Saturday, June 02, 2012

Air India pilot’s son expelled for midair stunt

NEW DELHI: An Air India commander's son got his student pilot license (SPL) cancelled by the Rae Bareli-based Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Udaan Academy (IGRUA) and will be expelled from the institute for flying his trainer aircraft extremely low to click pictures. 

 The aircraft crashed a few months ago near Rae Bareli. Luckily, the IGRUA student, who was flying solo, survived. But a probe later revealed the indiscipline that made the DGCA take an unprecedented action on Friday. "The student was on an unauthorized flight, flying dangerously low and clicking pictures; a combination of these factors led to the plane getting entangled in high tension wires and crashing. He could have crashed into a building which would have led to a loss of many lives. His SPL is being cancelled and IGRUA will be asked to expel him. Discipline in pilots has to start at a very early stage," DGCA chief Bharat Bhushan said.

"Such instances of indiscipline happen once every three to four years and unless the strictest action is not taken, they won't stop," said IGRUA director VK Verma.

A few years back, a student pilot had flown his trainer aircraft very low over a lake in Gondia to get the 'thrill' of making a splash over the water body. While doing this stunt, his aircraft crashed on the embankment of the lake. He was let off after a corrective training and allowed to proceed with the course.

Source:  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

How Duck Lake Fire was discovered: Michigan Department of Natural Resources pilot spots a curl of smoke

 
Courtesy Photo | Michigan DNR
Dean Minett was the first to spot the Duck Lake Fire, in his role as a fire detection pilot for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

 
This aerial shot shows the 11-mile-long Duck Lake Fire approaching Lake Superior. 
(Photo Courtesy of Michigan DNR/Air 4 Pilot Dean Minett)


 Air tankers on loan from Minnesota capture water from inland lakes to fight the Duck Lake Fire in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. 
(Photo Courtesy of Michigan DNR/Air 4 Pilot Dean Minett)





This aerial shot shows the 11-mile-long Duck Lake Fire approaching Lake Superior.
 (Photo Courtesy of Michigan DNR/Air 4 Pilot Dean Minett)

More equipment is readied to battle the Duck Lake Fire. 
(Photo Courtesy of Michigan DNR/Air 4 Pilot Dean Minett)
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Upper Peninsula residents hear the eerie sound of helicopters headed to fight the Duck Lake Fire. More than 91 firefighters and equipment from as far away as Minnesota are battling the Duck Lake Fire. 
(Photo courtesy of Newberry radio station Eagle 96.7)

Smoke is seen for miles from the Duck Lake Fire that started Wednesday and continues into the Memorial Day holiday weekend. 
(Photo courtesy of Newberry radio station Eagle 96.7)

Fire rages in north of Newberry in the Upper Peninsula. 
(Photo Courtesy of Michigan DNR/Air 4 Pilot Dean Minett)

This May 25 satellite image shows the broad smoke plume of the Duck Lake Fire pushing east across Whitefish Bay and into southern Ontario. This eastward push of the fire and the smoke was caused by winds shifting to the west-northwest this morning behind a cold front.

More than 91 firefighters and equipment from as far away as Minnesota are battling the Duck Lake Fire. This aerial shot shows the 11-mile-long Duck Lake Fire approaching Lake Superior. 
(Photo courtesy of Newberry radio station Eagle 96.7)

More than 91 firefighters and equipment from as far away as Minnesota are battling the Duck Lake Fire. This aerial shot shows the 11-mile-long Duck Lake Fire approaching Lake Superior.
(Photo courtesy of Newberry radio station Eagle 96.7)



Michigan DNR fire detection pilot Dean Minett was flying his Cessna 182 back from Sault Ste. Marie on Wednesday, May 23, to make a fuel stop at Newberry Airport.

His plan: Gas up and head back out to scan the remote eastern Upper Peninsula forests for any flare-ups in the wake of several lightning strikes in recent days.

The fire danger this time of year is heightened anyway, but the mild winter and months of drought meant the ground held little moisture. All you'd need is a lightning strike, a little wind and next thing you know, you could have a serious wildfire.

Minett, a former ambulance pilot who's had his license for 46 years, is meticulous about the maintenance of his dependable single-engine Cessna. Even though it's a 1975 model, it looks like it's five years old. New leather seats. A flashy color scheme. It represents the DNR well, he says.

