September 2010

The Cirrus aircraft is loaded with advanced safety features lacking in older "legacy" aircraft.  Yet, the Cirrus safety record appears to be no better — and perhaps even worse — than that of the legacy fleet.  How can this be? 

I’ve written before that "risk homeostasis" may be one factor at work.  I suggested here and here that pilots might tend to use the advanced features of the aircraft to fly into more challenging conditions than they otherwise would.  While using the features in that fashion might increase the utility of the aircraft, it necessarily undercuts many of the features’ safety benefits.  

It turns out that that three human factors experts have published a short article (see below) on riskContinue Reading Cirrus Safety and Risk Homeostasis

I was sitting in my aircraft at the approach end of the runway at San Carlos, waiting to be issued an instrument clearance. A Beech BE65 Queen Air taxied down to the runway and took off ahead of me. Sadly, it crashed 30 seconds later into a lagoon north of the airport, killing the three aboard. 

Some questions raised in the various news accounts:

Why was the aircraft headed north on the “Bay Meadows” departure, when its ultimate destination was to the south?

I heard the pilot – or whomever was handling the radios — tell the ground controller that he was going to fly along the ridge line west of the airport and then to South County airport. TheContinue Reading Witness to the Final Flight of Queen Air N832B