SAFETYGRAM

We have completed another successful year of flying in the aero club system with zero injury accidents! This continues a streak of many years of injury free flying in aero club aircraft. Thank you for your continued efforts! There have been, however, some events that we will discuss to help keep our streak going. We can do better.

There were two accidents in FY 07. One happened during takeoff and one during landing. In the first case, a student pilot allowed the aircraft to drift off the left side of the runway during takeoff. The pilot pulled the power to idle and used differential braking in an attempt to regain directional control. The aircraft hit a berm and flipped onto its back causing significant damage. There was a significant discussion of wake turbulence possibly being the cause, but the NTSB listed the cause as undetermined. The second accident involved an instructor pilot and student performing an approach to a planned touch and go. The instructor reported that he inadvertently allowed the student to get too low on the approach. The aircraft landed short of the runway, and as the airplane's main wheels contacted an area of deep, hard packed snow, the airplane nosed down, and the right wing struck the snow-covered terrain, sustaining substantial damage. Low and high experience levels were involved. No matter how long you have been flying, please keep your vigilance up….it can and does happen to all experience levels!

Here are some other events of note:

- One aircraft engine failed on the runway as power was added for the go portion of a touch and go. The crew aborted the takeoff and coasted to a stop.

- There were two prop strikes during landing. Both had the potential of becoming accidents, but thankfully the damage was not as bad as it could have been and the pilots only had bruised egos. - Another aircraft landed gear up. Damage was what one would expect when an airplane lands without the wheels down.

- Two aircraft departed the runway and finished their landing roll in an unexpected location. In both cases there was no damage to the aircraft or property.

- Bird strikes left two aircraft with minor damage on the leading edges of the wings. In both instances, the pilots landed uneventfully; one was a solo cross country student – great job diverting to an unplanned airport.

- There were several miscellaneous events that were not directly related to flight but did cause minor damage to airplanes including a dropped wingtip cover during maintenance, a prop spinner problem, a cowl door hinge failure, a cut in the lower surface of the elevator, and a tow bar/prop strike in the hanger.

There was one event during taxi operations. Our aircraft was stopped where directed by ATC when a Boeing 767s jet blast blew it onto its wingtip and prop. The investigation is ongoing but it appears the pilots were in the right place, unfortunately at the wrong time. See last months Safety Gram for more information.

Three events that merit extra attention were all found during maintenance action. Aircraft were found with damage to their firewalls. The damage was located in the vicinity of the nose landing gear. All appear to have been caused by impact to the nose gear. None were readily apparent during normal preflight inspections. Why the extra attention? No one reported a hard or unusual landing. If a landing is hard enough (or has enough side load) to damage a firewall, it seems it should be noticeable. Folks, if you even suspect a hard landing, please…please…please write it up! There is no crime in a hard landing. There is a crime in not reporting it, especially if a follow on flight has an accident because of unreported damage. This goes for any discrepancies you may have discovered or caused during your flight. If you are not sure, seek out the manager, maintenance or a club instructor and discuss it before you leave it for the next guy to discover.

The number of events this year over the previous year was relatively unchanged. There were two accidents each year for FY 06 and FY 07. This keeps the rate below 3.0 for the year and also keeps the aero club rate well less than half of the general aviation rate as a whole. Some contributing factors to the events included crosswinds, wake turbulence, checklist errors, and go around decisions. What would you do the same? What would you do differently? Use a thoughtful discussion of the events to analyze possible ways to avoid each situation and…..Learn from the mistakes of others…. you don’t have time to make them all yourself.

You did well – you can do even better. Thanks for your efforts to keep safety first – let’s all go fly and be safe out there!

FLY SAFE!