“Yesterday’s NTSB report on Roy’s accident was painful for our family, as it has caused us to relive the worst day of our lives. It has reinforced what I have previously stated, that no one is perfect. Most families struggle in some capacity and ours was no exception. We respectfully ask that you not make assumptions or pass judgment.” Ms. Halladay said, “Rather, we encourage you to hug your loved ones and appreciate having them in your lives. As a family, we ask that you allow Roy to rest in peace.”
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With factual information from toxicology tests to reveal "…a cocktail of drugs in Halladay’s blood, including the sleep aid Zolpidem, amphetamine, morphine and Fluoxetine, an antidepressant…, Icon’s onboard data acquisition unit…Multiple witnesses in the area stated that they saw the airplane flying very low, between 5 and 300 feet over the water as the airplane maneuvered south close to the shoreline. Some witnesses reported that the airplane was making steep turns and high-pitch climbs up to about 500 feet and that the engine sounded normal,” paints a picture of a pilot using drugs that most likely affected Halladay’s ADM. Without any on board data suggesting a stall/spin event, perhaps the cocktail of drugs, some of which may be disqualifying any pilot from taking to the air when discussing medications with a flight physician, wasn’t considered before taking off on a joyride around a local water way. It’s unfortunate for any pilot to assume any medication, legal or not, is ok when a personal or sports physician prescribes meds when further discussion should have included a flight physician. To make this unfortunate report an example of what not to do, I can use myself as an example.
During flight training for a ppl it rotorcraft, my seasonal allergies is a factor. Discussing over the counter meds with my flight instructor and research online via the FAA’s website on allowable otc meds for allergies, I didn’t risk taking any until discussing it with my flight physician. Training helicopters requires both hands and feet at all times so a sneezing fit, runny nose and tearing eyes tends to make anyone acutely aware of piloting while distracted with personal health issues. Fortunately for me, fresh air didn’t attack me with doors off during every season in NJ where I trained. Having an instructor along and aware of my allergies in case of turning over controls never occurred. When my flight physical came up, I simply asked if brand x antihistamine was allowable. His immediate reply was “Yes!”. I did my homework to determine what my choices were, including discontinuing training if otc or prescribed meds would disqualify me. Imagine a heli pilot suddenly being attacked with a sneezing fit, running nose and tearing eyes, frictions on or not. I achieved my ppl.
Please show me where I can see that data. And please show me the data that confirms the AoA was configured accurately. Thanks.
P.S. 15 degree AoA and a 50 degree bank ? Not a stall? Come on.
I know you want us to be kind. But this family had to know of Halladay’s issues. Whatever they were. Bottom line is the guy was not a nice man and could have killed some Mom and Dad and their kids.
There is no place in aviation for the likes of him!!
“During a visit in September 2015, the pilot’s primary care physician notes a history of substance abuse with inpatient rehab treatment in 2013 and another from January-March in 2015. At the time, the pilot had been abusing opioids and benzodiazepines,” the NTSB report states.
Halladay had received his pilot’s license in 2013 and had 51 overall hours in Icon A5s. How did he pass his medical?
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After almost 2.5 yrs gone by, I’m sure the feds will table this event.
Did not call it stall proof. One does not need to stall or spin to kill oneself while manouvring at low level.
If that’s a joke, it’s a poor one. Obviously Halladay didn’t fill out the form in a truthful manner. Nothing to do with ICON, whose marketing is brilliant.
Well, on the brighter side. If one is determined to load up on a boatload of drugs and then get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle, the choice of a light seaplane seems far less likely to result in the death of an innocent bystander than choosing something like a similarly priced exotic sports car.
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Idiots on drugs crash. It;s not the A5’s fault.
A drug induced stall/spin accident.
100 up votes. Amphibious aircraft are NOT toys.
People who ruin the good name and history of aviation are not heroes; they ruin it for the rest of us…
Yea, you nailed it. At least the drugged up pilot did not hurt/kill anyone else. Perhaps aviation dodged a bullet with his irresponsible behavior…
If it’s not weather and not structural, I think it’s pretty easy to say how a perfectly good airplane was converted into the image that we see at the top of this column.
True, but this is exactly what ICON was trying to avoid with contracts and flight monitoring.
Personally I am never surprised when some sort of fast and furious accident happens.
Nothing to learn from it other than it reinforces the reality that fast adrenaline toys WILL be used as such.
Pointless. If you die, you did it wrong.
You nailed it.
