Jim Warm thanks for another boots-on-the-ground commentary, this time related to your decades of flight experience.
“Man proposes, God disposes”relates to life. As John Lennon phrased it “Life is what happens, when you have other plans.”
I remember in my Foreign Service days encountering rigid security strictures. In fact, the greatest insecurity came from human carelessness.
I recall, after Martin and Mitchell defected from NSA to Moscow in 1960 and revealed a number of countries where NSA was intercepting and decoding communications. At the time I was working in the State Department’s COMINT office.
I chuckled reading one foreign communicator saying to another: “They can’t intercept us. We switched from a Haglin 34 to a Haglin 54.” Yes, but someone had carelessly botched the call signals, permitting NSA an entry point. My buddies and I had a good laugh. I don’t recall, after the Martin/Mitchell affair that NSA was cut out of any significant intelligence traffic.
The security in my office was draconian. However, this didn’t prevent my finding Top Secret/Code Word material in my coat jacket when I came home. Rather than attempt to smuggle it back to my office, I flushed it down the toilet. [A trick that Trump evidently practiced.]
As a blue water sailor I was thankful that I commenced sailing when I was 5. Good sailing practices are not learned, they are ingrained. On July 4, 1949, we were sailing in Long Island Sound. Upon hearing that a heavy squall was approaching, we battened down with only a small steadying sail. Next to us a yacht, with full sails, slipped below the water with two dead.
Just because someone can purchase a boat does not mean that they are safe sailors. I estimate that a Sunday sailor will, in at least 90-95% of the cases, encounter situations where he/she can muddle through.
I am personally familiar with a situation where such is not true. When a sail boat is hit by a savage wind, the natural tendency, as water is pouring over the rail, is to relieve this pressure by heading into the wind. WRONG! This typically would put the boat in stays and result in a heavy shaking that could cause the mast to fall into the water, with possibly deadly results.
It takes ingrained savvy to watch the water pouring in as the boat heels more and more. But with patience, this subsides, as the wind starts glancing off the sails.
I have sailed in hurricane winds. The best way to survive is to go with the flow. Reef down the sails, put out a sea anchor, watch apprehensively 30-40 foot waves, and pray that you don’t encounter a rogue wave. We lack data on those who did not survive the Bermuda Triangle and elsewhere.
Even with the most skilled operators, I humbly acknowledge that “Man proposes, God disposes.” What ever happened to Amilia Earhart?
Just saw that a story from the NBC affiliate in the region includes this comment:
"Autumn Branchaud was home with her family when her dad saw the plane take off from his porch at around 4 p.m. and heard it come crashing down nine minutes later. "I could see it. there was fuel pouring on their faces and they were trying to grab a rag to try to get it off their faces," she said."
It also includes an AOPA statement:
The organization released a statement, saying "The Cessna 177 Cardinal in which Richard was in the right seat experienced an emergency after takeoff. The airplane attempted to return to the airport but failed to make the runway. Both occupants lost their lives."
As you know, it's often hard to make sense of initial reports and eyewitness accounts, or know what they add up to. (For instance, could the plane really have been flying for nine minutes? I don't know.) I hope the most gruesome interpretation of the witnesses's account does not prove to be accurate.
Thanks Mr. Fallows for your thoughtful and insightful commentary. That Ernest Gann's Fate Is The Hunter masterpiece helped inform your thoughts is fitting and very personal to me. My worn and dog-eared copy of that tome occupied a space in my flight bag for many millions of miles for thirty-some years. I've given many copies to aviator friends over the years. Gann's words resonate so succinctly in every aspect of the potentially dangerous pursuits of aviation, sailing and other essential adventures, that his wisdom has found me, also, humbly nodding in respect on a few occasions; those few that visit me during the wee hours still, leaving me thankful for the years since that could have, if...if not for...been lost.
Yes. We... those not at all in control of our fate, yet trying so hard to make some sense of it. Ernie Gann, sage, mentor, aviator, thinker and practical human, who made so much sense when and where not much seems to make much sense. A treasure. And you, sir, for recognizing wisdom when you see it. Thank You. So much.
