A friend has a new Private pilot certificate. He is planning a 4-hour round-trip helicopter journey, in one day, to pick up his daughter from college. With him and his daughter on board there will be two empty seats in the machine on the way back. I encouraged him to take a junior flight instructor, who would be anxious to add hours to his or her logbook, along for the ride. Here’s a slightly edited version of my follow-up email explaining the advice (from a 4000-hour pilot with an ATP certificate):
Though I was not concerned about your ability to do the trip safely, I personally try to offer a two-pilot crew to any passenger if I am able to do so. That is really the cornerstone of airline safety. Let’s assume that a pilot makes a serious mistake once every 100 hours. Sufficient numbers of these mistakes are unrecoverable that we have the accident rate in R44s that we have (http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/11nall.pdf says it is between 6 and 7 per 100,000 hours for both non-commercial helicopters and airplanes). If you have two pilots and the mistakes are not correlated, the probably of both pilots making a mistake during the same hour is very low (1 in 10,000 hours). So in theory the chance of an accident should be 100X lower. In practice http://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safetystudies/SS0101.html makes it seem that the risk of an accident is about 24X lower in FAR 121 operations [scheduled airline; always two pilots] than for GA [generation aviation]. So there are some things that apparently aren’t uncorrelated or due to the pilots. But still I can think of a lot of times when a copilot has helped me and/or pointed out a mistake.
Phil,
I’m curious to know how a co-pilot in a helicopter is of much value other than to provide extra eyes and another opinion as to a go or no-go weather situation. As a licensed rotorcraft pilot, I know firsthand how unstable helicopters are compared to fixed wing aircraft and thus I wonder how much help a co-pilot would be in an actual in-flight emergency.
Typically, once out of control, there is no recovering a helicopter in comparison to an airplane.
Not a pilot myself, but a lifelong aviation “fan” now aged 80, and regular reader of NTSB accident reports (perhaps too biasing a source), I wonder about the wisdom of flying the family.
Surgeons do not operate on their close kin. Nor GPs (family doctors) take care of theirs. Should pilots take responsibility for the safety of theirs in the air?\
I would not!
B
Mark: How is a co-pilot helpful? A high-time pilot in Australia not too long ago lifted off into a hover. He discovered the door of his R44 was open. Rather than setting the helicopter back down and dealing with the door, he attempted to close the door while hovering. A rotor blade hit the ground as an unusual attitude developed. The ground pushing on the mast (indirectly) ruptured a fuel tank (this helicopter did not have the bladders installed) and the helicopter burst into flames before the skids hit the ground (all captured on mobile phone video). I don’t think that would have happened with a co-pilot on board (since probably the pilot would have transferred control prior to monkeying with the door and/or the copilot would have made some cyclic inputs to keep the helicopter level). Wire strikes and other encounters with obstacles are common. An extra set of eyes increases the chance of seeing the obstacle. Fuel exhaustion is common. A copilot doesn’t have anything better to do than look at the fuel gauges. Garmin 430s are common and have the potential to take a pilot’s attention away from aircraft attitude for a lengthy period of time. A copilot eliminates the possibility of loss of control while programming the Garmin.
Bernie: A pilot is supposed to be manipulating the controls of the machine, not of the passengers! So I don’t think that the analog to surgeons is apt. What does seem to be true is that a passenger with a fixed destination and arrival time/date can add risk to a flight (see JFK, Jr., for example) by adding a constraint. I don’t think it matters if that passenger is a family member or not (unless the family member gets on the pilot’s nerves!). Training flights at the local airport are always safer than flights made for the purpose of getting somewhere because they are easier to reschedule.
I recently did a significant cross-country with a co-pilot for the first time, and even though he has as little time as I do, it was such a vastly better experience that I almost don’t want to fly solo again.
Not only could one focus exclusively on flying the airplane while the other managed navigation and radios, but it was unquestionably a better decision-making environment.
