AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2015 - 104

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SAVVY MAINTENANCE

either electronically or telephonically. The
area forecast called for tops to 15,000 feet
and the destination TAF forecast a 300-foot
ceiling in mist and rainshowers.
The crash occurred shortly after midnight, and it was pitch dark and moonless.
Despite the fact that the AWOS was reporting a 700-foot ceiling and eight-mile
visibility, the pilot missed his first ILS
attempt and asked ATC for a second attempt.
The controller instructed the pilot to turn
left to a 360 heading and climb to 3,000 feet.
One minute later, the pilot told ATC, "I need
some help." That was his last transmission.
Radar track data showed that after the
missed approach, the aircraft turned left to
maintain a ground track of about 65 degrees
while climbing to about 2,800 feet. The aircraft then entered another left turn and
descended into the ground at about 6,000
feet per minute. The debris field extended
less than 150 feet from the impact crater.
The propeller exhibited S-bending and
chordwise scratches, indicating the engine
was making power at impact. Investigation
of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction.
The Cirrus was equipped with a CAPS ballistic parachute system, but there was no
indication that the pilot tried to activate it.
WHOSE FAULT?

Not surprisingly, the NTSB placed the
blame for this accident squarely on the
pilot in command's shoulders, attributing
the probable cause to, "The pilot's loss of
airplane control as a result of spatial disorientation experienced in night instrument
meteorological conditions."
Something the NTSB didn't say-but
I will-is that if you shoot an ILS in night
IMC and wind up going missed, attempting
the approach a second time is a sucker's bet.
The smart move is to divert to your alternate
where the weather is decent, check into the
local Motel 6, and lick your wounds.
Clearly, however, the plaintiff lawyer
had a very different take on the situation.
He was determined to convince a jury that
it was the airplane's fault-perhaps the fault
of its Sandel EHSI that might not have been
fully engaged in its mounting rack-and that
Cirrus Aircraft and Sandel Avionics should
be held financially responsible for the crash.
104 | AOPA PILOT November 2015

I don't blame the attorney. His job, after
all, is to obtain as much monetary compensation as possible for his client, the poor
mom who tragically lost two kids in the
crash. Unless the deceased pilot was an
extraordinarily high-net-worth individual, the only place that money could come
from would be the hardware manufacturers,
who carry lots of product liability insurance.
That's why whenever an airplane crashes
and people are seriously injured or killed,
the manufacturers get sued.
While I can't blame the lawyer for seeking redress from the manufacturers, I can't
bring myself to help him, either. My sympathy for the mom doesn't blind me to the fact
that the real loser in these lawsuits isn't the
manufacturer defendants or their insurance
companies-it's us, the aircraft owners and
pilots. Insurance companies pass the ridiculously high cost of defending, settling, and
even occasionally losing such lawsuits to
the manufacturers in the form of punitively
high insurance premiums. The manufacturers, in turn, pass the cost of those premiums
on to us in the form of punitively high prices
for aircraft, engines, propellers, avionics,
instruments, and repair parts.
There's no free lunch in aviation. And
we're the ones who seem to wind up picking up the check.
NTSB investigators found no evidence
of equipment failure, but for the sake of
argument, let's imagine that the plaintiff
attorney was right and the Sandel EHSI
went berserk at the worst possible moment.
The way I look at it, instruments and avionics are expected to fail from time to time.
That's why our aircraft are required to be
equipped with backup instruments, and
why we spend so much time learning how
to deal with such failures during initial and
recurrent instrument training.
In cases like these, the buck still stops
with the PIC. He's supposed to be able to
fly the aircraft even when instruments or
avionics fail. If he doesn't prove to be up to
that task, it's wrong to blame the hardware.
I guess it's a good thing I'm not a plaintiff lawyer; I'd make a terrible one.
AOPA
MIKE BUSCH is an A&P/IA.

EMAIL mike.busch@savvyaviator.com
http://www.trade-a-plane.com http://www.hiltonsoftware.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2015
