Flight Training - August 2020 - 19

ACCIDENT REPORT

BY DAN NAMOWITZ

AVOID 'SCENARIO C'
TEACHABLE MOMENTS OUTSIDE THE LESSON PLAN
THE MOST TEACHABLE MOMENTS OF A FLIGHT LESSON

can't always be found in the lesson plan, or its execution.
And sometimes it is the instructor, not the student, whose
learning curve is most steeply shaped by the flight.
All pilots looking back on their primary training can
recall instances when a maneuver, or a landing, or a navigational chore didn't work out as expected. Fortunately
there was a certificated flight instructor sitting alongside
whose mandate was to extract the educational essence
from the student's flying while keeping occupants and
aircraft intact to fly another day.
CFIs approach this responsibility based on their
instructing experience, their time in the aircraft type, and
their personalities and those of their students. The challenge is to strike that delicate balance between creating
"Scenario A" of being overly interventional-which smothers learning and disillusions the student-and "Scenario
B," which is to let things get too far without restoring
order. (Come to think of it, that scenario smothers learning
and disillusions the student, too.)
To be fair, the CFI must make the individual decisions
that shape the learning experience on a split-second timetable, as when a student pilot begins losing the battle with
a crosswind, or flares too high above the runway, or has
overshot a reasonable touchdown point but is showing no
sign of going around-just to name a few common training
scenarios.
Moment to moment a CFI considers whether to make
the save or let the event unfold another second or so to
give the student pilot every chance to fly out of trouble.
The factors that establish the instructor's comfort level
determine the outcome-and to share a trade secret ( just
between you and me), many training missteps that seemed
to arise all of a sudden were things the instructor saw coming long before they became evident to the student pilot.
What a CFI must not do is allow Scenario C: a mishap
in which a student pilot's error is initiated by an instructor's bad call, and/or compounded by instructor action or
inaction afterward. (For accounts about this kind of situation, just search the NTSB aviation accident database for
reports using the search term "inadequate supervision.")
Like many other accident types, Scenario C occurrences contain familiar elements: a bad initial judgment
aggravated by ragged flying, compounded by the absence
of margin to make a save.
On September 2, 2019, a 628-hour flight instructor and
a student pilot with 114 hours were working on takeoffs
and landings in a two-place 1978 Piper PA-38 Tomahawk
on the paved 4,000-foot-long runway at Taylor Munici-

pal Airport in Texas. The trouble began when the flight
instructor introduced a novel method of commencing a
soft-field takeoff into the session. Recall that in a soft-field
takeoff the goal is to get the airplane airborne at minimum
airspeed, remain in ground effect, and accelerate to a safe
climb speed for the initial climb. The maneuver is begun
with full back elevator, which is adjusted as control effectiveness builds. A common error until one has a feel for it
is to maintain an excessively nose-high attitude during the
takeoff run; one risk is the aircraft "mushing" into the air,
barely flying, and settling back to the ground. Not a critical
concern when there's plenty of runway available to establish controllability or abort. In this case, however, half the
runway had already been used by a touch-and-go landing
when the soft-field takeoff was initiated.

Moment to moment, a CFI considers
whether to make the save or let the
event unfold another second or so
to give the student pilot every chance
to fly out of trouble.
"During the landing rollout and with about 2,000 feet
of runway remaining, the instructor directed the student
to transition to a soft-field takeoff. The student conducted
the takeoff and attempted to climb with a high pitch
attitude, but the airplane settled back to the ground off the
end of the runway. The airplane subsequently impacted
a ditch, which resulted in substantial damage to the
fuselage," said the NTSB's report of the accident, assigning
the probable cause as the flight instructor's inadequate
supervision of the student's soft-field takeoff, resulting in
the common error of the excessive pitch attitude and the
familiar consequence of the settling effect. Neither occupant was injured.
Lesson learned: The CFI acknowledged that "he
should not have directed the student to attempt a soft-field
takeoff given the runway distance remaining."
An added insight might be that rolling out after
landing does not offer an ideal opportunity to brief the
next maneuver and review any operating constraints it
may face.
dan.namowitz@aopa.org

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Flight Training - August 2020

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