And it's modified to help him do his job. The high wings, allowing good ground visibility, have been lengthened and reshaped so he can fly slow and low to the ground. "It's about as close to a helicopter as you can get," he chuckles.

That capability is crucial to Minett's job in detecting fires, directing ground crews and documenting the fire patterns.

 His photos and videos of various fires are studied by the DNR and sometimes released to the media. Detail guy that he is, Minett has been bugging the DNR to get an HD/high resolution camera so he can provide better images. But it hasn't been a priority in these tight economic times.

The plane's design allows him to swoop in so he can see if there are any two-tracks or ways to get ground crews into backcountry that is thick with pine and undergrowth. In constant radio contact, Minett tells them to turn here, go around that pond, head toward 10 o'clock - whatever it takes to get the crews to a fire scene.

Firefighters call him their eyes in the sky. His ability to survey the landscape is a huge improvement over the fire towers of old.

"About 95 percent of fires are spotted by aircraft," Minett said. "Some may argue with me on that. But early detection is the name of the game. We're detection pilots. My aircraft does not have any contact with the fire. But our communication is paramount. And if we don't have ground troops, we're just a pretty airplane up there flying around."

What Minett didn't know on May 23 is that he would soon face a fire where early detection and all the fire-fighting manpower in the world simply wouldn't make a difference.


On this Wednesday, he was within 30 miles of Newberry when he saw a curl of smoke. He knew he had enough gas to check it out, but when he got within five miles, he saw a more serious looking situation to his left near Duck Lake.

Using GPS, he called in to dispatch in Marquette using his ID - "Air 4" named after his DNR District 4 in Luce County - and reported the first fire's location. He told them he was headed to the second fire to check it out. It looked more serious - flames 8 to 10 feet high in a stand of pines amid a marshy area "in about the most inaccessible place in the eastern UP."

Once Minett locates and sizes up a fire, his next job becomes tactical - recommending how much equipment may be needed and getting the crew in there to fight it.

From above, he told crews what roads to turn down in the remote area and confirmed they'd need to unload the bulldozer and force their way in. It took two hours to get the crew to the fire site.

"The last size-up I heard on the radio - and I always like to hear this - is 'Yeah, we've got a line all the way around this." The fire stood at about 2 acres and the crew signaled they no longer needed air support.

On Thursday, the temperature hovered around 80 and the relative humidity was low. The wind was picking up. When Minett got up in the air, he immediately started checking for lightning strikes and all looked good. But he radioed that Duck Lake was putting up a lot of smoke. Three firefighters were dispatched to widen a trail to get in more equipment.

He headed to another nearby fire, the Seney Fire, that ground crews had been working for a few days. They wanted to ensure it didn't jump a drainage ditch over M-28 north of Seney Refuge.

 Minett spent some time directing them where they needed to do battle, and then turned back to check on the Duck Lake trio around 2 p.m. He didn't like what he saw. "I could see a smoke plume 20 miles out in hazy sky. That's bad."

The firefighters were trapped - the fire blew across their trail and their only obvious egress would be to swim a pond created from a beaver dam. Minett got them to safety by pointing them to an open area.
And then all hell broke loose.

The hot southerly wind picked up embers into the tops of jack, red and white pine trees and the fire started crowning, moving at a pace of 1.5 to 2 miles an hour north. That doesn't sound fast, considering prairie fires can move 10 miles an hour and overtake people trying to escape. But for a forest fire, that speed is rare; the Duck Lake Fire will be remembered for its speed and heat.

As he approached the fire at one point, "I could feel the radiation a half mile away, so I knew I didn't want to get any closer ... They asked me about bringing in fire bombers, but those guys, they wouldn't be able to get close enough to do anything and they wouldn't put themselves into that kind of danger."

 As it raced north, it was only about a mile wide, and Minett took comfort in thinking Pike Lake, ringed by quaint cabins and year-round homes, would be spared.

But about 8 p.m. the winds took a destructive shift out of the west, pushing the fire past the Big Two-Hearted River and into Little Lake Harbor. And the eastern flank fingered out and burned several Pike Lake properties.

By 9 p.m. the fire had raced more than 11 miles north, scorching 21,135 acres. Only Lake Superior could stop it.

"This is one of those fires that you couldn't go in and attack when it's flying like that. You evacuate the people. You get 'em out and you get 'em to safety. Then you have no option but to watch it. It's kind of like the Titanic: You could do nothing about it. You watch this thing and monitor it until it kind of collapses. And then you bring in the firebombers."

