Sad news to report (crash/fatality)

I heard about this earlier today. My condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Schilleci. If I hear anything else I'll certainly let you know.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4682657.html



April 2, 2007, 8:03PM
Pilot dies in plane crash in Sinton
? 2007 The Associated Press
SINTON, Texas ? A Spring Branch man died Monday when his single-engine airplane crashed near the San Patricio County Airport west of Sinton.

The Department of Public Safety identified the crash victim as Scott James Schilleci.

Trooper Eric Jimenez said in his report that Schilleci made two passes above the runway before the plane crashed at the east end of the runway. Heavy fog was reported in the area at the time of the crash and may have contributed to the crash, according to the trooper's report.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating.

Schilleci owned a Vans Aircraft RV-6, a low-wing, home-built airplane that features two side-by-side seats.

Casey Rubey, manager of Kestral Airpark, said in a story in Tuesday's editions of The Herald-Zeitung that Schilleci was a professional pilot and was very responsible. "I can't believe this has happened," Rubey said.

Whoa... holy cr@p. I knew Scott; he was a fellow CAL pilot, Houston based B737 captain. He had a house and hangar at Kestrel Airpark N of San Antonio and ran a pool construction business on the side. Wife and two teenage kids as I recall...

I flew the entire month of May last year with him; he was a good guy to work and fly with and was very proud of his RV-6, a nice red/gold QB built in less than a year. He was a reserve MD-80 driver at the time, on call and not flying much, plenty of spare time to hammer out an RV.

Sad news...

Very sad indeed....

I own a runway lot at Kestrel, and every time I land there, I have friendly future-neighbors come up to say hi and welcome me to the field. I'm so bad with names and faces, but I would be surprised if I hadn't met him along the way....

My condolences to his family and friends.

Paul

Funeral Info for Scott Schilleci

...this forwarded to me by a friend of the family...asked to publish here.

> For those of you who aren't aware, Scott Schilleci was taken from us on
> Monday morning when he crashed his plane in South Texas. The family has
> asked me to notify neighbors and to give details for his service. At
> 11:30 Thursday morning a church service will be held at the Cibolo Creek
> Community Church. This church is located off of FM 3351 (Ralph Fair Rd)
> and their phone # is 210-698-5417

Wow, that really hits home. I live on the north end of the Kestrel runway and was out in my driveway and saw him take off. The weather was overcast and light drizzle. I thought to myself not a great day to fly, I guess he has to be somewhere.

Terrible news. Seemed like a nice enough guy.

Some questions?

So sad to hear about this. Can I ask some questions?

He was a professional pilot - how many hours would he likely have had? How much GA or RV experience would he have had?

How might his plane have been equipped for IFR? Did anyone get to see his cockpit?

The reason I ask is to try and gauge what kind of IFR flying does and does not make sense for someone like me with a whole lot less experience. I am getting the idea that doing more than climbing through a layer to VFR above or descending to VFR below with ceilings greater than 2000 AGL is all that I am likely ever to be able to do safely.

Again, condolences to his friends and family.

--John Babrick

NTSB

OldAndBold said:

So sad to hear about this. Can I ask some questions?--John Babrick

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Check the NTSB reports, it all will be in there. Usually initial report is out in a week or two, final factual report comes out in a year or so.

In regards to you question about can you fly IFR? Well that is a good question to ask one's self. Really only you can know that answer. Are you IFR rated now? The RV is a capable IFR plane and in some ways very good for IFR, in that its fast and responsive and maneuverable. However those Pros are the same things that can be a Con to a newbie RV/IFR pilot.

You talk about stratus penetration and HIGH mins as your personal mins. That is a good thing, but would say is that all the training and practice you would get. You should get several hours of "hood" every month to stay current. The IFR rating is one of the hardest ratings to stay truly current and proficient on.

Equip? Well most agree for single pilot IFR an autopilot wing leveler is almost a must have in a high performance RV. You can read countless threads on which EFIS is best or what redundancy is needed with a glass cockpit. We don't know what happened or am I going to guess.

When more people are killed in one labor day week end (464 deaths) than all GA crashes for a year (385 deaths avg 1996-98), than I'll take my chance in the air. Statistics of course don't mean much when they hit close to home.