My condolences to those touched by the loss of Richard McSpadden and Russ Francis.
Though I am not a pilot, “Fate is the Hunter” has been a go-to book for much of my life. The older I get, the more it resonates. This year, a friend died in a fall. Another drowned. These sudden, random events make me acutely aware of how precarious life can be.
Last year I made a documentary for CBC Radio about "Fate is the Hunter" and Gann. If readers want to check it out, click on the cbc.ca link at the top of James' post. It's just below the photo of Gann. For HD sound, find it here:
Dear Mr. Sandell: We don't know each other, but I am so glad to have this connection, and grateful to you for writing in. Yes, there are still positive things about the internet, even given all the rest we've been exposed to.
And for producing this documentary. I will listen to it this afternoon and weigh back in once I have done so.
This podcast is superb! Congratulations to all involved with it. I will do my best to spread the word. (Also available for further discussion / jfallows at gmail
Oct 3, 2023·edited Oct 3, 2023Liked by James Fallows
Jim, I am sorry for you loss, and grateful to you for sharing these thoughts. I have experienced an analogous event that claimed a towering figure in my corner of the world, and it can be a lot to process. I'm heartened the pilot community has folks like you creating space to talk through the myriad thoughts this sort of trauma can spark. Be gentle with yourself and each other in the days ahead.
Thank you for your gracious comments. I "knew" Richard McSpadden only by reputation, and through watching his videos and listening to him so often. But in small communities like this the ripple effects can be large.
In case you missed it, I direct your attention to a wonderfully eloquent essay that Richard M wrote just this past summer, as highlighted by Bruce Williams below. It is here: https://aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2023/august/pilot/safety-spotlight-decisions-we-make It is about McSpadden's comforting the daughter of another Air Force Thunderbird pilot who had died when the daughter was a small child.
Please read the whole thing. Its final lines, written not long before McSpadden's own death, are haunting:
"When a pilot perishes in an aircraft accident, suddenly—in an instant—they’re gone. They blast a hole in the lives of spouses, children, grandchildren, and close friends that can never be filled by anyone else. The mourners learn to cope with the loss, but they never get over it.
"Our lives are just one of many influenced by the decisions we make in the cockpit, even when we fly solo. "
One doesn't need to pilot an airplane to find oneself in a life-or-death situation. Here is an occurrence that I do my best not to contemplate at 3 AM - or any other time:
In my mid-twenties, my then wife and I visited the Grand Canyon. There was a cliff jutting out over the canyon, and we saw a few brave souls walking out there for a photo op. It was surrounded by a sheer drop of approximately one mile - and yet we thought it would be a clever idea for me to walk out there and have my photo taken. Even in the naivety and uncertainty of youth, I was justifiably terrified while I was out there and I called to her to see if she had taken the photo so I could return to safety. She replied, "just a minute." Soon, she said, "OK." When I returned and breathed a sigh of relief, she told me she had slipped and nearly fallen while trying to get a good shot - she was on the "dangerous" side of the safety fence, so the drop for her would have been the same as if I had fallen. Nearly a half century later, I shudder every time I think of our foolishness.
Just as Ernest K. Gann defied the odds and lived to a ripe old age of 81, I've managed to survive far too many stupid decisions like that to live to a ripe old age of 71. It is said that God watches over fools & drunks, and as I qualify in two categories (33 years in recovery), I can attest to the veracity of that statement. Long ago I gave up asking, "Why?" because in most cases there is no answer available to me, and so focusing on the question is usually an exercise in futility. Instead, I do my best to think about what lesson I can learn or who needs my help. And I use experiences like the "cliff-standing" to maintain an attitude of deep thankfulness as much as humanly possible.
Every day is a miracle of each one of us defying the probabilities. I have no idea why I'm still around, but I'm damn grateful.
Ooooof. There are events like that, from the time when our children were little, that I really cannot bear to think about. Where if things had been different by just a few inches, or just a few seconds in time, everything would have been unalterably difference forever more.
