The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was established by Congress to investigate transportation accidents, determine their specific cause, and make recommendations to prevent similar mishaps in the future.
More than two decades ago, the agency warned FAA about the limitations of the “see and avoid” method used by glider pilots and others flying under VFR. The agency’s analysis of past accidents conclusively determined that the use of VFR alone posed the highest risk of mid-air collisions. Yet many glider pilots still rely on VFR exclusively, putting themselves and other pilots at risk.
They’re not the only ones who fail to take advantage of the cushion of safety transponders provide. Since 2001, NTSB has investigated 51 incidents in which the lack of a transponder – or the failure to use one – played a significant role.
Accidents happen, even in wide-open spaces where mid-air collisions seem impossibly improbable. For instance, in 2005 one person was killed and two military pilots had to ditch their plane when a newly manufactured Air Tractor crop duster being flown to its new owner collided with an Air Force Cessna on a routine training flight in Oklahoma. The crop duster’s transponder had not yet been installed.
Last year, 31 near mid-air collisions were reported to the FAA. If every aircraft carried a transponder, that number would probably be much lower.
Glider pilots speak almost rhapsodically about the feeling of freedom they get when soaring above the Earth and “reading” the wind currents to keep aloft. Sailplanes are also a great way to teach student pilots basic aviation skills.
Retired Navy pilot and AOPA member Mark Danielson, who flies for FedEx, believes all student pilots should be required to spend some time in unpowered flight, which he says “is the true teacher of both aerodynamics and weather.”
Danielson noted several incidents in which commercial airliners crashed, even though their pilots did exactly what they were trained to do in an emergency, because the aircraft did not respond accordingly. In such cases, he says, the kind of airmanship uniquely acquired by learning to fly a non-motorized glider might have averted a tragedy.
So restricting gliders is not the answer. But for everybody’s safety, including their own, they do need to be “visible” to other pilots at all times. — Barbara Hollingsworth