You can get the odds in your favor with training, currency, practice and good maintenance on your bird; add not flying in bad weather and running out of gas you are safer in your RV than any car any day. Bottom line, every time any of us go up in the air there are risks. Accidents are part of flying.

Statistically single engine, single pilot IFR is more risky than other types of flying. However a qualified IFR pilot is much safer statistically than a VFR rated pilot, especially one who scud runs and flys in marginal weather low to the ground. I say get the IFR rating, train, stay current and equip you RV for that morning stratus penetration for VFR en-route or on top. I have my limits for single pilot single engine ops.

I appreciate you trying to make sense of it. Sadly we can't always make sense of it. Add my thoughts and prayers to friends and family.

OldAndBold said:

Can I ask some questions?

He was a professional pilot - how many hours would he likely have had? How much GA or RV experience would he have had?

How might his plane have been equipped for IFR? Did anyone get to see his cockpit?

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Regarding Scott's flying time, I'd wager a guess and say somewhere around 15,000+ hrs... just a WAG though. Drawing from my rusty memory banks, he learned to fly as a teenager in a Citabria as his Dad had a Bellanca dealership at Weiser (Houston) back in the late 70's, plus he'd been flying his RV for 5-6 years and had 5-600 hours on the hobbs as I recall. Plenty of GA and RV experience it seems. His ship had a full panel, including a Dynon. Lots of experience and a well equipped plane... you gotta wonder.

Your idea of using an IFR ticket in your RV just to punch up or down thru a cloud deck to VFR above or below sounds to me like a prudent, reasonable idea. I'm in a similar situation as Scott, an airline puke with lots of experience, yet I have no desire to bump thru the clouds for hours on end followed by an ILS approach down to 200 and a half mile viz. No thanks; for the RV I'll be using higher minimums as you described.

Yes

jbDC9 said:

I'm in a similar situation as Scott, an airline puke with lots of experience,.

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You also have autoland. Is it really as good as we're told? Hands off landings?
Only then would fog not be such a concern.

I'm very sad to hear about this whole deal.

Condolences....

IFR in an RV

I don't know that I personally would want to fly an RV in IMC for long. Everything happens so fast! Sorry to hear about our loss. My best to the family.

Condolences

My condolences to Scott's family.
There, but for the Grace of God go I.

Regarding John's concern about IFR flying, the greatest area of risk for IFR is the transition to VFR. Until you pop out into the clear, you do not really know what you are going to be dealing with.

You could become visual and under a defined cloud base with 20 mile visibility (piece of cake) or you could find the base undiscenible in 1 mile vis. in rain or snow- though not the later in Aus.

If you are doing an instrument approach and the runway is fittied with HIAL (High Intensity Approach Lighting) then the undefined base and poor visiblilty are not so hard to deal with, as at the minima you will either see the lights or you won't and if you don't you should be immediately carrying out a missed approach.

However, if you are faced with no HIAL and a circling approach then it is far more difficult to assess whether you have sufficient visual clues and legal VMC in order to continue the approach. It is also possible to become visual on a circling approach, only to find another part of the circuit pattern you need to fly, does not have IMC due lower cloud base or reduced visibility in precipitation.

Adding to the problem is that you may be circling away from the missed approach direction, so you need to keep a mental picture of which way to turn for a missed approach, at any stage of the circuit, in order to ensure that if a missed approach becomes necessary, then you will be afforded the terrain protection of the published missed approach procedure.

The ability to assess whether you are IMC or VMC is the crux of it.
YOU CAN ONLY EVER BE ONE OR THE OTHER.

Pete.

pierre smith said:

You also have autoland. Is it really as good as we're told? Hands off landings?
Only then would fog not be such a concern.

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It's better, Pierre, if the runway and airplane are certified for such ops.

When I was in that world, the only limitation was a 50' DH, vis did not matter. The best runways were at London and Paris. The airplane would autoland and track the center line perfectly. All the pilot had to do was ease the nose over after TD, go into reverse thrust, disconnect everything when slowed to taxi speed and follow a line of lights to the gate. The guy in the tower knew the gate and pushed buttons to get proper steering to the assigned gate. Sometimes the fog was so thick, you couldn't see the edge of the concrete on a taxi way. It was a piece of cake if everything was working. There were coordinated checks by the pilots on final to make sure everything was working. If not, it was off to an alternate.

