Confidence. It’s a curious commodity. You need it to be a good pilot, but not everyone comes by it naturally. A goal of training is to gain and maintain confidence. Acquiring it gradually is normal.
Too much confidence early is a bad sign. It makes a flight instructor’s cockiness detector flash shrill warnings. Log into an aviation accident database. Type the word “overconfidence” into the search field, using the last seven or eight years as a search parameter. Six accidents show up, five of which were fatal, with a total of 14 fatalities. Nine occurred on one flight—a turboprop ducking under bad weather over the Great Salt Lake while returning to base with a planeload of parachutists aboard.
Overconfidence and weather are codependents in accidents. “Pushing it” is the common term you’ll hear around the hangar. It’s a repeating theme in accident reports starring pilots who pushed it and include comments from their associates that the pilots were known for stunts like that.
Don’t even think of flying here today: That was the advice a pilot’s friend dispensed over the phone when the instrument-rated pilot of a Cessna 182E contacted him about a proposed flight from Albuquerque to high-elevation, mountainous Taos, New Mexico, on a snowy February 24, 2000. The fatal accident that would soon occur certainly was not a product of poor preflight research. The pilot, a psychiatrist, showed up at Albuquerque’s Automated Flight Service Station, described his planned VFR flight, and was briefed.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s online accident report relates what he heard and why he heard it: “He was advised that VFR (visual flight rules) flight was not recommended due to mountain tops being obscured, turbulence, and icing conditions. This information was based on Doppler radar and the Taos AWOS [Automated Weather Observation System]. The pilot’s friend said that about 45 minutes later, the pilot telephoned a second time and told him that it would be possible to make the flight VFR because the Taos AWOS was reporting 10 miles visibility and ceiling of at least 10,000 feet. His friend told him that it was still snowing where he lived (about 25 miles west of the airport and 8,200 feet above sea level). The pilot said he was going to attempt the flight anyway, citing his friend living ‘right at the edge of the snow level.’
“The pilot took off and established radio contact with the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center [ARTCC] at 1806. At 1818, the pilot requested and was given permission to leave the frequency momentarily. He contacted a friend at his home on [Unicom] frequency 122.75 MHz, and told him he had just passed Santa Fe and wanted to know what the weather was like at Taos. His friend, using a hand-held radio, looked outside and told him that the weather was clear in Taos, but snow was falling over the mountains,” the report continued.
The pilot notified ATC that he planned to land in Taos but might backtrack to Santa Fe. “At 1831, radar contact was lost and at 1832, the pilot’s request for a frequency change was approved.”
It was too late to run. “The pilot again contacted his friend and told him he had passed Española, and that the snow had moved in behind him. His friend said it was now snowing at Taos, too. The next contact with the pilot was when he reported being five miles southwest of the airport. Then the pilot said he had the airport in sight, but was having difficulty maintaining visual contact with the runway lights because he was ‘in and out of snow showers.’ His friend asked him what his altitude was, and the pilot replied he was at 7,600 feet (airport elevation is 7,091 feet). The pilot then said he was ‘picking up ice’ and ‘[thought he was] in trouble.’ This was the last contact with the pilot. The pilot’s friend telephoned the airport manager, who went outside his home and noted that it was ‘snowing chicken feathers’ (wet snow, large flakes, heavy downfall).” Wreckage of the Cessna was found by searchers on the ground.
Official probable cause: “The pilot’s improper preflight planning/preparation in that he initiated flight into known adverse weather, and continued VFR flight into IMC to the point where remedial action was not possible. Factors were the weather conditions that included snow, low ceiling, and obscuration, a dark night, and his overconfidence in his abilities.”
On January 14, 2001, a Beech King Air being operated for a skydiving enterprise hit the water while descending out of instrument conditions over the Great Salt Lake near Point Lake, Utah. The VFR flight was returning from Mesquite to Tooele when the accident occurred. The weather briefing the pilot had received from Reno flight service, said the NTSB, contained warnings about instrument conditions, including this exchange: “The briefer then asked, ‘You can make an IFR [instrument flight rules] approach, I presume?’ The pilot answered, ‘Yes, sir.’ The briefer then added, ‘You need to,’ and gave the current Salt Lake City weather observation, which was below VFR minimums.”
A witness’s rendering of the accident sequence, and radar returns, painted the picture of what followed. “According to the fixed base operator [FBO] at Mesquite, the airplane took off about 1615. There were no radio communications with the flight, and the pilot never activated the flight plan with FSS. Radar data retrieved from the Salt Lake City Air Route Traffic Control Center [ARTCC] indicates the airplane did not follow the filed route of flight, but flew direct from Mesquite to Tooele. According to the sheriff’s department, the Tooele Valley Airport’s weekend manager and the husband of one of the passengers were standing outside the airport office and heard an airplane pass overhead. From the sounds of the engines, they said it was a twin-engine turboprop and they assumed it was N616F. They said the engine noise diminished as the airplane flew north and never returned. Radar data indicates a VFR target passed over the airport at 1727:35 at an altitude of 7,700 feet above mean sea level, or approximately 3,400 feet above the ground. It was tracked to a point about five miles north of the airport, where it began a descending left turn. Between 1728:42 and 1729:42 (the last altitude return), the airplane lost 2,000 feet.
The NTSB report contained a pilot-witness’s report on the weather as obscured and snowing in the near-darkness. The NTSB examined the pilot’s logbook and reported various irregularities seeming to disqualify him from eligibility for conducting the flight. “Review of the logbook indicated the pilot had logged 1.2 hours of night flying time in the previous 90 days, but did not indicate the number of landings he had made. The pilot had not logged any instrument flying time in the previous six calendar months. According to the FAA, he was not qualified to serve as pilot in command of a civil aircraft carrying passengers in instrument meteorological conditions.”
There was past history of risk-taking, in the form of homemade methods for ducking under low ceilings, as reported by other members of the skydiving organization. This was noted by the NTSB in its determination of probable cause as “the pilot’s exercise of poor judgment and his failure to maintain a safe altitude/clearance above the water. Contributing factors were the weather conditions that included low ceiling and visibility obscured by snow and mist, an inadequately equipped airplane for flying in instrument meteorological conditions, and the pilot’s overconfidence in his personal ability in that he had reportedly done this on two previous occasions.”
Habitual risk taking is one link in an accident chain. Surviving a close call, or enduring a humiliating rescue, may only aggravate the tendency. Gambling on yet another miraculous escape may be thrilling, but it’s a losing bet.
Dan Namowitz is an aviation writer and flight instructor. A pilot since 1985 and an instructor since 1990, he resides in Maine.
