This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
While flying on an IFR flight plan last night, overcast 12,000 very dark night, I had descended from 8,000 and was level at 3,000 and was getting vectors for the ILS approach Runway 4 flying heading 290°.
Approach told me to turn left 250°. During the turn I noticed bright lights ahead and at first thought it was an airplane very close above me at 12 o’clock flying opposite direction.
I ducked my neck down and tilted my head back to look up 45° out the windscreen to look directly at the lights and immediately thought I was flying with a very high nose pitch up attitude and immediately realized “THAT IS NOT AN AIRPLANE!”
I must have pushed on the yoke to get the nose down. I turned my head left to look out the side window hoping to make sense of what I was seeing but the pitch blackness with only a couple lights was of no help. I immediately looked at my attitude indicator and what I saw made my head spin!
For a split second I questioned whether my G5 had malfunctioned but thank God all my training kicked in and I immediately disregarded the thought that my G5 was broken.
At that moment I realize I was experiencing overwhelming spacial disorientation. So I focused on using the attitude indicator to get wings level and control airspeed.
I was in a bank approximately standard rate. I leveled wings first (I did not notice the horizon so did not immediately perceive my pitch attitude.) After getting wings level then focused on the airspeed. The airspeed indicator was moving fast like a powerful spin on the Wheel of Fortune and the numbers were increasing!
I do not remember whether or not I reduced power…(before this happened power was set at about 1700 rpm and I had been flying at 135 mph). Now airspeed was passing through 190mph + fast! I immediately pulled back on the yoke to reduce the airspeed and recover the airplane.
The horizon came back into view, I stopped the descent, added power and began to climb. As I started to climb the controller came on the radio and stated “Aircraft X I got an altitude alert. Check your altitude.”
I could hear the controller’s alarm going off. I didn’t try to communicate. I only focused on completing the recovery and controlling the airplane. (I had gotten 400 feet off my assigned altitude).
Although it felt like slow motion, this all occurred in a time span of less than 10 seconds. I got back to 3,000 feet and a heading 250° and after a minute of silence the controller gave me a vector to intercept and cleared me for the approach.
I’ve thought a lot about what happened last night and realize that a slight disorientation accelerated rapidly into extreme disorientation and my head movements in the cockpit trying to figure things out were counterproductive and actually were a significant contributing factor to the magnitude of my disorientation.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 1990205
The pilot of the Mooney does not say if he was in IMC conditions nor if he was in marginal VFR conditions with reduces visibility. He did say it was a very dark night. It is a known fact turning one’s head quickly in IMC conditions can induce spatial disorientation. One should limit their head movement. Night flying in very dark conditions with little or no lights or ground contact is essentially IMC conditions. Good lesson to be learned here. He could have called ATC to confirm if there was any traffic near by without moving his head to the far left and 45 degrees up. If there was any ground reference at all he should have been able to easily look straight out and confirmed the slight upset with a quick recovery. I have experienced spatial disorientation only once and it was on a dark night practicing instrument approaches under the hood. I was flying a Cessna 210 on an ILS approach and I slightly moved my head such that out of the corner of my hood I could see ground lights out of the corner of the cockpit windshield. I immediately started to feel my head spin. I never deviated from the localizer or the glide slope. I recognized what was happening so I pulled off the hood and immediately recovered from the event visually. It would have also been helpful to know how much experience the Mooney pilot had accumulated since he got his instrument rating, and when he last flew instrument/IMC, as well as his night experience. This all makes a big difference. Regarding 3D instrumentation, I have flown 50+ years without it and have never had an issue with spatial disorientation. Best to focus in on one’s instrument skills to remain safe.
None of us that fly IFR should ever
forget what the raw instruments are for, that are in every instrument plane, and never forget how to use them.
You learned this in basic training; unusual attitude and partial panel.
Remember!!
Don’t forget, computers can fail.
Kudos to the pilot for ignoring all around him to get the aircraft under control. If you fly IFR, you WILL experience spatial disorientation at some point. I am 25000 hour Captain, 787 International. It is real folks!
Good job at recovery is all I have to say.
And I will add this, BTDT. One has very little time close to the ground to get things in order. Suggest everyone work at proficiency at partial panel. Glass panels do go dark.
Just like autopilots — When they fail, you will get to hand fly the plane and possibly out of an unusual attitude at the same time.
Fundamentals of instrument flight – minimize interruptions of scanning the instruments and minimize head movement.
The good thing is that the pilot is safe, and his training kicked in and they went to the instruments and didn’t react totally to what their body was telling them. As far as the 3D moving map not everyone can afford this and those that rent might not have that option. Fly safe everyone!!!!
Sounds like he…himself…wasn’t quite up to the task. And in the moment trying to decipher pertinent information from newer avionics where it’s clustered together probably didn’t help.
