# The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other) (Part 2) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 14, 2026, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892 "2026-06-14T14:38:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2026, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/221 "2026-07-30T22:38:21Z")
> [@N9IWP](#): > > This video popped up on my FB feed – how to get into the Widgeon front area: Thanks! Seems fairly simple. Never thought of a “throw-over control yoke,” but there it is. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2026, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/222 "2026-07-30T22:47:53Z")
The Beechcraft Bonanza has (or had) a similar throwover yoke. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2026, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/223 "2026-07-30T22:50:36Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The seat of pants & wind noise in the cockpit cues you’re used to in Cessnas are largely absent in big airplanes; So crank up the O2 and open a window. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/224 "2026-08-06T22:19:48Z")
> **[Brazil's police formally accuses 16 people for Voepass spiral plane crash...](https://apnews.com/article/brazil-voepass-police-plane-crash-accusation-cdbf914814936c4660d687e17ef0f2c2)** > > Brazil’s federal police have formally accused 16 current and former employees of airline Voepass for the in August 2024 plane crash that killed all 62 people on board. I wonder if any will actually be punished? You read frequently about planes trying to land on highways; here is one that actually succeeded: > **[Watch: Small plane makes emergency landing on Florida highway](https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c3d304x9yy1o)** > > Dashcam video shows a plane flying under a highway gantry after the instructor calmly informed air traffic control of the emergency. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/225 "2026-08-06T23:56:10Z")
Most pilots don’t practice a lot of engine-to-idle landings which makes emergency landings harder to deal with. I’d say that landing was well done. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/226 "2026-08-07T11:46:28Z")
The pilot is only 21 — and already a flight instructor. Impressive flying, slipping under that big signpost structure, no? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/227 "2026-08-07T12:28:17Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Most pilots don’t practice a lot of engine-to-idle landings Back when I was flying at WJF in dad’s Skyhawk, pretty much all of my landings were power-to-idle. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/228 "2026-08-07T23:49:04Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Back when I was flying at WJF in dad’s Skyhawk, pretty much all of my landings were power-to-idle. Was it maintenance problems or you just liked the practice? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2026, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/229 "2026-08-08T01:36:25Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Was it maintenance problems or you just liked the practice? Dad said brakes were expensive, so 40º flaps and power off. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/230 "2026-08-09T02:02:13Z")
> This past May, a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air medevac plane took off from Roswell, New Mexico, and headed west to the town of Ruidoso to pick up a patient. It shouldn’t have been a challenging flight for the two pilots and two nurses aboard. The temperature was 69 degrees; the sky was clear. The 60-mile journey normally takes a half hour, at most. > > But once airborne, the plane ran into trouble. At the White Sands Missile Range that night, US military personnel were conducting a GPS jamming exercise that left the King Air pilots—and anyone else within hundreds of miles—unable to use modern navigation systems. Forced to revert to older technology, ones that they rarely if ever use, the medevac pilots got disoriented and crashed into the side of a mountain. There were no survivors. > **[A Civilian Plane Crashed in New Mexico. Was the Military’s Tech to Blame?](https://www.wired.com/story/a-civilian-plane-crashed-in-new-mexico-was-the-militarys-tech-to-blame/)** > > Drone warfare is making the skies more dangerous, even for airplanes far from the battlefield. NTSB Preliminary Report: > **[Home (1)](https://web.ntsb.gov/investigations/?ntsbnumber=WPR26FA186)** ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/231 "2026-08-09T07:39:18Z")
It looks like there was no local forecast available. Without an updated altimeter setting the approach procedures were invalid. From the cite above: Bolding mine. The Foreflight weather briefing stated **“No METAR (Meteorological Aerodrome Report)” and “No TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast)” for SRR.** Destination Airport SRR is serviced by two instrument approaches, the ILS or LOC RWY 24 and the RNAV (GPS) RWY 24. Both instrument approach plate notes section contain the following statement: **“When local altimeter setting not received, procedure NA (Not Authorized).”** ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/232 "2026-08-09T16:54:52Z")
(The _Wired_ article is blocked for me; perhaps it addresses the following). While it’s surely bad that the military feels a need to test GPS jamming in civilian airspace, could this also be an example of too much dependence on GPS? I realize this was on a moonless night, but the plane went about seven long minutes heading north (not sure why the text says “northwest”), while the airport was to the west. Their magnetic compass was working fine, right? (Also their altimeter, well enough for a rough idea of altitude, even if it couldn’t be calibrated precisely for an instrument landing.) They must have known they were many miles north of their intended track. At their northernmost location, they said they were “going visual,” and said they could see the lights of their destination, over thirty miles to the southwest. I would have thought they’d be a little curious about the terrain between their location and their destination, now that the route was so different from the planned one. What charts would they have likely had available? A paper one stowed somewhere? Or couldn’t they just look at the digital Jeppesen chart on their visual display, using it as a map to learn about the high terrain, even if their (the plane’s) exact location wasn’t displayed on it due to the jamming? I know things happened quickly. Perhaps the lesson to pilots is to take the time to