this is Victoria and she was a flight instructor taking a student on his very first flight unfortunately somet

Question

this is Victoria and she was a flight instructor taking a student on his very first flight unfortunately something went terribly wrong and they crashed just a few seconds after getting airborne and tragically Victoria did not survive that's why today I'm going to talk about the real pilot mistake that got Victoria killed however that's not the only story that we're going to talk about because I also want to share with you the story of Alexis she was a student pilot with an incred future ahead of her but unfortunately she died when her flight instructor made a tragic mistake during a routine training flight now these are both two very different stories and they both have very tragic endings but I felt it was important to share them both because they both involved flight instructors uh and uh and students and I think there's some really good lessons that we can take away from all this I'm Hoover welcome to your pilot debrief again this is a live stream something new that we're trying out here for a little bit and if you could please if you have questions drop them in the uh the live chat and I'll try to get to those at the end uh but if you're watching this on the replay I'm going to try to keep this structured almost like a regular video so you guys can get the most out of it as possible as we walk through all this so I want to start with Victoria's story and give you a little bit of background on what's Happening Here uh if you're not familiar with her tragedy this took place back on October 6 of 2022 it was at the Newport News Williamsburg International Airport which is just to the north of norfol Virginia and it's an area I'm somewhat familiar with because you know I did a lot of my flying out of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base you know flying strike Eagles and this airport you can see on the map here it's right next to Langley Air Force Base so headquarters for air combat command for the Air Force and I remember when this story came out there was a lot of speculation and rumors about what might have taken place so I kind of want to walk through some of that as we do this and just for reference the flight school where Victoria worked is located at the North End of the airport they've got two runways there and this was supposed to be a routine training flight Victoria was in the right seat up front and her student was in the left seat but there was also a third person that was along for the flight sitting in the back and when the news when the news were agencies or or um the news companies were reporting on this initially they talked a lot about how you know it was two students on the flight and it's like well why would you have two students on the flight and and this and that and so we're going to get to that as we go through these people here in a minute but they taxied out for takeoff uh from Runway 20 which is uh as you can see depicted on the image here so very short taxi uh out to the runway getting ready to go now as soon as they got Airborne the aircraft entered a steep nose high pitch attitude it got about 200 feet in the air and they crashed off the side of the runway and there's video footage of that that we're going to take a look at later but for now one of the first things that came out with all of this was the Audio I know a lot of you guys follow along with live ATC uh it they're very good about getting the audio of these tragedies out there right away and it helps us to kind of figure out what might have happened uh in certain instances and this was the radio call that everybody was talking about 883 Runway 20 cleared for takeoff caution wake turbulence for the intersection from the departing Fighters right turn on course is approved now it's not a perfect radio call but what the controller is essentially telling Victoria is that there's some fighter aircraft they're taking off from the other Runway and at the inter section where those two run runways meet you know there might be some wake turbulence that she needed to be aware of and so we know that Victoria taken off from Runway two we've got the fighters taken off from Runway 25 uh you know going that direction and those where those two runways intersect you know wake turbulence is definitely something that you need to be aware of as a pilot one of the things that I talked about in a video a while back was a a student pilot that crashed due to the wake turbulence from a helicopter that he was Landing behind because I think wake turbulence from helicopters is something we don't talk a lot about but in this instance it was a big issue that was that was brought up and people were talking about and I kind of you know for somebody with a lot of Aviation experience and for those of you that are pilots out there you can take a look at this and we can see that based on where the crash site is you know wake turbulence was not really going to be a factor in this because the aircraft crashed before she got to that intersection of those two runways so it was never an issue and that's why again it's so important not to speculate on these things when when they come out in the news because until you start digging into the details you don't really have that full picture about everything that took place now that the NTSB you know was able to rule that out pretty quickly they started taking a look at the instructor herself and I wanted to share her story because I think for you know whether you're a student pilot or instructor or retired pilot you know wherever you're at or even just an aviation Enthusiast um it's it's a story that I think a lot of people can relate to you know reflecting back especially you know for those of us that are that are pilots today Victoria documented everything on Instagram and I think it just really showed her true love for Aviation and how much she was committed committed to to doing this and making this a full-time thing her journey began in May of 2019 so you know almost three years prior about three years prior to when this tragedy happened she started working on her private pilot license she ended up getting that about two months later uh at the end of June of 2019 and that meant she was most likely doing this full-time flying you know three to five days a week uh putting those hours in you know really really busting her butt to make it happen uh because typically what what you see in some of these tra IES is uh you know people that are doing this on a part-time basis because they've got careers and other things going on and so it typically takes a little bit longer she eventually got her instrument rating about nine months later in March of 2020 and then she made this post on Instagram in January of 2021 it was another uh nine months you know gone by showing that she had finally got 200 hours of Total flight time and then obtained her commercial certificate in March of 2021 with the desire now to you know pursue becoming a flight instructor uh by November of 2021 she was taking her written exams there's two written exams you have you have to take for that and then you know a few months later she ends up becoming a certified flight instructor in April of 2022 uh at the time of the crash she was 22 years old certified flight instructor she had about 330 hours of Total flight time but only about 75 hours as a new flight instructor but I think again like I said earlier it's definitely a journey that a lot of us can relate with you know going going through the process of becoming you know a pilot and then make making those career progression moves along the way the other thing that was obviously something the NTSB was going to take a look at was the student because remember I said the news was reporting there were two students uh on the plane with her the truth is there's only one the student in the front seat and in the left seat his name was Bo and I'm not his last name's not important I couldn't I know what his last name is but I can't pronounce it so I just decided to to take it off there but I couldn't find an image of him and that's that's not really important either you know what we need to talk about is this was a guy he was 18 years old he was a freshman at the the university he wanted to be an airline pilot but he had never flown before and the what I read about him to me it made it sound like he hadn't been on any aircraft before not even on a commercial aircraft and we know that he was very nervous about conducting this flight because this this was going to be his very first time flying and especially for him to be in a position where he can control the aircraft so a lot of nerves going into that and that's one of the reasons why there was another passenger on board the aircraft the passenger ended up being a really good friend of his uh or or a friend of his his name was Ashton now Ashton was he he was a student but uh he was a student at the University but he had he had a private pilot license that he had already obtained and so he was a student that was working on his instrument rating now this wasn't a training or an instructional flight for him it was he was just mainly on the flight just to provide that support uh to his friend Bo and make him feel a little bit better about flying now thankfully somehow they both managed to survive the crash and that's how the NTSB was eventually able to kind of piece together everything that happened on this uh on this tragedy the aircraft they were flying was a 1984 cesno 172 again you've got the three of them in there and I don't know what size individuals you know bow and Ashton were uh but we know that weight and balance was not a factor that was contributing to the crash the NTSB didn't mention it at all they they didn't talk about it at all uh and usually when that happens it's because they they dismiss it right away in terms of whether it's a factor or not one of the things that they looked at though was you know the sequence of events that took place all the way up to the takeoff and then you know how they got into that situation where the aircraft is crashing just a few seconds after takeoff when it comes to the pre-flight as they're getting ready to go out to uh the runway and and getting the aircraft ready and stuff you know remember this is Bose's First Flight it's supposed to be an instructional flight so there there's a lot to take in a lot to digest there but there are some very simple objectives that instructors have for a student pilot going on their first flight and Victoria did a pretty good job of covering these uh based on the interviews that they had with uh with boow and Ashton after she talked about here hey here's how we're going to do a pre-flight here's how you're going to use a checklist here's how you're going to adjust your seat belt your shoulder harness that sort of thing and the plan was to let B perform the takeoff and we're going to talk a little bit more about that later because that's something that's definitely going to be a factor in in what happened I'm going to show you a video of the takeoff um but before I show you that video I want to let you know it's first it's very grainy uh video quality because of the resolution of the camera so it's a little bit hard to see and oops let me pause it here and