At any rate I’ve got 38 years of flying a Mooney x-country at night over mountains…this is his problem and nothing to be learned.
“overcast 12,000 very dark night, I had descended from 8,000 and was level at 3,000 and was getting vectors for the ILS approach Runway 4 flying heading 290°.”
The report doesn’t say how long he was in cruise at 12,000 feet on a “very dark night,” but reduced oxygen saturation could have played a role in his subsequent experience with spatial disorientation.
The overcast was 12000ft. He was flying at 8000ft. O2 should not be an issue. Like pilots spend up to 16 hours at 8000 ft cabin altitude in long haul flights and hypoxia was never an issue.
Yes, I misread that as him being at 12,000 at cruise.
Nonetheless, even flying at 8,000 at night for a long period of time can lead to degraded performance. The FAA recommends using supplemental oxygen when flying at 6,000 feet or higher at night.
https://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media/hypoxia.pdf
I understand your concern but I’m happy that you don’t run the FAA. Safety is indeed very important, however over regulation can lead to “just stay in bed, it’s too dangerous to go outside “. Vertigo is a real hazard that can even kill a pilot using synthetic vision. No one is right here and no one is wrong, we just disagree my friend.
I have never experienced it, but I know it’s very real. Thank you for sharing your experience in vivid detail so we can all take this danger very seriously.
No we don’t have to take this danger very seriously because there is a way to eliminate it altogether with 3D moving map technology and never wonder which way is up ever again.. didn’t you read my comment?
I’m still curious to know what were the “bright lights” that made you duck your head and begin this deviation….?
I certainly wasn’t there and the author doesn’t answer the question but consider reflections from clouds. I’ve seen seen real distracters. There is a reason the face of props are matt black and the strobe switch placard say to turn them off in clouds. Nav lights, especially the newer LED gems can reflect harshly and they aren’t all bouncing off a flat vertical cloud ..JMHO…
They were lights from the ground apparently. He had pitched down inadvertently so the lights in the groin where above his “straight ahead” line of sight because his nose was aiming below the lights.
3D MOVING MAP COCKPIT DISPLAYS HAVE ENTIRELY SOLVED THE PROBLEM OF SPACIAL AWARENESS IN IFR CONDITIONS AND THE FACT THAT ANYONE IS STILL IGNORANT OF SUCH AN IMPORTANT ADVANCEMENT IN FLIGHT SAFETY TECHNOLOGY AND FAILS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT IS HEARTBREAKING. THE FAA SHOULD MANDATE 3D MOVING MAPS IN EVERY PLANE THAT FLIES. I AM YELLING BECAUSE THIS IS SO IMPORTANT AND YOU ARE ALL SEEMINGLY SO IGNORANT OF SUCH AN IMPORTANT TECHNOLOGY — A 3D VISUALIZATION OF THE WORLD AROUND YOU AT NIGHT OR IN FOG IS ABSOLUTELY VITAL TO YOUR SAFETY.
@ ASDF:
NO, YOU’RE SIMPLY WRONG. TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT SOLVE THIS BECAUSE IT BREAKS. BECAUSE IT IS NOT PERFECT. BECAUSE IT MALFUNCTIONS.
UNDERSTANDING ALONG WITH TRAINING ARE THE PROPER SOLUTIONS.
And please stop yelling. You don’t seem like a pilot. Are you?
I hope he isn’t a pilot. Arrogance will kill.
He’s right tho, you’re all living in the past 3d cockpit displays should be mandatory. Calling people arrogant makes you look childish. This person is clearly trying to save lives and you are doing the opposite.
@Mike Bass — Calling me arrogant and making a reference to my death in your comment is an assault against me and criminally violates the terms of this website. @the person moderating this — take Mike Bass’ comment about my death down right now and realize very clearly that deleting a federal court lawyer’s perfectly acceptable messages instead of allowing them to post is actionable — if you want to get sued then I dare you to delete this post. ASDF
Not a pilot, but I am a lawyer (oooo, you practice in federal district courts–how elite!). Bass’s comment could, in theory, by a jury deliberating in a room with a leak of nitrous oxide occuring within it, be understood as a threat to some unknown/speculative party’s life as a result of your attitude that he finds arrogant, but thankfully, every judge I’ve known would set aside the verdict as manifestly unreasonable as a matter of law. (This assuming your complaint wasn’t dismissed, properly, upon motion early in the dance.)
I’m offering a charitable interpretation of your comment, but attorney-to-attorney, please don’t abuse our position in the courts or society to intimidate the laity. We have earned a bad enough reputation for allowing zealous representation of our clients’ interests to prompt us to entertain ever more abuse of process. I expect someone will, someday, serve a ham sandwich with civil process. I hope I am long dead myself before then.