glasairpilot

“The pilot later stated the parking brake was set and he was applying the toe brakes during the engine-start sequence.”

Hmm… let’s assume that this is true. The problem becomes, “Do we teach pilots what an error condition feels like?”

For example, we teach student pilots to check “Flight Controls – Free & Correct” during preflight. But do they know what a bad flight control feels like?

So when I was instructing, I used to put my knee in the way of the yoke during the Preflight Check so that the ailerons would jam a bit while they moved the ailerons from one extreme to the other. I was looking to see if my students would blithely continue, as if nothing was wrong, or if they would squawk the problem. (Most all of them squawked it. And it was good for them to hear their instructor congratulate them for having the courage to speak out when they thought that something was wrong.)

Same with water in fuel. I would purposely add water into the sample cup so that they could see what it really looked like before having to figure it out for themselves as pilots carrying passengers someday later.

But how to simulate a brake system where the fluid has leaked out? Unless you’ve bled the brakes on your own plane, and so know the feeling of the pedal going “soft” as you try to get the air out, I don’t see a good way to teach this. We can’t open the drain valve on a brake on a real plane. I doubt that the feeling of a spongy brake pedal is mimicked in a Sim.

In the case above, if the brake system really had failed and if pilot really was stepping on the brakes, I have to believe that the pedals (plural) went to the floor. Which, in itself is improbable, because the left brake system is somewhat independent of the right.

Did the plane just come out of maintenance?

So now I’m suspicious. It will be interesting to see a Final Report to see if the brake system was working or not. And if there was a failure of both left and right, how did that happen?