How about the more modern day crashes ?

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It's really not a case of the instruments not working "good" then or now for that matter. It is exactly what was listed as the cause, i.e. Spatial Disorientation. Your 3 inner ear semicircular canals are telling you your position and motion in space and your aircraft's instrumentation is telling you something totally different. The issue is further compounded by a lack of visual orientation clues.
Then to even further confuse the issue we all are aware of the fact that any mechanical or electrical system can and do malfunction.
The pilot has to decide "who" to believe, his instruments or his senses.
John Kennedy Jr. was caught in this same dilemma. A heavy haze and a featureless sea, absolutely no visual clues, what pilots call 'black hole vertigo': a three-way disconnection between reason, instinct and reality - even an inability to tell the difference between up and down. There is some thought that he may have even turned the plane upside down then pulled back on the controls trying to climb. The out of control aircraft went into a "graveyard spiral" at 80ft/sec.
 
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I'm a flight instructor. A non-instrument rated pilot with minimal IMC training has about a 35 second life span the minute they go IMC. I do several flight reviews yearly and this is demonstrated to my non-instrument students during the flight review. 90% of the time the minute I put them under the hood within seconds we're in an unusual attitude.
 
I used to take students out to the football field, zero obstacles, and ask them to simply walk directly across the field totally blindfolded.
I only had one student able to do it and he later admitted that he had noted a breeze coming toward him BEFORE being blindfolded. He then TRUSTED the wind direction and kept walking into the wind
 
There's been only one time I have been under the hood and my butt very definitely told me the airplane was doing almost the exact opposite of what the instruments said, but that was a memorable occasion.

Some of the Smithsonian Air Disasters series have revealed mishaps that are mind boggling. An airliner flew 270 deg rather 27 deg and ended up crashing in the jungle. Another 737 took off and the crew did not understand why they were getting avionics overheat warnings, assuming it was that the fans were not turned on; in reality they had not turned on the pressurization system and all on board died. .
 
I've been IMC once. I felt like I was upside down and in a dive, but we were wings level.

I have minimal instrument training at the moment, and maybe 10 hours under the hood. You have to trust your instruments.

That's next up for me, getting my instrument rating.
 

I wouldn't say it was a case of the instruments not working. It was a case of the pilot not using or trusting his instruments.
 
I guess my flight instructor was exemplary because I spent enough time Under the hood in my initial training he made me Comfortable (?) enough to learn to trust the instruments. I did however spend some time as a backseat observer during IFR training of a friend, The instructor was a room mate and we did some IFR flying in twins. I did a lot of listening.

Having less than 50 hours VFR flying the story begins... Because of this I felt (over) confident requesting a Special VFR take off from Yuba City, destination Livermore. I lived in Yuba City for a few years and knew straight out was free of danger if I kept a course heading and climb rate to keep me on that track. I say that because I couldn't see the bottom of the fog at the airport and found myself in a milk bottle at about 150 feet AGL the runway. Didn't break out until I reached 1,500 ft. I pressed on and had to Drop in at Tracy and wait for VFR landing conditions at Livermore, two hours later just as it went VFR on 25R.

I don't recommend this to Anyone not instrument rated.I've never done this again!!!!!!! But I sure thank Bob and Greg.
 
I've been under a hood flying in the past many times. The guy in the jet had way more hours than me and tons of IFR too boot. I am curious I didn't see if they found the people that where on the plane? If a pilot knows how to read the instruments they will over come all your inner ear weaknesses. I was put into all sorts of situations with my head down and eyes closed, then told to fly the plane. So what about all the other missing plane cases and crashes in that area. What are all your answers for that?
 

Just because a pilot is instrument trained does not mean they are immune to spatial disorientation. Once it onsets it can be difficult to defeat, even if you trust your instruments.

The one time I went full IMC, the SIC on the controls was a 2000 hr pilot, and she still had a hard time. Me announcing to the redt of the crew that I felt like we were upside down and in a dive certainly did not help. The PIC who had about 3,000 more hours at the time did a great job of talking her through it and keeping her calm. It was a pretty hairy event, especially since we were in a hostile combat zone.

I have a few hundred IFR hours crewing, but none of them compared to hitting unexpected unforecasted weather with no way out of. Just had to punch in, initiate that climb and declare IMC.

I am currently working on a helicopter accident analysis for my work involving every offshore accident world wide, and you would be amazed how many accidents have happened because of loss of visual cues leading to spatial disorientation, and the pilots were instrument rated commercial and ATP pilots.

It's a real killer, regardless of experience.
 