The “cause” is obvious. It was not the weather nor the plane. Why does the NTSB have a problem assigning cause?
Agreed. It was NOT weather and NOT mechanical. why the problem assigning cause???
100 thumbs up. Thank God no one else was hurt!!!
Here we go again. It was a stall/spin. Pilot was an idiot. The airplane is bad. It’s the FAA’s fault. I have heard this for so long for so many accidents, I’m numb.
The bottom line is that it’s none of these. Humans simply consistently take uncalculated risks that put their lives in question and will continue to do so for eons to come. There’s nothing to learn here that should have not been learned long ago.
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I agree but I still can’t help believe that Icon’s advertising this airplane as a flying jetski is egregiously irresponsible. Watch their videos of formation flights at low altitude, thru canyons, etc … and “all in 10 hours less time than it takes to get a Private Pilot certificate”. I would suggest that a manufacturer than encourages such risky flying results in higher accident rates than those that don’t but I am open to learning how that would be inconsequential even in this case.
Unlikely to be the last ‘downsizing’ action either.
Be careful what you ask for (or tacitly allow without pushing back) people of Seattle, Washington and environs … you just might get it. Maybe the “normal” population of that State will – likewise – pull up stakes and go overwhelm some other place, too. At that point, the Duwamish people can rightly reclaim their ancestral lands. This isn’t JUST a reaction to Covid-19 economics; there’s ALWAYS more to the story. Always. Boeing didn’t just establish manufacturing operations in Charleston because they needed more capacity. Fill in the blanks.
“Will the last person in Seattle please remember to turn out the lights.”
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Larry is on to something.
Seattle has made it quite expensive to live there let alone do business there. Why should Boeing stick around given there are far cheaper options to hang a shingle, never mind the many locations they already have supplemental operations with room to grow. I seriously doubt Boeing will be the last to consider closing shop in that state.
That used to be such a great city to visit and get away to in addition to all the mountainous area I would spend time at while stationed at Whidbey Island. They had cleaned up the city considerably in the years after I left. They they got even worse than it was and then piled the anti-business nonsense on top of it.
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“Larry is on to something.” You’re kidding, right? That’s kind of like chasing fire flies in the middle of a train tunnel. I think I hear something, let me turn up my hearing aids Martha.
As has been stated already, the “Left Coast” is a very expensive location for doing business and the cost of living for employees is very high as well. This, of course, drives up the sticker price on the product offered. This is probably a great time to start “remodeling” Boeing but the key feature needs to be changing the “flavor” of upper management. The money people need to be sidelined to desks and taken well out of the management part of the business. They are necessary but should not be in charge. Their sole focus is always on the bottom line and stock prices. That attitude is, I am thoroughly convinced, the main cause of Boeing’s woes today. Quality control in the 73, the 78, and the KC-46 are poor based on issues reported by customers and the FAA. Making high quality aircraft requires, obviously, attention to detail and that hasn’t been happening at Boeing. Relying on a single point of failure (AOA), misclamping fuselage sections during mating, FOD in the fuel tanks and boom issues are all problems Boeing never faced before. They have to be the result of shortage of quality control people and front line managers feeling the pressure to “do more, faster, with less people”. Look at the WWII crunch with the B-17. I am sure that they had some issues with quality control but my father’s generation rode those planes into battle and I don’t remember those men complaining about them being POSs. One can easily find, via an extremely short internet search, almost unlimited photos of the -17s coming back to England in various states of extremely bad disrepair from combat damage. But, they were sturdy and CAME BACK! I am not al all sure that some of today’s Boeing products could make that same claim with equivalent level’s of damage. Note I qualified that with the word “equivalent”.
It is long since past time for Boeing’s Board to get their heads out and get real managers in the the slots and get the money people in their own “wing of offices” where their damage can be minimized.
I sincerely doubt this is the beginning of a total depopulation of Seattle, for Boeing is just one of many companies finding themselves in a similar situation. If you’re on the board of a for profit corporation trying to remain profitable in times like this, it’s not unreasonable for them to try and reduce fixed costs. And something like a brick and mortar office buildings require a lot of upkeep and expenses every year. If they anticipate keeping many/most of their employees as WFH down the road then why not look at offloading these kinds of facilities?
David said
“Making high quality aircraft requires, obviously, attention to detail and that hasn’t been happening at Boeing”
But perhaps the problem doesn’t stop at the level of management, quality control checkers and line managers but goes all the way down to the people performing hands on assembly. The people actually performing on the assembly line also need to pay “attention to detail”. What work pool is available and what standards are they held to.
