Roy Halladay Crash Dissected: Drugs Were the Least Of It

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not always at a loss for words, but it was exactly that last fall at this fair in DeLand, Florida, when I was approached with this question: When will the icon stop killing people? The representative of sales. from an airplane company that was nearby couldn't contain the laughter in my store look, where does a question like that come from even with two fatal accidents in three years that the icon is a killer? Well, one place where it comes from is the accident that we will review. in this video it was the second fatal accident of an a5 icon since the model appeared about a decade ago after an unusually long investigation that has not yet ended, the NTSB just released the file but gave no probable cause for the accident, Of course, you already know that.

In the

crash

, the pilot was Hall of Fame pitcher Roy Halladay, who played for the Toronto Blue Jays in the Philadelphia Phillies, retired in 2013 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame after his death. Holliday came from an aviation family, his father was a professional soldier who taught his son to fly at the time of the accident how did they have 721 hours a private certificate with single and multi-engine land ratings and presumably seaplane sport pilot privileges for the to 5? The accident occurred on November 7, 2017 on a day when there were two other fatal general aviation accidents, that is, part of the course, the investigation was unusually detailed, probably because it involved a high-profile celebrity because the A5 has A regimental flight data recorder and engine management unit also recorded data that the NTSB had in abundance.

To analyze fatal accident investigations they do not always include extensive interviews with the family, the manufacturer or the instructors, but this one does. The accident flight was short. How did they take off from Ford Lake Point northwest of Tampa and fly west toward the Gulf of Mexico at altitudes between 1600 and 600 feet, once it reached the Gulf it descended to altitudes well below 100 feet skimming the water in what the data showed were near-zero GPS altitudes, according to witnesses, executed at

least

three sharp pull-ups, the last reaching an altitude of 358 feet, one witness said the plane banked almost inverted, but it is possible that has moved away before completing the circuit.

If this is true, it is difficult to see in the data after the last climb, the plane banked before hitting the water wings. level and descending at about 45 degrees at that point the witness called 911 confirms that as they passed near the houses along the coast at low altitude a couple of boats in the area approached the wreckage but the pilot did not survive the initial impact Ikon took full advantage of the safety features built into the aircraft and fitted a ballistic parachute, a unique angle of attack indicator and a combined incidence wing to reduce, but not completely eliminate, the risk of stall.

The wing also has vortex generators to keep the airflow glued to the plane. wing that improves roll control during stall, okay with all that, it's just another stall or stall turn accident like that one we see dozens of every year, well it may be, but it may not be, The data is not necessarily so conclusive and in the last few seconds before impact, the indicated speed appears to be about 65 knots, the angle of attack about 16 degrees and the load factor is 1.9 GS, depending on the angle of pitch which would have been close to a stall, but witnesses said the wings were level at the time of impact, it is possible that the plane was in and out of buffet stall when the pilot entered aggressive pitch commands, it is also It may have been installed and simply hit the water due to an altitude miscalculation, but frankly, given everything else that was wrong on this flight related to aeronautical decision making, whether the plane stopped or not is a distinction without difference during the NTSB investigation that Roy Halladay's father revealed, but he considered his son to have excellent stick and rudder skills, which is not surprising for a guy who paid millions of dollars and put ninety per hour off pitch one inch.

From the edge of the attack zone, student Halladay also thought his son had good judgment, but was concerned about not appreciating the risks associated with aviation, specifically Halladay warned his son about long flights over water or at night in airplanes. single engine. but while most of us, accustomed to flying in general aviation, may find those risks a little shaky, they are not stupid crazy for the well-prepared and trained pilot, but the maneuvers as they flew on the day of their accident were close to the edge The NTSB investigation revealed that Holiday flew his icon under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge at a GPS altitude of thirty-nine feet and a speed of 73 knots. flight on social media and even wrote it down in his logbook part of the fun of seaplanes and amphibians is flying low over water and that necessarily involves flying close to obstacles when landing or taking off sure is a relative concept here flying low can be done with an acceptable risk, but that is not the same as safe.

Can't. I had to come to the mountains. Right now, when he was first promoting the plane, he circulated a clever video showing a pair of A5s flying low and dragging their wingtips in the water. he captured a righteous grief for this and removed the icon from the video. He had a second thought after the first fatal accident involving a factory pilot who arrived in a blind cove far from California and

crash

ed into terrain killing both on board after that accident. Icahn modified his training. To establish a soft platform concept of 300 feet above 300 feet, inclines up to 60 degrees are suggested and 30 degree incline excursions are fine, below that the limits are 45 degrees incline and 10 degrees incline.

This is a perfectly sensible and easy-to-understand doctrine. for anyone who wasn't able to figure it out on his own and Holiday seemed to have ignored it and flying under the bridge ignored another clearly stated element of icon training doctrine, don't brag in his interview with the NTSB, Senior Halliday said he was concerned . that his son was abusing medication and warned him that

drugs

and flying would not go together tragically his concerns proved well-founded a post-crash toxicology report revealed a cocktail of harmful

drugs

and Halliday's blood, including a sleeping pill, morphine for relief pain and antidepressant called fluoxetine also known as Prozac and baclofen a muscle relaxant hydromorphone another opioid pain reliever it was also detected that he had also ingested an amphetamine a stimulant four of these medications have sedative qualities and the FAA says they should be used with caution before flying or Not at all according to the record, Halliday had entered substance abuse treatment at

least

once, although he did not need it to operate the A5.

Halliday had a first-class FAA medical certificate issued about five months before the accident, he did not report neither the FAA nor the NTSB offer any opinion on how or whether this pharmacological soup may have affected the pilot's judgment and Halliday's motor skills, but it seems little a drug menu that would have been less blurry for most of us would likely have been a In my opinion, the performance enhancer is just one more data point in the pattern of flawed aeronautical decision-making. Survivable WMD doesn't matter, a good WMD requires solid basic instincts and a bit more restraint.

Let's go back to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge for a moment. Your grandmother could fly a plane under this bridge without hitting it good aeronautical decision making means you know that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should ignore what ultimately led to this accident no amount of good plane design smart indicators of angle of attack ballistic parachutes or stall-resistant wings would have prevented training aimed at breaking a tendency toward poor judgment has never been a range that is said in aviation and certainly was not here a last word for people who have been around addiction and that I have as an observer.

I know it's not a weakness but a disease, the victim deserves compassion and often intervention, but until the Beast is slang, never the keys to a plane for Ag web. I'm Paul Berger Ellie, thanks for watching and staying in the bubble.