then uh I'm G to cut it off right before the uh the impact because there's not necessarily anything of value that we're going to get out of watching that but what I want you to pay attention to is how quickly uh this happens you're going to see the air craft right over here it's just above my face on the screen here and then uh you're going to see it kind of go above the tree line and we'll take a look now you can see how fast that happened one of the big issues that the NTSB looked at when you know they saw some of this initial footage was whether B and Victoria's seat was locked in place or whether you know maybe there was an issue with with the seat rail uh or something like that because as soon as you start pulling back on the controls you know if if your seat's not locked into place and that seat start sliding back it's very easy for you to just grab on that control wheel and pull back even harder you know getting you you into that excessive nose High attitude and as I was researching that issue I wanted to share this just brief side note here uh because I came across this this other story this is Brenda and she was 56 years old she's a certified flight instructor with 18800 hours and she was also doing you know a routine training flight with a student um and during takeoff they ended up getting excessively nose High and the aircraft rolled inverted or rolled and crashed inverted right on takeoff now in that situation I think it was just relevant to share because the NTSB determined it was her failure to ensure that her seat was properly secured before takeoff that resulted in that loss of control and and one of the contributing factors was the lack of there was like a secondary seat stop that was supposed to be installed that wasn't installed and you know it just goes to show you that no matter you know what you're doing sometimes you know we have all these holes in the Swiss cheese that line up that contribute to the ultimate uh reason for the crash but with Brenda's case you know it's just a very simple basic mistake hey she didn't check to make sure her seat was locked in place the seat slid all the way back and then that's it you know and and it's just heartbreaking uh to hear that you know somebody with that much experience uh could miss something like that and it could turn out so tragically and like I said as I was looking at Victoria's case that that's the reason I wanted to share this and bring this up because I knew and everybody else knew that that was going to be a very important thing for the NTSB to look at when they were uh looking at what happened to Victoria however you know they discovered that based on the the examination of the wreckage and thankfully they were being able to interview both Ashton and Bo they could determine that this the seats didn't move during the flight so that wasn't a factor that contributed to the crash now before I I talk to you about what the the real pilot mistake was that got her killed uh just be sure to stick around we're going to also remember talk about Alexis here in the second story now the probable cause when it comes to Victoria was that according to Ashton who remember he's the pilot rated passenger he's in the back seat he said before they took off Victoria told Bo that she's gonna tell him when to start pulling back on the control wheel during takeoff however Bo said he didn't remember that and he Al he also didn't remember if Victoria told him how they were going to perform the takeoff role Ashton also said that Victoria was on the controls during in the initial portion of the takeoff roll until they reached rotation speed and then she told B to go ahead and start pulling back on the control wheel and as Bo pulled back on the wheel or pulled back on the controls the airplane lifted off the Runway but he just kept pulling back and pulling back essentially until the aircraft stalled and there wasn't a lot of words exchange there because as you saw from the video it was just you know happened just like that there really wasn't a lot of time for her to react I think Ashton said or or either astronaut or both said they remember you know Victoria like you know kind of um expressing some you know um shock uh or or Screaming essentially you know out but you know wasn't able to uh to do anything in time and one of the big issues that I think is really the the the real pilot mistake in all this was that V you know neither Bo nor Ashton could remember Victoria providing any instruction about the positive transfer of flight controls so again it's you know very simple mistake hey you know she gave all this instruction everything was you know seemed to be going fine but you know you forget to do one thing and it just turns out so tragically and the NTSB concluded that you know even though she had done all that you know instruction beforehand just missing uh this one piece of critical instruction it led to her getting into a situation where she didn't really anticipate that both was going to keep pulling back on the controls as soon as they got Airborne now in my opinion you know positive transfer flight controls is a huge thing you know anytime you're flying whether you're flying with another pilot or an instructor or a passenger you've got to understand who is flying the aircraft there should never be any doubt and sometimes you know it's easy to get in a situation where you're having casual conversation you're hey can you watch this for you watch the controls for me for a minute or I'm going to do this or you're going to do that and then the next thing you know wait a minute who's flying the plane and who's doing what so you know you really need to think about that brief that thoroughly you know beforehand if you're gonna especially if you're an instructor flying with a student and I think for um Victoria remember she only had what you know 75 hours as a new flight instructor so it's not something that she probably had ever experienced with other students that she had flown with and my guess is none of the other instructors had potentially warned her that this might be something that she might have to deal with on a flight and it's just you know it's just really sad and and tragic that it turned out the way it did um in this situation and again as you saw from the video I think the other thing to just remember is that in that takeoff environment when you know you're generating lift and it's just so critical to be able to make you know to to have effective communication when you're flying with somebody else uh and to know what you're going to do either when something like this happens or when you get into an emergency situation uh right on takeoff because you're you're low to the ground you don't have a lot of time to react and you got to make a decision quickly about about how to process what's happening and how to take the corrective action necessary to keep the aircraft safely flying even if that means you know in her situ situation you know karate chopping his arms off the controls or you know if she couldn't over overpower him with you know just full pushing full forward on the on the control wheel just to to break the angle of attack uh to to reduce the angle of attack low enough to keep the aircraft flying you know you may still crash but at least this way you know you're not developing into a full stall uh crash scenario so and just something to think about uh in this type of situation now that brings us to the uh the story of Alexis and I think this was also a very tragic story that was worth sharing you know because you see these situations where people want to become Pilots or or in Victoria's case you know she be she had just become a new flight instructor and now with the story of Alexis you have uh a brand new student pilot and then the the guy to our left is is the flight instructor that we're going to talk about this is a picture of the aircraft after they were able to pull it out of the river um where they crashed and but unfortunately uh neither of them were able toh survive this story took place on the 18th of June 2021 it's uh not too far from Jacksonville uh you can see Jacksonville International uh right below my face here on the map but um it happens at the uh Fernandina I think is how you pronounce that municipal airport and you've got David and Alexis doing a routine training flight they were supposed to go do some training over the St Mary's uh St Mary's River just Northwest of the Airfield there you can see the airport here uh with the location of the flight school the instructor on this flight was held in very high regard you know he's 66 years old he was a retired Naval aviator uh he had quite a bit of experience uh as a flight instructor with about 4,000 hours of flight time now when they go do the interviews with you know other Pilots that had flown with him and uh and previous students that had flown with him what they found was the chief instructor at the flight school where David worked out pre previously said he was very safety conscious he was very professional and I think one of the more tragic parts to this story that came out was they discovered that this was supposed to be David's very last day of flying you know he had told this was actually his second Flight of the day and on the First Flight of the day that's what he had told the student on that first flight said hey this is today's my last day of flying because I'm going to be retiring uh to spend some more time with his wife the student flying with him Alexis was 18 years old she graduated high school in May and the accident happened in June so she had only been out of high school maybe a couple weeks and had a lot to look forward to she had about 21 hours of Total flight time she was described as a very sharp student always prepared took flying very seriously and we know that she had a full scholarship to go to Embry Riddle so a lot of stuff to look forward to now according to the investigation Alexis had actually started flying while she was still in high school and she had been taking lessons at another flight school where she had previously soloed and a a diamond da20 but then she started taking lessons with David and at this at this new flight school and this was her fifth flight with David the aircraft they were flying was a 1971 Cessna 150 and once again just like the story with Victoria they were able to determine there was nothing mechanically wrong with the aircraft that would have contributed to the crash as I mentioned just a second ago David had flown one flight earlier in the day with a different student and in the interview they had with that student they discovered that during that flight uh they practiced uh some standard rate turns uh they practice low altitude engine failure and recoveries uh and then they also practiced stalls but they practice those stalls between 1,00 and 12200 feet now the reason this is important is because when we look at the Private Pilot for airplane category Airman certification standards so kind of your your guidelines here for or the standards that you need to meet for for private Pilots those certification standards tell you that you know you need to select an entry altitude that allows it task to be completed no lower than 1500 ft the NTSB asked the student that had flown with David earlier in the day you know hey you said you're