Oct 3, 2023·edited Oct 10, 2023Liked by James Fallows
I find this stuff fascinating and upsetting even though the only involvement I have is through you. I would not have become interested without your posts on it. (Doesn't matter that Lindbergh was my fourth grade teacher's aunt's husband, probably because I didn't know that until years later, but it probably does matter some that she got me very interested in school that year, fueled my interest in reading, and was an all around great teacher.) A crash in the air is somehow more compelling--more frightening--than one on the ground. My father had a friend in New Jersey who flew his own plane, sometimes up to Boston with his wife to see us. Not infrequently, Murray would wait a couple of days to visit because of the weather. I remarked on that once when I was a kid, and safety was the explanation.
Thank you. Yes, there is some intrinsic drama in these aerial disasters. As I've written many times, being on US commercial airliner in North America or Europe is about the safest activity humanity has ever devised. Yet when statistically rare perils occur, we are all riveted.
Having lived in the Lake Placid area for several years some time back I’d be looking into the wind conditions. From experience there are times when winds swirl quite a bit there.
Thank you. The only additional information I've seen, a day or two later, is that the plane barely gained any altitude on takeoff, suggesting and engine problem. But as Richard McS would be the first to remind everyone, it can take a long time to know more about what and why.
Quite coincidentally, and just before this post landed in my inbox, I had looked up the Wikipedia entry for test-pilot Scott Crossfield, because a friend and I had been discussing the movie The Right Stuff, in which he was briefly portrayed. I was shocked to find that he died in a crash of his Cessna 210A, when he flew it into severe weather. Quoted from the WP article:
On September 27, 2007, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a report stating the probable cause of his crash to be as follows: "The pilot's failure to obtain updated en route weather information, which resulted in his continued instrument flight into a widespread area of severe convective activity, and the air traffic controller's failure to provide adverse weather avoidance assistance, as required by Federal Aviation Administration directives, both of which led to the airplane's encounter with a severe thunderstorm and subsequent loss of control."
Lifelong experience is no guarantor, it seems. Just one mistake… (or two in this case)…
Yes, thank you. I remember vividly a lot of the discussion and "lessons learned" from the Scott Crossfield tragedy. Apart from his overall eminence, I'd always paid attention to him for other reasons. One of the first model planes I built, with my brother, as a kid was the black X-15 — which of course is as associated with Scott Crossfield as the Glamorous Glennis X-1 was with Chuck Yeager. Decades later I had a chance to meet him briefly at an aviation event.
As you'll recall, part of the discussion about Scott Crossfield involved his flying single-pilot IMC well into his mid-80s. Probably that had nothing directly to do with his crash. But who knows. And is his case, as with Richard McSpadden, anyone in aviation has to think: If it can happen to them ...
Thank you for sharing Gann's words and your own experiences here. This one has hit me really hard. I finally got my Private certificate in August, almost twenty years after my first solo. I'm in that notoriously dangerous range: a 70-150 hour private pilot. I religiously watch the ASI videos. I've come to appreciate an antidote to bad aeronautical decision-making: imagine Richard narrating my decision process in his calm, experienced, and unfailingly fair voice. I can only hope to continue benefiting from his wisdom, may he rest in peace.
Eloquently put, thank you. And I agree entirely in what you say about Richard McS's authoritative, calm voice.
As you're well aware, along with most people in the business, flying becomes significantly "safer" (though still inherently risky) once you're past the first few hundreds hours after a private certificate. The challenge is getting through those first hours. (For anyone who doesn't know, there is a famous book in the flying world about this perilous passage. It is called The Killing Zone. https://www.mypilotstore.com/mypilotstore/sep/3518 Over the years people have debated various parts of its analysis, but its main argument is sobering and important.)
And also, for anyone who doesn't know, this gives rise to one of many aphorisms in this realm: That the challenge is to fill up the experience bucket, before the luck bucket runs out.
Oct 2, 2023·edited Oct 3, 2023Liked by James Fallows
Captain A. G. Lamplugh, a British pilot from the early days of aviation once famously said “Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.”
Thanks for reminding me with that visual of one of the stupidest accidents I can think of recently - the P-63 and B-17 at the Dallas air show. The level of incompetence there was so thick you must have been able to taste it. The kind of pilots now attracted to the warbirds movement includes too damn many who think the fact they're rich means they're brilliant - and they aren't. It used to be different.