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Given the current climate I would not be surprised if they moved out of Chicago (a brief read about the budget problems the city of Chicago currently faces and the proposed fixes for that deficit is interesting) but probably not back to Seattle.
There is a difference between moving an office and closing the doors. Nothing in the article indicated they were downsizing staff and the building, thanks to COVID, was mostly empty anyway. Working from home is a good economical choice and since most of the people working in the headquarters would be salaried, moving them to SC would not do Boeing any favors for they would lose talent quickly. As one who lives in SC, many would opt to find other employment and Boeing would lose a talent pool hard to replace.
No fan of Boeing, but in this case a smart move to get them through this economic moment. Now if only they could write better programming and bring back, I dunno, Quality Control?
“Look at the WWII crunch with the B-17. I am sure that they had some issues with quality control but my father’s generation rode those planes into battle and I don’t remember those men complaining about them being POSs.” Well now, let’s not idealise that Boeing and that production line. My uncle was killed in 1944 on a training flight in Kansas in a newly-built B-17. A report said that a fire broke out in the bomb bay, and it took down the aircraft and some of the crew. I don’t know what caused the fire, but issues with quality control in production could conceivably have been part of it. But you are right, I don’t remember my uncle complaining — or at all, for that matter.
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There are cities all over the U.S. (and the world) that would love to have a Boeing plant. Boeing has proven that they can make subassemblies all over the U.S. (and the world)–assembling them in Seattle is not that big a deal.
I have to agree that Seattle USED to be a great place to live and to visit–20 years ago. Some of the best natural resources and climate in the world. The CLIMATE and the TERRAIN didn’t change–but the PEOPLE certainly did! Perhaps it is “creeping Californianism”–people expecting that “the good life” happens by accident. Instead, high business and personal taxes (and the resulting high cost of living) has made the city untenable–look for more business to follow those from California in relocating.
Airbus proved that parts can be made almost anywhere before being assembled–Boeing is just now catching up to that fact. Lockheed and Douglas USED to manufacture airplanes in California–but they too “diversified”. Time for “Seattlites” to wake up and realize that no major industry HAS to live there.
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The aerospace company I worked for sold their HQ in LA but stayed in it … for a while. Then, they pulled the plug and headed elsewhere when Calyfornya went crazy. They maintain a presence there only because that’s where some of the business is but the bulk of operations and HQ staff reside elsewhere now. Other major aerospace companies did the same and for the same reasons Used to be Calyfornya was the center of the aerospace universe but … no more. I never said Boeing would close down lock stock and barrel but they’d already moved HQ to Chicago. Now they’re selling the commercial HQ building. I DO hear a train coming … let’s just see if I’m right in the future.
Say … Mayor Sally and SPEEA … you’d better start learning the Southern Lushootseed dialect.
I summer in a tiny rural town in WI near Oshkosh half of the year. Around here, real estate is red hot predominantly because people are fleeing the cesspools called urban areas. Now toss in the Max8 debacle, economics and Covid and there’s plenty of reasons Seattle better wake up FAST. If you want to grow a garden, you have to start with fertile rich soil, not caliche. I hear they have good soil in SC. Get my drift?
… and MAYBE that’s the reason they’re selling the building … someone with a brain and horsepower has realized that what was once a wonderful place filled with qualified people ain’t so good anymore.
Either in '68 or '72, I remember seeing a bumper sticker in Denver that said, “Don’t Californicate Colorado.” Well … the mythical “they” did. NOW, it seems like that pretty much also fits Seattle except I can’t think of a way to make it rhyme. The sentiment remains the same, though. In 1970, entering NoCal, I thought I’d found the pot O’gold at the end of the rainbow. I even wanted to live in The City. Thirty years later in 1999, happiness was Calyfornya in my rear view mirror on eastbound I-10.
Boeing is financially in a dire situation… With a negative book value and ongoing major production issues at both Seattle and Charleston, SC. It is very likely that anything and/or everything is on the table… So, at least they’re trying…!!
So a company that makes airplanes is letting their employees work from home. I’m beginning to understand why the Max has been such a disaster.
This makes perfect sense. Boeings problems started when they moved the HQ to Chicago, believing that their real product is finance instead of airplanes and their executive distance allowed them to concentrate without distractions from those annoying factories. Now instead of correcting their mistake, they are doubling down on it.
Large piston engines have always had fuel leak issues, which is why the CAF prefers left and right spotters during flights, and why the public really shouldn’t fly on them.