[HN Gopher] FAA investigating controversial crash video
___________________________________________________________________
FAA investigating controversial crash video
Author : nostromo
Score : 511 points
Date : 2021-12-29 20:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.avweb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.avweb.com)
| mito88 wrote:
| he resembles that youtuber who was dumped by the love of his
| life...
| jb1991 wrote:
| I'm curious who is the person who supposedly shot footage of the
| plane from a distance as it was heading towards its crash. If he
| was in the air in the parachute, who was filming the plane from
| the ground?
| emilburzo wrote:
| I suspect it's from the selfie-stick gopro and cropped with
| subject tracking
| chrononaut wrote:
| Do you have a timestamp for which part you're referring to? It
| looked like it was entirely recorded by GoPros attached to the
| air frame, the camera on his selfie-stick, or the GoPro on his
| wrist.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I think I misinterpreted that part of the footage and the
| sister comment explains it.
| beaker52 wrote:
| I know this is extremely narrow but I think there's something in
| it: the way he says "I'm over the mountains and I have a
| [fricking] engine out" sets off my Spidey sense.
|
| This appears to justify the need to jump before pointing out the
| problem. That's not your reaction in an emergency. If you're
| making YouTube content then surely you want to show the sheer
| terror that you faced, not the calm justification for your
| bailing out.
|
| The problem is that your engine is out. Your response is supposed
| to be "[Frick], my engine is out and I can't see anywhere to land
| - this is concerning". Not "I'm over the mountains and my engine
| is out" suggesting that there is only one outcome.
|
| I don't know much about aviation, but his language and attitude
| throughout the video suggests to me that he's prepped to ditch
| the plane. I'm running off gut instinct here but it's always
| served me pretty well.
| replwoacause wrote:
| I don't think I could make a faker video if I tried.
| runjake wrote:
| A lot of mistakes were made. The FAA is investigating and I'm
| sure they will come to a sound conclusion. This is the most I can
| say, based on the footage I've watched. I cannot speak to his
| intent.
|
| Anything more is just Internet Pile-On, and the Internet can use
| less of that.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Not in this case. /r/flying put this idiocy on the map.
|
| FAA is an imperfect organization. Check out some of the
| discussions around pilots masking mental health issues to
| maintain medical status.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| What I've heard from a friend is: you should have a really
| good general practitioner, and a good doctor who certifies
| you, and they must never, ever communicate with or even be
| aware of each other.
|
| (I do not study airplane.)
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| The FAA/NTSB is pretty good at determining why a plane crashed,
| not so much on judging people's intentions, that's usually left
| to a jury.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I don't think it's wrong to talk about this rather than sit in
| complete silence until the FAA releases a report.
| planesceptic wrote:
| I agree, but the comments are all either "how dare he place
| an ad in his video (contractual, perhaps?)" to "I would
| never"
|
| There isn't much meat on the bone, to a layman at least.
| quasarj wrote:
| Thank you. People are so full of shit, thinking they can spot
| anything as being fake.. or knowing his intentions. There just
| isn't enough information yet.
| neom wrote:
| Reminds me of the David Lesh incident:
|
| https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/on-video-guy-ditche...
| roeles wrote:
| For comparison, here is a video of a YAK-50 with an engine
| failure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrR8pnMgMiE
| scarier wrote:
| If anyone's interested in watching videos of genuine emergencies
| in light aircraft, Elliot Seguin
| (https://www.youtube.com/c/utopiasnow) has some fantastic ones.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| My dad used a fly a cesna 172 when I was a kid. So I've heard
| many stories from his pilot friends about losing engines, landing
| in fields and the like. It happens quite a lot, apparently.
|
| A few things strike me:
|
| o why was he wobbling the yoke so much forwards and backwards,
| that costs you speed, and knackers your glide efficiency.
|
| o Why wasn't he looking for landing sites (he was up really high,
| like 2k+ above the mountain top), _edit_ : see comment daughter,
| decent is measured in feet per minute, unfeathered prop will
| cause drag, nailing your glide ratio so not 10 minutes glide time
| before action was needed
|
| o why didn't he set his glide path up properly, to give him time
| to think?
|
| o why isn't he looking at the checklist for engine failure? (my
| dad had one in the middle) I suspect he might not have one
|
| o Did he send a distress signal?
|
| o where was the attempt to restart the engine (granted it might
| not be young enough to have a starter, but he had the height to
| spin the prop)
|
| Finally, the other thing that gets me, is that the door is open
| before the engine fails. which either means that he's expecting
| the failure (checklists are your friend here) so why wasn't he
| lining up/searching for a river bed for landing?
| verytrivial wrote:
| o Why did he hike to the crash site to where all the GoPro
| memory cards were, and where all the flight controls were still
| set to where they were when he baile---Ooooh.
|
| Yeah. Go directly to jail. Do not pass GO.
| mizzao wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the jail part?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Sink rate is much higher than 200 fpm engine out (likely 500+
| fpm in a T-craft). From 2K AGL, you don't have 10 minutes.
| addaon wrote:
| Yep, almost exactly. Best glide in a t-craft is going to be
| about 65 mph, give or take. It's a better-than-average
| glider, and with the prop stopped should be able to get close
| to 10:1 (although I surely wouldn't plan on it); so vertical
| speed is about 6.5 mph, or ~575 fpm. If you're optimizing for
| time in the air (loiter) instead of glide distance you can
| pull it a bit slower than best glide -- Vx is about 57 mph,
| which at 10:1 (you'll get a bit less below best glide, but
| not much less) would be 500 fpm.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| thanks, I have updated.
| atlex2 wrote:
| Pilot here. That aircraft wasn't built with an electrical
| system, and people only install them when they need to fly into
| populated areas-- it's basically an antique. No way to radio
| anybody, barely any checklists to follow; generally
| extraordinary simple-- just throttle and magnetos, if it's
| anything like the Piper Cub... so engine failure is usually due
| to fuel exhaustion, the more likely case because also there
| wasn't a fire near the landing site despite the crumpled metal,
| or oil leak, unlikely because the prop freewheeled once the
| plane sped up, or maybe sure the magnetos were turned off. More
| generally, there's something off about the person... his
| emotional connection to his experience does not seem typically
| expressed.
| fnord77 wrote:
| take the tiktok plane crash challenge !
| polynomial wrote:
| YT really pays more out for a video with 250k views than the cost
| of that sweet vintage plane?!?
| bagels wrote:
| No, they don't. A rule of thumb I've seen is about $4/1000
| views. Not sure about the brand sponsors though.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Most pilots would run a checklist for an engine out situation.
| Maybe the video skipped over this because it's not raw footage,
| but it does seem a bit suspicious.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| Is it just me or he speaks of flying with a parachute in just
| like many vegans talking about being vegans?
|
| The tone is so similar
| stonepresto wrote:
| Browsing this guys YouTube video titles reads like a decent into
| madness... culminating in "I crashed my plane".
| stevesearer wrote:
| Oddly enough, I'm familiar with the wilderness where the plane
| crashed and based on the video am pretty confident I know where
| the crash site was. Am now interested in hiking out to it
| sometime too.
|
| In the case that this was real, it is interesting to me to see
| just how close he was to trails and camps without knowing it
| where he might have been able to better assess his situation and
| get his bearings.
| scruple wrote:
| Is that Hurricane Deck underneath when he bails? Haven't been
| up there for a while.
| stevesearer wrote:
| Yeah, hurricane deck trail looks like maybe .25mi uphill away
| from where the plane ends up.
|
| Access would be tough in general, plus there is a road
| closure right now making the trek even longer.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| It boggles my mind why he recommends a parachute but no offline
| maps on the phone.
|
| Still I think this entire thing is staged
| umpalumpaaa wrote:
| Shortly after the engine went off you could see roads from the
| plane...
| giarc wrote:
| I only watched about the first half of the video, but I
| understand there is controversy whether this was an accident or a
| planned wreck. If so, I think there is an easy answer, he should
| just release the footage of when the engine started to fail.
| There should be a good chunk of time where he is trying to
| restart, should also be genuine surprise when that happened and
| not a shot of him shutting the engine down. The youtube video (or
| at least the first half) didn't include that, only cut to a point
| where he has obviously decided to jump. He may claim to have
| turned off the gopro on the dash, but there was a gopro on the
| left wing that was focused on the cockpit that should show his
| reaction.
| cdiamand wrote:
| Came here to say this. Pilots are drilled to work an extensive
| engine-out checklist during training.
|
| In this situation, the pilot had what seemed like a significant
| amount of altitude (time) to work the problem.
| planesceptic wrote:
| So, I'm a complete ignorant when it comes to planes, but I do
| have the habit of giving folks BOTD and so I was wondering a
| few things:
|
| 1. How experienced a pilot is this man? Is he a very junior
| novice or experienced such that this should be a non-factor.
|
| 2. I see lots of folks mentioned hardwares in the comments -
| would a vintage craft (80+ years) be lacking good maintenance
| or equipment?
|
| All in all I think he needs to release full footage otherwise
| he isn't actually helping anyone as he claims to hope to. At
| the same time I see lots of armchair quarterbacking on what
| should have happened - but having been in high stress
| situations (fist, knife, and gun fights) in my life your
| reactions are never what you expect from the comfort of a
| computer chair. I've also witnessed as a software engineer
| very "senior" folks with loss of experience make amateur
| choices in no-stress situations - I cannot imagine the "oh
| shit this plane is going down" stress.
|
| Wish someone would have a good layman explanation instead of
| showing off their personal knowledge.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _1. How experienced a pilot is this man? Is he a very
| junior novice or experienced such that this should be a
| non-factor._
|
| Shouldn't matter. By the time the FAA examiner gives you a
| pilot's license, they should be convinced that you can
| safely handle aviation, to include engine failures.
|
| But unless the airplane is literally coming apart around
| you, bailing out of a light airplane is almost always the
| wrong answer. They land fairly slow, especially an old
| T-craft, and it doesn't take very many feet of deceleration
| room for it to be something you walk away from.
|
| I'm not familiar with the particular accident and
| circumstances, but nothing I've seen in the avweb writeup
| makes it look very good. And I generally suspect YouTube
| "pilots" are mostly in it for the views, and nothing sells
| views like a crash.
|
| As far as "the engine has quit" stress, as long as the rest
| of the airplane is in good shape, it's still a perfectly
| good airplane. And pilots regularly train (at least,
| should...) for engine out landings. It's a common event in
| training - you get somewhere near the airport, the
| instructor pulls the throttle back and says, "Your engine
| quit." I hate to say it's not a big deal, because if it
| quits for real, you'll certainly be sweating, but a general
| aviation airplane doesn't fall out of the sky if the engine
| quits.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| If it quits for real, you do NOT know you are sweating
| until you land. At least not in my two. For me, it felt
| like time slowed down and everything was crystal clear,
| like a yellow brick road appeared in my vision. OTOH, I
| fly a twin...
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Not everyone reacts the same to crisis though. I can
| imagine other people totally freaking out and not having
| razor focus like you. And your don't really know what
| type of person you are until you're in it.
|
| But it's sure a great thing to have!
| behringer wrote:
| No need to sweat. Just carry a skydiving parachute.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> you get somewhere near the airport, the instructor
| pulls the throttle back and says, "Your engine quit."
|
| The first time mine did this was on downwind in the
| pattern. I looked forward at lots of farmland and said
| "how about there?" He pointed left and said "you got a
| perfectly good runway over there." I said "oh you really
| want me to do this, I better make my turn." IIRC I made
| the landing but not really near the numbers :-)
| sparkling wrote:
| The giveaway for me is the camera mounted to his wrist. Why
| would you have that on the wrist, it makes no sense if the
| flight had gone "as planned".
| planesceptic wrote:
| I guess the question to what is, is this featured in
| other videos of his? If not, very bad look.
| jcrites wrote:
| Yeah, and does he wear a full, regular skydiving rig (not
| an emergency backup rig) while flying airplanes in his
| other videos?
|
| I have not watched them, but commenters in the original
| article have said that he does not wear skydiving rigs
| while flying other airplanes. (I haven't watched his
| other videos and can't personally confirm or deny)
| zikduruqe wrote:
| Thanks to Ridge Wallet being the sponsor.
|
| Don't forget that.
|
| N29508 if anyone is interested.
|
| NTSB investigation number - WPR22LA049
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| not even mounted on the wrist. If you watch the video he
| switches hands, so its on a selfie stick.
|
| Dude bailed out in an 'emergency' but remembered to grab
| his selfie stick and press record.
| varamocs wrote:
| For foreigners like me that are not so initialism-savvy,
| "BOTD" stands for "Benefit of the Doubt".
| weaksauce wrote:
| > 1. How experienced a pilot is this man? Is he a very
| junior novice or experienced such that this should be a
| non-factor.
|
| he has a pilot license and that is enough experience to get
| out of this without bailing on the plane. the fact that he
| had a full proper skydiving rig was a red flag.
|
| > 2. I see lots of folks mentioned hardwares in the
| comments - would a vintage craft (80+ years) be lacking
| good maintenance or equipment?
|
| every plane has to undergo some form of periodic
| maintenance and 80 year old planes are worthy if kept up.
| it's a single engine plane though and those do fail from
| time to time, however they do have practice in engine
| failures as part of the path to getting the pilot license.
| these things can glide for a long long way and he had a lot
| of altitude to find a place to land such as a road or dirt.
| this was imo a stunt for his youtube page.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| 1: A lot of failures could be attributed to someone
| forgetting their training due to stress... but he didn't
| seem under that much stress and evidently forgot _all_ of
| his training. That 's pretty suspect. You shouldn't be able
| to get a certificate without showing that slow to best
| glide, start looking for a landing site, and start the
| engine out checklist is a set of steps that you can conduct
| quickly from memory. It should be trained into pilots to do
| this kind of thing out loud (e.g. pointing and narrating)
| because the instructor and examiner want to see it that way
| and it just helps you keep on track and concentrating. That
| makes it odd that, if any of this happened, he omitted it
| from the video... from a vanity perspective it's an
| opportunity to Look Like A Real Pilot by working your list
| in an authoritative voice (I'm pretty sure every pilot gets
| a kick out of saying Landing Assured, otherwise they
| haven't found out how fun it is yet).
|
| Of course we can't totally tell from the video but it
| really doesn't seem like he took any of these actions prior
| to bailing out, certainly we don't see him with a
| checklist. Bailing out isn't even really something that's
| discussed as an option in an engine-out scenario, it would
| have to be such an unusual situation for it to be the best
| choice and it will tend to endanger anyone/anything on the
| ground (and of course it's a goal of aviation not to do
| that). One thing that is explicitly trained for any kind of
| precautionary (e.g. "this might go poorly") landing is
| opening the door, because in the past doors have jammed in
| the frame and prevented the pilot escaping a fire. That's
| why a lot of people are calling it out as suspect that he
| has his door open a bit from the very start... like he
| already worked some kind of precautionary landing
| checklist. Forward-hinged doors are also hard to open in
| flight because of the air pressure on them (that's kind of
| a feature), so one also wonders if he had tested to make
| sure he could get it open enough to fall out.
|
| It's hard to believe that someone with a certificate
| wouldn't at least promptly fumble for the checklist, and I
| bet inexperienced pilots would probably be inclined to make
| a radio call earlier than experienced ones did since it
| takes some discipline to keep your priorities on aviate,
| navigate, communicate when things go wrong. Yet we never
| see him make a radio call at all, which is very odd since
| he expresses concern about having a way out of the
| mountains... I personally suspect that he knew that a
| mayday call would probably result in a fire brigade or
| sheriff's deputies or state police helicopter or whatever
| showing up before he had much time to address the crash
| site (controllers activate local fire and search and rescue
| as a precaution when they hear a plane might go down in the
| wilderness and it didn't look like he was that far from
| civilization). That could easily lead to questions and
| discovery of evidence that would become a problem for him
| later, so I think it was an intentional decision to avoid
| having authorities notified in real-time. This is a cynical
| take obviously but it feels like he was preserving his
| ability to tamper with the incident site before anyone
| showed up who would know to preserve it for investigators.
|
| 2: I mean it's hard to say about some random airplane,
| obviously it's a very old aircraft but most of the critical
| parts will have been outright replaced much more recently
| than it was made. The FAA has requirements to keep an
| aircraft in use and they involve regular inspections and
| preventative maintenance, so older planes don't tend to
| fall out of the sky just because they're old. There are
| ways to skirt these rules but not a lot of them, and if
| it's found that he did (or the owner did or whatever) he
| will really get the book thrown at him just on that front.
| For the most part if an airplane is still registered to fly
| it's in as good of mechanical condition as any other plane,
| although sometimes older aircraft will get relegated to
| basically experimental status because of missing safety
| features (which puts in place restrictions like not flying
| over cities). The Taylorcraft he was in is certified as a
| standard aircraft though, nothing weird going on, except
| that I think it might fall into the grandfather sport pilot
| rules that allow certain standard aircraft to be called
| "light sport" if they meet the requirements but were
| certified as standard because the light sport class didn't
| exist yet at the time. That raises the question of whether
| Jacob had a sport pilot license or not since that program
| gets some criticism from a safety front, but from searching
| the airman registry it looks like he has a regular private
| certificate issued about a year and a half ago, on a third-
| class medical from 2018 which suggests maybe he started and
| stopped training but isn't super unusual.
|
| Also what YouTuber in their right mind leaves the part
| where they say "mayday mayday mayday" out of the video.
| It's just like the movies! If we believe that he worked the
| steps and just edited them out, it's a really bizarre
| creative decision for him to make. Hard for me to believe.