The death of my friend Chris Rushing in Reno Sunday before last at the races in a landing accident after winning the T-6 race, when apparently (no final word) the tower failed to tell the T-6 behind him that he was too close and should go around, so he landed on top of Chris - the only thing Chris had done wrong was be #1 for landing in front of that guy - and they're both gone. I'm glad the Reno Races are no more and I hope they don't find anyplace else to run them.
Thank you. I had *not* known the source of that "not inherently dangerous" quote, although I'd heard it as part of general aviation lore. One time in the late 1990s I was doing an IMC flight, in Seattle, with my friend and then-Atlantic-colleague William Langewiesche. He recited it more or less off the top of his head — probably having heard it from his father, Wolfgang, from earliest years. (As you probably know, Wolfgang L, like Ernest K. Gann, died not in aviation mishap but of natural causes, at age 95.)
I am so sorry about your friend Chris Rushing, and all other casualties of these recent air show and air race disasters. My limited exposure to the warbirds movement matches what you say.
Oct 3, 2023·edited Oct 3, 2023Liked by James Fallows
Yeah, it's sad - before the rich boys arrived, the warbirds and air racing really were a community. From wing polisher to plane pusher to mechanic, to airplane owner, everybody was in the club. The last time I went to the Chino show, after my good friend Ed Maloney died, I decided I'd do a volunteer stint in memory of the Chief Volunteer. After the show, I went over to the hangar where there was always an after-show party for everyone who worked on the show and there were two armed security shitheads turning people away - "This is only for the owners." I think Ed's spinning in his grave to think about the changes that have gone on there since he left. And I haven't been back since. (That T-6 photo I included in an email this past summer was Chris in the cockpit)
I’m not a pilot myself, but over the years I think I’ve passed out half a dozen or more copies of Gann’s book to friends who fly, to those merely interested in aviation, to others who simply admire well-crafted prose. As I recall, the book opens—following a shockingly long roster of perished colleagues—with an episode in which Gann, who has been trained to be conscientious in these matters, notices that his aircraft is flying fifty feet higher than its assigned altitude. Moments after he corrects for this another plane flies above him, missing Gann by—fifty feet. “All it takes is one” indeed.
Thank you. I hadn't known about this book until I got actively into the flying world in the 1990s. It is a shame that it is generally considered a "genre" work — ie, something for people in the flying community rather than for readers in general. Somehow the works of Saint-Exupery have escape the "genre" categorization. I think 'Fate' should be taught as a lasting work of nonfiction, for all the reasons you say.
Well done. This was and is a shock (I have become a devotee of his videos since my nephew started producing them) and your invocation of Gann helps put it in perspective.
Thank you. I hadn't know about your family connection to the ASI videos. But I have watched nearly all of them, and turn to them as the most level-headed assessment of what is known and unknown, what might have been preventable and what was not, in the fate of these aircraft and the people aboard them.
Bruce, thank you so much. I had *not* read that eloquent post by Richard McSpadden. As David Holzman points out, it is all the more poignant and powerful, because of what fate had in store for him within a matter of months.
I hope, in your role as genuine expert in small plane handling and small plane vulnerabilities, you will share with the rest of us what is "knowable" about this tragedy, if and when any such knowledge emerges.
I'm not at all sure that I have that I have expertise to add to the forthcoming analysis of this accident. I have spoken to a few people who have additional details, but, like everyone else, I'm waiting for the NTSB to do its work. I did not know Richard well, but we talked at some length about the Extra 300L aerobatic aircraft that he flew after I donated it to AOPA. He was a skilled, conscientious aviator. And his death is shock.
This moved me to buy (and read) the book. Wow!
All three of its aspects (technical, systemic, philosophical) are very interesting. And the man could write.
Additionally, I never realized how accident-prone commercial air traffic still was through the 1950s.
Jim Warm thanks for another boots-on-the-ground commentary, this time related to your decades of flight experience.
“Man proposes, God disposes”relates to life. As John Lennon phrased it “Life is what happens, when you have other plans.”