doing these stalls and these other things you know, to 12200 feet talk to me a little bit more about that and and what your history is of flying with David and they went interviewed some other students as well to to figure out what happened you know and are you sure that was the altitude you were at and that sort of thing and they deter you know the student said well listen there are some instances where we and previous flights where we might have climbed as high as 1,800 ft but we never really got any higher than that and definitely on the day of the crash we were definitely down at that thousand to to to 12200 feet so now the the NTSB has has a pretty good idea of of what might have contributed to the crash you know by you've got an instructor that's may be executing some low altitude or some Maneuvers at an altit itude lower than than what he should have been and I know everybody's going to kind of have their different take on what altitude you should be to start these these Maneuvers I know most people will say you know 3,000 or 4,000 feet you know the reality is the standard say 1500 feet you could start that maneuver you know at600 feet and if you complete it by, 1500 you pass the standards but but the question is why would you try to do that so you know you're putting yourself in an EnV enironment where you're reducing um you know your ability to react and respond to things that might happen with the aircraft U by by intentionally conducting stalls or or slow flight at at a lower altitude than necessary now the radar data from the flight they didn't have uh the aircraft didn't have adsb data so these were just different uh this was the radar composite track that the NTSB was able to put together so it's a little hard to assess from this directly what happened but we know that there was nothing eventful that took place on the departure and then route to the working area uh the departure happened around 1056 local and then the crash happened about 9 minutes later uh o over the uh over the river up to the north we know that once they got established up there they were doing some 360 Dee turns those turns were being conducted at an altitude between 800 a th000 ft and the last radar return the aircraft was at 800 feet above the ground so again well below the minimum altitude that the aircraft should have been when conducting you know intentional slow flight or or stalls that sort of thing ultimately the NTSB determined that the probable cause in this uh as they looked at everything that was feeding into this they discovered that the flight school that davood was working for had had a written policy that their minimum altitude for stalls and other airor was 1500 feet AGL they learned that most of the instructors at the school perform their stalls in slow flight and Maneuvers at a much higher altitude than 1500 feet AGL But ultimately David had a history not uh just with the the previous student that day but with other students of conducting airor below 1500 feet and I don't say this to try to disparage David or or paint him out to be you know a reckless instructor or anything like that I think sometimes you know I've talked about normalization of deviants before and that's where you have the a situation where essentially you know maybe at one point you had a standard for where where you were going to or the out Studio you were going to conduct the Maneuvers at and then maybe one day weather forced you oh instead of 3,000 feet we got some clouds that we're going to do a little bit lower and then you're like okay well maybe we'll do it a little bit lower next time because I'm I'm realizing I can save time on my flight I don't have to spend time climbing up as high altitude we can knock this out a lot quicker uh I think there was also some discussion in this investigation about how David really tried to focus or to get these students to understand that you know this is a a critical uh environment to be in when you're lower altitude and something happens with the aircraft so I want you to be able to to recognize that and be able to recover the aircraft and I know he uh According to some of the interviews he talked to his students about you know when they're flying around low altitude make sure you have a little bit of excess air speed in in certain situations where if if you're not within gliding distance of a place where you can land you know if you have a little bit of excess air speed you can trade that air speed for altitude to climb up higher and now reassess your situation reestablish Glide speed and then find a place to put the aircraft down so again I think you know I don't know because I don't I don't know David personally but I know that from everybody that knew him that had flown with him they had nothing but good things to say about him so you know it's really tough to to humanize these these tragedies you know we want to look at the human factors that are involved and nobody goes out there deliberately wanting to kill themselves or or or kill the person that they're flying with you know this guy was set to retire so I obviously just a very tragic situation uh in the story here with David and Alexis and ultimately the NTSB determined that you know it was David's decision to conduct that slowlight training at an altitude below the flight schools minimum altitude led to um whether he I don't know what they couldn't determine if he was practicing stalls or practicing slow flight but it put him in a in an environment where uh the aircraft ended up stalling and his delayed remedial action uh led to you know them crashing into the river uh unfortunately this you know it was determined that they uh died on impact um you know that happen so I know there's a lot of student Pilots out there that watch these videos I I don't want you to to walk away from this thinking that this is G this is something that happens to you you know when I talk about these tragedies just keep in mind that there are so many safe Pilots out there and so many Pilots doing the right thing uh and the safety record that we have in general you know in terms of the Aviation Community it's a really good safety record the things that I would say that are good takeaways uh from both of these tragedies are number one uh is complacency so don't ever become complacent whether you're a student pilot or an instructor or even if you're not a pilot at all I mean a lot of these lessons can also be applied to you know just just driving down the road it's so easy to become complacent in the things that we do and all it takes is one little mistake um and then the other thing is the you know especially on on the instructor side or for Pilots that have a lot more time is the normalization of deviants just understanding how you know stepping away from the standards which you set for yourself uh or or the standards which you're called to operate by and and sliding that standard lower and lower because hey well nothing happened this time so it's not going to happen the next time you get into those you you get into that pattern of doing that and ultimately it ends up you know a very tragic outcome so I know this was a little bit shorter live stream than normal but uh I wanted to hit both of those and then go ahead and open it up for questions and we'll go from there so I'll bring sticks up on stage here hey there um so I was getting a couple things down so one question that came up with respect to wake turbulence was what was the time interval between when the previous aircraft was taking off and when you would then be attempting your takeoff and I have the answer to that but I'll if you want to answer it I'll let you do that you you're talking about on the same Runway yeah yeah yeah so when you get a caution for Wake turbulence how much time should you leave between when you initiate your takeoff roll and when um your uh the other aircraft is that interval yeah I think I think Steve answered there two minutes um I it's going to depend on the aircraft category too you know so if you're a Cessna taking off behind a Airbus 350 you might want to wait a little bit longer uh right than taking off behind you know maybe a Lear jet or something um so so that's the big thing my my thing I would suggest is if you're ever in doubt or if you ever have a concern just tell tell the tower you're not ready you know don't ever get yourself forced into a situation where you end up making a bad decision um you can go back and look at the video on my Channel that I did of the um the student pilot in the helicopter and you can see the thumbnail looks like the uh the image of that um you know he kind of I think felt almost like he was talked into that situation where you know the helicopter was like oh don't worry about it we're just going to do this you know and you know and then he just kind of assumed he was going to be okay so if if there's ever a doubt in your mind just you know go around if you're if you're Landing or if you're um departing you know uh just just delay if you need to right yeah and my experience as well when you're dealing with a helicopter that you got to realize there so that's the entire weight of that helicopter is roughly the force that's coming out of that rotor system so um do not underestimate um the amount of R wash that's coming out from there and the heavier the helicopter the more rotor um vort vortices you're going to see and that can completely disrupt your lift and um cause a really bad day and also realize that helicopters can do non-standard Landing so while we may be in the pattern for a Runway you may also then be finding yourself going to a parallel taxi way or something like that so um yeah don't forget that they can do a lot of weird stuff well well yeah in this in the in the video I covered too like what was interesting was um it was I think it was a Blackhawk and he was he was Landing so he he made his approach to the numbers right at the beginning of the runway but then he hovered taxi down the runway right so you're still generating a significant amount of lift when you're doing that and and causing wake turbulence now if he had actually uh landed and and rolled you know like U you know yeah if your helicopter your op has wheels but even still you're still generating a lot of uh vortices a lot more than you are with a fixed Wing aircraft and a prop so yeah um so anyway so that was a that was question there was there was also a question that came up and I thought this was a pretty good one is at what point or maybe it was a question I was going to sort of propose you know so at what point do pilots do their risk actually go up so you get your private pilot's license and then there's a general hour window um where we tend to see a higher risk for mishaps and accidents I don't I I think that's kind of false you know um I don't know so when I I I did a good quick look on that and it's somewhere between 50 you know by some estimat is 50 to 300 hours yeah you know I think a lot of it's the mentality and how you approach it um so yeah I I've I've heard people refer to a certain window of hours as like The Kill Zone um where you're at the highest risk um I I think I've done a little bit of research on this a while back and I feel like I want to say that you know it's it's really it's not as black and white as what people think it is because we see