We humans are VISUAL creatures and we trust our eyes above all else. Though we do have inner ear balence organs we actually use visual clues more. Close your eyes and try to remain upright. You'll soon find yourself weaving back and forth, left and right.
Have you ever been to one of those so-called Mystery Houses in touristy locations? A small house is constructed on a hill about 25 degrees of slope. The exterior of the house is aligned normally, vertical to the pull of gravity BUT the inside walls, floors, etc. are aligned perpendicular to the sloped hillside. Additionally inside the house there are no exterior windows. Once inside visual clues as to true horizontal are absent, walls, door frames, pictures immediately conflict with your sense of balance. Watching people trying to align themselves with the door frames against the pull of gravity is hilarious. They even demonstrate water flowing up the lower end of a trough or even bring out a plumb bob which hangs at an angle to demonstrate how it is gravity that is skewed.

Flying over water is fine as long as water surface can be visually distinguished from sky. With failing light, mist, haze, the water and sky begin to blend until one cannot be visually distinguished from the other. All visual clues are lost. The moving aircraft also presents various accelerations as it moves. These accelerations without visual clues can easily be mistaken for gravitational pulls. An accelerating dive (pushed back into the seat) feels like a climb. The black hole of spatial disorientation
 
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If you do the study of that area, you will see that there are many many aircraft crashes and or missing, and all the crashes are always said to be caused by the same thing. Search United airlines flight 389, Northwest orient airlines 2501 a DC4 disappears with out a trace.
 
I've had it happen during my IFR training, it kept feeling like I was in a left climbing turn. it was really hard to shake that feeling, and a number of times I almost told my instructor that the A/H must have failed. But during my initial ground HF training, it was beaten into us to trust the instruments - there were failure warnings there for a reason, so I kept shaking my head every time I got that feeling again - it messes up with the inner ear organs and 'resets' them.

Then, when instructing, I'd see how much of an unusual attitude I could get an aircraft in while the student thought we were reasonably straight and level - the best was 95º bank angle with almost no airspeed.
 
If you can't trust one instrument that is what the others are for, gosh turn bank indicator and altimeter and rate of climb, airspeed, easy stuff. Just like planes that spin out of control, it is all a case of either you have it in you or you don't. The main problem with that great lakes area is something is messing everything up, pilots with 25K plus hours have crashed there, there are some scary flying stories in that area.
I've always wondered how a little bird would do in a plane where the pilot doesn't know up from down. I'm betting the bird would do great his little instruments wouldn't fail him.
 

I had it very similar under the hood one time. Though my instruments said I was wings level, I felt like I was in a climb to the left as well. It was really hard to concentrate and believe what my instruments were telling me. I always enjoyed that training. Even the unusual attitude recover was always fun for me. Especially when it was done under the hood as well.
 
Or its just that there's a higher than average concentration of traffic in the area, like the Bermuda 'Triangle' Scientist 'solves' mystery of the Bermuda Triangle – by claiming there was no mystery in the first place
 
You see tremendous flight hours built up by many of the commercial pilots, but a lot of that time is build up while the auto-pilot was in control of the aircraft, and the pilot is just occupying a seat in the cockpit, hopefully monitoring everything.
Despite the number of flight hours, it seems some weren't fully trained on systems they were supposed to be monitoring, and if something did go wrong they didn't recognize it in time to prevent the aircraft from getting into a attitude to could be recovered from before impact.
 
mikewint said:
I used to take students out to the football field, zero obstacles, and ask them to simply walk directly across the field totally blindfolded.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's amazing how messed up things go when you can't see at all. The only cues you have are your feet against the ground (doesn't apply when flying an aircraft) and memorization of the layout of the house.

I had a power-outage once and I was basically able to navigate in the dark because I basically can use my feet to determine if I'm right side up and then from there basically guess how many steps it takes before having to make turns. The table I banged into a few times though, and I was definitely going slowly down the stairs lol.

PWR4360-59B said:
If you do the study of that area, you will see that there are many many aircraft crashes and or missing, and all the crashes are always said to be caused by the same thing. Search United airlines flight 389
Click to expand...
United 389's problem was they misread the altimeter and not realizing they were too low, just went right into Lake Michigan. If I recall they were flying flaps up, 270 knots indicated, and BOOSH! I don't think they even felt what hit 'em.

tyrodtom said:
I know from personal experience you can get vertigo easier if you're fatigued
Click to expand...
Few things work well when you're tired!
 
They the investigators "THINK THEY MISS READ" the altimeter, that sounds like people that should not have a pilot certificate. It is just another excuse for either not knowing the real reason or just an answer to cover up the real reason. I wonder how many of those reports are still classified secret?
 
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