There was a point during a very gusty, turbulent approach where I could tell that he was 100% focused on getting the airplane on the ground. So focused, in fact, that I think he didn’t appreciate how dangerous the wind shear was — and as we weren’t stable crossing the threshold, I called the go-around. It was absolutely the right call, and he thanked me for it afterwards.
Do I have superior judgment? I doubt it very much. Rather, my only job on that approach was to sit quietly, process everything that happened, and notice details. Not to mention that as PNF, I had no pressure (perceived or real) to “prove myself” to a fellow pilot in very testing conditions.
Having often taken friends on Boston tours from Hanscom, there is not a lot to do with the setting up the Garmin. You can set KBOS as the desination inbound before you takeoff and easily set KBED as the destination outbound (Direct/Nearest) if you really care to. The radio frequencies are already stored and selected from the cyclic. However the transponder is a different story. You will have to enter a code given to you during the flight, probably ident, and then switch back to 1200 on the way out. It is easy to spend a minute or two to teach the front seat passenger how to do this while reminding them not to touch anything else and they will actually feel that they have done something important. I also give them the task of holding the Boston helicopter chart.
On other flights, fixed wing or rotary, other front seat pilot or non-pilot occupant can be given similar tasks and is really a good idea for things like Angel Flights to deal with the other passengers. This all comes under the concept of Cockpit Resource Management (CRM).
Tom: You just described the easiest possible flight. You took off and landed at your home airport where you’ve been operating for decades. It was a sunny day without much wind (otherwise why would anyone enjoy a Boston tour). You flew a route that you’d flown dozens of times before. You did not, I hope, need the Garmin to navigate down Route 2 towards the skyscrapers of Boston (plainly visible after about 30 seconds of climbing from Bedford). You would not have needed to determine whether or not you were in controlled airspace and, if so, the radio frequency for that controller. This is the kind of flight that a student with 20 hours of training could do so I don’t think it is surprising that you didn’t feel the need to have an additional certificated pilot on board. [How this kind of 30-minute round-trip from the local airport relates to the 4-hour round-trip cross-country of the original posting I am not sure!]
Phil,
What about the 2009 Maryland crash that killed four souls in an R44, three of which I believe were CFI’s? Those guys all decided to try a cross country trip in poor weather conditions that resulted in them striking a wire while trying to fly beneath the ever lowering clouds aka scud-running I’d say one pilot would have been much more likely to turn down that trip, but three experienced pilots thought it was worth the chance,
I agree there are times a co-pilot is a good idea in a helicopter, I’m just not certain that’s always the case.
Your newly minted PP taking a long cross country could surely use the help.
The point was that no matter what a flight may be, you can always use a helping hand and practice CRM. A CFI along for the ride is not a bad thing if they are willing to go for free and remember that to add hours to their logbook they have to be acting in the role of an instructor and also take on the liability if something goes wrong. I believe that a logbook entry would also be required.
Even after decades of flying, I like to assume that any flight could be the one that becomes the most challenging. What if on this short flight around Boston something happens that closes the airport to which you are returning? What if there is some issue with the aircraft?
Mark: Good point. If you have more resources/protections available and you are a human being you may just use those resources and protections to take on additional risk (do a google search for “Condoms and seat belts” and grab the classic Lancet paper as a PDF). That’s why we should all stay home on the sofa and send our children to University of Phoenix online!
If I were to purchase a new computer server for our corporation, I look for a number of redundant components. From there I add the server to a cluster of other servers. From there the cluster is part of a larger cluster in the cloud that allows the server to provide the data regardless of what happens. I could not imagine a world without this cloud infrastructure and I could not imagine somebody turning down the chance to add redundancy to their helicopter flight.
I do hope he is not passing on the other passenger in order to leave room and weight to haul back his daughter’s materials from her dorm room. Those materials are replaceable. The decisions you make in the air often are not.