that you know I mean you guys know from watching the videos on this channel like a lot of the tragedies I've covered these are you know all much older pilots who have thousands of hours of experience you know and every now and then it's it's it's a student pilot you know that actually I'll say very rarely it's it's it's a brand new pilot you know that I think you won't see the the kind of Reckless mistakes and other stuff with with the younger uh pilot somebody who doesn't have a lot of hours you see just like the you know they don't know what they don't know and we've talked about this before the Dunning Krueger effect how you know brand new pilot you you tend to overestimate your your skill capability um and underestimate the danger that you might be in for a given situation or or the threat that the weather might represent whereas on the flip side you know you've you've got you know the older Pilots that kind of um overestimate well I I don't know the right word for it but they're they're basically they're very confident what they're doing because they've done it for so long and and they underestimate I guess how much skill it takes to actually do what they're doing you know right so it's kind of like a curve yeah there's I think there's like a there's certain Gap that exists between you know competency and proficiency you know and you know competency being that you can routinely get into the aircraft and do the Maneuvers safely without an adver without having a you know a problem with it versus demonstrating that you're competent at one point in time so yeah I got I'm gonna throw a couple questions on here um about David's career I don't I don't know the fa standards didn't change during his career not that I'm aware of and he was um uh what one of the things I didn't mention about him he was a uh an a6e intruder um Bombadier naor he was in nfo I was looking when I was looking at his um flight suit his wings are nfo flight wings but he had he retired out of the the Navy in 1999 and then he had a significant amount of time uh as a commercial pilot uh and flight instructor so all those hours that I mentioned that that was all his as far as I'm aw flying hours yeah those were his you know as a rated pilot you know um but the regardless of whether the standards changed or not the school had a defined set of standards that he was supposed to be operating by and for some reason he wasn't you know so um so that that's unfortunate um I I think your point about um three-way transfer controls so in other words I have the controls you have the controls I have the controls yeah you know that so that that positive transfer closed loop communication is essential especially in the instructor environment um and it's surprising to me how often it's not practiced yeah and it really should be standard um do they even practice stall recovery at all yes you do practice stall recovery for student Pilots that's a very critical skill uh you have to know um 1500 foot stalls yeah I mean I wouldn't be doing them I mean you you could start that that um you could do your slow flight at 1500 feet and as long as you stay above 1500 feet you've met the standards you know um or I could start my like I said the I could start my power on stall or offall right at 1500 feet and as long as I'm you know do it exceptionally well and don't lose any altitude I'm fine but but but why like you know there there's just no reason give yourself that extra altitude uh when you can and then as far as I know flight instructors are not required to have any liability insurance now the flight schools that they operate for most likely are carrying some type of insurance I I don't know all the specifics on that though what's what's interesting and what was new to me was students when they now go start flight instruction they actually have to go get their own insurance um as part of like so my son started flight lessons he needs to he needed to get and obtain his own insurance policy um which I found interesting so yeah I I didn't have to do that in the 90s no um and then um there was also an interesting question that came up is like somebody brought up the question about how old why these planes are so old and you know why aren't there newer planes and is that contributing and so I don't know if you want to speak to that it's you know I'll get to that ju Just a second I hit this one here uh and I don't know that do younger instructors generally charge less than experienced I would say no um it it's gonna a lot of that's driven by the flight school specifically uh otherwise if you're not doing it through the flight school then it's going to be the negotiated rate you know if you're doing like one-on-one flight instruction you know so um the the question about the aircraft though because I I get that a lot of times is you know like well the problem is these planes are so old and it's just that's just the way aircraft are built you know but people need to realize these aren't like you know your they're not like cars you know uh they're very different in how they operate and not just how they operate but how they're maintained and then the requirements for annual inspections and and everything else you know uh compliance with directives and things like that to ensure uh the aircraft continue to operate in a safe and functional manner um and if we were to go back if you were to go back and look at all of the mishaps that I've covered on this channel I don't know that any of them were you know the main cause was a uh an air a malfunction with the aircraft now there might have been uh there's there's a couple where yep the pilot did everything he could something happened mechanically with the aircraft that led to a situation where the pilot had to respond and you know either run a checklist or perform the correct action to keep the aircraft flying safely and the pilot failed to do so either because they were too low altitude or because they weren't current or proficient uh with with their flying skills enough to actually be able to do that so those are the issues it's you know we still see to this day it's it's almost always pilot error you know right and if you're going to go out and do Maneuvers like slowlight or stalls and you know you the instructor haven't done them in a while then you should go get go out in the plane before you take a student out and you know practice them before you now trying to instruct and you know knock your cobwebs off so to speak yeah yeah and and and thanks for the Super Chat you know it it's hard like because you know you want to talk about the human factors involved but you also want to be respectful of of the family and I'll share a real quick story uh I this past week I was out at vid Summit uh which is where all like the the you bunch of YouTube creators go to learn from other creators you know stuff about YouTube and I sat down at a table with this with this gentleman you know shook his hand said hi hey what what do you do what do you do and uh pointed my shirt I'm like oh I'm pilot debrief you know I talk about Aviation mishaps and he's like oh and he like he started getting a little emotional he's said well you know I just lost some friends uh last month uh you know I was I was friends with some people that you know he's like he might have heard of them the the neans the Gospel family yeah yeah and I was like oh crap you know I'm like and I'm like like I just made a video on that you know and so as as I've said in other videos on this channel I think maybe in live streams before like I never want to say something in a video that I wouldn't feel comfortable saying to somebody you know face to face like as a friend or family member of somebody that survived the crash so we had a really good conversation about you know I told him like I did not want to cover that crash um you know right when um uh right when it happened just because there was you know stuff we still didn't know about it and it's it's so easy to speculate and you know I I don't I don't want to do that so that's why it took me some time to make sure I get was able to get as much information on it as I could and then also find another tragedy that was similar enough uh that had similar circumstances that I could talk to because that other tragedy was was what had all the information that I think we're going to find ultimately when the nean investigation is complete you know um so generally there's a there's an adage Within These mishaps that you know there's no new mishaps there's repeats of old mishaps and you don't have to dig too deep to to find similar similar patterns um within that and you know that's what we have to be aware of that's what we have to be looking for and it's up to us to police ourselves and that's why I think the whole concept of being an aviator is a vocation and not necessarily just um you know a hobby that we get into so yeah and this goes back to the earlier question but uh you know I in terms of when an airframe needs to be retired I think it's ultimately going to be a maintenance maintenance call you know on the structural wear and tear maybe one too many hard Landings you know um but it's that's ultimately part of the um inspection process on the aircraft and and for maintenance you know let the experts make that call and that's why like I think you know for a lot of um general aviation Pilots if you own your own aircraft you need to be you know working with somebody that's qualified to do the maintenance you know if you're not qualified to do that yourself sometimes you get you see these situations where an aircraft is overdue for an inspection you know and and that is a mechanical issue maybe that contributed to the crash but usually if if the Pilot's you know skimping out on the maintenance like there's there's other stuff going on too um you know in terms of the pilot behavior that contributes to the mishap um so there is let's see and actually I think those were all the ones that sort of stood out to me there was one interesting question that somebody asked about how do you get over a fear Heights when it comes to Flying and um the thing is it's going to be time in the aircraft and um and you know it's also you could try some other things like hypnosis and um you know also just you know a little bit of uh trying to work on you know getting yourself more centered and mindful and it's just it's time and repetition um is is the only thing that I could potentially recommend um the problem becomes if you start asking or thinking or considering medications obviously medications and flying uh don't work very well together so yeah okay well I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up I know like I said it was a little bit shorter live stream but I think those are two kind of important stories to cover and a little bit different you know flavor in terms of the the missp that was involved uh I want to thank everybody so much for your support if you guys want to support the channel head over to patreon and find me on patreon you can support me there or you can become a YouTube channel member or you can get yourself one of these cool av8 na commun communicate shirts on my website uh pilotbrief docomo for free uh and YouTube loves it when you watch more stuff on the channel and I appreciate it too so that's all I got appreciate yall great thanks thanks Hoover great job as always