| petters wrote:
| > Also what YouTuber in their right mind leaves the part
| where they say "mayday mayday mayday" out of the video.
| It's just like the movies! If we believe that he worked
| the steps and just edited them out, it's a really bizarre
| creative decision for him to make. Hard for me to
| believe.
|
| That is also weird if the whole thing is staged. So it's
| not really evidence for or against.
| jcrites wrote:
| If you have a pilot's license, which this man did, then you
| have been extensively trained on these things. Getting a
| pilot's license is not easy.
|
| As someone who has also been training for his own pilot's
| license, and has practiced engine-out situations while
| flying, his reactions look suspect. First of all, he has
| considerable altitude and could likely fly to a safe forced
| landing location. Second, he doesn't bank at all to provide
| better visibility into landing options. Third, we don't see
| him trying to restart the engine at all.
|
| (Unless this airplane is somehow so old that it doesn't
| have one) - all airplanes come with a quick reaction
| checklist which you keep right next at you, and are ready
| to pull out at a moment's notice. It provides instructions
| on exactly what to do in situations like an engine failure.
| From what I can see, I don't see him attempting to recover
| the engine. It would be poor airmanship to bail from the
| aircraft without at least running through the engine
| failure checklist.
|
| I'll let the FAA do their job before drawing any final
| conclusions but my impression as a student pilot is that
| this was planned and staged.
|
| Most light aircraft like the kind that he's flying have a
| glide slope of something like 1:6 with no power: meaning
| that you can travel quite a long distance with the altitude
| that he has in the video.
|
| Lastly, I will remark on comments made in the article
| itself. He is not wearing an emergency bail-out skydiving
| rig. He is wearing a full, redundant skydiving rig (the
| kind that come with two parachutes). This is highly unusual
| as full skydiving rigs are bulky and would be uncomfortable
| to wear in the cockpit of an airplane. Emergency bail-out
| rigs are considerably thinner since they are meant as
| actual backup systems.
|
| The guy's focus looking out the door, rather than focusing
| on flying the plane and looking for a landing spot (he has
| tons of altitude and potential to get to plenty of viably
| safe ones), gives me the impression that he's already made
| the decision to skydive out of the plane.
|
| Someone may have radio recordings. If we know the tail
| number of the aircraft (people were working it out in the
| article comments) then it may be possible to find the radar
| tracks showing the craft's last known location. If Internet
| sleuths want to dig in, then you can from there find the
| radio frequency that he'd be expected to be on, and if he's
| even attempting to make this seem like a real accident
| you'd hear him declare an emergency on the radio.
| Furthermore, if Air Traffic Control had a radar track on
| him, then they may have been able to guide him to a safe
| landing location given his altitude and knowledge of the
| aircraft's "best glide".
|
| To me it's highly suspicious that he's not showing any of
| the video angle of the cockpit interior, including what he
| should be/is doing to recover the aircraft and look for
| safe forced landing sites.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Registration is N29508
| KaiserPro wrote:
| All of this.
|
| My dad had a PPL (uk single engine pilots license). The
| checklist was on the dash, it was easy to understand.
|
| Even though I haven't flown with him since I was ten, I
| still vaguely remember what things you should generally
| do:
|
| 1) adjust trim for best glide
|
| 2) attempt restarts
|
| 3) find the best landing site, go to 2
| earleybird wrote:
| I still have a crystal clear memory of the time I was out in
| the practice area with my flight instructor and had what
| appeared to be a legitimate engine failure. I was all set to
| land in a stubble field and about 200' agl my instructor
| reached down and flipped the fuel selector from off to both.
| Never forgot that step in the checklist since. Learned
| several valuable lessons that day - practice til you don't
| miss anything . . . and keep an eye on your instructor :-)
| petters wrote:
| > Never forgot that step in the checklist since
|
| I thought the whole point of checklists was that individual
| steps should not have to be remembered.
|
| E.g. every doctor and nurse knows how to put in a catheter.
| Yet explicit checklists save lives.
|
| If you have to remember the individual steps, it sounds
| like you are not using a checklist? Aren't they printed
| somewhere?
| FabHK wrote:
| Some checklists include memory items - things that ought
| to be done immediately, without delay caused by looking
| up a checklist. An engine failure scenario is one where
| you don't want to spend time getting out the checklist.
|
| For the engine checks, you develop a flow from one area
| of the cockpit to the other, basically touching
| everything related to the engine. For a Cessna 172 you'd
| check fuel selector valve, alternate air intake, fuel
| shutoff valve, throttle, mixture, carb heat (if
| equipped), engine instruments, ignition switch, magnetos,
| fuel pump (if equipped).
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| Ballsy instructor to leave it that long. :)
| earleybird wrote:
| Possibly - pretty sure it wasn't the first time he'd done
| that. In the same practice area was a dirt runway in a
| farmers field that we'd use for rough field landing
| practice - usually meant cleaning the cow crap from the
| undersides of the wings. Worst that would have happened -
| rough field landing in stubble.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Also ... who is his friend Johnny that died ... is there an
| obit ... a facebook or instragram page of johnny's that shows a
| long history of using those apps and that he passed. Are there
| any pics of him with this johnny on those apps?
| planesceptic wrote:
| Cursory Googling gives:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Strange_(adventurer)
|
| The pilot mentions snowboarding and such, seems plausible it
| was this man. Then again he's a California extreme sports
| type so might just well be some commonly named punker friend.
| In that world "Johnny $FAKE_NAME" is a trope.
| paul7986 wrote:
| The guy you linked to died in 2015. I guess you could be
| holding onto his ashes that long...but HA
| c6th6l wrote:
| Seems correct based on this video from 7 months ago stating
| he died in 2015:
|
| https://youtu.be/1n4kFN-1axs
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I'm a pilot and a paraglider. I own an emergency chute via my
| paragliding kit. I fly an experimental plane powered by a much
| less reliable engine than what this man had. My airframe has had
| an in air engine failure, and forced landing on a small road,
| although I wasn't the pilot.
|
| I have never once thought about bringing my reserve parachute
| with me when piloting my plane. I was trained to land the plane
| without power, as are all pilots. I don't know any pilots who
| have had a simple engine out that wish they would have bailed
| out. I know pilots who are skydivers and they don't wear their
| chutes.
|
| The ONLY pilots that I know of that wear chutes are aerobatic
| pilots who do high risk maneuvers. Absolutely none of them wear
| one that looks like a skydiving rig because it is VERY
| uncomfortable to be in a cramped cockpit wearing what is
| essentially a bulky backpack. In the video you can see just how
| cramped he is in that plane because he has a chute on.
| nikitaga wrote:
| If you or anyone else ever decides to bring your paragliding
| reserve onboard an airplane, _be sure to check its specs
| first_. Paragliding reserves are optimized for fast deployment
| at low airspeed, whereas deployment at airplane flight speeds
| needs a slower deployment sequence to avoid excessive G load on
| both the parachute and yourself.
|
| For extra safety, getting a whole-airplane ballistic recovery
| parachute is a much better choice, although those are not
| foolproof either - installation must be done properly, and
| deployment is not guaranteed to succeed if your plane is in
| pieces by the time you need it, e.g. from structural failure or
| a midair collision.
| throwaway73838 wrote:
| > I don't know any pilots who have had a simple engine out that
| wish they would have bailed out.
|
| Survivorship bias?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Maybe. I also don't know anyone who has suffered serious
| injury or death.
|
| My feeling is just that landing a gliding airplane is just
| not that hard.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Thank you. All of the comments about full skydiving rig versus
| emergency chute kind of misses the point. It is _extremely_
| unusual to wear any kind of parachute at all when piloting an
| aircraft (yes, there are exceptions, but they are rare). To
| have a full skydiving rig is frankly all the evidence I need
| that he planned to bail out, never mind all of the other issues
| I have seen mentioned.
| topherPedersen wrote:
| At the dropzone the pilots usually wear emergency bailout
| parachutes. But yeah you're right, a skydiving rig would be
| really uncomfortable to wear flying. It looks like he was
| planning to jump before he ever took off to me. I've never seen
| anyone pilot an aircraft wearing a skydiving rig.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I recall now that some aircraft types are modified in a way
| that the FAA requires the pilots to wear a chute. But as you
| pointed out, they don't wear a full blown skydiving rig.
| geocrasher wrote:
| I couldn't stand to watch more than a couple minutes of this
| video. There are several clear landing areas within gliding
| distance, and in such gorgeous conditions he could probably could
| have hooked a couple thermals in such a light plane.
|
| This was a setup for YouTube, and he deserves whatever the FAA
| throws at him.
| emilburzo wrote:
| There's definitely some suspicious stuff going on:
|
| - gave up waaaay too early compared to any pilot I've seen with
| an engine out
|
| - skydiving rig[1] (bulky, more/less easy to reach handles,
| steerable) instead of safety parachute[2] (light, one accesibile
| handle, none/little steering, not intended for high freefall
| speeds)
|
| - gopro on ~wrist~ selfie-stick
|
| - long and stable freefall before pulling
|
| - before jumping, he opens the door and looks straight down a few
| times, exactly like skydivers spot the landing zone before
| jumping
|
| Basically I feel like I've watched an experienced skydiver on a
| planned jump more than a pilot surprised by an engine out.
|
| [1]
| http://scrisc.com/image/cache/data/m2aad/tn_zoom_obrazek_88-...
|
| [2]
| https://www.chutingstar.com/media/catalog/product/cache/dc97...
| gouggoug wrote:
| And to this already perfect list, I'll add the subjective:
|
| - terrible acting
| ziml77 wrote:
| Bad writing too. If he wanted it to be believable he should
| have left out the crap about his friend's ashes.
|
| There's also the text at the beginning saying he didn't think
| he'd have the courage to share the footage, but then he ends
| up sharing something that he had to have spent a lot of time
| editing? If it was that traumatic, surely he wouldn't be able
| to have put that much effort into editing it like that. It's
| not like all cutting between all those angles was necessary
| to demonstrate that a parachute is handy.
| Strom wrote:
| That was the main giveaway for me too. Sure there are lots of
| technical things that give it away, but this man couldn't act
| to save his life. When he first reached the tree with his
| parachute, I couldn't help but burst out laughing at his
| "anger".
| [deleted]
| ziml77 wrote:
| Oh man I skipped right over that. Terrible acting and he
| went for the cliche of getting stuck in a tree. If he's an
| experienced skydiver, surely he could have easily landed in
| a better spot.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Regardless of how prepared or experienced of sky diver he might
| be, the notion he'd selfie his way down and look at camera
| rather than doodoo his pants wondering if he'll live another
| day and looking for a place to land feels implausible for
| unplanned emergency excursion.
|
| Particularly telling moments are when he's steering parachute
| with one finger because others are holding the selfie stick;
| and the footage when he just landed and is trying to
| disentangle from bushes - but still prioritizing holding the
| selfie stick at correct angle. If somebody actually has those
| priorities in real emergency, dear gawd, I don't want to be
| near that person!
|
| (other inconsistencies have been well noted in op and in other
| posts)
| walrus01 wrote:
| In addition to everything you mentioned there's two fixed mount
| gopros, one on the wing aimed at the fuselage, and one on the
| tail aimed forward. Footage from these is seen in the first 15
| minutes of the video. Absolutely some kind of publicity stunt.
| TylerE wrote:
| That's not so unusual. Tons of student pilots mount external
| gopros for routine training flights these days.
| progbits wrote:
| I could believe that if the channel had a history of that
| kind of footage. But I just skipped around a few past videos
| (actually most of the channel content is not about flying)
| and couldn't see one.
|
| I'll let FAA assign blame, but sure does seem like he added
| that angle because it seemed like a cool shot for the crash.
|
| Edit: Also, he doesn't seem to fly with a full parachute
| normally, for example: https://youtu.be/OnOrfJo2LE0?t=253
| [deleted]
| ehsankia wrote:
| Not only it's not unusual for a Youtuber who frequently posts
| videos of themselves flying, but it also would explain why
| they would trek to the crash site, to recover expensive
| equipment, especially if the crash was nearby (which it was
| due to the plane turning and coming back and almost hitting
| him).
| biohacker85 wrote:
| I don't have the relevant experience to judge one way or the
| other, but my internal BS meter was definitely going off. Main
| thing I can say is his reactions to the engine failure and
| troubles while on the ground didn't seem authentic.
| sundvor wrote:
| One more thing, play it at 0.25x speed at 4:03 - then frame by
| frame it (double tap) until you see the hip mounted altimeter -
| white clock with a red "pie". It's visible for a few frames..
| just, gold. (If his left hand has filled the frame you've gone
| just too far, still at 4:03.)
|
| Sure, a perfectly normal thing for a pilot to wear on a not at
| all pre-coreographed free fall plane ditch.
| Too wrote:
| Don't forget about the gopro batteries, they only last an hour
| tops, this guy keeps shooting for several hours. Even if you
| turn it off in between the shots it's hard to get a full days
| worth of video, unless you have spares batteries in you pocket,
| plausible given that he's a youtuber after all.
|
| At the end of the video you can tell he's an experienced
| skydiver, which could explain how lax he is in the air and with
| the camera handling, but then why the hell did he crashland
| into a tree on the side of a cliff when there is a flat field
| right below him 10 seconds earlier in the video.
|
| And why is he dragging his heavy parachute gear throughout the
| jungle when he's tired and water deprived?
| Kye wrote:
| Alternate possibility: a skydiver had engine trouble during a
| non-skydiving flight and used his skydiving skills with the
| skydiving kit he had with him to escape the plane. Not to say I
| would be surprised if a YouTuber did a stunt for views, but
| there are other explanations. Even for the fakey stuff at the
| end. He _is_ a YouTuber, after all. Playing stuff up is habit
| for them.
| soneil wrote:
| It does leave me with two glaring questions.
|
| One, is where was he going? He states at the start the plan
| is to go paragliding in the mountains. Apparently without his
| paragliding kit. And up into the mountains with nowhere to
| land. And they're really not the wheels for bush landings, so
| I don't assume the plan was to land wild.
|
| He does have access to bush-appropriate craft though, he has
| an earlier video (this september) where he tells stories of
| how scary mountain flying can be, and the recurring craft in
| that video has the balloon-type tyres I expect from bush
| flying. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMrwPPMTCmM )
|
| But that earlier video raises the second question by
| repeatedly, consistently, shooting down his "I always fly
| with my chute on" statement.
|
| I don't want to be "we did it reddit", but I can see why
| questions are being asked.
| bagels wrote:
| Maybe there is paragliding equipment at Mammoth?
| pageandrew wrote:
| Why would he have a wrist GoPro and a full skydiving rig on a
| non-skydiving flight?
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Recording the whole thing for other friends of the
| deceased, skydiving rig because it's what he's used to or
| had on hand. (Hypothetically of course)
| pc86 wrote:
| To try and draw a technical analogy, wearing a skydiving
| rig in this instance is really like buying your
| grandfather a high end gaming PC so he can use email
| because "that's what you're used to." It's plausible, in
| the sense that those words in that particular sort of
| make sense, but realistically nobody would ever do it.
|
| Even if you've got thousands of solo jumps, if you're
| doing a non-skydiving flight and feel the need to wear a
| parachute (very few pilots _ever_ do this), you 're just
| not going to wear a full skydiving rig. It's several
| times bulkier, it's harder to move in the cockpit, and it
| doesn't fit the purpose, which is to allow you to bail
| closer to the ground after running your engine failure
| checklist and not die.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Look, I'm not claiming it would be a good idea. But if
| you're the type who wants to wear a parachute despite it
| being non-standard, and you've got the skydiving rig
| taking up space in your closet, and would have to pay
| extra for the usual emergency parachute -- maybe you
| don't have a ton of money (after aircraft maintenance
| anyway), or even think the skydiving rig is "better" in
| some ill-specified way -- do you really think it's
| impossible someone would just use what they have?
|
| Like, if a high-end gaming PC is what you have on hand
| after upgrading, why not give Gramps a computer that will
| maybe take a little longer to bog down?
| sokoloff wrote:
| No one would want to sit on a sport parachute pack for
| funsies. They're bulky and the cockpit is small. Even the
| acro chutes are slightly bulky and uncomfortable in a
| light aircraft cockpit. You wear them when flying acro;
| no one I know wears them when flying their aerobatic
| aircraft on a random trip.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| Not to take from your argument but my retired in law just
| bought top speced M1 Max for 5k or so. He is using it for
| light browsing so total overkill but his argument was
| that buying highest package Audi was way more expensive
| compared to base model but nobody questioned him on that
| and $2k is just not worth worrying about if 1tb is enough
| for photos or not.
|
| The same with parachute. He probably felt that flying in
| mountains on 1942 piece of crap is risky so he needed
| backup and that flight suite was what he had available
| and can use at the moment. Better than nothing and good
| enough not to hustle to get something better.
| pc86 wrote:
| As Syonyk said, the year of manufacture is completely
| irrelevant in a plane. The maintenance is so standardized
| that unless it has a _lot_ of hours on the airframe -
| think 20k+ and you 're in the right ballpark - or was a
| primary flight school trainer with 12-15k (not possible
| given its age due to insurance reasons), a 1942 plane
| with a 500 hour engine is all but identical to a 1982
| plane with a 500 hour engine, as far as reliability and
| safety of flight goes.
