Parowan midair?

Mark makes some great statements about a pilot’s mentality after a
collision.
To quote:
The shock of being involved in a near-death experience mid-air,
Post-accident denial
Hopeful/delusional expectations that "everything will be OK"
The desire to return to normalcy
The "racing mentality"

However, I think that it would be very few pilots that would say that
they handled such a situation perfectly after the fact, nearly every
pilot could probably think of something they could have done better
after they themselves have had the chance to do some arm chair
quarterbacking.

As far as continuing to race after the collision, this would seem to
be the poorest decision made in this incident, however with the
thinking, the collision “wasn’t that bad” it hit on a strong part of
the glider, which I have a pretty good view of (the interior inside
the cockpit). The thinking “I don’t have that much farther to go
anyway”. The thinking “The other pilot is OK, so far.” The thinking
“if I am careful, I can complete the task.” The thinking “it is
better to stay high and see if anything is going to get worse
anyway.” It is pretty easy to see how this kind of decision could be
made.

As for returning to Parowan, it disturbs me to see statements like “it
is the pilots duty to land at the nearest airport”. That is absolutely
incorrect and it is based on the fact that he was able to make a
fairly normal landing, which was an unknown at the time. It should say
“it is the pilots duty to do the safest thing possible” and landing at
the nearest airport may not be the safest thing, if fact it was
unknown if a landing could even be safely performed. My mottos for an
emergency are “Don’t do anything to make it worse” and “Try as little
new stuff as possible during the emergency, ie. Stick with what you
practice and are familiar with as much as possible.” Returning to
Parowan certainly had a number of advantages. I am assuming that he
was some altitude above the ground maybe as much as 10,000 feet, he
did not want to deploy the spoilers so that means he can either circle
down over the nearest airport that he is unfamiliar with and I doubt
while concentrating on flying damaged aircraft that he would want to
be doing a lot of research about them. I am sure other pilots could
have and may have even helped him evaluate his options. Or he could
use the altitude he needs to lose to return to Parowan where he is
familiar with the airport and the people on the ground know what is
going on. Best case scenario here is they could have even had
emergency services waiting for him when he attempted the landing
Worst case is he may have to bail out, but he may have to do that no
matter what he decides. From what I have heard Cedar City may have
been a better option with a larger runway and more services, but the
trade off was he would have been landing at an unfamiliar airport and
it was even further away.

Some pilots I am sure would have just bailed out of a glider with such
damage, and I am sure they would not have been faulted for doing so,
but bailing out has its risks as well.

While it can nearly always be argued they could have done better, they
at least made adequate decisions and it is useful to mentally place
yourself in their position and try to figure out how you would handle
the situation, It may influence how you handle your emergency if/when
it happens.

just my 2cents worth
Brian Case