JFK Jr.’s Crash: Inexperience or Lack of Proper Tools?
JFK Jr.’s Crash: Inexperience or Lack of Proper Tools?
By James F. Riordan
© 1997, 2012
We may never know for sure what caused John F. Kennedy Jr’s plane to plummet off the radar scope and into the ocean at a descent rate of, according to investigators, 4700 feet per minute. http://www.aopa.org/asf/asfarticles/sp0009.html We do however, have the tools to prevent the majority of similar accidents in the future, if only we would put them to use.
Imagine for a moment that each new pilot, during training, is given a toolbox containing “flight tools” which will be used to fix in-flight emergencies. The problem is that our presently mandated FAA training programs are failing to provide two critically important flight tools for the new pilot’s toolbox. We are simply leaving them out. The new “inexperienced” pilot now crashes due to the lack of one or the other of these flight tools. What is the true cause of the accident? Is it “inexperience” on the part of the pilot? Or is it the present training programs which failed to provide these critical flight tools to student pilots? I believe it is the latter. Vertigo training and actual spin training are presently being left out of the student pilot’s toolbox. The absence of these two critical flight tools virtually assures that we will continue to see a high rate of stall/spin accidents every year. Not all of them will attract the notoriety of JFK Jr.’s crash, but each of them will leave the public wondering whether small planes can be flown safely. The truth is, they can be flown safely and many lives could be saved if only we would give pilots the tools to save themselves.
Spatial disorientation comes on quite suddenly. One second you are in control. The very next second you are out of control and horrifyingly “behind” the aircraft. By “behind,” I mean the aircraft is changing direction and velocity faster than you are reacting to its changes.
You looked down for only a split second, and when you looked up, you suddenly felt as though your aircraft has entered a steep left banking turn. “Why?”, your brain is screaming? What caused this? Perhaps it was wind shear! Your peripheral vision searches for the horizon that was visible only moments ago. Your eyes desperately search for the visual cues which will tell you the position of your wings relative to the horizon. The horizon is now nowhere to be found in the haze and the darkness. Without the outside visual cues, your inner sense of balance or the “gyro” in your head is taking instructions from only your inner ear, which is sending it false signals. Your internal balance “gyro” has effectively “crashed” and is no longer sending correct horizontal situation information to your brain.
Just as you have been trained to do, you react to what you think must be a strong gust of wind blowing your plane to the left. You quickly turn the yoke to the right, and push right rudder. You still feel like you are banking to the left. Everything begins to seem as though it is in slow motion. You feel somehow out of control yet you can’t understand why. Your brain is still screaming, “you’re in a left turn, do something about it”, yet a quick glance at your instrument panel indicates you are entering a right turn. You vaguely remember your instructor telling you to, “believe your instruments,” but right now you do not believe them. Your brain and body are telling you that your instruments are wrong. Within a couple of seconds, the right turn you have unwittingly entered has quickly degraded into either a “spin” or a high speed “graveyard spiral”, from which you will not recover. You become, like JFK Jr., another small plane/private pilot statistic, chalked up to “inexperience.”
“Experience” in aviation comes less from accumulated total hours than from what a pilot experiences during those hours. It is easy to log a great number of hours without ever logging the real experience which will be needed to save your life in a vertigo or spin situation.
In October of 1987, I had the opportunity to “test fly” a simulator called the Vertigon which the FAA aeromedical team developed to induce vertigo. Please see: http://www.aopa.org/asf/asfarticles/sp0009.html The Vertigon is used by the FAA as a training tool, usually at airshows. As an aerobatic pilot, I had already experienced momentary vertigo doing vertical, straight up rolling aerobatics on a cloudy day, and I knew full well how deadly it could be. At first, I was skeptical that this “Vertigon” machine would be able to duplicate the vertigo experience. Boy was I in for a surprise.
The Vertigon had a redundant set of flight instruments. One set on the inside of the “pod” in front of the pilot and the other set on the outside of the simulator control panel where (certificated) pilots, waiting in line to try their hand, could watch the instrument panel and see how well or how poorly the pilot inside the Vertigon’s pod was reacting to the onset of vertigo. While I waited, several pilots “spun in”, and others, some nauseous, wobbly, incredulous or all three at the same time, said they would, “never forget the experience.” Neither will I. Expecting full well to easily master this beast I confidently climbed in and started the simulator. Sure enough, it induced the worst vertigo I had ever felt. When I stepped out, I had managed to lose only three hundred feet with a course deviation of 30 degrees before I recovered enough to get immediately back on course and altitude. I had achieved the best score of the day. The FAA official running the Vertigon commended me on my quick recovery, but I couldn’t help but think what would have happened to me had I been at 299 feet on a dark final approach.
The Vertigon was totally enclosed and revolved very slowly to the left about three turns and then to the right about three turns and effectively disoriented one’s inner ear. Inside I could sense no turning movement whatsoever even though I knew I was turning since I had been watching all the guys before me. After turning both ways, the recorded “air traffic controller” in the simulator asked the pilot to, “descend to and maintain a heading for approach to, a local airport”. I did. After a few more seconds went by, “air traffic control” radioed: “Change transponder frequency and squawk 1200.” I looked at the instrument panel and there was no transponder . . then I looked down and there it was on the right side of the cockpit floor (where it would never actually be located in a real aircraft) This action required the pilot to look down, which completed the inducement of vertigo. Remember, a pilot could drop a pencil on the cockpit floor or reach for a map, the point being, the Pilot looks down. When the pilot looks back up, the “gyro” in his head crashes and he honestly believes his aircraft is entering a steep turn to the left or right.
