Reply #165: Just the facts, ma'am [View All]

[MajorChode]

There's so much misinformation I hardly know where to start.

"First, he ran out of gas....That is when they told us it was the weather."

Who is "they"? The NTSB hasn't even released a prelim yet. Nobody officially has told anyone anything. Nothing like building strawmen to burn down.

So what are the facts?

Was Connell an instrument rated pilot?

First, Connell WAS an instrument rated pilot, at least according to the FAA pilot database:
FAA Registry
Name Inquiry Results
MICHAEL LOUIS CONNELL
Rating(s):
PRIVATE PILOT
AIRPLANE SINGLE ENGINE LAND
INSTRUMENT AIRPLANE

Connell was flying a Piper Saratoga which is a single engined, 4 seat, retractable gear, light aircraft. Coincidentally this is the exact same model that John-John was flying when he decided to go for a swim, but that is really irrelevant to the facts of this case. I just included it to tickle the fancy of the conspiracy theorists.

The crash was reported to have occurred around 6pm local time in Ohio.

So what was the OFFICIAL weather?

KCAK 192151Z 30017KT 10SM SCT007 BKN011 OVC014 02/00 A2972 RMK AO2 PK
WND 30032/2117 SLP075
KCAK 192251Z 30011KT 9SM BKN005 OVC010 01/M01 A2978 RMK AO2 SLP095
KCAK 192351Z 32013KT 3SM BR OVC003 01/M01 A2984 RMK AO2 SLP116 8/6//

Both of these reports are the METAR weather reports for the Akron airport both before and after the crash (assuming about a 6pm crash time). So what does all that mean? The first report at 4:51pm shows a ceiling of 700' and temperature of 2 degrees C with 10 miles of visibility. The second report at 5:51pm shows a ceiling of 500' and temperature of 1 degrees C and a visibility of 9 miles. The third report at 6:51pm shows a ceiling of 300' and a temperature of 1 degrees C and a visibility of 3 miles.

So what can we tell from this? Well, the conditions at the Akron airport were definitely below visual conditions, which meant any flight landing during this time would be required to be following instrument flight rules. It also shows the conditions were deteriorating fairly rapidly.

There's a few other things important to those who fly light aircraft which can be noted. First, those are hard instrument flying conditions. It's not enough to be instrument rated. You must also be instrument current to comply with FAA regs which requires recent instrument flying experience. This isn't like riding a bike. You must be on top of your game to attempt an approach under those ceilings. It's one thing to blast through the cloud layer at 2,000' and land the aircraft visually from there, it's quite another to not break out of the clouds until 500' or less. That leaves very little room for error, and quite simply even most private instrument rated pilots don't maintain their currency well enough to fly in those conditions.

So what about icing?

The temperature on the ground was very near freezing. Now the standard lapse rate says that for every 1,000' you go up, the temperature drops by 2 degrees C. Simply using this lapse rate, the freezing level would have been less than 1,000' up, or right about where the cloud layer was. Now someone said, well what if there was an inversion layer? Certain that is possible, but this is the exception, rather than the rule. The NTSB will have temperature at altitude data available to them and will be able to tell if there was an inversion. I don't particularly want to look up the historical data to find out, but it is out there. At any rate, Connell would have spend most of his flight at altitude, say around 5000'-6000' (his altitude information was also recorded but I haven't looked that up either). At that altitude, the conditions would most certainly be well below freezing, and that would have cooled the aluminum skin of his aircraft to well below freezing. At some point as Connell descended, he would have entered the clouds. Now what are clouds? They are visible moisture. The 192351Z METAR also shows BR, which is the code for light drizzle. In other words, those clouds had a lot of moisture in them. Imagine flying a super cooled aluminum object through them while that moisture was either at or very near the freezing level.

So does that mean his plane iced up?

Not necessarily. However, one thing is for sure, the conditions were right for icing. Icing conditions are quite often fatal for small aircraft. Large transport planes routinely fly through icing conditions, but this is generally not a problem for them. The reason is because they have sophisticated de-icing equipment on the aircraft, and they spend very little time at lower altitudes where icing conditions are prevalent. Small aircraft are a different story. Most of them have very little de-icing equipment, if any, and because of their slow speeds and low power, they can spend a lot of time in icing layers. Now a few Piper Saratogas do have de-icing equipment, but even assuming he had such a system a smart pilot would NOT have flown in those conditions. That alone raises questions about his pilot decision making skills.