some advice on flying in the alps

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some advice on flying in the alps

Something I wrote back in 2004 for a forum, still seems relevant today:

There's been some discussion on some rather shocking looking stats concerning alpine acidents in 2003. Putting aside the conspiracy theory that it's just a way of getting students for various magazine contributor's alpine flying courses ;-) I have of course my own opinion... Just to remind you, I'm British, I learnt to fly a HG in the UK in the late '80s. I redid my entire course here in Italy in 1999, and fly mostly "foothills" 1200m high on the southern edge of the alps in Northern Italy. Flying is seriously different here. I recall a trip to Annecy (rather similar to here) in my 2nd (British) season, and realise now I knew nothing about what flying in mountains meant.

First on the stats: in Italy, about 1/1000 members is killed each year, about the same for HG and PG, so pretty much the same as the BHPA stats. This is about double the level of sailplane pilots, and to put it into perspective is a bit more than three times for accidental death rate for an average person (i.e., something like 1/3,300 people are killed in a year through general accidental death), or about the same risk as driving 50,000km annually on Italian roads... A friend of mine fought an insurance case (PG accident, badly damaged ankle/foot) so we researched these figures pretty well. 50 deaths in 2003 in the alps doesn't really tell us much, since we don't know the population of pilots, but could be believable.

As for an analysis of the accident causes: none of the things commonly listed as "accident causes" are that - they are a situation a pilot got into through bad judgement. In my opinion, most days I fly, cloudsuck is there. Strong sink is nearly always predictable. Turbulence exists over the back of every mountain (but which side is the back?). An analysis of the accidents would be useful, to remind us all the banal kind of mistakes that lead to these incidents. But turbulence, sink and wind are not causes of accidents. We always fly with some of the these elements - indeed, we rely on them.

Second: is flying in the alps more dangerous than the UK? In my opinion, if you know when to fly, NO. Definitely not. I would say my 40hours/year here are in fact safer than when I flew in the UK, sometimes in marginal conditions because of desperation with my "addicition" - getting just half the airtime per year. Many of the classic problems faced in the UK - flying low to the ground in windy conditions springs to mind - are not faced on the right days in the Alps. The question is, which are the right days?

A little hill in northern Italy: Laveno.

The answer is quite simple - ones without wind. Or put differently, windy days in the Alps are never safe days. And you can pretty much work out when these are, especially given the abundance of information on the web (my main two sources for here: pressure difference across the alps (equals wind speed and turbulence) http://www.soaringwetter.ch/sg/adiff.html, and a specialised forecast for pilots again from Sitwzerland http://www.meteosvizzera.ch/it/Professione/Aviazione/vololibero.shtml; sorry, they are in Italian and German...). A statistic: I fly about 30 to 35 flights a year, mostly at weekends, and maybe only once or twice a year do I go out to fly and return home without doing so (compare that to a UK pilot's parawaiting stats). It is remarkably simple these days to forecast which days will be good ones.

Wind in the Alps is a killer, causes massive turbulence, and a pilot who is not used to turbulence will find the going scary and possibily fatal. My last flight here wasn't that exceptional for the spring, but I still registered +5/-8m/s on my vario. I landed when I saw a developing storm 6km away (over a mountain I just flew past 45mins before), I was at 1800m (1500m agl) and decided it was getting a bit too good (I spiraled down from 700m agl when the following 10km glide had only lost me 600m). It's this kind of decision making that keeps you out of the danger.

At 6pm the same day (I took off at 2.30pm, landed just after 4pm) there were PGs at 2000m over our club. And no danger in sight. A wonderful flight for a load of pilots who waited out for smooth evening air.

Typical mistakes by lowland pilots who don't have alpine knowledge:

- thinking they need wind. The only wind you need in the alps is thermal generated, and it can still be very strong.

- thinking they need to fly early: in fact superb flights can be had at 7pm. Don't fly at 2pm unless you have got the experience and are completely on top of your wing.

- not being prepared for the exposure: suddenly ending up 2000m (or more) AGL can freak you out. Be prepared, know where you want to go, know how to get down.

- XC: mountain XC has a high exposure level; again, psychologically, you can get freaked out when you are 30km from home, alone on a mountain.

- not realising that a cloud can go from +4 to +8 in a matter of seconds. On a PG (I very occasionally fly one) I never go closer than 300m, and even on my HG I only go near CB on benign, stable days.

- reading XC Mag too much: sites like St Andre and Laragne are superb XC sites for very experienced pilots, but very strong - valley winds, strong thermals. There are plenty of lesser sites offering great conditions. Or fly very late. Or both. Note Steve Pearson's and Gerard Thevenot's comments at the bottom of the XCMag web article: http://www.xcmag.com/Spinner/read/article.cfm?id=1134, as they point out it's not the conditions that are the problem.

There are lots of small things too: All the classic problems of new sites also mean that danger is there. Of course there is obvious stuff like valley winds (so landings aren't in the direction you think they will be) etc to consider.

It's ironic, but most of my fellow Italian pilots won't ridgesoar. They think top landings are for expert gurus only. They won't fly close to the hill. They prefer nil-wind landings (British HG pilots usually dread them, since they top landin wind 95% of the time). This is only because they don't have that experience... it's all relative. You can come to the Alps and fly safely, but you need a different reference set. You can get that safely through a guided course, or going regularly to a club-based site (from this perspective, Laragne and St Andre are good) and taking local advice seriously.