I remember in my Foreign Service days encountering rigid security strictures. In fact, the greatest insecurity came from human carelessness.
I recall, after Martin and Mitchell defected from NSA to Moscow in 1960 and revealed a number of countries where NSA was intercepting and decoding communications. At the time I was working in the State Department’s COMINT office.
I chuckled reading one foreign communicator saying to another: “They can’t intercept us. We switched from a Haglin 34 to a Haglin 54.” Yes, but someone had carelessly botched the call signals, permitting NSA an entry point. My buddies and I had a good laugh. I don’t recall, after the Martin/Mitchell affair that NSA was cut out of any significant intelligence traffic.
The security in my office was draconian. However, this didn’t prevent my finding Top Secret/Code Word material in my coat jacket when I came home. Rather than attempt to smuggle it back to my office, I flushed it down the toilet. [A trick that Trump evidently practiced.]
As a blue water sailor I was thankful that I commenced sailing when I was 5. Good sailing practices are not learned, they are ingrained. On July 4, 1949, we were sailing in Long Island Sound. Upon hearing that a heavy squall was approaching, we battened down with only a small steadying sail. Next to us a yacht, with full sails, slipped below the water with two dead.
Just because someone can purchase a boat does not mean that they are safe sailors. I estimate that a Sunday sailor will, in at least 90-95% of the cases, encounter situations where he/she can muddle through.
I am personally familiar with a situation where such is not true. When a sail boat is hit by a savage wind, the natural tendency, as water is pouring over the rail, is to relieve this pressure by heading into the wind. WRONG! This typically would put the boat in stays and result in a heavy shaking that could cause the mast to fall into the water, with possibly deadly results.
It takes ingrained savvy to watch the water pouring in as the boat heels more and more. But with patience, this subsides, as the wind starts glancing off the sails.
I have sailed in hurricane winds. The best way to survive is to go with the flow. Reef down the sails, put out a sea anchor, watch apprehensively 30-40 foot waves, and pray that you don’t encounter a rogue wave. We lack data on those who did not survive the Bermuda Triangle and elsewhere.
Even with the most skilled operators, I humbly acknowledge that “Man proposes, God disposes.” What ever happened to Amilia Earhart?
Just saw that a story from the NBC affiliate in the region includes this comment:
"Autumn Branchaud was home with her family when her dad saw the plane take off from his porch at around 4 p.m. and heard it come crashing down nine minutes later. "I could see it. there was fuel pouring on their faces and they were trying to grab a rag to try to get it off their faces," she said."
It also includes an AOPA statement:
The organization released a statement, saying "The Cessna 177 Cardinal in which Richard was in the right seat experienced an emergency after takeoff. The airplane attempted to return to the airport but failed to make the runway. Both occupants lost their lives."
As you know, it's often hard to make sense of initial reports and eyewitness accounts, or know what they add up to. (For instance, could the plane really have been flying for nine minutes? I don't know.) I hope the most gruesome interpretation of the witnesses's account does not prove to be accurate.
Thank you for the update.
So good. Love your trivia question as well.
Thank you. I appreciate your attention and support.
Thanks Mr. Fallows for your thoughtful and insightful commentary. That Ernest Gann's Fate Is The Hunter masterpiece helped inform your thoughts is fitting and very personal to me. My worn and dog-eared copy of that tome occupied a space in my flight bag for many millions of miles for thirty-some years. I've given many copies to aviator friends over the years. Gann's words resonate so succinctly in every aspect of the potentially dangerous pursuits of aviation, sailing and other essential adventures, that his wisdom has found me, also, humbly nodding in respect on a few occasions; those few that visit me during the wee hours still, leaving me thankful for the years since that could have, if...if not for...been lost.
"If not for...." There is so much that resonates from those words.
Thank you.
Yes. We... those not at all in control of our fate, yet trying so hard to make some sense of it. Ernie Gann, sage, mentor, aviator, thinker and practical human, who made so much sense when and where not much seems to make much sense. A treasure. And you, sir, for recognizing wisdom when you see it. Thank You. So much.