JJD – Wishin’ he could go….
A co-pilot is helpful for any flight if for no other reason than to catch non cognitive errors (slips) made by the pilot. An example is the father and son flight of a seaplane out west that flipped over on landing with tragic results because the (experienced) pilot did not raise the wheels.
Phil, I concur with having the co-pilot. As an Army aviator, we always fly dual pilot even if the aircraft is considered a single-pilot airframe. If nothing else, the second pilot prevents the cutting of corners and complacency. Whether it’s just backing you up with the checklist, reading the checklist items during an EP, or navigating and managing the radios while the other flies. Besides, I enjoy having a second pilot because all too often, when I fly, I’m focused on staying ahead of the aircraft and when I’m the extra eyes I get to enjoy the view that originally drew me to aviation in the first place!
I live in Newton, MA, a mostly affluent suburb just west of boston
sunday summer mornings, I like to read the paper in thebackyard, which is very quiet, except for the annoying whine of light aircraft
Question: Why is my right to quiet trumped by the right of light aircraft pilots to make noise ?
Or, more precisely, why is the right of 10s of thousands of people to peace and quiet trumped by the right of a < 100 pilots to make nearly continuous noise ?
why are my rights so belittled ?
Ezra: Not related to the original posting, but I will answer you anyway… the answer is government regulation. Under standard Common Law you have an absolute right to clean water, unpolluted soil, and a noise-free backyard. So until about 1900 you could go to court and sue a company that was polluting the river next to your house or making noise that disturbed you. The court would then issue and injunction and the polluter or noise maker would have to stop unless they got your agreement, e.g., by paying you. But the government decided to take away your right to sue on the grounds that it would slow down commerce. Instead of your common law right you now have wise regulators sitting in Washington who will decide how filthy is too filthy for the river and how low airplanes can fly or how much noise they can make.
So if airplane noise is bother you, you can travel down to Washington, D.C. to talk to Congress and the FAA. Your voice will be heard along with the voices of Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, American Airlines, JetBlue, the manufacturers and operators of Gulfstream business jets (including Warren Buffett), et al. The process does sometimes work in the ground-based complainant’s favor. For example, Walt Disney Corporation was able to effectively secure ownership of the airspace above its theme parks. The goal was to prevent banner-towing aircraft from passing overhead but in fact the federal government gave them the right to exclude all aircraft. Major League Baseball and Football secured similar rights.
Phil,
I thought TFR’s were first established after 9-11 for MLB and NFL games.
I recall attending MLB games before 9-11 and seeing banner towing planes regularly.
Seven: Restrictions specifically against banner towing planes had been long sought by MLB, NFL, and big universities that get substantial revenue from football games. They had been rejected by the FAA on the grounds that airspace belongs to the public and could not be transferred to a private commercial interest (such as MLB or the NFL). After 9-11, MLB and NFL donated substantial sums to Congress which then pressured the FAA to restrict all airplanes on the grounds of “security”.
[Unlike presidential flight restrictions, which come with fighter jets to shoot down/chase away Cessnas, the stadium flight restrictions are simply a published regulation. Pilots are supposed to do their own research to find out when games are occurring and then avoid the stadiums on pain of being hassled by the FAA and maybe having their licenses suspended. How this would deter a terrorist is unclear, since obviously our Saudi, Egyptian, Lebanese, and Emirati guests who carried out the 9-11 attacks were not concerned about their multiple FAR violations (flying aircraft over 12,500 lbs. without a type rating, acting as pilot in command of a turbojet under FAR 121 (scheduled airline service) without a type rating or an ATP, flying lower than 1000′ above a congested area, flying closer than 500′ to buildings, operating in Class A airspace without following a clearance, operating in Class B airspace without complying with ATC instructions, FAR 91.13 careless and reckless operation, etc.). It does deter banner-towing operators, though, which is what the MLB and NFL owners had been seeking for a long time.]