Hand flying an RV is such conditions is no piece of cake.....for anyone....really wonder why the guy was doing it?

My condolences to the family. This kind of news is always hard to hear.

David-aviator said:

. . .
Hand flying an RV is such conditions is no piece of cake..... for anyone.... really wonder why the guy was doing it?

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When I was a student pilot not so long ago part of the training was to start reading accident reports. The ones that really stood out in my mind were the airline pilots who died flying GA aircraft. How could these guys with all that much training and experience make those kind of mistakes? If they can make those mistakes then certainly I can. Yikes.

Speaking as someone who is getting his instrument training I can tell you that it is very tempting to think that after 40 hours of training and a successful checkride that I can start doing instrument approaches in bad conditions. After all, I will have been trained to know what the minimums are, I will know what the procedures are and the FAA will have given me this rating that says I can legally fly to minimums. The reality is that its a lot harder than it looks and its very easy to overestimate my abilities. And here I am trying to decide what kind of IFR panel to install...

--JCB

pierre smith said:

You also have autoland. Is it really as good as we're told? Hands off landings? Only then would fog not be such a concern.

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Yup, a Cat II or IIIA autolanding is an amazing thing to watch; how'd it do that? Pretty cool... it really is that good. One side effect of a using all that fancy technology is that it kinda dulls down your hands on skills. The sharpest I've ever been on instrument flying was my freight dog days hauling cancelled checks in ragged out Cessna 310s. Single pilot, no autopilot, mostly at night, in minimally equipped airplanes flying 5-7 legs per night in all kinds of weather. Some nights we did ILSs down to 200 and 1/2 mile viz every leg; throw in ice, thunderstorms, fog, the occasional NDB or DME arc approach just to keep it interesting. I'll never be that good again.

jbDC9 said:

Yup, a Cat II or IIIA autolanding is an amazing thing to watch.

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Gripe: Autoland very rough.
Maintenance: Aircraft not equiped with Autoland.

All levity aside, my condolences to family and friends - a sad time.

We don't know what happened here and no one should draw conclusions on what all the circumstances were that created this disaster but...

Was it the airplane type/model that killed this man? Most likely not. No mater how many hours you have and no mater what you fly, if you make a bad decision, it could kill you.

Everyone assumes that an airline pilot with thousands of hours shooting ILS approaches in the big iron is somehow exempt from what can happen to you in a single engine, light and agile airplane on a non-precision approach and that somehow the airplane must have been at fault. The airplane most likely did not cause this man to die.

My heart and prayers go out to the family of this fellow aviator.

Everyone be carefull!

I hasten to respond to Brantel's post and say that I have made no conclusions about this sad accident. My posts have been simply in consideration of what has been stated about the accident and reflecting on what it might mean for me as a pilot and builder of a similar aircraft.

--JCB

Once did a "flight advisor" session for an airline pilot. Thousands of hours in airliners. Less than 100 in single engine, and most of that in a Champ. Strongly recommended that he get some RV transition time before flying his 180 hp RV-4. He did, and has been enjoying it ever since.

jbDC9 said:

The sharpest I've ever been on instrument flying was my freight dog days hauling cancelled checks in ragged out Cessna 310s. Single pilot, no autopilot, mostly at night, in minimally equipped airplanes flying 5-7 legs per night in all kinds of weather. Some nights we did ILSs down to 200 and 1/2 mile viz every leg; throw in ice, thunderstorms, fog, the occasional NDB or DME arc approach just to keep it interesting. I'll never be that good again.

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So you're the guy I had to always slow down for on approaches! I was doing the same thing in Aerostars. My old favorite was serial no. 13.

Sad to hear of another brother going this way. May he rest in peace.

I have flowen many hours with Scott as a Senior Military Fighter pilot and a Pilot with Continental. It is hard to believe. He was a wonderful and experenced pilot. Our father above must have needed a new Captain because Scott always careful about everything he did.