My condolences to those touched by the loss of Richard McSpadden and Russ Francis.
Though I am not a pilot, “Fate is the Hunter” has been a go-to book for much of my life. The older I get, the more it resonates. This year, a friend died in a fall. Another drowned. These sudden, random events make me acutely aware of how precarious life can be.
Last year I made a documentary for CBC Radio about "Fate is the Hunter" and Gann. If readers want to check it out, click on the cbc.ca link at the top of James' post. It's just below the photo of Gann. For HD sound, find it here:
https://soundcloud.com/nsandell/fate-is-the-hunter-cbc-ideas?si=0ab960446e024878bbf3a8570b0a6d6b&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Dear Mr. Sandell: We don't know each other, but I am so glad to have this connection, and grateful to you for writing in. Yes, there are still positive things about the internet, even given all the rest we've been exposed to.
And for producing this documentary. I will listen to it this afternoon and weigh back in once I have done so.
I'd be delighted if you do. Looking forward to your thoughts.
This podcast is superb! Congratulations to all involved with it. I will do my best to spread the word. (Also available for further discussion / jfallows at gmail
Thank you. I just sent you an email. Hope it doesn't land in Spam :)
Jim, I am sorry for you loss, and grateful to you for sharing these thoughts. I have experienced an analogous event that claimed a towering figure in my corner of the world, and it can be a lot to process. I'm heartened the pilot community has folks like you creating space to talk through the myriad thoughts this sort of trauma can spark. Be gentle with yourself and each other in the days ahead.
Thank you for your gracious comments. I "knew" Richard McSpadden only by reputation, and through watching his videos and listening to him so often. But in small communities like this the ripple effects can be large.
In case you missed it, I direct your attention to a wonderfully eloquent essay that Richard M wrote just this past summer, as highlighted by Bruce Williams below. It is here: https://aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2023/august/pilot/safety-spotlight-decisions-we-make It is about McSpadden's comforting the daughter of another Air Force Thunderbird pilot who had died when the daughter was a small child.
Please read the whole thing. Its final lines, written not long before McSpadden's own death, are haunting:
"When a pilot perishes in an aircraft accident, suddenly—in an instant—they’re gone. They blast a hole in the lives of spouses, children, grandchildren, and close friends that can never be filled by anyone else. The mourners learn to cope with the loss, but they never get over it.
"Our lives are just one of many influenced by the decisions we make in the cockpit, even when we fly solo. "
That will stick with me. Many thanks. Fate Is The Hunter arrived this am, and I am eager to dive in.
One doesn't need to pilot an airplane to find oneself in a life-or-death situation. Here is an occurrence that I do my best not to contemplate at 3 AM - or any other time:
In my mid-twenties, my then wife and I visited the Grand Canyon. There was a cliff jutting out over the canyon, and we saw a few brave souls walking out there for a photo op. It was surrounded by a sheer drop of approximately one mile - and yet we thought it would be a clever idea for me to walk out there and have my photo taken. Even in the naivety and uncertainty of youth, I was justifiably terrified while I was out there and I called to her to see if she had taken the photo so I could return to safety. She replied, "just a minute." Soon, she said, "OK." When I returned and breathed a sigh of relief, she told me she had slipped and nearly fallen while trying to get a good shot - she was on the "dangerous" side of the safety fence, so the drop for her would have been the same as if I had fallen. Nearly a half century later, I shudder every time I think of our foolishness.
Just as Ernest K. Gann defied the odds and lived to a ripe old age of 81, I've managed to survive far too many stupid decisions like that to live to a ripe old age of 71. It is said that God watches over fools & drunks, and as I qualify in two categories (33 years in recovery), I can attest to the veracity of that statement. Long ago I gave up asking, "Why?" because in most cases there is no answer available to me, and so focusing on the question is usually an exercise in futility. Instead, I do my best to think about what lesson I can learn or who needs my help. And I use experiences like the "cliff-standing" to maintain an attitude of deep thankfulness as much as humanly possible.
Every day is a miracle of each one of us defying the probabilities. I have no idea why I'm still around, but I'm damn grateful.
