NTSB Says a Downdraft Killed Steve Fossett

jd writes "The National Transportation Safety Board has now released the text of its examination (full narrative available) into the crash of Steve Fossett's aircraft on Sept 3rd, 2007. It concludes that downdrafts were the likely cause of the crash, dragging the plane into the mountain with such force that, even at full power, it would have been impossible to escape the collision. Pilots experienced in the area report that those winds can rip the wings off aircraft; and Mark Twain remarked that they could roll up a tin house 'like sheet music.' One must wonder why such a skilled aviator was taking a gamble with such hostile conditions, given that he was looking for a flat stretch of land to race cars on, but that is one mystery we shall probably never know the answer to."

One must wonder ...

[qoncept]

One must wonder ...

...how pilots experienced in the area and are still alive know that these downdrafts can rip the wings off an airplane?

Can a Slashdot pilot tell us . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

When you register your flight, does the FAA (or whoever) give warnings about dangerous areas?

During your flight does the ATC tell you, "Be careful, you are about to enter a dangerous area?"

I guess what I want to know, is if he had a chance to know what the local pilots knew.

Re:Can a Slashdot pilot tell us . . .

[ColdWetDog]

Your basically correct. This page [wikipedia.org] has a nice brief explanation. Even if Fosset were flying IFR (Instrument Flight Rules), where the pilot would file a flight plan, it's not clear that a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) [wikipedia.org] (sexist assumption noted) would mention winds over the Sierra Nevada. Now, one of the pilots the investigators talked to who had flown over the general area that day said the weather was "weird". Perhaps, if enough pilots had mentioned some unusual conditions, the local controllers might have issued a NOTAM, but this is pretty much in the middle of nowhere so it may not have attracted much attention.

Re:Mountain Wave Action

[smellsofbikes]

Mountain flying is technically challenging -- as challenging for an experienced pilot, as just flying is for a person who doesn't know how to fly. There are a lot of things you do when you train in mountain flying to minimize your risk, but if you're in a small piston-engined plane, there are a lot of places where you just don' t know what the best plan is, so you have to make a quick decision and hope you were right.
First off: fly down valleys, not up them. That's not always possible, though: you sort of have to fly up one valley to go over the pass and fly down the next. Another is you don't fly up the middle of a valley. You fly up one side, so that you have room to make a quick turn if you find that you're in a narrow bit of the valley and you need to get out. But here's the tradeoff: there are sometimes strong upslope/downslope winds along the valley sides, so by preserving your ability to turn, you might run into an intense downdraft. (Generally, winds are faster, the higher you go, but in valley conditions, downslope winds known as foehn or scirroco winds tend to be intense right around the valley itself, particularly if you're flying up an old glacial valley with hanging valleys intersecting it: there are these big cold air currents flowing down them just like water would and pouring down into the main valley.)
Likewise, once you're in a downdraft you have to make some hard decisions. You pull the nose up to best angle of climb, full power, and you hold it. What if you're aiming right towards a big rock? If you turn, your stall speed increases, and you're already fairly close to stall speed, so you have to weigh reducing your angle of climb (which in a microburst or downdraft means increasing your speed towards the ground) to make the turn, vs. trying to ride out your current heading and hoping you'll miss that big object. You don't know, a priori, which one is going to work. Maybe you'll break out of the downdraft. Maybe it's worse over there where you're about to turn. That's where skill, experience, and lots and lots of luck come into play.
Where I live, sometimes the clouds from the mountain waves are visible in long rows at over 25,000 feet elevation, in lines for a hundred miles downwind of the mountains themselves, and every one of those is strong enough to shake a plane like a ragdoll. A B-52 bomber had its vertical tail ripped off and lost part of a wing [derkeiler.com] in clear air turbulence 5000 feet above the nearest mountain.

Re:Um, obvious speculation?

[Lil'wombat]

There are BOLD pilots
There are OLD pilots

But there are no OLD BOLD pilots

Re:Can a Slashdot pilot tell us . . .

[superdana]

This is a curious description of how aviation works in the U.S. While it's certainly possible for GA flights to "do their own thing" if they stay out of any airspace more restrictive than Class E, this is by no means representative of GA as a whole. A Cessna flying under instrument rules will be in constant contact with ATC. Even if you're just flying under visual rules, you have to get landing and takeoff clearances at controlled airports, you need a clearance to enter Class B airspace, and you need permission to transition through Classes C and D. Outside of controlled airspace, a pilot flying under visual rules can voluntarily request radar advisories. And at the extreme end, corporate and charter jets are considered GA too, and they fly in Class A airspace every day.

But to answer the original question, you're not required to file a flight plan if you're flying under visual rules. If you choose to file, the FAA isn't required to give you a weather briefing at that time, but most pilots ask for one.

Every pilot in California and Nevada knows

[wsanders]

I used to fly out of the Bay Area, and the club I flew with specifically prohibited us from flying over the Sierra without supplemental training. Every pilot in California and Nevada is usually trained of the danger, not to cross the Sierra without several thousand fleet of ground clearance.

And when I took hang gliding lessons, there were many many stories of pilots who tried to fly the huge lift coming off the eastern slope, only to return to earth under a parachute with pieces of their broken gliders falling all around them.

Mountain flying can be tricky - one of my flight instructors was killed several years ago in the Rockies, flew into the end of a canyon. He was not a risk taker, and had been regularly flying between the Bay Area and Lake Tahoe for many years,