Too High and Too Fast

This is one of the worst accident reports I have ever seen, and considering the horrendous quality of some of the others, this is indeed serious criticism.

It contains conflicting reports about who did what, and when. However, it’s obvious that they landed far too deep, and far too fast, and the instructor, who was comatose, reacted way too late.

When I say he reacted too late – I don’t mean when he took control on the ground. I mean he should have seen what was coming when they turned on to the final approach and called for more flap, less power or a go-around.

When I look at accidents like this it makes me wonder whether the magic 200 hours is enough for some instructors to be guardians of other people’s lives.

The 40-hour PPL and the 200-hour CPL rules were established in the days when these were reasonable targets.

I got my PPL in exactly 40 hours – to the minute. And the training comfortably included stuff like restarting the engine in flight (by diving the hell out of the aircraft until the prop started windmilling), solo spins overhead the airfield, so the instructor could watch you, three cross-countries, a hell of a lot of glide approaches, numerous go-arounds and the final flight test.

How was all this possible in the time that it takes some of today’s students to go solo? It’s not that we were smarter than today’s students, or that our instructors were better; they weren’t.

No, the secret is that we learned only the basics of flight. We were flying Cubs, and Tigers and Aeroncas, that had very few clocks to confuse us, or knobs to fiddle with.

And there was not much to do around the circuit, so we didn’t have to do any checks – we just enjoyed the ride.

Carb-heat was another matter – forget that in the glide and your prop would soon look like a pencil.

Cross countries were uncomplicated by beacons, frequencies and confusing lumps of airspace. You just had to keep away from the cooling towers, which were a warning that Jan Smuts [airport] was nearby. You also tried not to fly over Donottar–which was thick with Harvards–or Waterkloof or the Voortrekker Monument, both of which were verboten.

There were no magenta lines. Pencil lines on paper maps accurately reflected the nature of the territory over which we flew.

There was little, or no, ATC, and very little traffic.

But I am getting carried away by nostalgia when I should be explaining a couple of things.

• tailwheel aeroplanes caused us to get plenty of practice in go-arounds.
• 200 hours on basic aeroplanes, in empty skies, was enough for us to get a CPL and instruct on Cherokees and little Cessnas.

Today, technology has given us faster and more complicated aeroplanes, in cluttered airspace, with less time to think and more buttons and clocks to understand.

Now, 80 hours in a 172, in busy airspace, is barely enough to train a safe PPL.

And 200-hour CPL pilots, or instructors, are really floundering.

I asked a 250-hour CPL the other day when she had last done a go-around. Her answer was immediate: "never."

Horrifying? No – absolutely terrifying! Surprising? No, not at all.

Nowadays, with little nosewheel aeroplanes on long runways, it’s almost never necessary, especially when ATC are there to nursemaid other traffic out of your way.

So getting back to this accident – and a hundred more stuffed-up go-around accidents – the system is such that we are seldom taught to do go-arounds, and pretty much never practice them. We are not prepared for them, and are hugely surprised when faced with a real one. And when we have finished being surprised we have no idea what to do.

Most pilots have practiced EFATOs, and done a simulated one during their last flight test. A go-around? Nah – no idea what to do.

It’s very possible that this is the first real-life go-around this instructor had ever faced in his life. I think he was frozen with indecision.

If we could stop the action when they were at say 500 feet AGL and ask both the instructor and the student, what they felt about their airspeed, height, power setting and configuration, I’m sure they would both have said, “we are too high and too fast, and we need more flap.”

Correct. They were an unbelievable 15 to 20 knots too fast, and way too high, and why only 20° of flap?

And why didn’t they do anything about it?

The option of a go-around didn’t enter their heads – they had seldom done one before. Or if they had, it was long ago. It was just not part of their planning.

Remember the five dangerous characteristics? This one is resignation – let’s do nothing and see what happens.

What should happen is that on final approach we should brief ourselves that if we don’t like anything, at any stage we will do a go-around. It might be nothing to do with airspeed, height and power. Perhaps a dog runs onto the runway, or you spot an idiot landing on the cross runway, or you realise you still have the wheels up.

Your self-briefing should say, If anything looks wrong I will:

• smoothly take full power, using rudder to keep straight
• level the nose
• retract the undercarriage
• bleed off flap as airspeed increases
• climb away.

Note: heavy aircraft sometimes call flaps to be retracted before the undercarriage. This is because inertia may cause the aircraft to touch down during the go-around. 

What Can We Learn?

Not sure how to do a go-around? Get some dual from a good instructor.

Use the correct approach speed.

On every approach, your throttle hand should be itching to go smoothly all the way forward for another few minutes of flying.

Be like an airline pilot and brief for the go-around every time.

Jim Davis is a natural teacher with a passion for flying training, believes in learning through enjoyment. His book is refreshingly un-textbookish yet thoroughly covers its subject clearly. With over 15,000 hours, including 10,000 in flying instruction for civilian and military pilots, Jim founded South Africa’s largest and most respected flying school, 43 Air School. He is also an author of multiple books on flying training and has contributed numerous articles to flying magazines across two continents. https://www.jimdavis.com.au