zaitcev.mee.nu

According to Phoenix ABC 15, 3 small children were on board of a Twin Commander that smashed into Superstition Mountains yesterday night. There's a YouTube video from a security camera.

The first lesson is obviously the dangers of night VFR. But without removing the blame of the two grown idiots who thought it was a good idea to avoid the hassle of rerouting by dodging rocks in the dark, look at pictures posted to PoA. Dodging Bravo is difficult at the best of times, and rocks made it much worse. Frankly I am quite unimpressed with the "air grab" that is going on around "the nation's busiest airports". But what to do? We have the big airline businesses on the other side.

By the way, for some reason, journalists call the Twin Commander "small". It's not really.

QUICK UPDATE: The menacing floor of Bravo not always made people run into mountains. It was in fact lowered from 8000 to 5000 a few years ago. Here's a quote from AOPA letter, objecting to the "air grab":

East Valley Airspace [proposal] Flawed

AOPA is opposed to lowering the floor of the Class B sector over the East Valley area from the current 8,000-foot floor down to 5,000 feet msl. The TRACON's proposed floor of 5,000 feet extending to 25 nautical miles will not only severely hamper GA's ability to transition the Phoenix airspace to the east but is being proposed to allow PHX arrivals to descend lower on visual approaches to parallel downwinds -- the very scenario that when educating the surrounding Phoenix communities, the FAA claimed would NOT OCCUR.

Between the Superstition Mountains to the east and Falcon Field (FFZ) Class D to the west, there is literally nowhere for GA pilots to transition on the East side of PHX. And just as the TRACON and ATC heard repeatedly in the public airspace meetings and acknowledged during a telcon with AOPA in early May, the lack of GA services available from the Phoenix TRACON makes it impossible to transit within the Class B airspace area. Furthermore, the TRACON's proposal will not permit GA pilots to fly at least 2,000 feet over the Superstition Mountains Wilderness Preserve, which would be against FAA's very own guidance as spelled out in Advisory Circular, AC 91-36. [...]

But the lowering was implemented anyway, because it saves fuel for big airlines. This is how your government kills you.

UPDATE: Rob reposted to Facebook.

UPDATE 2011/11/29: Here's an article by Jim Walsh in Arizona Republic:

Ian Gregor, an FAA spokesman, said he cannot comment on specific crashes but said general-aviation pilots can request clearance from control towers to enter the so-called Class Bravo airspace when necessary.

True enough, we can request. But then quite often we hear "Remain clear of Class Bravo". Last time I received that reply, controller added: "I don't have time to deal with you." It was in DEN Bravo, not PHX, but same principle applies.

Mike Huhn, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator, said he is examining the airspace-redesign issue as one of many potential contributing factors in the collision.

"They are all correct statements. Therein lies the fingerpointing,'' Huhn said.

Mr. Huhn is right, and my own post above borders on fingerpointing.

UPDATE: NTSB report for N690SM is WPR12FA046, November 23, 2011.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 02:21 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 555 words, total size 4 kb.