Safety procedures improved after fatal glider crash

[Dave Homewood]

Safety procedures improved after fatal glider crash

Last updated 16:56, May 31 2018


Improvements have been introduced in an attempt to avoid fatal accidents like that of Gavin Harvey's in 2016.

The Coroner has recommended that flight instructors be in radio contact with student pilots after the death of Gavin Harvey.

The 40 year old died when he lost control of his glider coming in to land at Tauranga Airport on May 1, 2016.

In his findings, Coroner Gordon Matenga said that the Tauranga Gilding Club, Gliding New Zealand and the Civil Aviation Authority have taken actions aimed at reducing the likelihood of a repetition of a death or serious incident in similar circumstances.

During an inquest into his death at the Tauranga District Court on Wednesday, it was revealed that it was the first time Harvey had flown a single-seater glider.

He'd completed about 40 flights in a dual-seat training aircraft.

His Tauranga Gliding Club instructor, Edouard Devenoges, was on the ground watching Harvey make his landing approach towards runway 4.

Devenoges said Harvey was approaching high, but not so high as to have made him unable to complete the landing as planned.

The glider went out of his view behind a hangar as it descended.

"I heard a loud bang, bang, and I knew something was wrong," he said.

Unknown to Devenoges, Harvey had attempted to make a sharp turn to line up a landing at a different runway after abandoning his first attempt.

Harvey had called his plan change to the tower, but had no way of communicating with his instructor from the glider.

The steep turn put the glider into a stall, causing him to lose control and crash.

Harvey suffered critical injuries in the crash and had to be cut free by rescuers. He died after being transferred to Waikato Hospital on May 2.

Matenga acknowledged that a peer review process had been introduced by the Tauranga Gliding Club. The gliding instructors will use the process to evaluate a student's suitability for progression into a single glider.

There have also been improvements to the Gliding New Zealand Instructor's Manual, with additional information to provide guidance with regard to conversion to single-seat gliders.

The new safety measures were added in January.

- Stuff

www.stuff.co.nz/national/104373806/safety-procedures-improved-after-fatal-glider-crash

[Bruce]

"The Coroner has recommended that flight instructors be in radio contact with student pilots after the death of Gavin Harvey."

Would take a special sort of radio to be in contact with student pilots after their death....

[horicle]

The unintended consequence is non standard communications when the pilot is already overloaded with problems he/she did not see coming. Right now I can only recall one other fatal first flight in a single seater and that was in the 1960's. The hard truth of that one was pilot preparation which compounded with the unfamiliar environment lead to the sad outcome.

Now for the long story (and this is the short version). At Ohakea we evolved to the situation where a glider landing on the grass vector with its undercut up was left alone. In two cases where a well meaning call "ZZ you have your undercut up" was made a simple embarrassment nearly turned into a total disaster. The one I saw involved a Phoebus C on a hangar flight. The pilot was taking the luxury of a long ground effect run west towards 1 Hangar and from my vantage point near the winch I was thinking we will have to clean the crap out of the belly hook after this effort because it is too late to change hands and put the undercard down now. Then the winch driver radioed "GA undercart", half a second later the glider which was flying level 10 feet off the ground pitched violently upward into a 60 to 70 degree climb, gained about 30 feet and the pitched down to level flight - with the undercard down - and landed straight ahead. Now for the aerodynamic bit. Phoebus had a slab all flying tailplane. No aerodynamic trim, just a spring on the control column (a design practice now happily consigned to the past) and the anti flutter device was the mass of the pilots arm on the end of the control column. From my own experience if left hands off when trimmed absolutely perfectly Phoebus could not fly straight for 10 seconds. It was a 50/50 pitch hard up or hard down. If not trimmed perfectly it diverted instantly.

Now the owner/pilot in this story knew all this and was in a no stress situation until that radio call.

Back to the post. So if the instructor on the ground is going to make a difference to (for example) a badly planned circuit it has got to be done in stages. First by verbal assistance when things are seen to be diverging from OK, just like the instructor is in the aircraft. Trouble is when things really get rough the instructors next call is "I have control". Only there is a problem. Radio assistance will work but it is an early intervention tool and comes with hooks. It is not the answer to proper training and briefing. As so often happens I feel the findings by the experts are not the best answer.

The earliest intervention from the ground could only be "you have turned onto base leg to soon" (too high). The instructor in the glider would have spoken as the turn was initiated as prevented it, a totally different outcome. Try any combination of events/outcomes and radio assistance from the ground is harder than you think.