Greg is a Platinum CSIP - Cirrus Standardized Instructor Pilot - which means that he is factory trained and regularly audited by Cirrus to … read more
All The Way to Cabo San Lucas!
This wasn’t your standard Mexico Checkout flight! Usually for a border crossing checkout, we fly just across the border to Tijuana or San Felipe so the pilot can get a feel for all of the paperwork, fees, and sloooow service that awaits. This time – we went all the way to the tip of Baja California and landed at Cabo San Lucas. What a treat!
From the Bay Area, we flew nonstop and under IFR into Tijuana (MMTJ) where we cleared into Mexico, did all the paperwork for the pilots and airplane, and refueled. Then it was onward to Loreto (MMLT) which was another couple of hours flying time. We enjoyed beautiful scenery along the Sea of Cortez.
After an overnight in Loreto (the client had business there), a day trip to Cabo was in order. Only another 1.25 hours down the Sea of Cortez, La Paz instructed us to contact Los Cabos Approach and we were soon on the ground in Cabo San Lucas (MMSL). Note: don’t try to land at San Jose Del Cabo (MMSD), that is the busy air carrier airport with much higher prices.
Fees and fuel were reasonable at MMSL, and they even gave us a ride to the beach for lunch.
The return trip was slow (headwinds) but uneventful – we landed at San Diego Brown Field (KSDM) and cleared US Customs in no time. Then it was an IFR flight back home to the Bay Area.
This was a wonderful way to introduce flying in Baja California and I hope to have the opportunity to do it again. If you are thinking about flying into Mexico (or Canada, or the Bahamas!) please contact me to discuss your training options.
For a more complete description of border crossing procedures, read my blog post about visiting Rocky Point on mainland Mexico. To read more about my “Mexico Checkout” flight instruction, read this.
Another Cirrus Parachute Save – At Sea
Pair Survives Plane Crash at Sea On Way to Charity Mission in Haiti (From ABC News 1-10-12)
Cirrus CAPS parachute credited with another 2 saved lives. The chute deployed and they descended into the Atlantic Ocean. The airplane quickly began to fill with water.
What would YOU do? Get with your Cirrus CSIP instructor soon to practice emergency scenarios.
Fly safe,
Greg
(if you can’t see the video, use Chrome or FireFox. It doesn’t seem to load correctly in IE.)
The full story from ABC:
After surviving a harrowing plane crash off a sparsely populated Bahamas island – during which their lives were saved by the deployment of a giant parachute — a father and daughter from Alabama are continuing on with their medical mission to Haiti.
59-year-old Dr. Richard McGlaughlin and his 25-year-old daughter, Elaine McGlaughlin, departed from their home near Birmingham, Ala., on Saturday for a planned stop in Miami, before continuing on to Haiti.
Just one hour after the pair took off from Miami, however, trouble struck in their small plane.
The oil pressure plummeted, forcing Dr. McGlaughlin, the pilot, to send a distress signal to Coast Guard officials that their single-engine jet was going down.
Quickly coming to their aid were two Coast Guard lieutenants, who happened to be on a cargo mission nearby and raced to the plane’s location, just off the coast of Andros Island in the Bahamas. The Coast Guard also deployed a HC-144 Ocean Sentry fixed-wing aircraft from Miami to find the McGlaughlin’s airplane.
The oil pressure malfunction caused the plane’s single engine to seize up. After mayday calls, the father and daughter could only watch.
“The most frightening thing for me was seeing the propeller frozen, motionless, in front of a plane that’s in the air,” Elaine McGlaughlin said.
Dr. McGlaughlin deployed the plane’s parachute – standard on that model of Cirrus plane – which slowed descent to about 25 miles per hour.
“…We hit the water hard,” Dr. McGlaughlin said. “25 miles per hour is not an incidental collision. We pounded pretty good.”
Once the two hit the water, they faced the risk of drowning as the water in the plane rose around them.
“The plane filled up with water quickly, and that was sort of scary too because the doors are all closed but it just comes in the vents, and right away you are waist-deep,” said Dr. McGlaughlin.
The doctor and his daughter managed to make it out onto one of the plane’s wings, and then into an emergency inflatable raft stored on the plane.
Minutes later, an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter deployed from Clearwater by the Coast Guard began to circle overhead.
Video shot by the Coast Guard shows the tail and wing of their plane sticking up out of the water, along with the plane’s parachute that saved their lives.
Coast Guard officials were able to hoist the two up out of the water and safely into the helicopter, with no injuries reported.
The pair were then flown to Odyssey Airport in Nassau, Bahamas, where Dr. McGlaughlin’s passion for his work in Haiti, devastated by earthquake two years ago, became evident.
“Am I doing to do it again? As soon as I get another airplane. Yes, oh, yeah,” said the doctor.
McGlaughlin and his daughter departed at 8:30am Monday morning on a commercial flight to Haiti.
Cirrus Safety Record Rated Average – Could Be Better If…
The Cirrus safety record could be better if pilots would do just one thing when unrecoverable trouble strikes – PULL THE CHUTE!
A story on AVweb.com reveals that the safety record of Cirrus SR series aircraft is just average.
The magazine also examined how effective CAPS has been and concludes that when deployed under optimal conditions of speed and altitude, the system has proven effective in saving lives and preventing serious injury.
From the article: The Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association has studied Cirrus accidents extensively and concludes that the models would have a much better safety record if some 83 pilots who got into trouble in circumstances where CAPS was well within its envelope had simply used it. COPA is developing new training methods to teach pilots how to include CAPS more effectively in their response to abnormal flight situations.
Read the entire article here.
If you’re in northern California, feel free to contact me for your Cirrus flight training needs. When we’re training in a Cirrus, we will repeatedly examine situations where pulling the chute is the best answer to an emergency.
Fly safe,
Greg
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