抖阴ap

Many general-aviation pilots need more training for dealing with critical weather situations, the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday as it released results of a new safety study.

Weather-related accidents are a leading cause of fatalities in noncommercial flights, said acting NTSB chairman Mark Rosenker as the board issued key recommendations for improving the skills of pilots flying in bad weather using instruments.

Over the past nine months, there have been a number of fatal aircraft accidents in Colorado and Wyoming for which weather was a possible contributing factor. The study didn’t include the most recent crashes, but the recommendations could apply in those cases.

In its study, the NTSB looked at 72 general-aviation crashes that occurred in bad weather around the country between August 2003 and April 2004.

The review included private and corporate noncommercial flights. It did not look at nonscheduled air-taxi and charter flights.

Two crashes were in Colorado – the January 2004 crash of a twin-engine Rockwell 690A in Cortez and the crash of a single-engine Cessna 182F near Burlington three months later. In each accident, the sole pilot died.

The pilot in the Cortez incident crashed while landing during a snow shower.

NTSB investigators said the probable cause of the Cessna crash near Burlington was the “loss of aircraft control due to structural icing.” The pilot flew into an ice fog, and investigators found evidence of icing on the wings, wing struts and other parts.

The NTSB also included the February 2004 crash of a Cessna T206H that hit Elk Mountain near Walcott, Wyo., while flying to Jackson Hole from the Denver area in low clouds under instrument conditions. The accident killed the pilot and injured one of his two passengers.

The NTSB found that “pilots who start flying earlier in life are at lower risk of being involved in a weather-related general- aviation accident than those who start flying when they are older.”

To improve general-aviation safety, the agency recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration set a minimum number of weather-related questions that a pilot must answer correctly to pass an FAA test. Currently, a pilot can get every question about weather wrong and still receive a passing score, NTSB said.

The agency also recommended that general-aviation pilots’ flight reviews every two years “include a demonstration of control and maneuvering of an airplane solely by reference to instruments” if the pilot is not regularly receiving instrument training.

Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-820-1645 or at jleib@denverpost.com.