DrW wrote: ↑Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:59 pm
Dr Moore wrote: ↑Fri Apr 02, 2021 8:13 pm
The way Nelson describes the other passengers and the pilot is very impersonal here. I think for that reason we can rule out personal/private aircraft. It had to have been a commercial flight. And for that reason, in the pre-1979 timeframe, I believe it had to be Sky West.
This website appears to have a database of all incident reports, including engine failures, going back to 1973.
Sky West had 5 incident reports in the state of Utah before 1979.
There were 8 engine failure incidents reported in Utah before 1979.
None matches the description in Nelson's story. Maybe I'm doing the wrong parameter searches.
Dr. Moore,
Your website is a great find. Looks like the Holy Grail of aviation accident and incident information to me. No need to be concerned about entering the wrong search parameters. After entering the time interval for the search, just leave the other parameter values alone and designate the State of Utah.
Searching only the date and state parameters settings, one can see
every FAA aviation accident and incident report in the State of Utah for a given year or other time interval. I did the search for 1976.
FAA Accidents and Incidents Query
Occurrence date from equal 1976-01-01
Occurrence date to equal 1977-01-01
Accident state code equal UT
It took less than ten minutes to carefully evaluate the 54 returns for viable aircraft type (there were only 7) and then to check the details of each event. Details on each clearly ruled them out as possibly being involved in the Nelson story.
So, as far as I'm concerned, this FAA listing provides incontrovertible evidence against such an incident as described by Nelson in 1976.
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For anyone wishing to spend more time looking for supporting evidence in other years - clicking on Dr. Moore's link will take you directly to the
Aviation DB website. Once there, leave all parameter values at default except for the dates and the state. Designate "UTAH", set your date interval, then press 'Run Query'.
After about five seconds the website will return a list of occurrence dates, last report update dates, and aircraft make and group. Scan the list for 'PIPER' under "Aircraft Make" and click on 'Details'. If you want to save time, look for 'PA31' under "Aircraft Group", which is a Piper Navaho light twin most likely flown by SkyWest at the time and the plane Nelson was most likely fantasizing about. SkyWest may have also had Piper Chieftains in service on those routes.
There were no viable candidates listed in 1976 (nobody damaged a Navajo in Utah that year). If you think it may have been some aircraft other that a SkyWest Piper Navajo, check for any Cessna 400 series planes, Metro II, and Piper Chieftains. That's pretty much it for smaller twins in commercial service in Utah in 1976.
Dr. W,
I spent a fair amount of time checking out that website to try and understand exactly what I was looking at. So, I'm going to give you my understanding and ask you to double check me.
That website aggregates information from other websites, including the FAA and NTSB websites. Currently, there are three relevant "documents." First , the FAA has a voluntary reporting system. There is no legal requirement to file any accident or incident report. So, the FAA reports are not a complete set of all accidents or incidents.
The other two documents are a mandatory notice that the owner must file under certain circumstances. If the what happened was an "accident" according to the NTSB's definitions, this notice must be filed within a short time of the accident (10 days?). Everything that happens that might impact flight safety is an "incident." The notice is not required for all "incidents." The regulations define certain types of incidents that might be reported (I've seen them referred to sometimes as "serious" incidents, although I don't think that's the official term.
The last document is an NTSB Accident/Incident Report. It has to be filed for accidents. Whether it is required for an incident is determined by the NTSB.
So, under current regulations, an incident that does not fit into one of the specified categories is not required to be reported to the FAA or NTSB. As the Aviation DB simply pulls data from the FAA or NTSB databases, there is no reason to believe that the Aviation DB contains all "incidents."
Now, the current regulations date back to 1988. I've looked for earlier versions, but it looks like I would have to go to a library that has a 1976 copy of the Code of Federal Regulations available. If you can point me to a legal requirement that an accident or incident report had to be filed with the FAA in 1976, that would clear out a ton of underbrush.
If I go to the FAA webpage, where the Aviation db says it pulls its data from, I learn that the FAA database for "incidents" goes back only to 1978, not 1973.
https://www.asias.faa.gov/apex/f?p=100:2:::NO::: I even tried a query from the database for 1976 just in case the FAA didn't know the date range of it's own database. No returns. So, according to the FAA, it does not have a database that includes ANY incidents from 1976. So, neither does the Aviation DB.
So, how could we test to see whether the Aviation DB actually includes incidents from 1976. I'm gonna try this: run a query limited only to Utah and calendar year 1976. Be right back.
Well, it was easier than I thought. It took two quick searches because I could restrict to Incident - Commercial and then Incident-General Aviation. I got no hits. So, what's more likely: (1) There were no aviation incidents in Utah during calendar year 1976 or (2) The FAA incident data available on Aviation DB does not include 1976?
So, to recap. The failure to find an incident -- even a reportable incident -- in the Aviation DB FAA database you used for the year 1976 means absolutely nothing. The only hits you got on your search were accidents. Holy Grail my ass.
Just to review the bidding, your claim was that the best fit explanation for the evidence is: Nelson imagined the entire incident a result of experiencing turbulence on a flight. My claim was that your claim isn't reasonable based on the state of the evidence. But, just for yuks, let's make it easier by narrowing the possibilities down to two competing hypotheses.
Hypothesis one: Nelson experienced turbulence during a flight, which prompted him to imagine the entire story.
Hypothesis two: Nelson was on a flight that experienced a failure of one of the two engine. The plane went into a dive that Nelson did not expect, causing him to think he was going to die. The plane recovered from the dive. It landed safely, powered by the other engine. No one was injured, and the plane did not sustain "substantial damage" as defined by the NTSB.
Under each hypothesis, what would we expect to find if we did a search on the Aviation DB FAA database, limited only to 1976 and Utah?