|
| Even flight school planes aren't that bad, it's usually
| just the landing gear that is a little worse for wear :)
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _He probably felt that flying in mountains on 1942
| piece of crap..._
|
| Then the right answer is _not take the trip in that
| airplane._
|
| General aviation is pretty timeless, as far as vehicles
| go. If an airplane has regular annual inspections, decent
| maintenance as required, and a proven record of "not
| being a consistent pain in the ass," then it's likely to
| be quite reliable. I've flown stuff from the 60s and 70s,
| far older than I am, and I don't think twice about it. I
| do think about the general condition of the airplane and
| the maintenance trends I've seen, but age of the airframe
| just isn't a concern if it's still airworthy. If it were
| a "piece of crap," then it's not being maintained to
| something resembling airworthy. There are some out there,
| but they're rare.
|
| And then, if you don't think it's the right plane for the
| trip, _don 't take that trip in that plane._ Find a
| different route. Again, this is part of what you're
| supposed to learn in the process of getting your pilot's
| license. In general aviation, there are places you can't
| be, and there are places you shouldn't be - not in terms
| of "legal to be there," but in terms of "stupid to be
| there."
|
| It varies from person to person, but a single engine,
| piston powered GA aircraft can't do an awful lot of
| things people would like to do with them. Or, at least,
| can't do it consistently. I personally think night single
| engine IFR is insane without a turbine up front and anti-
| icing equipment, though I've known people who do it.
| There are plenty of weather conditions you shouldn't fly
| in, and there are places you simply shouldn't be -
| downwind of a mountain ridge on a windy day is one of
| those places where the air will simply rip small
| airplanes out of the sky and dash them against the rocks.
| You can climb at 500 fpm up there? Cute, the descending
| air is doing 4000 fpm. On the flip side, if you're on the
| upwind side, you can get a nice boost from the rising air
| and, from what I hear, can damned near soar a Cessna on
| ridge lift in good conditions.
|
| I'll tend to follow the valley, though, if I can find a
| route that goes where I'm going, and tend to skip as many
| ridge crossings as I can. It adds some time, yes, but I
| prefer to have an awful lot of big flat area under me in
| case the engine does go quiet.
|
| If you're so concerned about flying in the mountains in a
| 1942 airplane, though, the right answer isn't to take a
| parachute and a studio worth of cameras. It's to re-
| evaluate the trip you're about to take and find a
| solution you're comfortable with.
| wolrah wrote:
| > Not to take from your argument but my retired in law
| just bought top speced M1 Max for 5k or so. He is using
| it for light browsing so total overkill but his argument
| was that buying highest package Audi was way more
| expensive compared to base model but nobody questioned
| him on that and $2k is just not worth worrying about if
| 1tb is enough for photos or not.
|
| The difference is that if you are already looking at a M1
| Macbook Pro, the only downside from getting the top end
| one if you don't need it is cost. If that amount of money
| doesn't matter to you, then there's no significant
| downside.
|
| Same with the Audi. If I'm looking at an A7 and don't
| care much about the overall cost, there's not really much
| of a downside to buying a S7 or RS7 as long as the roads
| in your area are decent.
|
| ---
|
| GP's example of a gaming PC was a good analogy for this
| situation because a gaming PC brings significant
| downsides for normal users over non-gaming PCs. They're
| bulky, can be noisy, definitely not portable, sometimes
| finicky, etc.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| As a pilot, I consider skydivers a weird lot.
|
| I can understand a skydiver-first, pilot-second being a bit
| dependent on their blanky kit.
| urda wrote:
| The prepared selfie-stick was a really awful look. I couldn't'
| believe what I was seeing.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| What if it's a scheme to collect commissions selling wallets?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Not sure about the US but in Europe I'm pretty sure that
| would fall under commercial use and not allowed on a PPL.
|
| Of course that would be the least serious infraction if he
| did it on purpose. Which I agree it has all the hallmarks of.
| spyder wrote:
| Yea, I really want a wallet which is advertised with ashes of
| people. /s
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Noooo. Couldn't be. \s
|
| Can't believe people are even seriously discussing this - the
| controversy over the fake is exactly the desired outcome.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Right. The reactions to the post, it's almost like watching
| a thought process evolving in slow motion. And I think
| there's a beautiful robustness here to this socially
| engineered system, where those wallets still get sold.
| [deleted]
| shortstuffsushi wrote:
| I don't know a whole lot about skydiving or piloting (nothing
| in fact), but to each of your points:
|
| > gave up too early
|
| You and a couple other commenters mention this and not trying
| to land. Do we know how long it was before he gave up? Did he
| float 15 minutes before bailing after failing to restart, and
| that's just not included in the video? I understand landing on
| a small road would be possible in a plane like this, but since
| he's over mountains (3rd disclaimer, I don't know this area) -
| is it likely there would be roads available to him?
|
| > skydiving rig
|
| Is this because he is already a skydiver and/or was going
| paragliding (is this the same rig? Another thing I don't know).
| Would it make sense that this is just "what he has," as opposed
| to owning both a bail out and a sky diving kit?
|
| > gopro on wrist
|
| Wasn't it mounted on the plane dash, and he took it with him
| when he bailed?
|
| > long/stable freefall
|
| What is the norm for this? My thinking was this was to distance
| himself from the plane, which he later mentioned "came back
| around him" after he pulled.
|
| I don't have any opinion either way, but I'm curious to know
| more about why some of these details are "give aways" on it
| being fake
| kortilla wrote:
| Unless he was in Alaska, there are always roads relatively
| close by from a gliding perspective.
|
| For more perspective, in the mainland US, the furthest you
| can get from a McDonald's, let alone a rode, is 107 miles as
| the crow flies.
|
| A Cessna can glide 9000 feet per 1000 feet altitude loss so
| at 10k feet that thing can go roughly 17 miles.
|
| A 17 mile radius gives you 900 square miles to find a place
| to land. Even deep in the Rockies wilderness areas I'm
| familiar with, there are going to be several forest service
| roads available and plenty of natural clearings with that
| kind of range.
| stymaar wrote:
| Casual skydiver with no piloting experience here.
|
| > > skydiving rig
|
| > Is this because he is already a skydiver and/or was going
| paragliding (is this the same rig? Another thing I don't
| know). Would it make sense that this is just "what he has,"
| as opposed to owning both a bail out and a sky diving kit?
|
| Not really. Those are really different material, with really
| different design constraints. Skydiving parachutes open
| slowly so they aren't a good fit for an emergency situation
| because if you have to leave the plane too low, you're pretty
| much dead, and as long as your plane is still high in the
| sky, I guess there's little reason to leave it...
|
| > > long/stable freefall
|
| > What is the norm for this? My thinking was this was to
| distance himself from the plane, which he later mentioned
| "came back around him" after he pulled.
|
| AFAIK safety parachute don't open well at high fall speed
| (unlike skydiving ones) so you want to open it quickly and
| not enjoy your freefall.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Jumping in that terrain with a safety parachute would be
| pretty dangerous. You don't have any control, so just as
| well crash the plane in a flat spot.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Skydiving rigs are also big which make them annoying to fly
| with. You can tell early on in the video that he's
| basically on top of the yoke, which would be extremely
| obnoxious for obvious ergonomic reasons. The idea that
| someone would "always" fly like that (as the pilot claims)
| is ... dubious.
|
| Also, there are other videos of this guy flying without
| that rig, which doesn't help his case.
| lumost wrote:
| Generally planes are good gliders. The only reason to bail
| out is if it is _impossible_ to find an airport /landing
| strip within glide range _and_ the aircraft is in a remote
| location where the aircraft crashing won't matter.
|
| Even in the latter case - there is limited benefit from
| jumping early vs. gliding towards civilization/possible
| landing sites.
|
| IIRC dealing with engine out/glide contingencies is part of
| pilot training and licensing in the US
|
| EDIT: the commenters on the FA also point out several
| distinct troubleshooting steps that are missing from the
| video including pre-engine failure signs + recovery steps,
| radioing ATC for guidance, flying above roads to ensure
| proximity to off field landing sites, and maintaining an
| updated list of off field landing sites along the route.
|
| At the very least, several flying mistakes were demonstrated.
| [deleted]
| haney wrote:
| > IIRC dealing with engine out/glide contingencies is part
| of pilot training and licensing in the US
|
| Recently got my Private Pilot License, emergency descents
| and planning for emergency landings is definitely part of
| the check ride.
| avereveard wrote:
| recently got gifted a plane ride, it was a something
| something pioneer, a low two seaters, and a dead stick
| landing was part of the routine, and was almost menial.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| And early, way earlier than I expected as a student. In
| my flight club at least they taught you engine failure
| explicitly early on, then practiced it frequently
| throughout rest of the lessons and training. I. E. My
| instructor would literally pull out throttle during a
| different planned exercise which was my signal for "oh
| crap I guess we are doing engine fail sim now" :-D
|
| There are very very very few situations where I'd imagine
| trusting my parachuting skills over my Cessna gliding
| skills. That thing is meant to protect you all the way
| down.
| tomcam wrote:
| Congratulations on the pilot's license!
| topspin wrote:
| > Do we know how long it was before he gave up?
|
| We don't need to know this. We can clearly see ample altitude
| at the time he abandoned the plane. Although there are
| reasons to jump at great altitude (severe fire, etc.) none of
| those reasons are apparent here.
|
| When a competent driver loses engine power while driving they
| do not immediately stop their vehicle in the middle of the
| road. They will use the available momentum (pulling to the
| shoulder or whatever) for the benefit of their own safety and
| the safety of others, and ground vehicles are deliberately
| designed to achieve this. The analogy for (conventional,
| fixed wing) aircraft is altitude; this pilot wasted available
| altitude for no discernable reason despite the fact that he
| had a perfectly functional glider.
|
| No competent pilot would do that. So the best case here is an
| incompetent pilot that shouldn't hold a license. All other
| possibilities are some form of attention seeking fraud and
| also reckless endangerment.
| sundvor wrote:
| Look at 3:33 into the video, about where he's about to
| ditch it.
|
| It's easy to identify the Y shaped delta of the mountain
| ridges just 2 clicks north of the Manzana _School Camp_ ,
| with the plane travelling westwards. 34.8081872,
| -119.9438522.
|
| Given the near service ceiling altitude the dude had plenty
| of opportunity to double back to eg 34.7683290,
| -120.1101663 . Not exactly sure how much gliding range it
| has, but can go to just over 60km/h before stalling, and
| can't be radically different from a Cessna which will do
| "1.5 nautical miles per 1,000 feet of altitude above ground
| level". The landing gear appears made for grass fields.
|
| Of course, one might speculate, given lack of in-plane
| footage and everything else, he could also not have
| throttled the airplane and landed it normally instead of
| pulling this pathetic stunt. Ie it appears reasonable to
| assume that the entire thing is a complete fabrication.
|
| Who carries a hip altimeter (a few frames of 4:03) and full
| parachute when flying, as well as covering every angle of
| the "emergency departure" with GoPros, not a single frame
| of the "emergency" instruments despite another GoPro in
| full view, freefalls for ages instead of taking their time
| to assess etc, then avoids several flat spots including
| flat riverbeds that were a great alternative to doubling
| back if completely panicking on basic arithmetics, only to
| land in dangerous bushes instead "for the views". And then
| complains of being so so thirsty whilst carrying the whole
| chute around in his "life and death" situation.
|
| Look at the YouTube history, the guy's pathological
| prankster.
|
| Lots of camping sites and such in the area, just look at
| the coords in your favourite map provider. It was reckless
| beyond belief.
|
| Should I not be wrong with my analysis (having spent a few
| hours reviewing this), I hope he goes to prison for a very
| long time.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Why should he go to prison? Faking an airplane crash for
| YouTube views, while clearly in bad taste, doesn't seem
| worthy of jail time.
|
| Reckless self endangerment maybe? But that also doesn't
| seem to rise to the level of "put you in jail".
|
| If the crash was intentional, then he's certainly liable
| for violating littering laws by depositing a moderate
| amount of wreckage in the mountains which he didn't clean
| up. Again, not worthy of prison time. Probably a hefty
| fine though.
|
| Last I can think of is if he makes a fraudulent insurance
| claim; in that case then yeah he might be eligible for
| jail time, but I don't think we know whether he filed an
| insurance claim in the first place.
| emilburzo wrote:
| > You and a couple other commenters mention this and not
| trying to land. Do we know how long it was before he gave up?
|
| It's true that there might be video cuts, but just visually
| guesstimating, there's very little altitude difference
| between when the propeller stops and when he jumps.
|
| > Is this because he is already a skydiver and/or was going
| paragliding (is this the same rig? Another thing I don't
| know). Would it make sense that this is just "what he has,"
| as opposed to owning both a bail out and a sky diving kit?
|
| Paragliding gear is even more bulkier than a skydiving rig,
| there's various types depending on the flying you want to do,
| but here's a typical example: https://qefimagazine.com/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/303/2018/0...
|
| Even if he is a skydiver and pilot, you want to use the right
| tool for the job
|
| - skydiving rig: larger, main handle is out of sight, has
| more snag points, built to stop you from terminal velocity
| (~120mph/200km) so the opening distance is higher
|
| - emergency parachute: small, usually just one handle which
| you can see and very hard to snag on anything, meant to be
| opened in under 3s after jumping, definitely not for terminal
| velocity kind of speeds
|
| > Wasn't it mounted on the plane dash, and he took it with
| him when he bailed?
|
| I re-watched the video now and you're right, it's a selfie
| stick in his hand, as he moves the camera from one hand to
| the other. Another "unlikely things a pilot does in an
| emergency" from my side then.
|
| > What is the norm for this? My thinking was this was to
| distance himself from the plane, which he later mentioned
| "came back around him" after he pulled.
|
| This ties in to the parachute type mostly, for rescue
| situations with emergency parachutes you want to pull ASAP,
| as the plane will usually fly away anyway (excepting maybe
| spins, but then it's pretty hard to exit anyway)
| polack wrote:
| > - emergency parachute: small, usually just one handle
| which you can see and very hard to snag on anything, meant
| to be opened in under 3s after jumping, definitely not for
| terminal velocity kind of speeds
|
| Are you sure about that? Then you would have to bring some
| planes to stall speed first in order be able to bail out.
| Sounds like a huge flaw...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Softie parachutes indicates that the effectively risk
| free bail out conditions are 1000ft AGL and 100MPH, with
| a lower speed requiring more altitude. They don't specify
| a max speed, but it's worth pointing out that 100MPH is
| pretty slow comparatively.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > Another "unlikely things a pilot does in an emergency"
| from my side then.
|
| Well, these youtubers are strange people. It doesn't strike
| me as that odd he'd consider his fame before his safety.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| The alternative scenario is also that he crashed a plane
| just for views; grabbing video gear is rather sane in
| comparison.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| base698 wrote:
| Skydiver and pilot here. A skydiving rig can't be used for
| paragliding. Also a skydiving rig is incredibly uncomfortable
| worn as pilot of the plane. Pilots use emergency parachutes
| that are smaller and designed to be used sitting in an
| airplane seat. Pilot rigs are used primarily for aerobatics.
|
| The most suspect thing is jumping with a selfie stick.
| ehsankia wrote:
| It's already established that he's a Youtuber and has
| cameras, why would you not take all your cameras with you
| when jumping out of the plane? Not even for the cool
| factor, a gopro costs like over $500, why would you not
| take it with you?
| Syonyk wrote:
| Because if it were an _actual_ emergency, survival is
| your main priority, "great footage of it" isn't a
| priority at all.
|
| And:
|
| (1) GoPros are a lot cheaper than $500.
|
| (2) GoPros are a lot cheaper than any flyable airplane.
|
| Of course, I wouldn't fly in a plane with a pilot who had
| and used a selfie stick in flight, so my judgement
| clearly isn't up to that of YouTube Famous Stars.
| ehsankia wrote:
| (1) GoPro Hero10 has MSRP of 500$
|
| (2) He (supposedly) couldn't save the plane, but taking
| the GoPro takes 5s.
|
| > used a selfie stick in flight
|
| Everyone keeps talking about selfie stick, it was just
| the normal leg attachment, not a "selfie stick":
| https://i.imgur.com/hOkcxOa.png
|
| > "great footage of it" isn't a priority at all.
|
| Where is this "Great footage"? He's literally just
| holding the camera by the leg attachment. Half the
| falling footage is just his feet or chest, and that's
| already the heavily trimmed version, which I assume he
| only kept the better part of the footage.
|
| Again, to me it just seems like he grabbed whatever he
| could quickly and jumped out, which is a natural
| instinct.
| Vespasian wrote:
| You want to pull the cord a few seconds after exiting.
| 1...2...3...pull. Freefall is not the goal when bailing in
| case of an emergency.
| polack wrote:
| Especially in a case like this when you need to hike your
| way out. Then why not pull ASAP and then fly back towards
| civilization and look for the best possible landing spot.
|
| You can also see much better landing spots when he's
| hanging in the shoot that he could easily make. So why the
| hell did he end up in a bush like that?
|
| And why go look for the plane? Like just focus on getting
| to safety. Nothing in this video makes sense.
| Vespasian wrote:
| > And why go look for the plane?
|
| You would attempt to go back to civilization
| ASAP...Unless you'd need to, for example, reenable the
| magnetos/fuel switch in order to avoid "embarrassing"
| questions from the authorities.
| tzs wrote:
| Wouldn't you want to go back to the plane to see if
| anything survived the crash that will be useful to help
| you get back to civilization?
|
| Radio, food, water, warmer clothes, first aid kit, and
| weapons are all things that are plausible to have in the
| plane that would be nice to have when trying to either
| hike out or get help.