On Friday, Minett and a DNR manager took an air tour of the fire. They saw large patches of black and large patches of green south of Pike Lake. From County Road 414 north, "it's as black as you can paint a picture." As they flew above the beach rimming Lake Superior, they spotted a piece of driftwood - still burning.

Rainbow Lodge at the mouth of the Two-Hearted, a destination for sportsmen and for generations of families who would go there every year for their up-north fix - gone, along with 137 homes, garages and other buildings in the fire zone.

"It's gut wrenching when you get up around Rainbow Lodge," said Minett. "When I saw that, it looked like the pictures you see of Hiroshima. It's just ashen remains. No structures left. This was like it went through a ceramic kiln. There's a bulldozer there, and it melted the engine block, and on the ground you could see this molten mass of aluminum run 20 feet down the hill."

 Fires are hot. This fire was beyond hot, rivaled perhaps by the 1980 Mack Lake Fire, which records show produced an estimated 3 trillion BTUs of energy, about the same as nine Hiroshima bombs.

The DNR, Michigan State Police, Luce County Emergency Services Management and others started assembling equipment and people to fight what some call a "career fire."
 
Minett's role was elevated to directing the air fleet and guiding the "troops."

On Friday, Air 3, a DNR plane out of Escanaba, flew in to join the fight. Two CL215s - tanker planes that can scoop up 1,500 gallons at a time - arrived from Minnesota. On Sunday four Blackhawk helicopters arrived from the Air National Guard based in Grand Ledge, ready with buckets that can hold 760 gallons a shot. Also part of the "air show": A heavy Helo - the big daddy - from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with its 2,600-gallon capability.

The operation has the intricacy of a military attack, but not the luxury of planning. Minett spent the next several days flying above the aircraft, telling them what sector most needed their watery loads. An "attack pilot" closer to the action would tell colleagues how to approach the dump area - hitting the fire on the upwind side or banking in on a curve downwind to avoid the smoke. Then he'd tell them that the next bucket should be dumped a wingspan to the right or left.

All this happens with multiple aircraft in a "daisy chain." Minett ensures they're at a safe distance from one another and yet get the job done.

When not directing the air show, he'd swoop closer to document the fire with photos and videos. Many would be featured by news outlets in the coming days. Evacuees and area residents lept on those photos, hoping to see if their property was pictured or if their favorite campground was untouched.

He was bothered by the quality of the photos and video he shot. He'd set the camera wrong at one point. And darn, he wished he'd had that high-def camera he'd been requesting.

 Media and others asked to go up with him on fly-arounds but he wouldn't allow it. "I've tried in the past. People say, 'Oh I can handle it,' but one hour into the mission they're finding their breakfast again. I carried bags for just that reason."

Plus, he needed to focus on the task at hand, especially when he's 500 feet above the trees, flying with one hand, controlling the throttle with his knee and holding the camera with his other hand.

"It's almost a comical scene but it's the only way that I can get this done," Minett said. "Some pilots would say, 'Oh my goodness, this guy is an accident waiting to happen.' But my one goal is to get back in the evening."

When he touched down each night, his Cessna smelled like a campfire, even though he'd done all he could to avoid the smoke.

Two days ago, as he directed the Blackhawks fighting flames by Little Lake Harbor, he was scouring the area and blinked at what he saw near Bodi Lake, an area of more cottages east of the fire scene. "I can't believe my eyes. I see a curl of smoke out there and it's already involved, right in the middle of red pine and jackpine fuels."

He immediately radioed the Blackhawks to leave Little Lake and dip out of Bodi Lake, and douse the freshly rising smoke. "These guys were there within 60 seconds. They made a swimming pool out of the place," Minett laughed.

It took him an hour and a half to direct ground crews to the remote spot, where they verified it was a lightning strike. The fire area was only 50 feet in diameter. Water lay all over the access road.

He thinks about that incident. If he'd been at the south end of the fire, it's possible the smoke could have flamed into something much more serious. It reminds him to be ever watchful, even as the Duck Lake Fire now is 71 percent contained and the DNR feels comfortable enough to let evacuees return to check their residences today.

There will be more fires that Minett will spot, although he'll remember this one. He'll get the troops in and he'll do that balancing act of steering, throttling and shooting images so the DNR and the public know what firefighters are facing.

But next time, it'll be easier. A new HD camera arrived Thursday.

Story, photos, and video:   http://www.mlive.com