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this is Victoria and she was a flight instructor taking a student on his very first flight unfortunately something went terribly wrong and they crashed just a few seconds after getting airborne and tragically Victoria did not survive that's why today I'm going to talk about the real pilot mistake that got Victoria killed however that's not the only story that we're going to talk about because I also want to share with you the story of Alexis she was a student pilot with an incred future ahead of her but unfortunately she died when her flight instructor made a tragic mistake during a routine training flight now these are both two very different stories and they both have very tragic endings but I felt it was important to share them both because they both involved flight instructors uh and uh and students and I think there's some really good lessons that we can take away from all this I'm Hoover welcome to your pilot debrief again this is a live stream something new that we're trying out here for a little bit and if you could please if you have questions drop them in the uh the live chat and I'll try to get to those at the end uh but if you're watching this on the replay I'm going to try to keep this structured almost like a regular video so you guys can get the most out of it as possible as we walk through all this so I want to start with Victoria's story and give you a little bit of background on what's Happening Here uh if you're not familiar with her tragedy this took place back on October 6 of 2022 it was at the Newport News Williamsburg International Airport which is just to the north of norfol Virginia and it's an area I'm somewhat familiar with because you know I did a lot of my flying out of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base you know flying strike Eagles and this airport you can see on the map here it's right next to Langley Air Force Base so headquarters for air combat command for the Air Force and I remember when this story came out there was a lot of speculation and rumors about what might have taken place so I kind of want to walk through some of that as we do this and just for reference the flight school where Victoria worked is located at the North End of the airport they've got two runways there and this was supposed to be a routine training flight Victoria was in the right seat up front and her student was in the left seat but there was also a third person that was along for the flight sitting in the back and when the news when the news were agencies or or um the news companies were reporting on this initially they talked a lot about how you know it was two students on the flight and it's like well why would you have two students on the flight and and this and that and so we're going to get to that as we go through these people here in a minute but they taxied out for takeoff uh from Runway 20 which is uh as you can see depicted on the image here so very short taxi uh out to the runway getting ready to go now as soon as they got Airborne the aircraft entered a steep nose high pitch attitude it got about 200 feet in the air and they crashed off the side of the runway and there's video footage of that that we're going to take a look at later but for now one of the first things that came out with all of this was the Audio I know a lot of you guys follow along with live ATC uh it they're very good about getting the audio of these tragedies out there right away and it helps us to kind of figure out what might have happened uh in certain instances and this was the radio call that everybody was talking about 883 Runway 20 cleared for takeoff caution wake turbulence for the intersection from the departing Fighters right turn on course is approved now it's not a perfect radio call but what the controller is essentially telling Victoria is that there's some fighter aircraft they're taking off from the other Runway and at the inter section where those two run runways meet you know there might be some wake turbulence that she needed to be aware of and so we know that Victoria taken off from Runway two we've got the fighters taken off from Runway 25 uh you know going that direction and those where those two runways intersect you know wake turbulence is definitely something that you need to be aware of as a pilot one of the things that I talked about in a video a while back was a a student pilot that crashed due to the wake turbulence from a helicopter that he was Landing behind because I think wake turbulence from helicopters is something we don't talk a lot about but in this instance it was a big issue that was that was brought up and people were talking about and I kind of you know for somebody with a lot of Aviation experience and for those of you that are pilots out there you can take a look at this and we can see that based on where the crash site is you know wake turbulence was not really going to be a factor in this because the aircraft crashed before she got to that intersection of those two runways so it was never an issue and that's why again it's so important not to speculate on these things when when they come out in the news because until you start digging into the details you don't really have that full picture about everything that took place now that the NTSB you know was able to rule that out pretty quickly they started taking a look at the instructor herself and I wanted to share her story because I think for you know whether you're a student pilot or instructor or retired pilot you know wherever you're at or even just an aviation Enthusiast um it's it's a story that I think a lot of people can relate to you know reflecting back especially you know for those of us that are that are pilots today Victoria documented everything on Instagram and I think it just really showed her true love for Aviation and how much she was committed committed to to doing this and making this a full-time thing her journey began in May of 2019 so you know almost three years prior about three years prior to when this tragedy happened she started working on her private pilot license she ended up getting that about two months later uh at the end of June of 2019 and that meant she was most likely doing this full-time flying you know three to five days a week uh putting those hours in you know really really busting her butt to make it happen uh because typically what what you see in some of these tra IES is uh you know people that are doing this on a part-time basis because they've got careers and other things going on and so it typically takes a little bit longer she eventually got her instrument rating about nine months later in March of 2020 and then she made this post on Instagram in January of 2021 it was another uh nine months you know gone by showing that she had finally got 200 hours of Total flight time and then obtained her commercial certificate in March of 2021 with the desire now to you know pursue becoming a flight instructor uh by November of 2021 she was taking her written exams there's two written exams you have you have to take for that and then you know a few months later she ends up becoming a certified flight instructor in April of 2022 uh at the time of the crash she was 22 years old certified flight instructor she had about 330 hours of Total flight time but only about 75 hours as a new flight instructor but I think again like I said earlier it's definitely a journey that a lot of us can relate with you know going going through the process of becoming you know a pilot and then make making those career progression moves along the way the other thing that was obviously something the NTSB was going to take a look at was the student because remember I said the news was reporting there were two students uh on the plane with her the truth is there's only one the student in the front seat and in the left seat his name was Bo and I'm not his last name's not important I couldn't I know what his last name is but I can't pronounce it so I just decided to to take it off there but I couldn't find an image of him and that's that's not really important either you know what we need to talk about is this was a guy he was 18 years old he was a freshman at the the university he wanted to be an airline pilot but he had never flown before and the what I read about him to me it made it sound like he hadn't been on any aircraft before not even on a commercial aircraft and we know that he was very nervous about conducting this flight because this this was going to be his very first time flying and especially for him to be in a position where he can control the aircraft so a lot of nerves going into that and that's one of the reasons why there was another passenger on board the aircraft the passenger ended up being a really good friend of his uh or or a friend of his his name was Ashton now Ashton was he he was a student but uh he was a student at the University but he had he had a private pilot license that he had already obtained and so he was a student that was working on his instrument rating now this wasn't a training or an instructional flight for him it was he was just mainly on the flight just to provide that support uh to his friend Bo and make him feel a little bit better about flying now thankfully somehow they both managed to survive the crash and that's how the NTSB was eventually able to kind of piece together everything that happened on this uh on this tragedy the aircraft they were flying was a 1984 cesno 172 again you've got the three of them in there and I don't know what size individuals you know bow and Ashton were uh but we know that weight and balance was not a factor that was contributing to the crash the NTSB didn't mention it at all they they didn't talk about it at all uh and usually when that happens it's because they they dismiss it right away in terms of whether it's a factor or not one of the things that they looked at though was you know the sequence of events that took place all the way up to the takeoff and then you know how they got into that situation where the aircraft is crashing just a few seconds after takeoff when it comes to the pre-flight as they're getting ready to go out to uh the runway and and getting the aircraft ready and stuff you know remember this is Bose's First Flight it's supposed to be an instructional flight so there there's a lot to take in a lot to digest there but there are some very simple objectives that instructors have for a student pilot going on their first flight and Victoria did a pretty good job of covering these uh based on the interviews that they had with uh with boow and Ashton after she talked about here hey here's how we're going to do a pre-flight here's how you're going to use a checklist here's how you're going to adjust your seat belt your shoulder harness that sort of thing and the plan was to let B perform the takeoff and we're going to talk a little bit more about that later because that's something that's definitely going to be a factor in in what happened I'm going to show you a video of the takeoff um but before I show you that video I want to let you know it's first it's very grainy uh video quality because of the resolution of the camera so it's a little bit hard to see and oops let me pause it here and then uh I'm G to cut it off right