a large pool of oil under the engine which came from a cracked cylinder head. Apart from the ignominy of a slow return by coach there was a lot of pondering on the way back about what would have happened to our children if the cylinder head had given out over the Severn estuary (not known for its benign wind and tides) rather than safely on the ground at an airfield.

[Lister Noble]

Every day tens of millions of people take their wives,families etc on a road trip.
Most with a very basic understanding of speed and dynamics.
Vehicles approaching each other at speeds up to 140 mph plus,seperated by a few feet of tarmac.
Do you use two cars,send half the family by rail,or air?
Do we all stop doing anything and everything with any risk?

[XX621]

The argument about cars vs. light aircraft doesn't hold up IMHO. If every driver in the UK swapped their license for a PPL and headed off to work in a spamcan I would be amazed if the fatality rate dropped.

I don't fly my wife (she has little interest in flying anyway), but since we have two young kids I long decided it's not simply worth the risk - it's not as if we'd miss the collective experience. Nearly every flight of mine has unavoidable periods (allbeit short periods) of flight over areas where if the engine popped I would be in serious trouble.

[robin]

I take the same view. I know I sometimes take the passengers by car to the airfield together, and that, statistically, is more risky than the flight.

But in the air is my unbreakable rule. Once upon a time a friend asked if I could treat his wife to a flight to celebrate her birthday and the birth of their daughter 3 weeks earlier. Then he asked if he could come along as well - the answer was no.

Being a good friend he understood my concern and I flew them separately, but the worry of leaving the wee bairn behind in case of incident would have caused me a lot of worry.

[IO540]

However, you could manage the risk to a large degree.

There is a lot of difference between flying to Norway across the N Sea, and going for a bimble from Goodwood over Kent.

The latter is over land; 99.9% of which is fields.

Short of a structural failure, one isn't going to get killed. And if SF was a possibility I would not be flying in it myself as I have 2 kids, a girlfriend, and I value my life too much.

I must admit however I would not be writing this is I was renting the stuff I did the PPL in...

[XX621]

Originally Posted by IO540

And if SF was a possibility I would not be flying in it myself as I have 2 kids, a girlfriend, and I value my life too much.

How do you know SF isn't going to happen though? Although it really is risk hardly worth discussing...

However, people do get killed in light aircraft, as we well know, flying over areas which are 99.9% fields.....and if reading the reports are anything to go by, the actual surface below is of little consequence because, typically, and for whatever reason the aircraft was not in control when it became re-united with the ground (or it was, but pilot was unable to see the ground)...

The biggest single risk I have identified is my handling of an engine out at low level. I simply can't be 110% sure I would deliver a textbook performance and/or find a suitable piece of land in time, simply because I had never proven my ability to do so (or had to, to be exact, touch wood)...

[IO540]

How do you know SF isn't going to happen though?

I think it is safe to assume that if flying on a nice day (the kind of day one might be taking people sightseeing) and not showing off doing barrel rolls or whatever, and if flying a plane one has had since new, or at least since its last major belly inspection, so one knows nobody has done anything nasty in it and nearly broke it, that the wing spar isn't going to break.

I have never read an accident report suggesting otherwise.

But as you say the risk is miniscule anyway.