| gpm wrote:
| Are these switches really robust enough that "flipped
| during crash" isn't a likely explanation you could give
| to the authorities?
|
| Needing to return to the crash site to destroy the
| evidence feels like a very forced narrative to me (though
| I know nothing about flying).
| Vespasian wrote:
| some are. The mixture nob for example could easily
| survive this especially in a slow splane like this.
|
| But I agree it's not the strongest argument
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, if you were far from civilization, it's probably
| best to wait for rescue next to the crashed plane, no?
| Much easier to spot from the air.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The thing about engine out situations is that it's not
| that hard to get to civilization _before_ you bail out.
| These light aircraft glide great, he should have been
| able to ditch (or land) closer to a town or road.
| behringer wrote:
| From the video it doesn't even look like he called atc.
| But to answer your question, yes. He would tell atc where
| he's going and where he can be found.
| aeternum wrote:
| There's a simple explanation for both. Freefall is more
| dramatic and you want to be low enough that you get some
| good shots of the plane crashing into terrain for your
| video. Both help increase view count.
|
| Landing in a bush and climbing out from bramble is also
| more dramatic.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Unless you're a skydiver by trade in an emergency situation
| and you fall back on what is familiar to you?
|
| Let's say instead they did pull the chute immediately after
| bailing and then used the extra altitude to sail back to
| safety. Would you be more inclined to believe the stunt was
| real?
| akiselev wrote:
| _> I understand landing on a small road would be possible in
| a plane like this, but since he 's over mountains (3rd
| disclaimer, I don't know this area) - is it likely there
| would be roads available to him?_
|
| Comments in the article point out several viable landing
| spots are visible in the video including a (seemingly huge)
| dry river bed you can see just after the 5 minute mark.
|
| I'm not a pilot (working on it) but my understanding is that
| most crash landing fatalities occur when the plane clips
| something like a fence or a power line because they couldn't
| see it on the approach or they miscalculated the glide angle.
| This causes the plane to suddenly pitch down and fall like a
| rock but the stall speed for a 1940s Taylorcraft is around 40
| mph so as long as the pilot avoids obstacles, they can touch
| down and quickly dump enough kinetic energy so that the final
| impact is more like a slow speed auto collision on a
| residential street (minus airbags). The plane will be
| totaled, but the pilot will probably survive.
|
| It's even possible to land up a hill [1] but that area is
| relatively rocky so I don't know how safe that would be
|
| Edit: Forgot to add, with 40mph stall speed you only really
| need about a football field worth of space to safely land
| without totaling the plane, with a decent safety margin to
| boot.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvKdfa8CoBw
| spitfire wrote:
| I thought you were going to post Steve Henry's stuff:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zDo7hkmCNY
|
| There's a great clip of him parallel parking a tail dragger
| at some fly in on the side of a mountain somewhere in his
| videos.
| andrepew wrote:
| For engine failures turning in to fatalities, the biggest
| cause are stalls/spins where the pilot fails to maintain
| airspeed, unload the wings and stay coordinated.
|
| Flying the aircraft just above stall speed into the side of
| a barn is far more survivable than entering a stall or spin
| at 200ft.
|
| Pilots panic and yank back the yoke in denial that they're
| going down. Or they try to "stretch the glide" in hopes of
| making it back to an airport. Or if the engine failure is
| on take-off, they don't shove the nose down fast enough
| (you literally have seconds to do so before airspeed gets
| dangerously low)
| akiselev wrote:
| I'm talking about crash landings in general. It doesn't
| matter what caused the emergency landing, what makes them
| dangerous isn't crashing into something at the end, but
| snagging an obstacle right before touchdown that sends
| the plane cockpit first into the ground. Power lines
| don't care about the state of the power plant.
| bjornsing wrote:
| I'd say it's understandable though that he prefers to jump.
| The risk of personal injury is probably much lower that
| way.
|
| Still many reasons to doubt that there even was an engine
| failure, but that's a separate question.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| That may be perspective from outside but not I think for
| actual pilots. I have not finished my flight training yet
| but already I've had enough prep to be way way way more
| comfortable gliding a controllable predictable metal
| cocoon designed to protect me, over parachuting :O. I
| think for all but experienced pros, parachute is a
| _guaranteed_ personal injury. Movies are way way off when
| it comes to ability of a random person to safely
| parachute even in most controlled situation.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I'm not a pilot so I have no clue what is or isn't
| understandable. But based upon what other pilots are
| saying, it appears to not be a reasonable reaction in
| this case.
|
| Beyond that, if you're flying an airplane, I think you
| have some responsibility to not jump out at the first
| sign of trouble.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Beyond that, if you 're flying an airplane, I think you
| have some responsibility to not jump out at the first
| sign of trouble._
|
| As the saying goes, "The captain goes down with the
| ship."
| bjornsing wrote:
| > Beyond that, if you're flying an airplane, I think you
| have some responsibility to not jump out at the first
| sign of trouble.
|
| I agree, and in the video it looks like he abandons ship
| very quickly. But there could be a section of video
| edited out.
|
| EDIT: It doesn't help his moral case that he's carrying a
| selfie stick though, and is filming himself as his plane
| is potentially landing on someone.
| theli0nheart wrote:
| Licensed private pilot here. Absolutely _not_
| understandable at all. Planes are natural gliders. The
| only reason to jump out of a plane is if you have 0
| chance of landing it safely. Unless you have no other
| recourse, land the plane.
|
| I don't know if all pilots are trained to do this, but my
| instructor literally turned off the engine multiple times
| during training and had me land without power. Whoever
| made this video did it for show; incredibly
| irresponsible.
| sio8ohPi wrote:
| Most USAAF WWII training manuals all tell pilots to bail
| out in preference to trying to glide to a landing at
| night or over rough terrain, because the odds of
| surviving a landing under those conditions are poor.
|
| Mind you, those planes stall at much higher speeds, and
| those pilots all wore parachutes and trained on how to
| bail out if needed. But I wouldn't go so far as to say
| there's never any reason to jump.
|
| I agree the video looks intentional.
| kortilla wrote:
| Irrelevant, this isn't a high speed aircraft, which
| totally changes the risk calculus of a crash landing.
| tata71 wrote:
| It's also not being flown in warzone...wtf
| sio8ohPi wrote:
| The manuals I refer to advise a bail-out under some
| conditions, even flying stateside. For example, this
| manual is for students training in the AT-6:
|
| https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth873939/m1/
| 76/
|
| "Never attempt a night landing except on a lighted field.
| So if you are completely lost at night, you have no other
| choice than to jump. Climb to at least 3000ft (above the
| terrain), trim your airplane for level flight, cut the
| switches, and bail out. It may be heartbreaking to crash
| a fine airplane -- but it beats cashing in your own
| chips."
|
| "If your fuel supply is running low, if the terrain
| (mountains, swamps, water, or heavily timbered area)
| offers no possible landing place, you must bail out."
|
| "If there is no suitable field and the weather is closing
| in from all sides, climb to 3000ft, trim your airplane,
| cut the switches, and bail out."
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| Military pilots are gonna be wearing parachutes. Civilian
| private pilots don't.
| JamesGi wrote:
| keyword is "night"
| bjornsing wrote:
| I'm not a licensed pilot, so I'm just arguing from my
| intuitive understanding of the risks involved.
|
| > The only reason to jump out of a plane is if you have 0
| chance of landing it safely.
|
| I understand that's the responsible professional
| attitude. But if it was me in that plane and I saw a 10%
| risk of serious bodily harm / death in trying to land and
| a 0.1% risk in jumping, it would be tempting to jump.
|
| As I understand it the landing attempt here would
| probably be on a dry river bed or a dirt road. That's not
| the same thing as turning back to an airfield. There's
| serious risk involved.
| ohazi wrote:
| Another licensed pilot here (but not a skydiver).
|
| I would have attempted a controlled crash over gentle
| mountainous terrain like this. You want to dump the
| aircraft's kinetic energy rapidly but not suddenly --
| gliding into the side of a cliff will kill you, but
| keeping the airplane pointed forward while shearing off
| the wheels and crumpling the nose is fine. It looked like
| there were several areas where this would have been
| relatively safe to attempt. You don't need a nice flat
| field for a survivable crash.
|
| After you're on the ground, you also need to be able to
| survive (possibly for days), and then be visible enough
| to be found and rescued. Staying with the aircraft is
| usually considered the safer approach, both for
| visibility as well as the emergency gear that you're
| supposed to be carrying in the back.
|
| The only terrain where I'd seriously consider bailing out
| (assuming I had a parachute) is dense forest with no
| clearings. Surviving a crash like this is incredibly
| difficult -- you hit a redwood, shear off your wings, and
| then plummet 250 ft to your death. It'll be hard to spot
| the wreckage of a small plane from above. Even with a
| parachute, there's a serious risk of getting stuck in a
| tree (or impaled by branches). There are basically no
| good options here.
|
| In short, mountains aren't so bad. But be super careful
| flying over forests. If this video was a stunt, there's a
| reason why he decided to stage it over mountains rather
| than a forest.
| jaxomlotus wrote:
| I think the risk of dying in a crash are still too high.
| If I had a parachute and a knew there was nobody else who
| would be hurt if I bailed out, I think the parachute is
| safer. The plane is going to crash either way.
| base698 wrote:
| You're in a metal shell in the plane. Even the small
| trees can impale you under a parachute.
| na85 wrote:
| I used to work in SAR. I've seen crash sites where tree
| branches punctured through helicopter blades.
|
| It's not so cut and dry as you might think.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > I would have attempted a controlled crash over gentle
| mountainous terrain like this. You want to dump the
| aircraft's kinetic energy rapidly but not suddenly --
| gliding into the side of a cliff will kill you, but
| keeping the airplane pointed forward while shearing off
| the wheels and crumpling the nose is fine. It looked like
| there were several areas where this would have been
| relatively safe to attempt. You don't need a nice flat
| field for a survivable crash.
|
| This sounds pretty scary though... If you were an
| experienced skydiver, with your gear on, don't you think
| you'd be tempted to jump instead?
| kortilla wrote:
| No, even then it's the wrong call. You're forgetting what
| happens when you land after jumping out of the plane if
| it's not staged. No cell service, no epirb, no flares, no
| first aid kit, etc. One broken leg because you floated
| into the dense trees and you're dead.
|
| Experienced sky divers get to choose their jump points
| and landing sites. They don't get thrown out of the plane
| at an arbitrary time with no preselected landing side.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >you were an experienced skydiver, with your gear on
|
| You would controlled crash the plane because you would
| know that jumping over mountainous terrain with
| vegetation is a great way to break a bone which is going
| to make getting the heck out of there really, really
| suck.
|
| A plane like pictured is going to stall at like 40mph so
| that will be your approximate crash speed, which is
| really damn survivable in an aircraft with a 4pt belt to
| keep you off the hard bits of the cabin.
|
| Risk of some bruising and maybe a concussion beats risk
| of broken ankle any day.
| oivaksef wrote:
| I have plenty of hours flying planes (unlicensed - while
| doing aerial work and playing around to kill time thanks
| to my instructor pilot), and have a limited amount of
| experience skydiving.
|
| One thing in these comments I haven't seen said: F*K that
| plane. Off runway landing has significant risk. Parachute
| is so close to 0.0 risk that you do it just for fun on a
| day off. I wouldn't do an off runway landing just for fun
| on my day off.
|
| The thing is staged, no question. The guy knows he messed
| up and will pay for it. But if I had to decide between my
| life and protecting a bunch of metal tubes and (fabric |
| aluminium, not sure), I know what I would do.
| dahdum wrote:
| As a skydiver, I think it's important to note he didn't
| have an emergency chute but a regular sport one. They are
| extremely maneuverable and if there is a small clearing
| or riverbed nearby (he looked down for such a thing) the
| risk of injury is nearly non existent for an experienced
| skydiver.
|
| The whole thing looks planned, but if I were in the same
| situation I'd definitely be jumping over trying to crash
| land a cheap plane in a riverbed or clearing.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>"But if it was me in that plane and I saw a 10% risk of
| serious bodily harm / death in trying to land and a 0.1%
| risk in jumping, it would be tempting to jump."
|
| Of course. Point is, risk does not actually turn that
| way. Parachuting into rocks is not exactly safe and easy
| either! Vast majority of pilots are much more trained to
| safely land than to safely parachute. Movies give us this
| idea that you pull a cord and land feather like. That is
| empathically not the case. Especially for an untrained
| person, parachuting on safe ground will break your limbs
| virtually guaranteed.
|
| Small airplanes have very low stall speed. If you fly
| into the wind you can have your land / crash speed very
| low and very controlled, you are trained to find best
| possible spot, and are buckled inside metal chassis.
|
| I genuinely believe most licensed pilots would stay
| inside the damn plane :)
| manojlds wrote:
| > Vast majority of pilots are much more trained to safely
| land than to safely parachute
|
| So if the person is an experienced skydiver, doesn't the
| equation change towards ditching the plane?
|
| Mind you, no one is arguing whether the video is real or
| not, that's conclusive that it's likely fake. But what if
| an experience skydiver was actually in this situation?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I am not an experienced professional skydiver so I really
| cannot speak to that. :-/
|
| I _think_ he should still follow the procedure far
| further than showed in video (where he doesn 't follow
| ANY), and I still feel he should have tried far harder to
| find a landing spot - cessna 152 has 11 to 1 glide ratio,
| which means for every foot of altitude you can travel 11
| feet of distance. I imagine his airplane has roughly
| comparable gliding distance so given his original height,
| he had a LOT of time and options he seemed to have
| immediately squandered. At _best_ , assuming reality,
| that feels like a yahoo parachuter rather than methodical
| pilot, and not advice / approach to follow.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| The vast majority of private pilots are not trained
| parachutists and don't fly regularly with parachutes.
| JamesGi wrote:
| no
|
| if skydiver has a pilots license he will always prefer to
| try to land it, unless the wings broke off
| akiselev wrote:
| _> I'm not a licensed pilot, so I'm just arguing from my
| intuitive understanding of the risks involved._
|
| _> But if it was me in that plane and I saw a 10% risk
| of serious bodily harm / death in trying to land and a
| 0.1% risk in jumping, it would be tempting to jump._
|
| I think your intuition is wildly off base w.r.t. the
| risks of general aviation and sky diving.
|
| If you exclude experimental aircraft like fighter jets
| and kit builds, general aviation isn't much more
| dangerous than riding a motorcycle. The leading causes of
| death are misjudging the weather and miscalculating fuel
| because most of a pilot's training isn't in how to fly a
| plane but how to troubleshoot it midair or land safely if
| that is impossible.
|
| An _unplanned_ skydive in a mountainous area in Southern
| California during _Santa Ana season_? Now, that 's risky.
| (Edit) For perspective, Nevada sky diving companies won't
| even jump over Black rock desert because of the wind and
| that's a desert so big and flat that it's used for
| amateur rocketry in the 100k+ feet range.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > If you exclude experimental aircraft like fighter jets
| and kit builds, general aviation isn't much more
| dangerous than riding a motorcycle.
|
| Sure, but now we're talking about a situation where your
| engine has already failed... That's very different.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> Sure, but now we're talking about a situation where
| your engine has already failed... That's very different._
|
| What to do on engine failure is one of the first things
| they teach you after basic flight lessons. After that
| many instructors will even simulate surprise engine
| failure by cutting off the engine at random while the
| student is trying to learn about some other emergency
| situation. Engine failure is part of the check rides
| every pilot needs to pass to get a license.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| You said one of the leading causes of death was
| miscalculating fuel. I.e., engine failure. (I assume you
| don't mean weight miscalculation)
| akiselev wrote:
| By that logic the only cause of death in GA is "plane hit
| the ground."
|
| When the engine stops working because it doesn't get
| enough fuel because there's nothing left in the tanks,
| the root cause is not putting enough fuel in the tanks,
| not engine failure.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > By that logic the only cause of death in GA is "plane
| hit the ground."
|
| Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29731719 it
| seems like you are essentially saying "engine failure is
| not too dangerous; one of the leading causes of death is
| running out of fuel".
|
| I did not say running out of fuel should be formally
| classified as an engine failure. It was more that I
| supposed that the effect on the airworthiness of their
| airplane should be approximately the same whether the
| engine stops due to failure or running out of fuel. So
| that makes your comment appear contradictory. Hence my
| prompting for an explanation, I'm quite willing to
| believe I misunderstood something of your post or about
| aviation so I didn't intend for it to sound glib.
| akiselev wrote:
| My apologies, this discussion leans heavily into
| federally mandated jargon that has very recently been
| drilled into my head and it's all to easy to forget how
| overloaded the words are - as an SWE in my day job the
| irony is almost palpable.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I'm only a flightsimmer but even fighter jets can
| probably make it to somewhere with the kind of energy he
| had. A Space Shuttle or a Blackbird might have been a
| different story. If you're busting through Autobahn at
| 240mph and the car suddenly goes neutral, trucks coming
| up behind is going to be quite low on the list of
| immediate dangers.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I live not too far from where this was supposed to take
| place, and November is not a bad time for winds. If you
| go further East (or South as people say here) that may
| change, but Lompoc -> Mammoth ending somewhere described
| as "50 miles N of Santa Barbara" doesn't seem like it
| would take you there.
| akiselev wrote:
| I only pointed out the Santa Ana winds to emphasize the
| "unplanned" portion. Even a 10-20 mph gust is enough to
| bash a skydiver against a rock outcrop, and (in my
| experience) that's the equivalent of a light morning
| breeze in mountainous regions.