Ooooof. There are events like that, from the time when our children were little, that I really cannot bear to think about. Where if things had been different by just a few inches, or just a few seconds in time, everything would have been unalterably difference forever more.
Thank you very much for sharing this.
I find this stuff fascinating and upsetting even though the only involvement I have is through you. I would not have become interested without your posts on it. (Doesn't matter that Lindbergh was my fourth grade teacher's aunt's husband, probably because I didn't know that until years later, but it probably does matter some that she got me very interested in school that year, fueled my interest in reading, and was an all around great teacher.) A crash in the air is somehow more compelling--more frightening--than one on the ground. My father had a friend in New Jersey who flew his own plane, sometimes up to Boston with his wife to see us. Not infrequently, Murray would wait a couple of days to visit because of the weather. I remarked on that once when I was a kid, and safety was the explanation.
Thank you. Yes, there is some intrinsic drama in these aerial disasters. As I've written many times, being on US commercial airliner in North America or Europe is about the safest activity humanity has ever devised. Yet when statistically rare perils occur, we are all riveted.
Having lived in the Lake Placid area for several years some time back I’d be looking into the wind conditions. From experience there are times when winds swirl quite a bit there.
Thank you. The only additional information I've seen, a day or two later, is that the plane barely gained any altitude on takeoff, suggesting and engine problem. But as Richard McS would be the first to remind everyone, it can take a long time to know more about what and why.
Quite coincidentally, and just before this post landed in my inbox, I had looked up the Wikipedia entry for test-pilot Scott Crossfield, because a friend and I had been discussing the movie The Right Stuff, in which he was briefly portrayed. I was shocked to find that he died in a crash of his Cessna 210A, when he flew it into severe weather. Quoted from the WP article:
On September 27, 2007, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a report stating the probable cause of his crash to be as follows: "The pilot's failure to obtain updated en route weather information, which resulted in his continued instrument flight into a widespread area of severe convective activity, and the air traffic controller's failure to provide adverse weather avoidance assistance, as required by Federal Aviation Administration directives, both of which led to the airplane's encounter with a severe thunderstorm and subsequent loss of control."
Lifelong experience is no guarantor, it seems. Just one mistake… (or two in this case)…
Yes, thank you. I remember vividly a lot of the discussion and "lessons learned" from the Scott Crossfield tragedy. Apart from his overall eminence, I'd always paid attention to him for other reasons. One of the first model planes I built, with my brother, as a kid was the black X-15 — which of course is as associated with Scott Crossfield as the Glamorous Glennis X-1 was with Chuck Yeager. Decades later I had a chance to meet him briefly at an aviation event.
As you'll recall, part of the discussion about Scott Crossfield involved his flying single-pilot IMC well into his mid-80s. Probably that had nothing directly to do with his crash. But who knows. And is his case, as with Richard McSpadden, anyone in aviation has to think: If it can happen to them ...
Thank you for sharing Gann's words and your own experiences here. This one has hit me really hard. I finally got my Private certificate in August, almost twenty years after my first solo. I'm in that notoriously dangerous range: a 70-150 hour private pilot. I religiously watch the ASI videos. I've come to appreciate an antidote to bad aeronautical decision-making: imagine Richard narrating my decision process in his calm, experienced, and unfailingly fair voice. I can only hope to continue benefiting from his wisdom, may he rest in peace.
Eloquently put, thank you. And I agree entirely in what you say about Richard McS's authoritative, calm voice.
As you're well aware, along with most people in the business, flying becomes significantly "safer" (though still inherently risky) once you're past the first few hundreds hours after a private certificate. The challenge is getting through those first hours. (For anyone who doesn't know, there is a famous book in the flying world about this perilous passage. It is called The Killing Zone. https://www.mypilotstore.com/mypilotstore/sep/3518 Over the years people have debated various parts of its analysis, but its main argument is sobering and important.)
And also, for anyone who doesn't know, this gives rise to one of many aphorisms in this realm: That the challenge is to fill up the experience bucket, before the luck bucket runs out.
Captain A. G. Lamplugh, a British pilot from the early days of aviation once famously said “Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.”
