Just as automobiles and pedestrians sometimes mix badly when they must cross each other’s paths, persons operating aircraft in the vicinity of pedestrians confront some known risks and other unpredictable perils. In a perfect world, every passenger would emplane or deplane from an aircraft safely secured, with no props, turbine blades, or rotors in motion, and would be under escort until safely off airport movement areas.
That’s not the way of things in the real world, so pilots must remain acutely aware of the hazards that await the unwary or the distracted on the ramp.
The last thing pilots should do is aggravate matters in the name of convenience. One way pilots have done that on numerous occasions is to press nonpilot passengers into service to perform tasks that they should never be asked—or allowed—to perform.
One of those scenarios is when a non-
pilot passenger is asked to “hold the brakes” during an attempt to hand-start an aircraft. One such case occurred in Danbury, Connecticut, on June 28, 2014.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s accident summary, the pilot had already resorted to hand-starting the aircraft “once during five attempts prior to five separate flights the previous weekend.”
This time, unable to find someone from the FBO to help start the Cessna 172, the pilot “asked the non-rated passenger seated in the right front seat to apply the aircraft’s brakes. With the airplane unsecured and the throttle applied ‘a little bit,’ the engine started. Initially the airplane did not move, but then began to move. He attempted to board the airplane but was unable and it began travelling faster. The airplane turned to the left, went between two rows of airplanes, and impacted several parked unoccupied airplanes.”
The report added that the pilot said he “did not show the passenger how to activate the aircraft’s brakes, and believes the passenger may have inadvertently applied left rudder in an attempt to stop the airplane, although the passenger told him he did not recall doing so.”
The NTSB assigned the probable cause of the mishap as “the pilot’s use of a person unfamiliar with aviation and his failure to properly secure the airplane during hand starting of the engine.”
There were no injuries—but the next time you are out on the ramp, walking toward your aircraft, pay close attention if a nearby aircraft begins to move. There may be an untrained person in charge.
Should a person who works for an airport business in a nonpilot capacity, and who has the run of the ramp during routine operations, be considered familiar or unfamiliar with aviation?
A tragic accident in June 2014 in Middletown, Ohio, might cause pilots to rethink their ideas about that.
The NTSB reported that on June 1, 2014, a propeller from a de Havilland DHC-6-200 Twin Otter, a high-winged turboprop, “struck an employee from the skydiving operator as she walked toward the cockpit while the airplane was standing with the engines operating on a ramp at the Middletown Regional Airport/Hook Field.”
The report said the skydiving aircraft, which has two wing-mounted engines, had been contracted by a skydiving business that normally operated single-engine aircraft with engine and propeller up front. The twin “was standing on the MWO ramp while waiting for passengers to board when the accident occurred.” The report noted that the pilot thought that the delay before the next flight “was not long enough to justify shutting down the engines.”
According to newspaper reporting of the accident, the employee, a 24-year-old office manager for the based skydiving business, had walked out to the aircraft—“as she frequently did”—to ask the pilot if he wanted food. She was struck by the rotating propeller of the left engine.
The NTSB’s terse report set the probable cause of the accident as “the skydiving operator employee’s failure to see and avoid the rotating propeller blades when she walked toward the cockpit while the airplane’s engines were running.”
In its aftermath, if pilots take some time to rethink their sense of what constitutes risk mitigation on ramps and movement areas, a shred of good may emerge from the darkest day in the life of one airport community.
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