before the uh the impact because there's not necessarily anything of value that we're going to get out of watching that but what I want you to pay attention to is how quickly uh this happens you're going to see the air craft right over here it's just above my face on the screen here and then uh you're going to see it kind of go above the tree line and we'll take a look now you can see how fast that happened one of the big issues that the NTSB looked at when you know they saw some of this initial footage was whether B and Victoria's seat was locked in place or whether you know maybe there was an issue with with the seat rail uh or something like that because as soon as you start pulling back on the controls you know if if your seat's not locked into place and that seat start sliding back it's very easy for you to just grab on that control wheel and pull back even harder you know getting you you into that excessive nose High attitude and as I was researching that issue I wanted to share this just brief side note here uh because I came across this this other story this is Brenda and she was 56 years old she's a certified flight instructor with 18800 hours and she was also doing you know a routine training flight with a student um and during takeoff they ended up getting excessively nose High and the aircraft rolled inverted or rolled and crashed inverted right on takeoff now in that situation I think it was just relevant to share because the NTSB determined it was her failure to ensure that her seat was properly secured before takeoff that resulted in that loss of control and and one of the contributing factors was the lack of there was like a secondary seat stop that was supposed to be installed that wasn't installed and you know it just goes to show you that no matter you know what you're doing sometimes you know we have all these holes in the Swiss cheese that line up that contribute to the ultimate uh reason for the crash but with Brenda's case you know it's just a very simple basic mistake hey she didn't check to make sure her seat was locked in place the seat slid all the way back and then that's it you know and and it's just heartbreaking uh to hear that you know somebody with that much experience uh could miss something like that and it could turn out so tragically and like I said as I was looking at Victoria's case that that's the reason I wanted to share this and bring this up because I knew and everybody else knew that that was going to be a very important thing for the NTSB to look at when they were uh looking at what happened to Victoria however you know they discovered that based on the the examination of the wreckage and thankfully they were being able to interview both Ashton and Bo they could determine that this the seats didn't move during the flight so that wasn't a factor that contributed to the crash now before I I talk to you about what the the real pilot mistake was that got her killed uh just be sure to stick around we're going to also remember talk about Alexis here in the second story now the probable cause when it comes to Victoria was that according to Ashton who remember he's the pilot rated passenger he's in the back seat he said before they took off Victoria told Bo that she's gonna tell him when to start pulling back on the control wheel during takeoff however Bo said he didn't remember that and he Al he also didn't remember if Victoria told him how they were going to perform the takeoff role Ashton also said that Victoria was on the controls during in the initial portion of the takeoff roll until they reached rotation speed and then she told B to go ahead and start pulling back on the control wheel and as Bo pulled back on the wheel or pulled back on the controls the airplane lifted off the Runway but he just kept pulling back and pulling back essentially until the aircraft stalled and there wasn't a lot of words exchange there because as you saw from the video it was just you know happened just like that there really wasn't a lot of time for her to react I think Ashton said or or either astronaut or both said they remember you know Victoria like you know kind of um expressing some you know um shock uh or or Screaming essentially you know out but you know wasn't able to uh to do anything in time and one of the big issues that I think is really the the the real pilot mistake in all this was that V you know neither Bo nor Ashton could remember Victoria providing any instruction about the positive transfer of flight controls so again it's you know very simple mistake hey you know she gave all this instruction everything was you know seemed to be going fine but you know you forget to do one thing and it just turns out so tragically and the NTSB concluded that you know even though she had done all that you know instruction beforehand just missing uh this one piece of critical instruction it led to her getting into a situation where she didn't really anticipate that both was going to keep pulling back on the controls as soon as they got Airborne now in my opinion you know positive transfer flight controls is a huge thing you know anytime you're flying whether you're flying with another pilot or an instructor or a passenger you've got to understand who is flying the aircraft there should never be any doubt and sometimes you know it's easy to get in a situation where you're having casual conversation you're hey can you watch this for you watch the controls for me for a minute or I'm going to do this or you're going to do that and then the next thing you know wait a minute who's flying the plane and who's doing what so you know you really need to think about that brief that thoroughly you know beforehand if you're gonna especially if you're an instructor flying with a student and I think for um Victoria remember she only had what you know 75 hours as a new flight instructor so it's not something that she probably had ever experienced with other students that she had flown with and my guess is none of the other instructors had potentially warned her that this might be something that she might have to deal with on a flight and it's just you know it's just really sad and and tragic that it turned out the way it did um in this situation and again as you saw from the video I think the other thing to just remember is that in that takeoff environment when you know you're generating lift and it's just so critical to be able to make you know to to have effective communication when you're flying with somebody else uh and to know what you're going to do either when something like this happens or when you get into an emergency situation uh right on takeoff because you're you're low to the ground you don't have a lot of time to react and you got to make a decision quickly about about how to process what's happening and how to take the corrective action necessary to keep the aircraft safely flying even if that means you know in her situ situation you know karate chopping his arms off the controls or you know if she couldn't over overpower him with you know just full pushing full forward on the on the control wheel just to to break the angle of attack uh to to reduce the angle of attack low enough to keep the aircraft flying you know you may still crash but at least this way you know you're not developing into a full stall uh crash scenario so and just something to think about uh in this type of situation now that brings us to the uh the story of Alexis and I think this was also a very tragic story that was worth sharing you know because you see these situations where people want to become Pilots or or in Victoria's case you know she be she had just become a new flight instructor and now with the story of Alexis you have uh a brand new student pilot and then the the guy to our left is is the flight instructor that we're going to talk about this is a picture of the aircraft after they were able to pull it out of the river um where they crashed and but unfortunately uh neither of them were able toh survive this story took place on the 18th of June 2021 it's uh not too far from Jacksonville uh you can see Jacksonville International uh right below my face here on the map but um it happens at the uh Fernandina I think is how you pronounce that municipal airport and you've got David and Alexis doing a routine training flight they were supposed to go do some training over the St Mary's uh St Mary's River just Northwest of the Airfield there you can see the airport here uh with the location of the flight school the instructor on this flight was held in very high regard you know he's 66 years old he was a retired Naval aviator uh he had quite a bit of experience uh as a flight instructor with about 4,000 hours of flight time now when they go do the interviews with you know other Pilots that had flown with him and uh and previous students that had flown with him what they found was the chief instructor at the flight school where David worked out pre previously said he was very safety conscious he was very professional and I think one of the more tragic parts to this story that came out was they discovered that this was supposed to be David's very last day of flying you know he had told this was actually his second Flight of the day and on the First Flight of the day that's what he had told the student on that first flight said hey this is today's my last day of flying because I'm going to be retiring uh to spend some more time with his wife the student flying with him Alexis was 18 years old she graduated high school in May and the accident happened in June so she had only been out of high school maybe a couple weeks and had a lot to look forward to she had about 21 hours of Total flight time she was described as a very sharp student always prepared took flying very seriously and we know that she had a full scholarship to go to Embry Riddle so a lot of stuff to look forward to now according to the investigation Alexis had actually started flying while she was still in high school and she had been taking lessons at another flight school where she had previously soloed and a a diamond da20 but then she started taking lessons with David and at this at this new flight school and this was her fifth flight with David the aircraft they were flying was a 1971 Cessna 150 and once again just like the story with Victoria they were able to determine there was nothing mechanically wrong with the aircraft that would have contributed to the crash as I mentioned just a second ago David had flown one flight earlier in the day with a different student and in the interview they had with that student they discovered that during that flight uh they practiced uh some standard rate turns uh they practice low altitude engine failure and recoveries uh and then they also practiced stalls but they practice those stalls between 1,00 and 12200 feet now the reason this is important is because when we look at the Private Pilot for airplane category Airman certification standards so kind of your your guidelines here for or the standards that you need to meet for for private Pilots those certification standards tell you that you know you need to select an entry altitude that allows it task to be completed no lower than 1500 ft the NTSB asked the student that had flown with David earlier in the day you know hey you said you're doing these stalls and these