Most captivating crash tabulation sites

[caesar novus]

We've often seen coverage of airliner crashes, but what happens almost every daylight hour are small plane crashes. There is a site http://www.kathrynsreport.com/ that tabulates these for US and maybe Canada almost the day it happens. Then it sort of crowdsources amazing info over a week or two, months or years before dry gov't reports are released. The backstories are often extreme and worthy of a TV docudrama.

We see patterns unfold, like the doctors who get themselves killed in the first family flight outing in their brand new airplane and new license. Over and over with an unforgiving snazzy plane into sketchy weather. At least they tend to be legal, but another common wildman segment has no license or registration or insurance and kills innocent passengers or folks on the ground. An amazing example of this emerges in the far-down pages of http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2021/06/fuel-exhaustion-piper-pa-22-160-n9227d.html where a ne'er-do-well in debt for a million takes a million life insurance on his girlfriend and kills her but not him on an avoidable forced landing. He had her sell her house to buy the plane of course, and on goes the hollywood ready plot.

There are various tricks to navigate, such as the "most read: today" column which hits the major fatal stories, or click on todays date archive to view them all together (probably too new for comments). Sometimes the site hides a lot of stuff for a while probably due to complaints from victim families, but even unkind but informed speculation can be a lifesaver. Sometimes the exact same kind of accident repeats because the gov't reports are waiting years to dot the i's, like parking brakes that don't fully release in a certain bizjet. I can't pick out by eye the most epic story of a church owned bizjet recklessly crashing to make many kids orphans, which is already in process of I think an HBO series.

 

 

[caesar novus]

17 hours ago, caesar novus said:

 I can't pick out by eye the most epic story of a church owned bizjet recklessly crashing to make many kids orphans, which is already in process of I think an HBO series. 

That and several other eye popping stories seem to have been removed from the above site. Even some youtube accounts have been hacked in order to delete the story. An amateurish version is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ixX9KOBQIU which depicts a diet pill empire crashing with an unqualified ex Tarzan actor at the controls of the cult church jet.

Much data on Katherine's site is factual in the sense that air traffic control conversations with any particular plane is now immediately downloadable, as is their exact flight paths and altitude. This is archived automatically, and no need for any gatekeeper to ask for it. So that is indexed by tailnumber NXXXX, and with the pilot name you can download all sorts of certification info from gov't sites. By cross checking folks can often detect fraud, and check for repeat patterns of misbehavior and accidents. Hmm, someday much the same info may be available for car drivers, for better or worse.

 

Edited October 29, 2021 by caesar novus

[caesar novus]

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/ has absolutely amazing ways to break down global historical crashes, such as by body count or maps or wacky causes.

https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/monthly.aspx US gov't tabulation by month.

https://aviation-safety.net/statistics/ has much the same, but I land you on a page of re-assuring graphics on almost vanishing death rate for airlines altho small planes have a much worse rate which seems to be increasing over time:

Here I will riff a bit on anecdotal impressions I got from months following Kathryns; your's may wildly differ. The easy rupture of fuel tanks can turn a minor crumple crash into a delayed action horror. A rough landing can crimp the exits closed, and if you can't get out eventually that leaking fuel can blowtorch you into a Pompeii like figure. Another good reason to start flight lessons with a no-fuel sailplane. Also you will learn how to unexpectedly land almost anywhere safely if your lift disappears. No more oops my engine quit so we gotta crash; you will be used to spotting potential landing sites with a confident feeling of how far you can glide. Sailplanes do break a lot of backs on rough landings because they have little springiness, so maybe use an extra cushion.

A lot of young women are appearing in crashes recently, often as instructors. This seems to be due to a huge demand for airline pilots in the light of mass retirements, and women are an under-tapped demographic. In the US a brief phase of small plane instruction is the norm on the path to becoming an airline pilot, so they are more present to show up in incidents. There are some cases where small stature or body strength or fighting experience could have been an issue. Take the case of a large student freezing up on the controls in a spin. You might think that an instructor could simply beat the students skull with fists or a cabin fire extinguisher to regain control. But it seems that males confide with one another that the cockpit doesn't have room for the windup/backswing to apply much force. You have to go for their throat or eyes (don't try this, I am leaving out details). In some areas spin training is banned because of the hypnotic freezeup issue; I was lucky I did it in a sluggish forgiving aircraft.

Oh, here is my completely novel idea for the famous problem of doctor crashes ('another day, another doctor" was the comment on a crash log). It is thought their lack of time to get muscle memory on expensive new aircraft comes to a crunch in unexpected bad weather. But our now easy ability to listen or read transcripts of their radio chat up to the moment of crash gives thought to another factor. They actually have training and certificates for the conditions and unforgiving planes they fly, but I detect they aren't assertive enough under the micromanagement that air traffic control imposes in cloudy weather. Docs are collegial and unused to challenging authority/bosses. The atc has little knowledge of the doctor's snazzy aircraft abilities, but rather airliners and modest little planes. The atc bullies them over mountains and out of airliner ways, when the doc needs to assert noncompliance with legally recognized keywords like "unable". In other words give me the priority I need in this very work-overloaded condition.

