Stalls in the Pattern

[steveinindy]

Gotcha, understand. Lots of tubing and whatnot for the passenger to be clutching....

I heard the hand-injury thing at an NTSB presentation ~25 years ago, undoubtedly the state of the art is improved.

Ron Wanttaja

Well, among the folks who actually bother to read the forensic literature, yes it has. You still hear folks- including NTSB investigators and even their safety and survivability folks- treat it like gospel because it is so ingrained in the literature (there are references to it that I have found dating back to the 1920s) and lore of aviation pathology and crash investigation that you can't convince them otherwise. That is a major problem with these folks in that they treat the practice of investigation more like a religion rather than a scientifically grounded exercise.

You can also get similar injuries from someone's arms and legs flailing during the crash deceleration. This is an area that really needs to have more research before it is finally dismissed or is able to be applied in a more rigorous manner. Myself and a couple of colleagues (a forensic pathologist and a forensic radiologist respectively) are working on a retrospective review to see if we can do something about that.

[Mayhemxpc]

Just a couple of anecdotes about rudders, ASIs and low-time pilots...

Some years ago, when providing flight instruction at a Civil Air Patrol National Flight Academy, I overheard this joke told between the student pilots (All 16 and 17 year old cadets): "Why does an airplane have rudder pedals? To give the flight instructor something to say." At another iteration of the NFA, all 12 airplanes taxied out for departure together, shortly after a squall line came through (after pre-flight, before starting engines.) One of the first planes off quickly called back for a priority landing having experienced complete pitot/static failure. (There is more to that, but for another time.) We were number two for take-off and due for the line-up check. I asked the student, "Everything OK? Are we ready for take-off?" "Sure" came the reply. I then asked, "Do you really think we are doing 40 knots just sitting here?" While he was flummoxed, I advised all the other planes to drain their pitot static systems as part of the run-up check that morning.

Ruddering through the turn is possible but, as pointed out above, not too likely (the turns may have still been uncoordinated.) Blocks in the pitot-static system CAN cause a false high reading. That said, a pilot should be able to fly a light aircraft base to final SAFELY -- and land without looking at any instruments.

I will be very interested in reading the final report.