|
| I think it's pretty obvious this was staged and he very
| carefully chose the landing spot.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Your intuition here is wrong. Probably the better way to
| think of it: in a car crash, would you rather be the
| person in the car or the pedestrian?
|
| While I have never flown a plane nor parachuted, my
| understanding is that the maneuverability options of both
| are going to be roughly equivalent, so that either option
| will have roughly the same ability to choose the site of
| collision and (for small aircraft) even roughly the same
| speed at collision. And that makes the choice down to
| having a layer of metal that can absorb some of the
| impact for your versus having to be in the exactly
| correct position to absorb the impact energy best with
| your body.
| manojlds wrote:
| Unless cars have ejection seats it's not the same
| comparison. Pedestrians in this case are potential hikers
| or people in the area.
| chrononaut wrote:
| > Wasn't it mounted on the plane dash, and he took it with
| him when he bailed?
|
| I had the exact same thought. If you look at 3m53s in the
| video, he has both a camera in his hand and the other GoPro
| remains on the dash.
|
| > Is this because he is already a skydiver and/or was going
| paragliding (is this the same rig? Another thing I don't
| know). Would it make sense that this is just "what he has,"
| as opposed to owning both a bail out and a sky diving kit?
|
| Another set of comments discuss that traditionally pilots who
| might consider using a parachute generally bring a different
| type of parachute on board, and not one that would be used by
| normal skydivers:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29730298
| shortstuffsushi wrote:
| > 3m53s
|
| Hmm, I see what you're saying - is that a second camera or
| a mount though?
|
| https://imgur.com/a/REa64jn
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| The strongest tell for me was that he hiked first to the
| _crashed_ _plane_. The broken plane isn 't going to save him,
| ergo, by going there first he suggests he knows he knows that
| he does not need saving. The second tell is he didn't show the
| part where he declared a mayday to air traffic control, or
| radio anybody. Either it didn't happen, or the exchange
| explains why he knew he needed to hike rather than wait. The
| third is where he encounters the driver at the end and buries
| the lede-- plane crash-- instead making it sound at first like
| an emergency landing.
| db65edfc7996 wrote:
| From the safety of my armchair, it feels reasonable to go to
| a known landmark? It is a lot easier for search and rescue to
| find a crashed plane that a guy wandering on the ground.
| Additionally, the plane might contain salvageable food,
| water, medkit, etc.
| jaxomlotus wrote:
| In the video it sounded like he thought the plane had a
| water jug in it and was talking about how thirsty he was.
| That part was reasonable to me. But as a non-pilot the
| flight itself was pretty sketchy.
| katmannthree wrote:
| It looks like he ditched it on the hurricane deck, that's
| as close to a landmark as you'll get in that range. It's
| more or less the midpoint of a 20-mile wide mountain range,
| pretty sure he could've glided far enough to get to plains
| on either side.
|
| It's worth noting that there's decent cell service there if
| you just hike up to a ridge. Fair number of other hikers
| out on the trails too, his odds of bumping into somebody
| within a couple hours was high.
| lisper wrote:
| All else being equal yes. But all else is far from equal
| here. The plane is on a slope in the brush. There is a
| clear flat riverbed nearby. When those are your choices,
| you definitely want to pick the riverbed because that's
| where water the the path to civilization are.
|
| And indeed he did eventually get himself to the riverbed.
| If he'd just landed there in the first place he would have
| shaved many hours off the hike and avoided nearly falling
| off a cliff.
| deeviant wrote:
| It's obvious why he returned to the plane: to collect the
| cameras and put the settings back that he used to stall out
| the plane.
| kadoban wrote:
| Why wouldn't he just have done that before bailing out?
| deeviant wrote:
| The camera on the plane was there to film the crash, for
| his video, so it's pretty straightforward why he would
| not remove it before bailing out.
|
| As far as the controls, it just depends on what was done.
| At some point he started filming, and he couldn't change
| any controls after that without giving it away for free.
| rzz3 wrote:
| He said he had water in the plane but couldn't find it.
| chaps wrote:
| He made a comment about how he was expecting a water bottle
| in the plane. Seems reasonable to me.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| Isnt that what survivorman and bear grylls do in every
| episode?
| ctdonath wrote:
| Both make it abundantly clear that their "survival"
| situation is artificially contrived (i.e.: traveled into
| the target area with acknowledge purpose of concocting a
| "survival" scenario, have safety teams either on-site or
| nearby, have a decent idea how to get out if not an
| actually arranged plan).
|
| Seems this guy is claiming it was a genuine
| malfunction/crash/survival case, while giving numerous
| "tells" that it wasn't. Deliberately disabling and
| abandoning a functioning aircraft in-flight over
| potentially habitated/occupied territory (i.e.: it's gonna
| crash somewhere, and perpetrator doesn't know it won't kill
| someone) is actionably reckless endangerment.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| Putting all of that aside, do you not see any logic in
| getting items from the plane that could be used in an
| actual real survival situation? For example a first aid
| kit, or emergency tarp?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > Both make it abundantly clear that their "survival"
| situation is artificially contrived (i.e.: traveled into
| the target area with acknowledge purpose of concocting a
| "survival" scenario, have safety teams either on-site or
| nearby, have a decent idea how to get out if not an
| actually arranged plan).
|
| Worse than conceived. Totally fake.
|
| Bear Grylls filmed an episode near where I live. It was
| some how to survive a white water disaster whatever. He
| had a scene where he was crying about missing his family,
| and how many other people in his exact spot would be dead
| this far out in the wilderness... issue is, I know
| exactly where he was, and you can hear the highway from
| there, it's literally just out of scene.
| minimuffins wrote:
| Going to the wreckage is a reasonable idea. There will be an
| ELT in there which is what a rescue crew will come looking
| for. Plus it's easier to spot from the air than a lone
| person. And maybe something useful survived the crash.
|
| That said, it's an incredibly fake stunt video.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah but once you make it to the plane the best bet would
| be staying in that area after activating the ELT, perhaps
| only making slight excursions in search of water or food.
|
| The plane even if it didn't have an ELT would be a great
| beacon for rescuers that works come looking after he didn't
| arrive back on time.
| topherPedersen wrote:
| Great point! My grandfather's B-17 caught on fire back in the
| 1940's flying over California and the crew all had to bail
| out. They definitely did NOT hike back to the crash site.
| Alupis wrote:
| Further, his video conveniently cuts to the tail camera when
| the engine goes out, making it impossible to see if he
| manually cut fuel, mags, etc (which I strongly suspect he
| did).
|
| We also never see him even attempt to restart the engine -
| let alone glide to a reasonable area to land (at the altitude
| he was at, he had time to think before jumping as a last
| resort - he also crashed the plane near what appears to be a
| road, which would have been sufficient to land such a small
| aircraft).
|
| Instead, he immediately opens the door and starts looking
| below himself... with his conveniently already strapped-on
| parachute... and his go-pro selfie-cam. Without even
| attempting to call mayday or restart, he jumps.
|
| He jumps without even radioing his location on UNICOM or
| closest airfield freq - made evident by his repeated claims
| he has no phone service and therefore can't reach help (I
| suspect he was hoping this entire video would avoid notice of
| authorities). He had _plenty_ of time to radio for help and
| attempt a restart at the altitude he was at.
|
| Everything about this video screams fake crash.
|
| I hate to second guess a pilot in a real situation, but
| nothing about this video makes me feel it was a real
| situation. Seems like this youtuber was trying to get some
| easy views and that sweet, sweet monetization. What a shame,
| really gives the aviation community a bad rep if there's
| folks out there like him.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Agree 100%, easy to restart, radio unicom, and glide to
| possible safety, it's even windmilling so unless there
| really was no fuel... but I just can't fathom someone would
| do it for the views.
|
| Scary, and does youtube even pay that much? Isn't it like
| $1000 per million views?
| csa wrote:
| > Isn't it like $1000 per million views?
|
| That ($1 cpm) would be relatively low.
|
| Average cpm is $2. Depending on numerous variables, this
| can go higher -- $7-$13 is average cpm for certain high
| value niches.
| rootsudo wrote:
| But at this time, the video only has 165,000 views.
| Unless we're really early and it's going to go viral and
| blow up to millions overnight... it seems like it was not
| the smartest of plans.
| belter wrote:
| He should have tried a bikini try on.
| csa wrote:
| It's not something I would do for a number of reasons.
|
| In terms of cost effectiveness -- that is, leaving out
| the ethics aspect -- this gambit could make sense if he
| converts those views somewhere else in a sales funnel
| (not sure he has one). As a simple example, increasing
| his subscribers will likely raise the floor for his views
| of future videos. A more complex example might be using
| that video as a lead generator for a gofundme.
|
| I haven't really looked into the economics of this
| particular niche, but a savvy marketer could turn those
| views into additional money by using it as a feeder into
| a sales funnel of some sort.
| thathndude wrote:
| And, in any event, it compounds. Views are great, but
| subscribers are repeat viewers (and juice the algorithm).
|
| So 100k new subscribers could be worth millions of views
| over a one year period.
| usefulcat wrote:
| If he did intentionally cut the engine, it might well be
| obvious from an inspection of the wreckage, so even more
| reason to go to the wreckage first.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I doubt it. There's no need to do anything detectable to
| turn off the engine. There are three things he could have
| flipped to kill the engine, then put back in the same
| position (mags, fuel valve, mixture). Then, it's unlikely
| that a crashed airplane is going to be in such good
| condition you can prove nothing was wrong with it.
| Leherenn wrote:
| I would hazard fuel exhaustion due to the shape of the
| crash site.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| I think that if he put the controls back the engine could
| have restarted when air drag started turning propeller
| during steep descent?
| travisjungroth wrote:
| You're right. If you put anything I listed to "off" to
| kill the engine and put it back to "on", windmilling
| would have restarted it.
|
| But, as your sibling comment notes, turning those things
| to "off" when you can't restart the engine is normal. So
| I still doubt the airplane would be conclusive (and
| really won't be since he visited it after the crash).
|
| And even if the fuel valve was off and even if you could
| prove that he turned it off in flight and never turned it
| on, that alone doesn't prove it was intentional. People
| have turned off fuel valves by accident and failed to
| check them during the engine failure.
|
| One thing that's misleading about this whole comment
| section is the skill level assumed in your average
| Private Pilot. The "pilots are drilled from day one..."
| is a bit amusing to read as someone who did the drilling
| for a few years.
|
| But the "seriously, no one wears chutes" are more
| accurate. That being said, I did just sell a parachute to
| a pilot who said he wanted it "just in case", so who
| knows.
| louwhopley wrote:
| Part of checklist for shut down before emergency landing
| is to close mixture, close throttle, turn off master &
| magnetos.
|
| So those can be expected to be closed if he done things
| right in a real emergency too.
|
| I'm curious to see what the investigators will use to
| debunk this.
| fnord77 wrote:
| he could have put the controls back when he visited the
| wreckage
| coryfklein wrote:
| > this youtuber was trying to get some easy views
|
| I think the word "easy" means something different to you
| than it does to me. Even staged, I wouldn't call what he
| did easy. But it certainly seems like a way to get
| _guaranteed_ views!
| vmception wrote:
| Despite other reasons for the circumstance to come under
| scrutiny, these arguments from pilots or enthusiasts are
| all so weak. It's an edited video. There is no chronology.
| There is nothing from us to glean from "a cut to the tail
| camera". We have no idea how long any of this sequence
| lasted.
|
| The only one that will know is the FAA if they issue a
| subpoena and get to see the full footage from all sources,
| not saying conversation isn't warranted, just pointing out
| that we don't know if any of this stuff happened or not.
|
| He edited it for what would be interesting, not to appease
| pilots mentally checking a box.
| coin wrote:
| Completely agree. No visible engine restart attempt. Very
| little time between engine out and bailing out. It's not
| clear he attempted to pitch for best glide. Complains of no
| phone service but presumably he could have gotten a call
| out to ATC while in the air. He could have tried to put in
| down on the river bed.
|
| It does seem like an expensive way to get monetization.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| _It does seem like an expensive way to get monetization._
|
| I'm sure he put in an insurance claim . . .
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| On the ground he sounds like he's faking how difficult of a go
| it is-I had to watch it with sound off because of all his
| complaining.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, he says he needs water badly yet he's complaining loudly
| all the time. That's contradictory. If you need water and
| there is none, you better keep your mouth shut.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's not a core competency of YouTubers.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I know you're referring to the tendency of many Youtubers
| to not shut up, but every streamer I've seen has
| invariably had as part of their setup the "massive drink"
| in large part because incessant talking requires heavy
| liquid consumption. So I actually imagine most YouTubers
| are actually aware that talking is not the wisest idea in
| a dehydration scenario...
| chaps wrote:
| It's not exactly uncommon for someone lost to record
| themselves. If he died, the recording could give family
| and friends closure.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| I'm sure his family would appreciate his grunting,
| groaning and profanities.
| [deleted]
| edelans wrote:
| no one mentioned how he films himself with LIGHTS ON drinking
| water from the river... If I was lost at night in this kind of
| bush, I guess I would try to save my battery.
| aksss wrote:
| So... did the ridge wallet survive?
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| I grew up flying a homebuilt Taylorcraft. There is no way I would
| have gotten out of that plane at that altitude. Those things will
| glide forever and can land on almost nothing. One of the biggest
| problems they have for new pilots is that they really want to
| just float and you end up using far more runway than you actually
| need.
|
| It's possible he's just a new pilot and panicked when the engine
| went out and would have rather relied on his skill as a skydiver
| rather than his skill as a pilot. But even the plane looks like
| it circled and tried to land in the river without him.
|
| Just bad all the way around. At the very least he needs to lose
| his license.
| daveslash wrote:
| This might be off topic, but can you really just _spread human
| remains_ willy-nilly like that?
|
| I know people _do it_ , but from what I understand, you're _not
| supposed to_. Sure, it may "just be ashes", but it's human
| remains nonetheless.
|
| We cremated my late father in law here in California, and first
| we wanted to spread his ashes at sea, then we thought we wanted
| to have them interred, then we thought maybe we'd hold onto them.
| Every time we changed our minds we had to update our permit for
| human remains.
|
| While I think we can all probably agree that spreading a handful
| of ashes in the wilderness is not really that big of a deal in
| the grand scheme of things, _legally_ speaking, would you want to
| publicize that?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I watched the video and I'm no expert, but I'll be amazed if this
| guy didn't crash his plane for views (and maybe insurance fraud).
| This situation _feels_ like the perfect disaster... almost like a
| low-budget Man vs Wild. I hope I 'm wrong.
| shimonabi wrote:
| Yeah, in the middle of the video I was expecting to see a hand
| to hand combat with a man in a bear costume.
| nefitty wrote:
| A tangent, but the movie Hardcore Henry is a first-person
| perspective action movie in that vein. Once I got over the
| initial motion sickness it was insanely riveting.
| histriosum wrote:
| Private pilot here. Posting this because I haven't the regulation
| mentioned, and because several folks have made it sound like
| bailing out of a still-flyable airplane isn't against regulation.
|
| Among the several other regs that the FAA will eventually cite
| when they pull his ticket (hopefully forever), 14 CFR 91.119
| paragraph (a) is compelling here IMHO. (asterisks around my
| emphasis):
|
| SS 91.119 Minimum safe altitudes: General.
|
| Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may
| operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:
|
| (a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an
| emergency landing * _without undue hazard to persons or property
| on the surface*_.
| FabHK wrote:
| He was above a safe altitude while operating the airplane
| though, and not operating it when it was below a safe altitude.
| histriosum wrote:
| In order for that argument to make sense, you'd have to make
| the logical leap that jumping out of the perfectly flyable
| airplane ceases his responsibility for operating the
| aircraft. That doesn't seem reasonable, and I doubt any judge
| would think so...
| mmaunder wrote:
| Martha Lunken lost her pilots license at 78 years old for flying
| under a bridge. She had 14,000 hours, worked for the FAA as a
| safety manager and ran a flying school for 28 years. This guy is
| toast.
|
| https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/04/18/lunken-airp...
| sephamorr wrote:
| My father used to fly with the RAF - he told me that old pilots
| who were about to lose their licenses due to age/health used to
| 'go out with a bang' flying under a bridge rather than quietly
| aging out of their license. IIRC, Tower Bridge in London was a
| favorite. This was decades ago, but I'm curious if the
| motivations were similar here.
| darrenf wrote:
| I don't know that it was a favourite, but there was certainly
| a famous incident in 1968 where a pilot decided to buzz Tower
| Bridge as a protest against the MoD not recognising the RAF's
| 50th anniversary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Hunter
| _Tower_Bridge_inc...
|
| (My father was also ex-RAF, though his role was to jump out
| of planes - and teach others how to - rather than fly them)
| comrh wrote:
| Holy crap that is an insane story.
|
| Here's the man himself telling the story:
| https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80027439
| rambambram wrote:
| What a story. Anybody interested in seeing this Alan
| Pollock, I guess this is him:
| https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_YhGsknrK8Io/SE-
| QN8bsQDI/AAAAAAAAC...
| masklinn wrote:
| According to a followup article she'd also turned her ADS-B
| off before going under the bridge (which is apparently why
| her license was revoked rather than suspended).
|
| So the hypothesis seems credible at least.
| twhb wrote:
| Article says she only lost it for nine months, and has to
| retake the test if she wants it back.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > She had 14,000 hours, worked for the FAA as a safety manager
| and ran a flying school for 28 years
|
| Sounds like the FAA correctly decided that she should have
| known better. Especially given her age, she should have been
| dotting every i and crossing every t, because everyone knows
| the FAA comes down like a pile of bricks on elderly pilots.