other things you know, to 12200 feet talk to me a little bit more about that and and what your history is of flying with David and they went interviewed some other students as well to to figure out what happened you know and are you sure that was the altitude you were at and that sort of thing and they deter you know the student said well listen there are some instances where we and previous flights where we might have climbed as high as 1,800 ft but we never really got any higher than that and definitely on the day of the crash we were definitely down at that thousand to to to 12200 feet so now the the NTSB has has a pretty good idea of of what might have contributed to the crash you know by you've got an instructor that's may be executing some low altitude or some Maneuvers at an altit itude lower than than what he should have been and I know everybody's going to kind of have their different take on what altitude you should be to start these these Maneuvers I know most people will say you know 3,000 or 4,000 feet you know the reality is the standard say 1500 feet you could start that maneuver you know at600 feet and if you complete it by, 1500 you pass the standards but but the question is why would you try to do that so you know you're putting yourself in an EnV enironment where you're reducing um you know your ability to react and respond to things that might happen with the aircraft U by by intentionally conducting stalls or or slow flight at at a lower altitude than necessary now the radar data from the flight they didn't have uh the aircraft didn't have adsb data so these were just different uh this was the radar composite track that the NTSB was able to put together so it's a little hard to assess from this directly what happened but we know that there was nothing eventful that took place on the departure and then route to the working area uh the departure happened around 1056 local and then the crash happened about 9 minutes later uh o over the uh over the river up to the north we know that once they got established up there they were doing some 360 Dee turns those turns were being conducted at an altitude between 800 a th000 ft and the last radar return the aircraft was at 800 feet above the ground so again well below the minimum altitude that the aircraft should have been when conducting you know intentional slow flight or or stalls that sort of thing ultimately the NTSB determined that the probable cause in this uh as they looked at everything that was feeding into this they discovered that the flight school that davood was working for had had a written policy that their minimum altitude for stalls and other airor was 1500 feet AGL they learned that most of the instructors at the school perform their stalls in slow flight and Maneuvers at a much higher altitude than 1500 feet AGL But ultimately David had a history not uh just with the the previous student that day but with other students of conducting airor below 1500 feet and I don't say this to try to disparage David or or paint him out to be you know a reckless instructor or anything like that I think sometimes you know I've talked about normalization of deviants before and that's where you have the a situation where essentially you know maybe at one point you had a standard for where where you were going to or the out Studio you were going to conduct the Maneuvers at and then maybe one day weather forced you oh instead of 3,000 feet we got some clouds that we're going to do a little bit lower and then you're like okay well maybe we'll do it a little bit lower next time because I'm I'm realizing I can save time on my flight I don't have to spend time climbing up as high altitude we can knock this out a lot quicker uh I think there was also some discussion in this investigation about how David really tried to focus or to get these students to understand that you know this is a a critical uh environment to be in when you're lower altitude and something happens with the aircraft so I want you to be able to to recognize that and be able to recover the aircraft and I know he uh According to some of the interviews he talked to his students about you know when they're flying around low altitude make sure you have a little bit of excess air speed in in certain situations where if if you're not within gliding distance of a place where you can land you know if you have a little bit of excess air speed you can trade that air speed for altitude to climb up higher and now reassess your situation reestablish Glide speed and then find a place to put the aircraft down so again I think you know I don't know because I don't I don't know David personally but I know that from everybody that knew him that had flown with him they had nothing but good things to say about him so you know it's really tough to to humanize these these tragedies you know we want to look at the human factors that are involved and nobody goes out there deliberately wanting to kill themselves or or or kill the person that they're flying with you know this guy was set to retire so I obviously just a very tragic situation uh in the story here with David and Alexis and ultimately the NTSB determined that you know it was David's decision to conduct that slowlight training at an altitude below the flight schools minimum altitude led to um whether he I don't know what they couldn't determine if he was practicing stalls or practicing slow flight but it put him in a in an environment where uh the aircraft ended up stalling and his delayed remedial action uh led to you know them crashing into the river uh unfortunately this you know it was determined that they uh died on impact um you know that happen so I know there's a lot of student Pilots out there that watch these videos I I don't want you to to walk away from this thinking that this is G this is something that happens to you you know when I talk about these tragedies just keep in mind that there are so many safe Pilots out there and so many Pilots doing the right thing uh and the safety record that we have in general you know in terms of the Aviation Community it's a really good safety record the things that I would say that are good takeaways uh from both of these tragedies are number one uh is complacency so don't ever become complacent whether you're a student pilot or an instructor or even if you're not a pilot at all I mean a lot of these lessons can also be applied to you know just just driving down the road it's so easy to become complacent in the things that we do and all it takes is one little mistake um and then the other thing is the you know especially on on the instructor side or for Pilots that have a lot more time is the normalization of deviants just understanding how you know stepping away from the standards which you set for yourself uh or or the standards which you're called to operate by and and sliding that standard lower and lower because hey well nothing happened this time so it's not going to happen the next time you get into those you you get into that pattern of doing that and ultimately it ends up you know a very tragic outcome so I know this was a little bit shorter live stream than normal but uh I wanted to hit both of those and then go ahead and open it up for questions and we'll go from there so I'll bring sticks up on stage here hey there um so I was getting a couple things down so one question that came up with respect to wake turbulence was what was the time interval between when the previous aircraft was taking off and when you would then be attempting your takeoff and I have the answer to that but I'll if you want to answer it I'll let you do that you you're talking about on the same Runway yeah yeah yeah so when you get a caution for Wake turbulence how much time should you leave between when you initiate your takeoff roll and when um your uh the other aircraft is that interval yeah I think I think Steve answered there two minutes um I it's going to depend on the aircraft category too you know so if you're a Cessna taking off behind a Airbus 350 you might want to wait a little bit longer uh right than taking off behind you know maybe a Lear jet or something um so so that's the big thing my my thing I would suggest is if you're ever in doubt or if you ever have a concern just tell tell the tower you're not ready you know don't ever get yourself forced into a situation where you end up making a bad decision um you can go back and look at the video on my Channel that I did of the um the student pilot in the helicopter and you can see the thumbnail looks like the uh the image of that um you know he kind of I think felt almost like he was talked into that situation where you know the helicopter was like oh don't worry about it we're just going to do this you know and you know and then he just kind of assumed he was going to be okay so if if there's ever a doubt in your mind just you know go around if you're if you're Landing or if you're um departing you know uh just just delay if you need to right yeah and my experience as well when you're dealing with a helicopter that you got to realize there so that's the entire weight of that helicopter is roughly the force that's coming out of that rotor system so um do not underestimate um the amount of R wash that's coming out from there and the heavier the helicopter the more rotor um vort vortices you're going to see and that can completely disrupt your lift and um cause a really bad day and also realize that helicopters can do non-standard Landing so while we may be in the pattern for a Runway you may also then be finding yourself going to a parallel taxi way or something like that so um yeah don't forget that they can do a lot of weird stuff well well yeah in this in the in the video I covered too like what was interesting was um it was I think it was a Blackhawk and he was he was Landing so he he made his approach to the numbers right at the beginning of the runway but then he hovered taxi down the runway right so you're still generating a significant amount of lift when you're doing that and and causing wake turbulence now if he had actually uh landed and and rolled you know like U you know yeah if your helicopter your op has wheels but even still you're still generating a lot of uh vortices a lot more than you are with a fixed Wing aircraft and a prop so yeah um so anyway so that was a that was question there was there was also a question that came up and I thought this was a pretty good one is at what point or maybe it was a question I was going to sort of propose you know so at what point do pilots do their risk actually go up so you get your private pilot's license and then there's a general hour window um where we tend to see a higher risk for mishaps and accidents I don't I I think that's kind of false you know um I don't know so when I I I did a good quick look on that and it's somewhere between 50 you know by some estimat is 50 to 300 hours yeah you know I think a lot of it's the mentality and how you approach it um so yeah I I've I've heard people refer to a certain window of hours as like The Kill Zone um where you're at the highest risk um I I think I've done a little bit of research on this a while back and I feel like I want to say that you know it's it's really it's not as black and white as what people think it is because we see that you know I mean you guys know