Thanks for reminding me with that visual of one of the stupidest accidents I can think of recently - the P-63 and B-17 at the Dallas air show. The level of incompetence there was so thick you must have been able to taste it. The kind of pilots now attracted to the warbirds movement includes too damn many who think the fact they're rich means they're brilliant - and they aren't. It used to be different.
The death of my friend Chris Rushing in Reno Sunday before last at the races in a landing accident after winning the T-6 race, when apparently (no final word) the tower failed to tell the T-6 behind him that he was too close and should go around, so he landed on top of Chris - the only thing Chris had done wrong was be #1 for landing in front of that guy - and they're both gone. I'm glad the Reno Races are no more and I hope they don't find anyplace else to run them.
Thank you. I had *not* known the source of that "not inherently dangerous" quote, although I'd heard it as part of general aviation lore. One time in the late 1990s I was doing an IMC flight, in Seattle, with my friend and then-Atlantic-colleague William Langewiesche. He recited it more or less off the top of his head — probably having heard it from his father, Wolfgang, from earliest years. (As you probably know, Wolfgang L, like Ernest K. Gann, died not in aviation mishap but of natural causes, at age 95.)
I am so sorry about your friend Chris Rushing, and all other casualties of these recent air show and air race disasters. My limited exposure to the warbirds movement matches what you say.
Yeah, it's sad - before the rich boys arrived, the warbirds and air racing really were a community. From wing polisher to plane pusher to mechanic, to airplane owner, everybody was in the club. The last time I went to the Chino show, after my good friend Ed Maloney died, I decided I'd do a volunteer stint in memory of the Chief Volunteer. After the show, I went over to the hangar where there was always an after-show party for everyone who worked on the show and there were two armed security shitheads turning people away - "This is only for the owners." I think Ed's spinning in his grave to think about the changes that have gone on there since he left. And I haven't been back since. (That T-6 photo I included in an email this past summer was Chris in the cockpit)
I’m not a pilot myself, but over the years I think I’ve passed out half a dozen or more copies of Gann’s book to friends who fly, to those merely interested in aviation, to others who simply admire well-crafted prose. As I recall, the book opens—following a shockingly long roster of perished colleagues—with an episode in which Gann, who has been trained to be conscientious in these matters, notices that his aircraft is flying fifty feet higher than its assigned altitude. Moments after he corrects for this another plane flies above him, missing Gann by—fifty feet. “All it takes is one” indeed.
Thank you. I hadn't known about this book until I got actively into the flying world in the 1990s. It is a shame that it is generally considered a "genre" work — ie, something for people in the flying community rather than for readers in general. Somehow the works of Saint-Exupery have escape the "genre" categorization. I think 'Fate' should be taught as a lasting work of nonfiction, for all the reasons you say.
Well done. This was and is a shock (I have become a devotee of his videos since my nephew started producing them) and your invocation of Gann helps put it in perspective.
Thank you. I hadn't know about your family connection to the ASI videos. But I have watched nearly all of them, and turn to them as the most level-headed assessment of what is known and unknown, what might have been preventable and what was not, in the fate of these aircraft and the people aboard them.
Please read this beautiful story, "Decisions We Make," that Richard wrote for the June issue of AOPA Pilot:
https://aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2023/august/pilot/safety-spotlight-decisions-we-make
Bruce, thank you so much. I had *not* read that eloquent post by Richard McSpadden. As David Holzman points out, it is all the more poignant and powerful, because of what fate had in store for him within a matter of months.
I hope, in your role as genuine expert in small plane handling and small plane vulnerabilities, you will share with the rest of us what is "knowable" about this tragedy, if and when any such knowledge emerges.
I'm not at all sure that I have that I have expertise to add to the forthcoming analysis of this accident. I have spoken to a few people who have additional details, but, like everyone else, I'm waiting for the NTSB to do its work. I did not know Richard well, but we talked at some length about the Extra 300L aerobatic aircraft that he flew after I donated it to AOPA. He was a skilled, conscientious aviator. And his death is shock.
Wow. All the more sad for what I knew was going to happen, and how the history of a very young daughter losing her father was about to be repeated.