| mmaunder wrote:
| They do?
| pc86 wrote:
| They might, but probably not for the reason(s) the GP is
| implying. I've definitely noticed a correlation between age
| and how quickly a pilot is to disregard safety, checklists,
| etc.
| amelius wrote:
| > ... worked for the FAA as a safety manager ...
|
| Sounds more like she was a liability.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| Sounds on purpose.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The linked article is a little odd to me, this story is kind
| of famous as she's a bit of a celebrity in the aviation world
| for her accomplished instruction career. The way I've always
| heard it is that she was aware that her pilot's certificate
| was going to be revoked soon anyway due to her advanced age,
| and so she flew under the bridge well aware that there was a
| possibility her certificate would be revoked for it. AOPA's
| article supports this theory, it says that she did fight the
| revocation but quotes her saying that she knew it would
| likely happen.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| She knew that would be the result. She can't have not known.
| Every FAA certificated pilot knows not to do this, with a
| limited exception for seaplane landings and takeoffs AFAIK. Why
| is this even an article? I don't know.
|
| (FAA certificated pilot for almost 30 years.)
| rkagerer wrote:
| People who do stupid things like this for attention really piss
| me off.
| temikus wrote:
| - Crashing an airplane
|
| - Recklessly endangering other people in the area (this was not
| far from established hiking trails)
|
| - Getting investigated by FAA
|
| All for barely 200k views on YouTube. Wow.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| Even hearing the synopsis, I don't even care to watch the
| video...
| walrus01 wrote:
| But it was all sponsored by _ridge wallet_ , I'm sure that
| totally paid off. /s
|
| At least not sponsored by RAID SHADOW LEGENDS
| libria wrote:
| 2100 likes & no dislikes, though. Looks like the people have
| spoken!
| stordoff wrote:
| Does YouTube show the dislike count anymore?
| h3mb3 wrote:
| They don't. And videos like this is exactly why they still
| should. There is no indication to a casual viewer that this
| might be BS unless they carefully look at the trend in the
| comments.
|
| I read the message you replied to as sarcasm btw.
| missblit wrote:
| His youtube channel really sets the scene...
|
| "I got stuck on a chairlift", "Skydive ends in police car", "A
| helicopter left me in the ocean", "I Brought My Dog Flying (Bad
| Idea)"... just on and on.
|
| In the don't bring your dog flying one he starts with "this
| story may or may not be true", mentions that his gopro
| coincidentally didn't capture the critical moments, then talks
| about nearly crashing during takeoff and all his electronics
| going out and his dog panicking. So of course he alledgedly
| continued on without navigation into a no-fly zone instead of
| y'know turning around and landing.
|
| I'm not totally 100% convinced the stuff is all fake, but at
| the very least he probably shouldn't be flying...
| rossjudson wrote:
| I'd say that if he stays on the same path, we won't need to
| concerned for much longer. Compounding risks have a way of
| converging on expected outcomes, over time.
| feupan wrote:
| So many people are suspicious that he has so many cameras and
| footage. Maybe that's because he's a YouTuber and documenting a
| flight was his exact purpose.
|
| There are many reasons to doubt this, but cameras aren't one.
| aembleton wrote:
| Going directly to the crash site to collect footage seems
| suspicious though.
| umvi wrote:
| Even if it is staged/fake... he only got 200k views out of it, so
| it wouldn't have even been worth the cost of the plane
| rambambram wrote:
| Might want to check his other videos. Some have millions of
| views.
| reidjs wrote:
| For some people, notoriety/fame is more important than money.
| Now he has a one-up story for parties. Instead of a rich
| nobody, now he's someone who survived a plane crash.
| Digory wrote:
| Insurance.
| gruez wrote:
| but if it's an insurance scam why bother filming it? Surely
| the investigation/evidence risk isn't worth 200k views?
| Digory wrote:
| If you think you're good enough to fool 200k YouTube
| detectives, I imagine you think you're good enough to get
| it past the average insurance adjuster.
|
| I think this guy's risk-reward calculations are probably
| off by a few standard deviations.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Did he even own the plane?
| ksherlock wrote:
| The airplane is registered with the FAA under someone else's
| name.
| idatum wrote:
| HN will feed more clicks, even in good faith to question this
| video. The company behind that stupid wallet thing he's promoting
| is probably happy, at least for now. And GOOG won't pull this, at
| least for now. Fact checkers? lol
|
| What a f'd up online world.
|
| EDIT: oh, and it was NordicTrack that bought the ad before I
| could watch the video.
| bluehorseray wrote:
| Someone on youtube also pointed out that the day this occurred
| just so happens to be the 50th anniversary of DB Cooper's jump
| (November 24, 1971). For some reason I don't think that's a
| coincidence.
| chrononaut wrote:
| > "Please fly with a parachute"
|
| Do pilots of small aircraft consider this in practice?
|
| (As someone who doesn't fly, it's obviously an interesting
| thought experiment as a means to survive, but I would imagine
| most pilots are going to be looking to recover or land the
| aircraft, not bail out of it?)
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _Do pilots of small aircraft consider this in practice?_
|
| No. Not unless it's required (doing aerobatics work requires
| it, which is rather more likely to overstress the aircraft than
| regular mostly straight and level flying).
|
| Small airplanes just don't fall apart in flight (exceptions
| like the Piper wing spar in training duty are just that -
| exceptions, and typically lead to a lot of exception
| requirements). They only come apart if you've already screwed
| up _a lot_ - usually lost control flying into a cloud without
| an instrument rating and ended up in a graveyard spiral (nose
| down, steep bank, you either hit the ground at speed or pull
| the wings off first, and then hit the ground at speed).
|
| I know a lot of GA pilots. I know _none_ who fly with
| parachutes.
|
| Things like the Cirrus airframe chute are interesting, and have
| saved some people, but Cirrus seems to attract a large number
| of people who outfly their skill level and get themselves into
| a lot of trouble. Sometimes the parachute helps, but they
| shouldn't have been there in the first place.
|
| General wisdom is that once the engine quits, the airframe is
| the insurance company's problem. However, an awful lot of the
| time, the pilot is able to perform a safe off-airport landing
| with minimal or no damage to the aircraft. You can safely land
| on roads, in fields, in random desert, etc, and walk away with
| a perfectly usable airplane. A typical single engine GA
| aircraft only lands at about 50mph. It really doesn't take much
| distance to get down and, if not stopped, at least slow enough
| that you don't really hurt yourself or the airframe if you go
| off the end of [whatever].
| CSSer wrote:
| It amazes me how many pilots I see on here when the topic
| comes up. Is it because this site is just popular enough to
| have a mix of everyone or is there some true demographic
| overlap here?
| Syonyk wrote:
| I would assume there's a decent overlap between tech
| types/programmers/etc and pilots. They have the money for
| it (GA is not as expensive as most people think, but
| neither is it cheap), and they have the whole attention to
| detail/"The more gauges the better!" attitudes that tend to
| work well with flying.
|
| There also seems to be a pretty good overlap between
| motorcycle riders and pilots. Find a middle aged man riding
| 10k+ miles/yr on a BMW or similar, and there's a very good
| chance he's a pilot too.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Both. A lot of people are on HN. There's also a big
| demographic overlap between pilots and HN readers. So, lots
| of pilots on HN. Source: pilot turned software engineer in
| San Francisco.
| tialaramex wrote:
| CAPS (the Cirrus parachute system) has a pretty impressive
| record. One of the ways Cirrus actually improved crash
| survivability for their aircraft was training pilots to
| _start_ by assuming they 're going to pull the chute. Might
| they be able to perform a successful engine-out landing? Yes.
| Might they be able to restart the engine? Also yes. But, by
| starting with the mindset "Plane failed, pull the chute" you
| don't fixate on these ideas past the point where the chute
| ceases to be available, so when that engine _won 't_ start,
| and you realise you can't find that long straight road you'd
| always imagined landing on, you still have enough altitude to
| pull the CAPS handle and live to make better choices another
| day.
|
| On their Vision Jets they also have emergency autoland, which
| is a blessing under FAA conditions where realistically some
| elderly pilots are going to die up there, leaving anybody
| else in the plane to get down on their own. Is it possible to
| talk a zero experience lay person down in a single engine
| plane when their pilot buddy slumped over suddenly in level
| flight? I wouldn't bet money on them even operating the radio
| correctly. But the emergency autoland can put that plane back
| on the ground pretty reliably, maybe even in time for the
| pilot to receive medical attention if they're merely
| incapacitated not yet dead.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I was doing a video shoot of a group of sky divers, but I was
| not getting out of the plane. I don't know the exact make/model
| of plane, but it was small. I was provided a parachute. I was
| told it was required by regulations that all in the plane
| needed one. The only training I was provided was a pointing to
| a handle on a chest strap and the phrase "if you find yourself
| outside of the airplane, this is the only thing you will want
| to be concerned".
|
| I did not enquire about what subsection of the regulations made
| this requirement or any of the qualifications of equipment. The
| pilot did have a parachute on as well.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > I did not enquire about what subsection of the regulations
| made this requirement or any of the qualifications of
| equipment.
|
| I'm glad it turned out okay. Personally, I've learned over
| time that plenty of people will sacrifice _my_ safety or
| financial risk for _their_ convenience. Now I 'm rarely
| satisfied by them saying "Don't worry, it will be fine.
| Everyone does is this way." I'm glad that I've learned to
| stick up for myself under that kind of pressure.
| cmurf wrote:
| Literally never (former flight instructor). I have no idea how
| to operate a parachute. Not required knowledge!
|
| Occasionally a student pilot will inadvertently get into
| stall/spin (only allowed at a proper altitude) during stall
| training. The value of the student getting into the stall spin,
| and flight instructor calmly saying "what are you going to do?"
| is way higher than a parachute. Low altitude stall/spins are
| essentially not recoverable (in time) and you die. A parachute
| won't help you, you're not getting out of the plane soon
| enough. And a parachute as a fallback for proper stall/spin
| recovery technique to me is idiotic. Don't get in a stall spin
| low to the ground, and if you have the altitude you recover.
| Either you can't parachute out or you don't need to. That's the
| bottom line.
|
| Further, my confidence getting out of the plane with a
| parachute on is essentially zero. Whereas I know I can recover
| from a stall/spin. In fact, normally trimmed, most planes have
| positive static and dynamic stability, and will recover from a
| stall spin on their own if you just relax back pressure on the
| yoke. Which I'd have to do to parachute away from the plane. So
| hilariously, by jumping from the plane, the plane has a very
| good chance of recovering on its own, obviating the need to
| jump.
|
| Now for aerobatics training, it's different because plausibly
| you could stress the airplane enough to break it. At which
| point it might be uncontrollable enough you'd need to parachute
| out to survive. And flight over hazardous terrain is another
| plausible scenario although I'd argue that's just plain bad
| flight planning. WTF are you doing planning a flight where you
| can't glide to a road? I've done quite a lot of mountain flying
| and it's not difficult to plane this, at least in the lower 48.
| In Alaska and Canada, I'm sure there's a bit of a chuckle the
| idea of being in gliding distance of a road or some flat enough
| surface.
|
| But for the other 95% of flights going on, you're not
| considering a parachute. No. I've never worn one.
| userbinator wrote:
| _So hilariously, by jumping from the plane, the plane has a
| very good chance of recovering on its own, obviating the need
| to jump_
|
| That reminds me of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| > *I'm sure there's a bit of a chuckle the idea of being in
| gliding distance of a road or some flat enough surface*
|
| So I just saw a video on YouTube which analyzed an incident
| of a plane outbound from Aspen which was flown into the
| ground. I'm sure if the terrain were about 6000 ft lower it
| would not have been considered hazardous. They simply failed
| to get high enough to go over the pass, and when they tried
| to turn around and give up they hit the ground. So the point
| is, they couldn't fly under power safely back to the airport,
| gliding wasn't a factor.
|
| https://youtu.be/8PBUVMCbmFQ
| cmurf wrote:
| I just watched the video. AOPA puts out great stuff.
| Everything they say here is spot on.
|
| It's not simple failure to get high enough. That was not
| the fatal mistake. It's multiple mistakes, the accumulation
| of which results in no more choices. Poor flight planning,
| possibly an inhibition of an ATP to ask "lower ranked"
| local pilots about various routes, and waiting too long to
| abort. They lacked an abort plan. They could not have been
| asking "what do I do right now if the powerplant fails?"
| Because they not only accepted going passed the point of
| managing a powerplant failure, to the point where they had
| no options even with a fully operating powerplant. There
| was nothing wrong with that airplane. It was all errors in
| judgement that lead to no choice but a crash.
|
| Having flown in and out of Aspen many times myself, I have
| never used Independence pass. I've opted for the down
| valley northwest route for climb out, then north, and
| finally east to Corona/Rollins pass. Many choices before,
| during, and after pass crossing. A local pilot would have
| given alternatives to Independence, and their reasoning. A
| local flight instructor would have reminded them about
| density altitude, leaning, and even the option of not
| taking off fully fueled in order to improve climb
| performance, and fully fuel on the other side of the
| mountain range instead.
|
| Colorado sees this same lack of awareness of the effects of
| altitude with hikers all the time too. Folks from New York
| and Florida and California, regularly climb 14ers in fall
| and unwittingly get stuck in snow storms while Denver is
| clear as a bell, having no imagination at all for
| treachery. And their families are appalled when the search
| and rescue is called off because it's even too treacherous
| for S&R operations. Happens every year.
| cmurf wrote:
| The mantra of mountain flying, "altitude is your friend".
|
| You can't fight physics. Normally aspirated planes are
| seriously underpowered at high altitude. It's shocking. And
| they don't have much excess power to start with.
|
| This pilot made a fatal mistake much earlier than the
| actual accident by not becoming deeply uncomfortable at the
| low altitude perniciously taking away all options. He
| assumed the rate of climb would get them over the pass. A
| small tailwind makes this even worse as it reduces the time
| you gave for climb.
|
| Every time I fly in the mountains I see planes well below
| my altitude, thousands of feet. I've slowly build up a
| store of power and thus choices, including more time to
| troubleshoot, more time to announce position which is a
| line of sight transmission.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| In almost 30 years of flying light aircraft here in the US, I
| have worn a parachute only when obliged to - during aerobatic
| flights. (Technically required only if you are not alone.) And
| the one time I intentionally skydived.
|
| So, it seems odd to me.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| For some small airplanes (I think every one by Cirrus), they
| actually have a parachute for the entire aircraft
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| I don't think it's normal for the overwhelming majority of
| pilots who fly single engine propeller planes. The Cirrus is
| very much an exception. Given the older ages of many people
| who are private pilots, they probably shouldn't be
| parachuting regardless.
| azalemeth wrote:
| No. Glider [sailplane] pilots routinely do, but only because of
| their habit of soaring together in thermals, and the increased
| risk of a mid-air collision. Larger and much newer (i.e. more
| expensive) general aviation aircraft sometimes have a
| "ballistic recovery system" fitted where the whole aircraft has
| a parachute -- Cirrus a/c are famous for this. Other than that,
| pilots dropping skydivers use them. And in some jurisdictions,
| aerobatics. And that's it.
|
| General aviation is about as safe as riding a motorbike. You're
| trained to not get into that situation in the first place --
| it's a very fishy video for many different reasons. We plan for
| eventualities! Pilots assume that everything _will_ fail and
| ideally don't let themselves get into a position where a
| parachute is needed. I've been in a glider (ASK-21) under tow
| from a tug plane (a Piper Pawnee) where it lost an engine
| cylinder at exactly "the worst point" on the way up. The pilot
| waved us off immediately, and we both executed our well-
| practiced "eventualities" plan for that airfield, with no
| incident whatsoever. An investigation showed that the engine
| casing on the Pawnee had cracked, despite recent inspection.
| dpifke wrote:
| They're required when performing aerobatics, or if you plan to
| open the door in flight. (e.g. pilots of skydiving planes need
| to wear one, even though they plan to land with the plane)
|
| But bail-out rigs are much smaller than normal skydiving rigs;
| the latter would be uncomfortable to wear while operating the
| plane. A bail-out rig is thinner, shaped more like a seat
| cushion, and contains only a single parachute, often a non-
| steerable round (which can reliably open much lower).
|
| Example of typical bail-out rig:
| https://www.summitparachutesystems.com/pilot-emergency-back-...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > (e.g. pilots of skydiving planes need to wear one, even
| though they plan to land with the plane)
|
| This is not true. I've watched numerous youtube videos of
| pilots flying skydivers and I've never seen them wearing a
| parachute. Flight Chops, for example. The pilot in question
| in the videos was chief instructor for a flight safety
| training company.
| benlm wrote:
| I've been a skydiver for many years and as far as I know
| the FAA _does_ require the pilot to wear a bail out rig.
| Most skydiving pilots I know do wear them, but I have come
| across some pilots not wearing them in flight (even though
| their bail out rig was in the plane next to them).
| dpifke wrote:
| I thought this was required by the FAA advisory circular
| governing parachute operations (https://www.faa.gov/documen
| tLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/... - PDF), but after just
| looking, I now think it was part of the supplemental type
| certificate (https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_a
| pprovals/stc/) or 337 approval for the door modifications
| on the planes at the drop zone where I used to work.
|
| Thus, it probably depends on the aircraft, and possibly the
| process by which the owner got FAA approval to modify the
| door.
