C-172 down at HPN - 2 fatalities

"A.Coleman" wrote in message
. ..
The damned ceiling couldn't have been more than 500 feet. Temp/dewpoint
spread was zero. Says something about American Flyers that it's taking a
primary student up shooting instrument approaches in low IMC .

Was it _expected_ low IMC? When I was learning to fly, my instructor (13,000
hour ATPL) took me out in IMC with a cloudbase of 800 feet and two potential
diversions to where the weather was nice just in case. The forecast said 800
feet for the rest of the day, and ATC said 800 feet when we started down the
ILS. We went around at 500 feet (still in IMC) on the first attempt, just so
we could resolve the conflict between what we heard and what we saw, and on
the second attempt (at which point ATC's observations had been revised)
popped out of the bottoms at 300 feet.

The experience was most rewarding and educational. At no time was there any
danger, we were well within the restrictions of the instructor's licence,
the instructor was extremely experienced in IMC flying, training and
examining (in fact he was my IMC rating examiner a couple of years later)
and we had diversions just in case everything got foggy.

It's not fair, then, to suggest that taking a student out in IMC was a bad
thing to do. In my case it taught me how to not kill myself by inadvertently
flying into a cloud (something that I'm not convinced you can learn properly
on a nice day with foggles on). The only caveat here, though, is that the
zero spread between temperature and dewpoint would have made me think twice.

D.

"A.Coleman" wrote in
:

The damned ceiling couldn't have been more than 500 feet.
Temp/dewpoint spread was zero. Says something about American Flyers
that it's taking a primary student up shooting instrument approaches
in low IMC .


When they left ALB, the METAR reported Vertical Visibility 200' and 1/8
mi visibility in fog that had been sitting at the airport all day. Plus
earlier that day the Approach Lights were reported out of service
(though I don't know if it was still inop at the time of the report I am
referring to).

1/8 mi is below ILS 16 minimum @HPN. And VV002 is exactly minimum. But
without a rabbit you lose a fair amount of latitude with an approach
into below minimums. (ie: You can see the rabbit a few hundred feet
ahead of the threshold, and once you see it you can go down another
100'. It's a big safety feature.)

I know experienced Instrument Rated pilots who would cancel a flight in
those conditions. By 3pm, the METAR reported VV002 and 1/2mi Visibility
in Fog, so it was exactly at minimums.

My guess is that the instructor felt that he could take the student up
and take over at some point when the student was clearly out of his
league. Still, I don't know enough about the instructor to know A) how
far he would let the student go before he decided it was time to take
over, B) if he had enough experience teaching THIS particular student to
read through potentially confused signals to recognize when it was time
to take over, and C) if he would be able to take over a potentially
panicked approach in IMC, recover, and safely navigate the plane onto
the ground from the right seat.

None of us will ever know... But we can sure guess at it based on the
unfortunate and dire result...

The Metars that day were as follows

KHPN 232056Z 19014G20KT 1/4SM FG OVC002 13/13 A2947
KHPN 232018Z 19012G20KT 160V220 1/2SM -RA FG OVC002 13/13 A2948
KHPN 231956Z COR 18012G20KT 3/4SM -RA BR OVC002 13/13 A2948 RMK
AIRCRAFT MISHAP
KHPN 231856Z 19012G16KT 1/2SM FG OVC002 12/12 A2951
KHPN 231756Z 18013G19KT 1/8SM FG OVC002 12/12 A2952
KHPN 231743Z 17016G22KT 1/8SM FG OVC002 12/12 A2951 RMK AO2
KHPN 231656Z 19013KT 1/2SM FG VV002 13/13 A2952
KHPN 231556Z 18006KT 1/4SM -RA FG VV002 12/12 A2954

turns out that POU had 800 foot ceilings and 7 mile visability and DXR
had 300 and 2 mile vis.....

The most charitable thing we can say is that praciticing IFR approaches
in those conditions with a PPL student was less than optimal judgement.

Tom wrote:

It's worth noting that the student was NOT an instrument student. He
was still working on his private ticket.

If that is truly the case, then it would seem more probably that the
instructor were flying the approach from the left seat. I cannot
imagine any student pilot being able to, nor a primary instructor
allowing the student to fly an approach in actual low IFR conditions.

--
Peter

approach from the left seat

Sorry, meant to type right seat.

--
Peter

"Peter R." wrote in message
oups.com...
It's worth noting that the student was NOT an instrument student. He
was still working on his private ticket.
If that is truly the case, then it would seem more probably that the
instructor were flying the approach from the left seat. I cannot
imagine any student pilot being able to, nor a primary instructor
allowing the student to fly an approach in actual low IFR conditions.

It's quite possible that the student flew a chunk of the approach and then
the instructor took over when it started to go a bit askew. When I was a
student I flew a vectored rejoin, established (sort of) on the localiser and
got down to about 600 feet with my instructor giving instructions all the
way ("left a couple of degrees, take off about 100rpm, ..."). Only when the
needles started to drift about did the instructor take over (and isn't it
annoying when you've been slaving for five minutes to keep them vaguely
right and the instant he takes over they hammer back to where they should be
and stay there ? :-)

Of course, the sign of a good instructor is that (a) he/she knows to take
over while all is not lost; and (b) he/she realises that if he/she takes
over a bit late, the direction to go in is up.

D.

What he was doing was putting IMC time in the CFI's logbook.


It's worth noting that the student was NOT an instrument student. He
was still working on his private ticket. It was a pretty low day for a
student pilot to be shooting instrument approaches, in fact I have no
idea what they were doing out there that day. I can't imagine my
primary instructor allowing me out in such low weather.

Tom Fleischman wrote:

Believe me, by the time he got to his final position he would have been
handed off long ago. Normally NY App does the handoff shortly before
clearing for the approach, certainly outside the HESTER (the outer
makrker/FAF). He went down less than a half mile from the threshold.

How is the approach clearance delivered *after* the handoff?

Dave wrote:

How is the approach clearance delivered *after* the handoff?

It looks like you read it backwards. Tom point was that the handoff
occurs there right after the approach clearance.

--
Peter

Andrew Gideon wrote:

It's possible that there was no contact with the tower if the pilot hadn't
been handed off yet (or if he never made contact with the tower after the
hand-off).

He's 1/4 mile from the runway and hasn't been handed off yet?

George Patterson
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures. Right next to the
mashed potatoes.