familiarize oneself with the basic geography for a hundred miles on either side of one’s intended path, not just under the path itself. I am not a pilot; feel free to school me on anything I got wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/233 "2026-08-09T20:27:13Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > While it’s surely bad that the military feels a need to test GPS jamming in civilian airspace, could this also be an example of too much dependence on GPS? This opens a fairly big can of worms. A good case can be made that pilots are now “children of the magenta” (not my phrase), too reliant on the GPS course to take us where we want to go. But that’s how we’ve designed the system. GPS with satellite based augmentation is considered a primary means of navigation. At the same time we have been doing away with legacy forms of navigation like NDBs and we have reduced the number of VORs. I fly a fairly advanced bizjet and while we can use raw VOR signals, our avionics don’t make it intuitive. It’s primarily built for GPS. It can even handle GPS jamming, automatically selecting the next best navigation source (usually our inertial reference system or DME, which is a component of VOR nav). But a bigger problem than jamming is now GPS spoofing - erroneous signals which the airplane cannot distinguish from valid GPS data. Unfortunately, both jamming and spoofing are becoming widely used military tactics and I suspect it will only get worse. We have procedures for jamming / spoofing, but sometimes it’s not simple to determine what’s happened or what to do about it. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/234 "2026-08-09T21:01:09Z")
Visual at night on a heading of 350 with an airport 31 NM behind them seems unlikely. I don’t know why they didn’t just fly the ILS. The altimeter setting they were using en route would have been good enough and an ILS doesn’t physically need an accurate altimeter the way a GPS approach does (note on the chart notwithstanding). They could have taken vectors to the ILS and flown a visual approach using the ILS guidance as a backup. Easy in hindsight. I note they were told they were flying 1000’ high earlier on which seems odd. Were they on autopilot and had set the wrong altitude or were they hand flying with very poor accuracy? Were they distracted trying to work out where they were? ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/235 "2026-08-09T23:26:55Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > Visual at night on a heading of 350 with an airport 31 NM behind them seems unlikely. I don’t know why they didn’t just fly the ILS. The altimeter setting they were using en route would have been good enough and an ILS doesn’t physically need an accurate altimeter the way a GPS approach does (note on the chart notwithstanding). > > Visually they say the airport at altitude which was far above ground interference. They apparently had the wrong barometric pressure entered into their system or the system was off by 1000 feet. When they got to the destination airport the automated weather system was down so they couldn’t fly the local instrument approach pattern. Had they tried and their altitude was incorrect (for any reason) then they risk being on the wrong side of ground zero. The right thing to do was as you suggested, get radar vectors to the ILS and fly a straight in approach. that would have given them the information they needed to fly a glide slope that is independent of their altitude setting. This was a nothing burger flight if done with a GPS driven moving map display. All the charts loaded into the system and any bit of fluff information you could ask for. They could fly a blind pattern almost to the runway. But that ability was gone without information needed for altitude. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/236 "2026-08-10T00:49:57Z")
They were missing GPS, not altitude. Sure they didn’t have access to a local altimeter setting from a TAF or METAR/AWS but they had an en route controller giving them vectors, they would have been given an area QNH from ATC that would have been safe enough even if it technically invalidated the approach chart. The report raises more questions than it answers at this stage. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/237 "2026-08-10T01:48:24Z")
Llama, Richard, and Magiver: I appreciate your detailed observations – for real. But would you also suggest that the pilots should have had a better sense of the terrain a few miles left and right of their intended course? Namely, some high honkin’ mountains just to the north…and then they were, you know, _flying north_… Even as a kid, I knew what the number in the middle of each grid square meant on an aeronautical chart: the highest-elevation obstacle within that square. I’m no pilot, but if I were, I’d get familiar with those numbers in the area of my planned flight. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/238 "2026-08-10T02:57:10Z")
They should always be aware of the lowest safe altitude for where they are, not necessarily the details of the terrain itself, but a minimum altitude to fly at. If they’re being radar vectored then the radar controller should only let them descend to the radar minimum safe altitude. The crew said they were visual though, and requested a visual approach, that tells the controller they will stay clear of terrain visually. This can be tricky on a dark night as you can’t really see the terrain at all. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/239 "2026-08-10T12:28:08Z")
[General Aviation to the rescue.](https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/private-pilots-airlift-supplies-from-arlington-to-families-affected-by-colville-reservation-wildfires/281-5eb98631-ff88-4625-8841-924ce74005ab) > # **Private pilots airlift supplies from Arlington to families affected by Colville Reservation wildfires** > > **Volunteer pilots are using Arlington Municipal Airport to fly donated supplies across Washington as wildfires devastate communities in the Colville Tribal area.** ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2026, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/240 "2026-08-12T18:27:34Z")
Very unfortunate. 22-year-old dies after suffering ‘medical emergency’ on a Southwest flight > **[22-year-old dies after suffering ‘medical emergency’ on a Southwest flight](https://www.aol.com/articles/22-old-dies-suffering-medical-135511000.html)** > > The 22-year-old passenger received CPR while on the airplane, but first responders on the ground were unable to revive him [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892.md?page=13)