| malexw wrote:
| Flight Chops is based in Canada, so anytime he's flying up
| here he'll fall under Transport Canada and Canadian
| Aviation Regulations (CARs). There are no legal
| requirements in Canada for pilots to wear parachutes.
| gromitss wrote:
| topherPedersen wrote:
| As a skydiver, I think I noticed some stuff from the video that
| looks pretty fishy. Why is he flying with a skydiving rig on?
| Normally pilots where emergency parachutes with only one
| parachute which are made to be worn comfortably while flying.
| He's wearing a skydiving rig in the video which would be very
| uncomfortable to wear while flying an aircraft. I could be wrong,
| but that sort of makes it look like he was planning to jump
| before he ever took off.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Only about 240,000 views. I wonder if he still thinks it's worth
| the fine / loss of pilot's license / jail time for reckless
| endangerment.
|
| Also, a selfie stick, really? He might as well have had a camera
| crew filming his little stunt.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| I don't see any tail number on the aircraft for identification.
|
| There is no fire which means likely no fuel. Could have been the
| reason for the engine failure but could also indicate planned
| activity.
|
| Who knows? The FAA will find out, they don't fuck around.
| arch-ninja wrote:
| This guy sounds like he's fishing for attention, the phrase "I
| didn't think I would have the courage to share..." is something
| 10-year-olds think up for attention. It drips vanity and a
| covered ego the size of the Hindenburg.
| smcl wrote:
| You picked up the same thing I did. I'm not sure what _exactly_
| in this sentence does it, but warning lights in the "this
| person is lying to me" section of my brain started flashing.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Apparently it's working. Since the whole "dream cheated @
| minecraft" drama - it's clear that there aren't really any
| consequences for lying to millions of people and in fact, you
| might even get your own little fanbase defending you.
|
| The video is sponsored by the way.
| [deleted]
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Lying to the FAA on other hand does come with consequences.
| holoduke wrote:
| A YouTube video in this genre where there is a little
| questionmark whether it's real or not, is unfortunately almost
| always fake. How is it possible that you jump from a plane,
| descent at least for 5 to 10 seconds, deploy parachute and then
| make a shot of the airplane 1000 feet below, who made a full 360
| turn, but during the shot flying straight, at almost the same
| altitude as where the engine problems started.
| DrScump wrote:
| The original on YouTube credits Ridge wallets as a sponsor
| (complete with referral link spam), so that's one company I'm
| never patronizing.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| If he doesn't post the full unedited videos, then he's probably
| hiding something.
| bartread wrote:
| I mean, he literally says that he immediately reported the crash
| to the FAA and NTSB at the beginning of the video.
|
| It's certainly both fascinating and terrifying to watch, but
| wouldn't the FAA investigate, regardless of whether or not the
| crash was "controversial", whatever that actually means in the
| context of this incident (disclaimer: not a pilot)?
|
| Also, isn't the "controversy" here basically a bunch of armchair
| critics/commenters?
| lisper wrote:
| Private pilot here. A lot of people have remarked on the lack of
| a mayday call. It's not clear whether that plane had a radio.
| Many aircraft of that type don't.
|
| That said, I see a lot of smoking guns:
|
| 1. He doesn't do _any_ of the normal engine-out procedures. In
| particular, he does not turn the plane. He makes no attempt to
| try to find a safe landing site, which was pretty clearly
| available on the dry river bed. The plane he was flying is
| specifically designed to land in places like that. Even if he
| wasn 't able to land, turning around would have placed him closer
| to civilization before he bailed out, but he clearly didn't even
| try.
|
| 2. His reaction when the engine quits is very heavy on
| profanities and lamenting the direness of the situation, and
| completely devoid of troubleshooting or planning the best course
| of action. Both of his hands can be seen on the yoke, so he's not
| trimming for best glide, checking the mags, checking the fuel
| selector. _At best_ he is a completely incompetent pilot.
|
| 3. He is an accomplished skydiver flying a controllable skydiving
| chute (not an emergency chute). He could have put that chute down
| wherever he chose, but instead of landing on clear flat terrain
| (in the riverbed) he chose to land in the brush on the
| mountainside. That was either the most incredibly stupid decision
| anyone has ever made in an emergency situation, or part of a
| deliberate plan. I don't see any other possibilities.
|
| 4. The fact that he's able to get a shot of the plane flying
| below him also looks mighty hinky. He spent a lot of time in
| free-fall. For the plane to end up underneath him like that would
| be an incredible coincidence. Indeed, being able to hike to the
| crash site is mighty suspicious, even leaving aside the highly
| questionable decision-making required to even attempt it.
|
| [UPDATE]
|
| Also this video [1] where he spends a day at an airport trying to
| scam a free flight off someone by presenting himself as someone
| who has never had the opportunity to fly despite the fact that he
| is himself a pilot. This indicates that it is very much in
| character for him to try to deceive people for the sake of YT
| views.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWoEv0t5xGc
| k3lsi3r wrote:
| > 3. He is an accomplished skydiver flying a controllable
| skydiving chute (not an emergency chute). He could have put
| that chute down wherever he chose, but instead of landing on
| clear flat terrain (in the riverbed) he chose to land in the
| brush on the mountainside. That was either the most incredibly
| stupid decision anyone has ever made in an emergency situation,
| or part of a deliberate plan. I don't see any other
| possibilities.
|
| Yeah, this one seemed really silly. There is even a large open
| field at 5:36 pretty close to where he chose to "crash" land.
| Maybe not completely level, but as you said, many other
| options.
| aspaceman wrote:
| Could anyone who is a pilot comment on what you're _supposed_
| to do if your engine completely goes out? From what I've read
| so far the answer is "keep trying to get the engine back".
|
| Do you just try and glide it out and land? That's what I
| would imagine. What even would be the situation where you
| would bail?
|
| Bailing sounds like more of a military thing to me. _Or_ a
| fire?
| repiret wrote:
| Fly. Find. Fix.
|
| 1. Fly: Trim the airplane for best glide speed (that is the
| speed that will let you travel the farthest before hitting
| the ground), which is a value you should have memorized.
| And don't forget to keep minding the stick and rudder - any
| unnecessary turns or aileron/rudder miscoordination costs
| you energy, and that means less time and less distance.
|
| 2. Find: Find the best place to put down the plane, and
| start maneuvering there. A road. A field. A river bed. Or
| even an airport; at cruising altitude there's one in
| gliding distance more often than you might think.
|
| 3. Fix: Try to get the engine running again. The engine can
| fail in a way the pilot is hopeless to get it running
| again, but more often by adjusting the throttle or mixture
| you'll be able to get it started again (it might have even
| been mismanagement of those things that caused it to fail -
| I accidentally turned the fuel off once).
|
| Note that "call mayday" isn't even on that list. Its not
| like ATC is going to run out and catch you. While on a
| cross country VFR flight, you ought to have the radio tuned
| to a center controller, and have flight following so they
| know which blip on the radar is you. And if you don't do
| that, you ought to have the radio tuned to guard (the
| emergency frequency). And then when the "fix" step isn't
| working out, I would make a quick "MAYDAY MAYDAY MADAY,
| Center, $CALLSIGN, has an engine out, one on board, forced
| landing in a river bed to my east." But many people don't
| do any of those things. And for most of the airspace out
| there, you're not even required to have a radio, and planes
| of that vintage often don't.
|
| And while lots of that video is fishy, I'm not reading much
| into his lack of communication. If I happened to be an
| experienced skydiver wearing a parachute, and my radio
| wasn't already tuned to a frequency where someone would be
| listening, in a panic I might skip talking to anybody in
| favor of getting out of the airplane while I still had
| enough altitude to safely deploy the chute.
| FabHK wrote:
| > Fly. Find. Fix.
|
| Also known as A, B, C (Airspeed, Best landing field,
| Checks).
|
| Can add D, E (Declare emergency, prepare Exit).
| sundvor wrote:
| I'm not a pilot, just someone who's been doing flight sims
| on and off for decades:
|
| Here's a good take on what he could have done - gliding
| back to those fields clearly visible in the rear right
| quarter at the time of the "failure".
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VXaLiB70glE&feature=youtu.be
|
| Author (not myself) also shows a simulated landing on the
| riverbeds below - heck, the 1940 Taylorcraft nearly landed
| there by itself! AFAIK the plane was designed to land off
| road, with a stall speed barely over 61km/h - it can land
| on a proverbial dime.
|
| What a waste of a perfectly good aircraft.
| ewoodrich wrote:
| Could you expand on 4? Are you thinking he deliberately planned
| the trajectory when he bailed out so he would be able to get
| footage of the plane beneath him or the footage was manipulated
| somehow/something else.
| lisper wrote:
| I honestly have no idea, which is why I just characterized it
| as "mighty hinky". To get that shot for real, the plane would
| have had to somehow catch up with his free-fall descent _and_
| circle around to end up underneath him. For an unmanned
| aircraft to carry out that maneuver seems extremely
| improbable to me. Even with a pilot at the controls it would
| have been challenging to pull off. Catching up with a
| skydiver in freefall is not easy.
| aeternum wrote:
| As a pilot, this is what it looks like. Altitude is gold in
| an engine out situation, survival is all about trading
| altitude for time/airspeed. It makes absolutely no sense to
| spend time in freefall, its akin to putting an engine out
| plane into a dive on purpose before pulling into a glide.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| he was in freefall for 20ish seconds while the plane was
| seemingly flying away from him straight and level at ~70 mph
| losing altitude at a moderate pace. So at the time he popped
| his chute he was several thousand feet below a plane that was
| last seen flying away from him. A parachute has a higher sink
| rate than that plane as well.
|
| Somehow the plane then ends up losing altitude VERY quickly
| before leveling off again, and by chance circling back
| directly underneath the pilot in the process. It could
| theoretically happen, but also seems ridiculous when you put
| it in context.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I remember this dude being another one of those youtube
| pranksters so doing a dangerous and stupid act for views seems
| on brand. The FAA won't go easy on him.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Without a radio how would he have gotten clearance at his
| fields? If there was no radio he'd have to have had at least a
| portable.
|
| And transponders are also mandatory in any aircraft at least
| here in Europe. Even gliders or microlights.
|
| But perhaps this works differently in the US I guess.
| bloggie wrote:
| There are plenty of airstrips in the US and Canada that are
| both uncontrolled and have no radio requirement. And,
| transponders are only required in control zones.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| But even in Lompoc where he took off? That seems to be a
| pretty big town. I've even heard of it and I've never been
| to the US :) Also I see lots of military activity in the
| area (e.g. Vandenberg AFB). I can't imagine it would not be
| controlled.
|
| Here uncontrolled fields are also common but you'd still
| call local traffic. And transponders are always mandatory.
| But aviation is not as commonplace as in the US.
| pilot7378535 wrote:
| I regularly fly without any radio.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with Lompoc. That looks like
| class echo airspace in which a radio is not required.
| Apparently the airport's control tower only operates part
| time. Still, with nearby population centers, restricted
| air over military bases, possible gliders and skydivers
| in the area, even oil wells relatively close, it looks
| like a particularly foolish place to turn an aircraft
| into an unguided missile by jumping out of it.
|
| Sources: https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/12-02-2021/PDFs/L
| os_Angeles.p... which includes a legend, faster version
| here: https://skyvector.com/?ll=34.665619444,-120.4675027
| 78&chart=....
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Ok I'm surprised. I don't think anyone here in Europe
| flies without a radio. If only just to monitor local
| traffic. Most of the flying club members even carried
| backup portables. I didn't proceed to my full license so
| I never did. But I did have lots of ham radios on which I
| could receive (not transmit) the airband if needed.
| gsk22 wrote:
| Yep, Lompoc is uncontrolled:
| https://www.airnav.com/airport/KLPC
|
| And notifying local traffic (on CTAF) at uncontrolled
| airports is recommended, but not required.
|
| This is quite common in the US, especially in small
| towns/rural areas.
| soneil wrote:
| If he took off in Lompoc, and he doesn't have a radio,
| wouldn't that indicate the radio isn't mandatory for
| Lompoc?
|
| Also worth noting that in a life-threatening emergency
| you have wide, wide discretion when it comes to putting
| her down. Fields, Roads, Riverbed, pretty much anything
| that's remotely flat is fair game.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It never said whether or not he had a radio AFAIK.
|
| We were just philosophising whether he had one or not.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| He also made a deliberate point of pointing out beforehand that
| of course he always flies with a parachute. Nope, not
| suspicious at all.
| josefx wrote:
| ~2000 upvotes on the video, no way there is anything wrong with
| its content. Thank YouTube for providing such a great UI. /s
| jrootabega wrote:
| Seems like a stunt on MTVs Jackass.
| e-clinton wrote:
| Don't think it was staged, but I could see him making
| questionable decisions. He seems to put very little effort into
| finding a spot to land. That's probably because he had the shoot
| rdiddly wrote:
| Everybody's got questions and suspicions, but here's my rather
| subtle one: If you're editing dramatic video footage for YouTube,
| why exclude the exciting moment when the engine suddenly quits?
| Why edit out the suspense of your repeated attempts to restart
| the engine? Why omit the drama of your repeated radio calls?
|
| I think if you're a YouTube narcissist, you leave everything in
| that attracts attention and views. Now of course maybe if your
| ego is especially fragile, you edit out anything that makes you
| look bad. (Bad in your own opinion, mind you. There were numerous
| things left in that make him look bad in my opinion, but I
| digress.) So maybe he thought he sounded panicky on the radio,
| and maybe he thought he looked inept trying to restart the engine
| (or maybe he was too dumb to try either of those), but that still
| leaves the moment the engine quits - why leave that out?
|
| Now you know what they say about assume: it puts U between me and
| some ass. Which I don't appreciate. But nonetheless I _assume_
| that moment is not shown from the cockpit camera because he
| killed the engine. And if he killed the engine, he probably never
| tried to restart it, and never made any radio calls.
|
| It's kind of like when your cell phone is turned off all day, on
| the same day your spouse happens to get murdered. Nobody can
| triangulate & prove you were at the crime scene... but.........
| [deleted]
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| And if he had made radio calls, wouldn't he gave stayed with
| the plane where they could have found him?
| tshaddox wrote:
| Okay, but if he's faking the video and the most believable
| video would show the part where the engine stops, then why
| wouldn't he include that in the fake video?
| m000z0rz wrote:
| Per the comment you're replying to, "...that moment is not
| shown from the cockpit camera because he killed the engine.
| And if he killed the engine, he probably never tried to
| restart it, and never made any radio calls."
| hannasanarion wrote:
| When you have an engine failure, don't you think the most
| exciting, watchable, share-able drama would happen _inside_
| the cockpit? He has a camera in the cockpit, but he chose to
| only show footage from takeoff, cruise, and ditch.
|
| If attempts at recovery, contacting ATC, or searching for a
| safe landing ever occurred, he chose not to include them.
| Which is very strange for a person who is clearly editing for
| drama and virality in the rest of the video. Why didn't he
| include that footage?
|
| A reasonable suspicion therefore is that he didn't include
| them because he didn't have any footage of them, because he
| never tried to restart the engine or call for help, because
| he wanted the drama of the ditch and crash.
| spuz wrote:
| I think you misunderstood the question. The person you are
| replying to isn't questioning any of the things you
| mentioned.
| edoceo wrote:
| I've always heard assume makes and Ass out of U and Me - yours
| is good too, thank you, imma use it.
| [deleted]
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Biggest guilty before proven innocent aspect: He's a Youtuber.
| whyenot wrote:
| This whole discussion reminds me of Reddit's imfamous
| /r/findbostonbombers. Humans seem to have this need to find and
| punish cheaters (see for example some of the experiments by
| Cosmides and Tooby). Sometimes we get things wrong.
|
| (we did it HN! Take that lamestrean media)
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4f340r/where_...
| aaron695 wrote:
| bagels wrote:
| The door went from closed to open before the engine went out. I'm
| not saying that's proof it was a stunt, but it sure is strange.
| pageandrew wrote:
| "Open the door" is not on the engine out checklist, its on the
| forced landing checklist, which comes after all engine restart
| options are exhausted. He didn't run any items on the engine-
| out checklist. He went straight to skydiving.
|
| I don't think any pilot that managed to pass their checkride
| would neglect running a single diagnostic or attempted restart
| checklist item. This had to be intentional.
| bagels wrote:
| Yes, my point though is that the door was opened before the
| engine went out.
|
| It might've been on his "before you have an engine out"
| checklist.
| pageandrew wrote:
| Its on his "get YouTube views" checklist
| jacquesm wrote:
| This reminds me of:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RF9UVwWM9E
|
| does anybody know how that ended, and if it turned out it was
| staged?
| tverbeure wrote:
| This is the location above which he jumped:
| https://goo.gl/maps/jjqRoC4pyCzNYXDN8. You can match the
| landscape features with the video here:
| https://youtu.be/vbYszLNZxhM?t=251.
|
| He doesn't show it on the video (coincidence, of course!), but he
| could easily have glided ~5 miles south-west to some wineries.
| coryfklein wrote:
| I'm impressed how quickly folks here are able to arrive at the
| most certain conclusion that this was staged! While that
| explanation seems possible (and not unlikely), I keep coming back
| to Hanlon's Razor:
|
| > Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
| stupidity.
|
| The individual seems to have decent skills at YouTube'ing and
| probably paragliding, but most of the video seems easily
| explained by him simply being a stupid _pilot_. Let me spin an
| alternative narrative and you compare it to the narrative of
| malicious intent to see whether one is more obviously true than
| the other.
|
| Amateur pilot YouTuber has invested money in several GoPros.