from watching the videos on this channel like a lot of the tragedies I've covered these are you know all much older pilots who have thousands of hours of experience you know and every now and then it's it's it's a student pilot you know that actually I'll say very rarely it's it's it's a brand new pilot you know that I think you won't see the the kind of Reckless mistakes and other stuff with with the younger uh pilot somebody who doesn't have a lot of hours you see just like the you know they don't know what they don't know and we've talked about this before the Dunning Krueger effect how you know brand new pilot you you tend to overestimate your your skill capability um and underestimate the danger that you might be in for a given situation or or the threat that the weather might represent whereas on the flip side you know you've you've got you know the older Pilots that kind of um overestimate well I I don't know the right word for it but they're they're basically they're very confident what they're doing because they've done it for so long and and they underestimate I guess how much skill it takes to actually do what they're doing you know right so it's kind of like a curve yeah there's I think there's like a there's certain Gap that exists between you know competency and proficiency you know and you know competency being that you can routinely get into the aircraft and do the Maneuvers safely without an adver without having a you know a problem with it versus demonstrating that you're competent at one point in time so yeah I got I'm gonna throw a couple questions on here um about David's career I don't I don't know the fa standards didn't change during his career not that I'm aware of and he was um uh what one of the things I didn't mention about him he was a uh an a6e intruder um Bombadier naor he was in nfo I was looking when I was looking at his um flight suit his wings are nfo flight wings but he had he retired out of the the Navy in 1999 and then he had a significant amount of time uh as a commercial pilot uh and flight instructor so all those hours that I mentioned that that was all his as far as I'm aw flying hours yeah those were his you know as a rated pilot you know um but the regardless of whether the standards changed or not the school had a defined set of standards that he was supposed to be operating by and for some reason he wasn't you know so um so that that's unfortunate um I I think your point about um three-way transfer controls so in other words I have the controls you have the controls I have the controls yeah you know that so that that positive transfer closed loop communication is essential especially in the instructor environment um and it's surprising to me how often it's not practiced yeah and it really should be standard um do they even practice stall recovery at all yes you do practice stall recovery for student Pilots that's a very critical skill uh you have to know um 1500 foot stalls yeah I mean I wouldn't be doing them I mean you you could start that that um you could do your slow flight at 1500 feet and as long as you stay above 1500 feet you've met the standards you know um or I could start my like I said the I could start my power on stall or offall right at 1500 feet and as long as I'm you know do it exceptionally well and don't lose any altitude I'm fine but but but why like you know there there's just no reason give yourself that extra altitude uh when you can and then as far as I know flight instructors are not required to have any liability insurance now the flight schools that they operate for most likely are carrying some type of insurance I I don't know all the specifics on that though what's what's interesting and what was new to me was students when they now go start flight instruction they actually have to go get their own insurance um as part of like so my son started flight lessons he needs to he needed to get and obtain his own insurance policy um which I found interesting so yeah I I didn't have to do that in the 90s no um and then um there was also an interesting question that came up is like somebody brought up the question about how old why these planes are so old and you know why aren't there newer planes and is that contributing and so I don't know if you want to speak to that it's you know I'll get to that ju Just a second I hit this one here uh and I don't know that do younger instructors generally charge less than experienced I would say no um it it's gonna a lot of that's driven by the flight school specifically uh otherwise if you're not doing it through the flight school then it's going to be the negotiated rate you know if you're doing like one-on-one flight instruction you know so um the the question about the aircraft though because I I get that a lot of times is you know like well the problem is these planes are so old and it's just that's just the way aircraft are built you know but people need to realize these aren't like you know your they're not like cars you know uh they're very different in how they operate and not just how they operate but how they're maintained and then the requirements for annual inspections and and everything else you know uh compliance with directives and things like that to ensure uh the aircraft continue to operate in a safe and functional manner um and if we were to go back if you were to go back and look at all of the mishaps that I've covered on this channel I don't know that any of them were you know the main cause was a uh an air a malfunction with the aircraft now there might have been uh there's there's a couple where yep the pilot did everything he could something happened mechanically with the aircraft that led to a situation where the pilot had to respond and you know either run a checklist or perform the correct action to keep the aircraft flying safely and the pilot failed to do so either because they were too low altitude or because they weren't current or proficient uh with with their flying skills enough to actually be able to do that so those are the issues it's you know we still see to this day it's it's almost always pilot error you know right and if you're going to go out and do Maneuvers like slowlight or stalls and you know you the instructor haven't done them in a while then you should go get go out in the plane before you take a student out and you know practice them before you now trying to instruct and you know knock your cobwebs off so to speak yeah yeah and and and thanks for the Super Chat you know it it's hard like because you know you want to talk about the human factors involved but you also want to be respectful of of the family and I'll share a real quick story uh I this past week I was out at vid Summit uh which is where all like the the you bunch of YouTube creators go to learn from other creators you know stuff about YouTube and I sat down at a table with this with this gentleman you know shook his hand said hi hey what what do you do what do you do and uh pointed my shirt I'm like oh I'm pilot debrief you know I talk about Aviation mishaps and he's like oh and he like he started getting a little emotional he's said well you know I just lost some friends uh last month uh you know I was I was friends with some people that you know he's like he might have heard of them the the neans the Gospel family yeah yeah and I was like oh crap you know I'm like and I'm like like I just made a video on that you know and so as as I've said in other videos on this channel I think maybe in live streams before like I never want to say something in a video that I wouldn't feel comfortable saying to somebody you know face to face like as a friend or family member of somebody that survived the crash so we had a really good conversation about you know I told him like I did not want to cover that crash um you know right when um uh right when it happened just because there was you know stuff we still didn't know about it and it's it's so easy to speculate and you know I I don't I don't want to do that so that's why it took me some time to make sure I get was able to get as much information on it as I could and then also find another tragedy that was similar enough uh that had similar circumstances that I could talk to because that other tragedy was was what had all the information that I think we're going to find ultimately when the nean investigation is complete you know um so generally there's a there's an adage Within These mishaps that you know there's no new mishaps there's repeats of old mishaps and you don't have to dig too deep to to find similar similar patterns um within that and you know that's what we have to be aware of that's what we have to be looking for and it's up to us to police ourselves and that's why I think the whole concept of being an aviator is a vocation and not necessarily just um you know a hobby that we get into so yeah and this goes back to the earlier question but uh you know I in terms of when an airframe needs to be retired I think it's ultimately going to be a maintenance maintenance call you know on the structural wear and tear maybe one too many hard Landings you know um but it's that's ultimately part of the um inspection process on the aircraft and and for maintenance you know let the experts make that call and that's why like I think you know for a lot of um general aviation Pilots if you own your own aircraft you need to be you know working with somebody that's qualified to do the maintenance you know if you're not qualified to do that yourself sometimes you get you see these situations where an aircraft is overdue for an inspection you know and and that is a mechanical issue maybe that contributed to the crash but usually if if the Pilot's you know skimping out on the maintenance like there's there's other stuff going on too um you know in terms of the pilot behavior that contributes to the mishap um so there is let's see and actually I think those were all the ones that sort of stood out to me there was one interesting question that somebody asked about how do you get over a fear Heights when it comes to Flying and um the thing is it's going to be time in the aircraft and um and you know it's also you could try some other things like hypnosis and um you know also just you know a little bit of uh trying to work on you know getting yourself more centered and mindful and it's just it's time and repetition um is is the only thing that I could potentially recommend um the problem becomes if you start asking or thinking or considering medications obviously medications and flying uh don't work very well together so yeah okay well I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up I know like I said it was a little bit shorter live stream but I think those are two kind of important stories to cover and a little bit different you know flavor in terms of the the missp that was involved uh I want to thank everybody so much for your support if you guys want to support the channel head over to patreon and find me on patreon you can support me there or you can become a YouTube channel member or you can get yourself one of these cool av8 na commun communicate shirts on my website uh pilotbrief docomo for free uh and YouTube loves it when you watch more stuff on the channel and I appreciate it too so that's all I got appreciate yall great thanks thanks Hoover great job as always