Sylvia published her views on the fatal Southend accident that involved a student who was on his second solo fight. You can read all the details on Sylvia’s blog, but to make the long story short, let’s say that the tower controller asked the pilot to break his approach in a non-standard way.

The student pilot found himself in an unusual situation, which ultimately lead to a crash. As he got killed in the accident, we will never know the exact causes, but this accident raises an old question: what shall a student pilot know before his first solo ?

The accident report mentions: “During his second solo flight the student was instructed to carry out an unfamiliar and non-standard manoeuvre. Presented with a situation beyond his experience, he failed to reconfigure the aircraft for level flight. The aircraft continued to fly level at a power setting which the available evidence indicates would have been insufficient to maintain flying speed, and eventually the aircraft stalled at a height from which recovery was impossible.”

In her analysis, Sylvia somehow confirms that what the controller asked for was beyond the pilot’s experience: “Initial solo flights are straight-forward. You fly in a pattern around the airfield, called a circuit. First you’ll simply take off and follow the circuit and land again. The next stage is to start coming down as if to land but as the wheels touch the runway you clean up the plane and take off again – a touch and go – to save time.”

All my training took place in Geneva, mostly using the grass runway, operating in parallel to airline and business jet traffic on the concrete runway. Before my first solo, I landed a couple of times on the concrete runway. The pre-solo training also included simulated engine failure, and no flaps landings, because the training aircraft had electrical flaps.

The pre-flight briefing I received from my instructor included a plan in case of problem with the grass runway: land on the concrete runway, or go to a nearby airport. The probability of an aircraft crashing shortly before the landing of a solo-student is rather low, but this can be. So shall a solo student be ready for a diversion ?

I was involved once in an occurrence where a solo student did not acted as expected – click here to read more. I discussed with both the student and the instructor. This occured on a non-towered airport, and the instructor kept radio contact with his student all the time on a separate frequency. I don’t know the UK traditions, but in Switzerland an instructor could give instructions on the frequency.

There was once an incident in Geneva where an instructor told his student to go-around after a bouncy landing. The student applied full power, but did not compensated with rudder. He turned left, and crashed in a nearby hangar. Hopefully, he survived, and is still active.

Was the instructor’s intervention a good thing ? We’ll never know. A go-around is a stressful time, particularly for a pilot on his first solo flights. The voice of the instructor on the radio can help, but also add to the confusion.

In the Southend case, the instructor did not used his radio, probably trusting that his student would react properly, and that it was no time for an additional stress factor. Could he have helped ? We’ll never know.

One of the contributing factors in the Southend accident was on the tower side. There was a shift change while the accident pilot was flying, and the new controller was not aware that he had to deal with a solo student.

Some recommendations from the AAIB go in this direction. Here they are, together with Sylvia’s comments:

Safety Recommendation 2007-050
The Civil Aviation Authority should instigate the use of a suitable prefix, for use in civil radiotelephony, to signify a student pilot, flying solo.

Safety Recommendation 2007-051
The Civil Aviation Authority should amend the Manual of Air Traffic Services Part 1 and the Radio Telephony Manual (CAP413) to emphasise to controllers that pilots identifying themselves as students have limited ability, which must be taken into consideration when issuing instructions.

These changes are all focused on ensuring that the controllers are aware of who they are dealing with and what the expected level of experience is. No one expects a student on his second solo to understand what the controller at Southend meant for Sam Cross to do.

…although the use of non-standard phraseology probably exacerbated the student’s difficulties, even a clear instruction to orbit in the approach configuration would have been problematic. Under existing provisions, air traffic controllers are not expressly prohibited from instructing this manoeuvre.

Thus, there is an argument that Sam Cross should have been given precedence due to his inexperience.”

While I recognize a possible safety improvement in these recommendations, there is something that makes me feel uncomfortable. Flying is all about decision making, and the words “In Command” are as important as “Pilot”, in “Pilot in Command”.

One is always smarter after an accident, but any pilot can refuse a clearance if he does not feel safe with it. There is even a standard word for that: “Unable”. If the student used it, the plane behind would probably have been instructed to go around. Unpleasant for a commercial aircraft, as Sylvia mentioned, but safe. As pilot in command, one is in charge of ensuring the aircraft safety, including by not respecting an ATC clearance.

The controller issued a non-standard clearance, because of the speed difference. Asking the student pilot to execute a standard go-around would not have been safe: the plane behind was so quick that he would have overtaken the slow trainer. Should the student refuse the non-standard clearance, the controller would probably issue a similar “approach break-up” clearance to the aircraft behind. But here again, we’ll never know.

My point of view is complex to defend, because it’s never easy to say that the victim of an accident is partly responsible. But unless you bring better arguments, I won’t depart from that: either Sam was not ready to fly solo, or he made bad decisions. The whole system failed, including the “instructor – pilot – controller” trio.