| Costs him nothing to mount them all over the airplane for some
| cool footage on the way. The engine stops midflight. The pilot
| tries a few things (cut from the video so he doesn't look
| incompetent to his subscribers), but he hasn't flown in a while
| and has forgotten what he's supposed to do in this scenario.
|
| "Was there an acronym? ABC: abort, blame, no that's not it. GLO:
| Glide, Land, Observe?" The tiny plane has no radio so he can't
| phone a friend for help. Could he land on that stream bed down
| there? Possibly...
|
| "Dammit, I _might_ be skilled enough to land this, but I have
| spent a gajillion hours live-streaming my skydives recently and
| THAT I definitely know how to do. "
|
| Pilot grabs the GoPro off the dashboard just like he did on his
| last 10 skydives and jumps out of the plane. In his panicked
| state of mind, he doesn't realise that he should pull the chute
| ASAP and he falls back on his skydiving experience and freefalls
| for a decent amount of time before thinking to pull the chute.
|
| Like the terrible pilot he is, he didn't spend much time looking
| at the route of his flight plans and he doesn't know where he is.
| He has a bag of gear in the plane, so he follows the plane to
| where it crashes in hopes of getting his water bottle, even
| though it means he has to land in the brambles. Unsurprisingly,
| he can't locate his gear but he's able to escape with only some
| scratches. He barely escaped a death caused by his stupidity, but
| maybe he can salvage this difficult situation with a well edited
| YouTube video...
|
| Now some of you might say that this is a just-so story crafted to
| spin a particular narrative, but how is that different from all
| the other stories here portraying him as a well-trained pilot and
| ascribing all sorts of other characteristics to him?
|
| Honestly I won't be surprised whichever direction the FAA
| investigation comes back, but I am surprised at how _certain_ all
| the "skeptics" here are of the facts they're able to extract
| from such a heavily edited video.
| xzcvczx wrote:
| i am not a pilot but i am a skydiver so i am not going to comment
| on what he did/didn't do to keep the plane in the air. i watched
| the video and the one thing that makes it slightly more
| believable for me is the headset still on in (part of) freefall.
| it could easily cause problems on opening, and wouldn't be too
| suspicious to remove it if you were getting out planned or
| unplanned.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The FAA/NTSB investigates basically every crash, they do a good
| job. I doubt they will react kindly to crashing on purpose for
| views.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > The FAA/NTSB investigates basically every crash
|
| No. The NTSB investigates significant accidents (either
| commercial operations or passengers involved.)
|
| There's an average of 400 GA accidents per year, so about one a
| day.
|
| If two CFIs climb into a Piper and crash, it probably won't be
| investigated. Add a passenger, then the NTSB gets interested.
|
| Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Yeah, parent commenter has no experience in any aviation
| matters. I've been in a "crash" (off runway excursion, no
| injuries, no damage save a slightly bent landing gear door
| flap.)
|
| The "investigation" consisted of the airport director
| speaking with the PIC and passenger (me.) His sole question
| to me was "were you operating the aircraft?"
|
| There are a lot of stories of pretty terrible decisions made
| by GA pilots and little/nothing happening from the FAA. And
| then do stupid shit like going after Bob Hoover's license
| because he was too old for their tastes.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The details are nuanced by the definitions in the CFR, the
| details of the reporting requirements (NTSB must do
| _something_ with everything reported to it but that may be
| minimal), and the NTSB 's authority to delegate more minor
| investigations to FAA flight standards. Lots of people in the
| thread are hashing these out. But it suffices to say that
| when an airplane is seriously damaged or people are seriously
| injured, the NTSB is obligated to investigate. This dates way
| back to before the NTSB existed. In straightforward
| situations that sometimes consists only of the regional
| office making some phone calls and then preparing a two-page
| summary (you see a LOT of these two-page summaries for GA
| incidents, it's basically a form letter), but that's under
| the assumption that their cursory review doesn't turn up
| anything interesting. You can already find this incident in
| the NTSB's investigation database, WPR22LA049.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The NTSB website says:
|
| "The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent
| Federal agency charged by Congress with investigating every
| civil aviation accident in the United States and significant
| accidents in other modes of transportation - railroad,
| highway, marine and pipeline."
|
| So if the NTSB is not investigating every civil aviation
| crash, then they are failing in their congressional mandate.
| If you have evidence of this, you should probably contact
| your congress person or a newspaper with the details.
| galago wrote:
| I wonder how they define a "civil aviation accident"? In
| places like Alaska, people routinely land at sites which
| are not airports. If someone has a hard landing, there
| could be some damage to the aircraft with no injuries. Do
| they investigate every one of those? It might be there are
| a lot of minor "accidents" that fall into grey areas. I
| don't know if that's the case, I'm actually curious if
| anyone knows.
| p_l wrote:
| _Accident_ , _Incident_ and _Serious Incident_ have
| explicit definitions in civil aviation, and are also
| graded internally and thus might have different scope of
| investigation.
|
| A planned landing in terrain, if it caused no injuries
| but caused enough damage to aircraft to prevent takeoff
| without repair, would be classified as accident, but its
| investigation might be very brief depending on the event
| in question.
|
| Essentially if you have an "occurence", you're required
| to report it to NTSB, which in turn will grade it and
| decide if you need even a cursory interview.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Not quite correct. You have to report any accident and
| any of a specific list of serious incidents to the NTSB.
| You do not have to report other incidents or occurrences.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/830.5
|
| Also note: a landing that required repairs would not
| necessarily be an accident either, assuming no serious
| injuries occurred. "Engine failure or damage limited to
| an engine if only one engine fails or is damaged, bent
| fairings or cowling, dented skin, small punctured holes
| in the skin or fabric, ground damage to rotor or
| propeller blades, and damage to landing gear, wheels,
| tires, flaps, engine accessories, brakes, or wingtips are
| not considered "substantial damage" for the purpose of
| this part." (Those minor damages, even if they made the
| airplane require repairs prior to further flight, are not
| enough to make that landing an accident.)
| p_l wrote:
| Well, I'm going off more ICAO rules than NTSB specific -
| what I know for sure is that the differences you just
| specified are prerogative of NTSB and its parent govt to
| hash out (and seen it being decided upon in Polish PKBWL)
| krisoft wrote:
| "SS 830.2
|
| Aircraft accident means an occurrence associated with the
| operation of an aircraft which takes place between the
| time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of
| flight and all such persons have disembarked, and in
| which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in
| which the aircraft receives substantial damage. "
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/830.2
|
| Later on the same page you can see how they define
| "substantial damage" and "civil aircraft" too.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| That sounds like an incident, not an accident. They are
| treated differently.
|
| > [1] Aircraft accident means an occurrence associated
| with the operation of an aircraft which takes place
| between the time any person boards the aircraft with the
| intention of flight and all such persons have
| disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or
| serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives
| substantial damage.
|
| Substantial damage is then defined as:
|
| > Substantial damage means damage or failure which
| adversely affects the structural strength, performance,
| or flight characteristics of the aircraft, and which
| would normally require major repair or replacement of the
| affected component. Engine failure or damage limited to
| an engine if only one engine fails or is damaged, bent
| fairings or cowling, dented skin, small punctured holes
| in the skin or fabric, ground damage to rotor or
| propeller blades, and damage to landing gear, wheels,
| tires, flaps, engine accessories, brakes, or wingtips are
| not considered substantial damage for the purpose of this
| part.
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/830.2
| p_l wrote:
| In most countries, depending on severity of the event, the
| agency responsible for crash investigation can delegate
| investigation of the event to another entity.
|
| Mind you, this is usually done for _incidents_ , not
| accidents. However, sometimes an accident is clearly due to
| illegal operation, and sometimes that means that a) matter
| is passed directly to prosecution b) investigation is
| closed without conclusion due to explicit disregard of
| safety mechanisms, thus making further investigation
| useless to the purpose of aircraft accident investigation
| (under common rules from ICAO that NTSB also operates when
| it comes to aircraft)
| sokoloff wrote:
| Not every aircraft crash is an aircraft accident.
|
| The definition of an aircraft accident is a matter of
| federal law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/830.2
|
| An aircraft crash where the aircraft suffers minor damage
| and no one is seriously injured is, by definition, not an
| aircraft accident, but rather an incident. (This incident
| is definitely an aircraft accident, of course, whether or
| not it was accidental. :) )
|
| There is prior art for non-accidental plane crashes:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhoxaJTzPu4
| shkkmo wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification of terminology. "Crash" is
| indeed a bit ambiguous as a layman's term (though I would
| personally argue that incidents that cause minimal damage
| are generally not considered crashes.) Indeed, I think
| there are even many accidents that don't rise to the
| level of what I consider a crash (such as when my dad's
| friend bent a prop by briefy tipping his plane onto its
| nose when landing on a gravel bar to pickup a load of the
| moose they had killed. While they did fly it out by
| cutting/sanding all the prop blades to match and reducing
| weight, it would seem to easily match the definition of
| "significant damage" but I still wouldn't call it a
| crash.)
|
| I believe the claims made by the GP are still clearly
| wrong, given that they do use the term "accident" and
| stipulate criteria for investigation that (commercial or
| passengers) that have no basis in the definition your
| provided or the NTSB's mandate.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| sokoloff wrote:
| > While they did fly it out by cutting/sanding all the
| prop blades to match and reducing weight, it would seem
| to easily match the definition of "significant damage"
|
| Probably not (assuming you're trying to determine
| reporting requirements and figuring out if it's
| substantial damage). It's specifically excluded: "ground
| damage to rotor or propeller blades, and damage to
| landing gear, wheels, tires, flaps, engine accessories,
| brakes, or wingtips are not considered "substantial
| damage" for the purpose of this part." The NTSB doesn't
| want to be bothered everytime a prop makes ground
| contact, hits a runway light, a towbar, etc. It happens a
| lot.
| [deleted]
| natch wrote:
| Repeated "oh my gosh" and "oh my godsh" came off as the biggest
| fakey red flags here. Clear sign it was a performance; he was
| more worried about offending some sensitive people than he was
| actually stressed out.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| He has plenty of places where he bleeps himself, so I don't
| think this really counts for much. I do this type of thing
| often myself, saying "whoops", or "Martha Faulker" even when no
| one is around.
| shoo wrote:
| youtube demonetizes videos that use language that advertisers
| do not wish to be associated with.
|
| so, arguably less about offending viewers and more about
| keeping the advertising revenues flowing
| avs733 wrote:
| Which would totally be my focus if I was actually
| experiencing an in flight emergency as a pilot
| throwaway73838 wrote:
| No fire = no fuel? Easy way to have an engine failure
| [deleted]
| t8e56vd4ih wrote:
| why is this interesting to official agencies? because stuff
| insurance payout? i mean it's his plane. why care? why the
| response on YouTube?
| pageandrew wrote:
| It is completely reckless to ditch an aircraft if other options
| are available. The chances are low, but it could have hit
| someone or caused a fire.
| t8e56vd4ih wrote:
| why would he do it intentionally, though. isn't an airplane
| more expensive then what he can expect to earn with that clip
| on YouTube?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I don't know what a youtube video earns, but it is entirely
| possible to find a clapped out old taylorcraft or
| equivalent for $10-15k.
|
| I think that breaking even is entirely impossible.
| WHistlinDiesel destroyed an almost identical airplane in a
| video...
| bagels wrote:
| Yes, but he only endangered his crew, thankfully.
| pageandrew wrote:
| He probably has insurance on the aircraft, so the YouTube
| earnings + increased publicity + insurance payout could
| make such a stunt profitable.
| [deleted]
| paul7986 wrote:
| TikTok is a cancer to society ... you see so many staged.. mean
| things pulled on innocent people either working.. shopping at a
| store, pranks, etc that i loathe most of it. Reels is the same
| and both pay creators for content like Youtube does.
|
| All such people should be made an example of get huge fines or do
| jail time for creating fake content that harms others for their
| financial gain or in this instance forces the FAA to spend money
| on investigation only to find it was staged.
| pageandrew wrote:
| I'm a private pilot and I regularly fly aircraft similar to the
| one in the video. Engines can fail for any number of reasons, but
| catastrophic engine failure is exceedingly rare, and most of the
| time an engine stoppage is going to be something that can be
| corrected easily, such as fuel starvation (maybe failure to
| switch fuel tanks?), or a misconfigured fuel mixture, or a fried
| magneto.
|
| As student pilots, we train extensively for engine-out scenarios
| by running through checklists to increase glide distance,
| diagnose the problem, and hopefully restart the engine. At the
| very least, we evaluate all options.
|
| The _first_ thing you are trained to do in an engine-out is to
| pitch the aircraft for best glide speed, and you don 't even see
| him do that in the video. The prop stops spinning and he
| immediately opens the door.
|
| Bailing from the aircraft was the first thing he thought of
| doing, and that is the complete opposite of what every pilot is
| trained to do. I can't emphasize enough how much the engine-out
| checklist is drilled into you during training. Any qualified
| pilot is going to exercise some of those options unless their
| intention is in fact to bail from the aircraft.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| >The prop stops spinning and he immediately opens the door.
|
| I'm no pilot (student or otherwise), but as a comment in OP's
| link points out, his door is cracked open _before_ the engine
| shuts down.
|
| At 2:35 we see it properly closed (as a layman would expect
| from someone sitting in a chair in the sky). At 2:37-42 in the
| establishing shot and the shot of the engine shutting down, it
| is clearly cracked open. As tho he was peaking out to see the
| terrain prior to killing his engine, like he does right after
| in the video.
|
| That alone makes it... suspicious. You'd think he might have
| spread his friend's ashes just before as an explanation, but
| considering how he used said ashes as a video prop, I'd expect
| him to include that shot in if he'd done it. Does a small plane
| pilot have any reason to open the door other than anticipating
| a jump?
|
| Than there's the whole parachute thing, which is further
| notable as you don't see him wearing any in his other flight
| videos.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Does a small plane pilot have any reason to open the door
| other than anticipating a jump?
|
| Additional ventilation, especially in older planes (according
| to comments on the original article). So that's not a dead
| giveaway.
| aeternum wrote:
| It's possible that the engine was out at that point and the
| prop was just flywheeling. Possible but unlikely as it sounds
| like the engine is still on in some of the external shots.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The prop doesn't even stop spinning of its own accord - only
| after he yanks back on the yoke. That's not a standard engine
| out procedure, I think! Surely he'd want to maintain airspeed
| to keep it windmilling while troubleshooting.
| plasticchris wrote:
| If you failed to restart the engine and intended to glide
| some distance it might make sense to stop windmilling the
| prop since it generates a lot of drag. But it seems to be
| theatrics here.
| repiret wrote:
| That's a fixed-pitch prop, which will generate more drag
| stopped than windmilling.
| addaon wrote:
| This is not true for any plane I've flown -- see
| discussion at
| https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/64394/does-
| a-wi..., although it does seem like there's some
| variability.
|
| Especially if the engine is still making compression, a
| windmilling prop is extracting at least enough energy
| from the free stream to keep not just the prop but the
| engine turning... this is a lot!
| repiret wrote:
| I agree that energy lost to turning the engine must come
| from the airstream, don't underestimate how much energy
| can be lost just to creating turbulence in the airstream
| - after all, that's why you drop like a rock if you do a
| slip with full flaps. And a stalled windmilling prop will
| generate less turbulence than a stalled stopped prop.
|
| The discussion at your link makes a good point though -
| the windmilling prop might not be stalled while a stopped
| prop certainly is stalled, and a stalled prop obviously
| creates less drag.
| FabHK wrote:
| It is surprising that there's no good data on it. Someone
| with a scientific mindset in a remote location who's good
| at restarting a stopped engine in flight should run a
| couple of tests.
| bagels wrote:
| The video is edited, so it's possible that some of those things
| were cut, but I don't think they actually were.
| can16358p wrote:
| Yup. As he was explaining all the details for pretty much
| everything else, I'd also expect him to have him go over the
| emergency procedures/checklist on the video before bailing
| out.
| FabHK wrote:
| > catastrophic engine failure is exceedingly rare
|
| Not really... apparently the rate for piston engines is around
| 15 failures in 100,000 hours (it's not trivial to find reliable
| statistics on that, because an engine failure that does not
| result in an accident need not be reported). If an average GA
| pilot flies around 1000 hours, encountering an engine failure
| is as common as throwing a 6 on a die. (I've had one.)
| SCAQTony wrote:
| His body has a blurred outline around it as he exits the plane.
| jwithington wrote:
| People really out here writing articles on Christmas
| rndmind wrote:
| eCa wrote:
| Really looking forward to commentary from Mentour and blancolirio
| on this. Judging from Mentour's comment on the video I think it's
| an understatement to say that he thinks it is correct for the FAA
| to investigate...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Also "Probable Cause: Dan Gryder"
|
| He can be a little harsh on people but usually for good reason.
| Laforet wrote:
| Just wanna chime in and say that Mentour has been doing a great
| job with his videos.
|
| There is a lot of low effort air crash videos on YouTube that
| does not do much more than reading off the official report or
| the script of an ACI episode. Mentour is one of the few that
| goes beyond that by injecting actual professional insight into
| the events.
| geocrasher wrote:
| I actually emailed this to blancolirio and ask him to cover it.
| He's a great commentator.
| mmaunder wrote:
| They should arrest him for littering.
| thrill wrote:
| That aircraft could land on a driveway, much less the miles of
| dirt roads visible all around.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Seriously. Your average dirt road is probably comparable to
| some of the runways it used to fly off when it was new.
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