 

Edited October 31, 2021 by caesar novus

[caesar novus]

Last observation. I thought I would demonstrate how you can investigate a pet hypothesis, so put "doctor" in kathryn's search box. Instead of a tidy list of recent cases I had followed, it randomly dredged up old reports in a wordy forrmat with freakish doctor pilot deaths, such as in jail or by suicide. It would take me forever to page to the newer more data filled stuff.

So I fell back to conventional google to check for where this stereotype came from. It dredged up several articles by doctor pilots about how their death rate used to be 4 times higher than other pilots, but not so much any more. They mentioned the classic stereotype of a "doctor killer" favorite airplane (V tailed Bonanza), and even whether it was an "overconfident surgeon" issue. Well the articles blather on and on about factors without hard statistics. The best I found was from old FAA Office of Aviation Medicine "Physician P.I.C. Fatal Flight Accidents" which covers 4x deaths getting worse 1966-70 while non doctors trending for the better https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oamtechreports/1970s/media/AM71-09.pdf

Alternatively I wanted to research frequency of crashes from circling back to the runway in the wrong direction, but I've run out of ideas to set up keywords. Anecdotally it seems you are supposed to turn away from the side of your dead engine, which is counterintuitive since the good engine yaws you the other way. Apparently the good engine overpowers a turn into the dead engine and it is very hard to level out and quit the turn rather than spin and crash. I give up...

[caldrail]

As a qualified pilot of light aircraft in two countries I feel obliged to point out that emergency action is part of the initial training syllabus because the instructor will want you to go solo at the first opportunity (usually around 10 hours flying time) to build confidence. Periodic checks and familiarisation flights for aircraft types new to you also involve the same procedures. Although I never suffered 'The Big One', I have encountered equipment or system failures in flight and had to make decisions on what to do.

But inexperience is something to be wary of. I once went down to the airfield one friday afternoon because the weather looked brilliant. Always check the expected weather. It showed heavy rain coming in from the Atlantic but I had time to enjoy a flight so I got ready, preflighted the Cessna, and duly took off. Had a nice time in the local area, not wishing to go too far from my home field. I saw the clouds coming in, a great bank of cloud along the horizon. So I thought it was prudent to head home and land. What I underestimated due to inexperience was how slow that headwind was going to make me. So I arrived at the airfield as the weather did. On finals, I could see the runway slowly vanishing from the other end. Cause for concern but I still misjudged how much time I had.

So as I came over the runway threshold at about ten or fifteen feet AGL, the rain arrived. My vision disappeared. Everything went light grey. For a moment, I experienced suprise. Was this it? Is this where it all goes wrong? Then I realised that an ever so slightly darker trapezoid was in front of me, the asphalt runway surface, barely visible, but it was enough to make a controlled landing. I taxied out into sunshine. The rain was a curtain in front of the main event, and I parked up, went to the office to sign off, and found out that the ATC people were furious at my lack of judgement. I had entirely forgotten the idea of finding somewhere else to land in good vis. Luckily however the Chief Instructor spoke up for me. As far as he was concerned, I hadn't panicked, I'd made a decision and followed it through. But it could have ended so much worse, and strictly speaking, the situation was entirely my own fault. Lesson learned. Some people unfortunately learn harder lessons, but flying is inherently risky. I know they say ity's the safest form of transport, but realistically, flying light aeroplanes has the same risk level as riding a motorbike.

[caesar novus]

On 10/29/2021 at 12:11 PM, caesar novus said:

which depicts a diet pill empire crashing with an unqualified ex Tarzan actor at the controls of the cult church jet.

You will be highly rewarded by checking out one more home made documentary by the above channel. It is an absolute bombshell that may be removed by youtube at any time.  He has gotten interviews with the children of the most famous mystery hijacker (two time actually) who had been silent to protect their now dead mother from prosecution. It is more polished than above but super long and marred by personal attacks in the first hour that seem gratuitous until later account of botched investigation.

I will try to ease your way into it with links that cue up at the summation in last 12 minutes (2:36:36 or 9396 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UuRpW8wdVA&t=9396s

Next backing up to re-enactment of first parachute with money and transition into second hijacking (1:09:51 or 4191 seconds) https://youtu.be/7UuRpW8wdVA?t=4191

Below is the whole thing. He normally does wonderful short punchy muck raking videos but struggles in longer subjects. He lashed out at my critique of his flying Tarzan video, but seems to have improved a bit anyway. The blundering FBI he depicts was at the tail end of J. E. Hoover's directorship and I wonder if he was steering the investigations while losing mental sharpness near end of life.

P.S. you may have to cue this last one back to time zero manually.

Edited December 14, 2021 by caesar novus