On Monday 29th March 2021 the General Aviation Safety Council held a webinar with the objective of promoting flight safety by looking at the causes of accidents and near misses and suggesting ways to improve. One of our instructors, Jonathan Cormack put together the following report from the webinar. If you didnt get to see the webinar you can view it here.
“I’ve always enjoyed attending the face-to-face GASCO meetings which we host at Bristol and Wessex and now with COVID a recent webinar was hosted with the same objectives of promoting flight safety by looking at the causes of accidents and near misses and suggesting ways to improve.
Here are some of the things that interested me from the meeting:
The biggest cause of accidents has moved from Controlled Flight Into Terrain to Loss of Control. The introduction of Ground Proximity Warning Systems along is a major factor especially on the commercial side.
Apparently the first documented recovery from a spin was when Lieutenant William Pikes managed to recover from one on 25 August 1912. He was interviewed by a Mr Shorts (of the Shorts aircraft company) afterwards!
The talk discussed the approach to flight training now which involves the use of highly stable aircraft that are not at all prone to spinning and that students are not required to undertake any spin / spin recovery training. Unusual attitude courses and aerobatics are separate from the LAPL/ PPL.
Currency was a hot topic. The British Gliding Association has a useful little chart. The link for it is below. Basically they would see 10-15 hours plus and 15-20 take offs and landings in the last 6 months as being good.
Article Link: https://www.bjoms.com/article/S0266-4356(20)30271-0/fulltext
Lastly, the talk covered airproxes. These have gone up from 30 in 2010 to 110 in 2019. Possible explanations include the increased use of technology in the cockpit (Skydemon etc) resulting in pilots being “eyes-in” more of the time; and also the increasing amount of airspace in the South East of England forcing GA pilots into narrower Class G corridors.
Keeping a good look out in all directions and being eyes out most of the time is the best advice.
Another good point was that flying above 2000 feet will reduce risks of conflict with low flying military aircraft.
All in all then, a very worthwhile 90 minutes and hopefully we will be back to the face-to-face evenings later in the year.”
Jonathan Cormack
Instructor
To view the webinar again please visit: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/UiOkdo2TKFgRMq7NeXos4zKEgJDax35fBLRNfP4VbnX6sKmmeePb8eA4vPNzjqE.97s45uG5iavR8tAF?startTime=1617042038000