The Vertigon was one of the finest and most amazing training tools I have personally experienced. The moment I looked up, I felt as though I had been violently lifted up and thrown HARD to the left. I looked at my instruments and they were telling me I was straight and level but my mind simply could not believe them. I started to turn in the direction my head was telling me I should turn KNOWING that my instruments were telling me differently. My aerobatic background kicked in and I simply let go of the controls, let the aircraft fly itself for a moment, took a couple of deep breaths and said out loud ”believe your instruments!!”I regained my ability to follow my instruments, got back on course and altitude . .yet with a whole lot more respect for killer disorientation. It is my opinion as an experienced aerobatic pilot, that every private pilot should be required to log time in this device.
Pilots who have actually experienced this feeling can predictably overcome their natural reactions and instead, believe in, and rely totally upon, their flight instruments. Pilots who have never experienced vertigo may not be so fortunate. If, instead of believing the flight instruments, a pilot listens to the nearly overpowering and sensory-overloading urge in his head to bank the plane in the opposite direction, to “get level again,” the plane can easily “get ahead of” an inexperienced pilot so quickly that he never regains control and either spins or high speed spirals right into the ground or water.
Alas, according to the FAA, the Vertigon, along with actual spin training, is no longer a part of private pilot training. Nancy, a Sacramento, CA FAA Flight Standards District Office employee at that time, who was reluctant to share her last name, said she was hired in 1989 and had, “heard about the Vertigon” but said it “was not in use anymore.” Nancy said, “Now, all they have is spin awareness training which can be done orally. They do not have to actually do spins in order to get a private pilot’s certificate.”
As a private pilot, aerobatic pilot, glider pilot and ultralight flight instructor, with tailwheel and complex endorsements, over forty years and thousands of hours of aviation experience, including flying the Piper Saratoga, JFK jr’s plane, I find the concept of “oral spin awareness training” to be absurd. There is no way to adequately orally describe the sensory overload an inexperienced pilot will feel the first time he experiences a plane “breaking” over into a fully developed spin. After years of teaching students to recover from spins, and in fact having to “whack” an experienced pilot on both earpieces of his headset to break his death grip on the stick in a 3 turn spin that turned into a six turn spin after he “froze”, when I was in the rear seat of a Citabria, I still really love spins and snap rolls etc. However, the sheer terror of my first one remains well etched in my memory. Thankfully, my instructors, who taught WWII airmen, believed in actual, not “oral” spin training. They gave me the tools to save my life and the lives of my passengers.
I believe we need to revise the private pilot training process to give all new pilots these tools. Tools which might have saved JFK Jr. from the murky waters. I believe he lost the horizon, became disoriented and “death spiraled” the Saratoga into the ocean. Stall/spin accidents are among the most common killers of “inexperienced” pilots. I believe that every applicant for a private pilot’s license should be trained to recover from fully developed spins, rather than being given an oral description of what it will feel like. An oral description does not even begin to qualify as a “flight tool.” The real experience does.
So why did they quit teaching spins? Perhaps it is because many FAA approved flight instructors are scared to death of doing spins. I have personally flown with ones who were, and who had “signed off” commercial students without ever giving them full-on spin training! I have flown with Airline captains who had never experienced spins or vertigo. That is scary! If an instructor is too scared to teach spins to students, then that instructor is “holding on too tight” and flying “too scared” for his students’ good and that instructor should take up another sport, say boating, for his students’ sake. At the very least, the instructor should send the student off for a couple of hours of spin training with another instructor who is comfortable teaching them. Students who are not taught how to manage and recover from spins and are instead given “oral spin awareness training” are being cheated out of learning the very maneuvers that are most likely to help them save themselves. I have personally taught several FAA certified flight instructors, during check rides and flight reviews, to do spins to the right and left. To a man, they had not done even one full turn spin, even to get their commercial and CFI ratings! They told me that their instructors had simply signed them off as having completed the spin portion of the training! These instructors were amazed at how fast the aircraft began rotating once a spin was fully established at 3 to 5 turns. Thanks to the excellent “old school” spin training I received from my instructors, (Thanks Dave Gray,
 Dave Gray, CFI, Aerobatics At Aerodynamic Aviation Dave Gray, CFI, Aerobatics At Aerodynamic Aviation |
Bret Willat at www.skysailing.com Amelia Reid and Lennert Von Klemm http://www.aerodynamicaviation.com/index.php) I am perfectly comfortable doing upright, inverted and flat spins in aerobatic airplanes and I taught my son at thirteen years old to be competent and proficient at spins before he soloed at age 16. In fact he could do a full Sportsman aerobatic routine before I set him free to Solo. I wanted him to start his flying experience with a full set of tools. Any pilot CAN learn these skills. Every pilot SHOULD learn them. Without them, they do not have a “Full toolbox”
JFK Jr, his wife and his sister-in-law, might be alive today had John been given a full toolbox. Had he been proficient at spin recovery and had he been introduced to vertigo in the Vertigon, before he learned about it the hard way on a gray afternoon in a dark cockpit above a darker ocean, he might still be with us.
Rather than placing unduly weighted blame on “pilot inexperience,” perhaps the FAA needs to revive the Vertigon and include vertigo and actual spin training in every new pilot’s toolbox, before they receive their Private Pilot’s Certificate which is really a “license to learn”.
Recent Comments