By all all the all the odds I should not have
survived. Um, it's just difficult for me. It's not... it's just, there's an emotional thing
going on inside. And um... So... And it's happening right now. You know, so I just, it just comes
with the the package is the way it is. [music] NARRATOR: On January 15th 2018, the pilot of N787SB, a Velocity XL amateur-built aircraft, departed Rosecrans Memorial Airport near St. Joseph, Missouri for a two leg flight to Santa Fe, New Mexico. His first stop would be about 330 nautical miles Southwest at Liberal Mid-America Airport in Kansas. The weather that day was unseasonably cold, a factor that would have
a significant impact on the events that would transpire. JOHN BERMAN: Yeah hi um I'm John Berman. I have
a private pilot's license. I have about 1,500 hours. I'm instrument rated. The day before, I had had a late lunch kind of brunch and it went on towards about 4:30 with a friend of mine in Olathe, Kansas. Yeah, the my mission here was to to get back to see my daughter who was five at the time. There was without a doubt an element of get-there-itis, which all pilots know about, you know
whatever you want to call it, that you're focused on getting where you want to go and uh the
probability that you're going to forget something in that in that state of mind, goes up. And my intention had been to fly out of St. Joseph's which is Missouri right across the the border,
that evening. But it was cold and it was getting dark. This was, you know, January 14th I guess. And
I made the correct decision just to to bag it. I made the correct decision not to fly. NARRATOR: Normally a cautious pilot, John spent a great deal of time in his pre-flight planning routine. It was common
for him to spend several hours reviewing weather forecast tools available on aviationweather.gov.
Refreshing data numerous times to get a sense of changing conditions. He typically avoided flying
in instrument meteorological conditions and was especially concerned about flying in IMC during
the winter months because of the potential for icing. On January 15th, John spent about an hour and
a half looking at the weather before departing on the first leg of his flight from St Joseph,
Missouri to Liberal, Kansas. JOHN BERMAN: It was fine going to Liberal, Kansas, but that's one things went off track. Probably the biggest red flag or cold red flag, was when I landed at Liberal. And, you know, I
had my Mac, you know, MacBook which is anodized aluminum, you know, it's a little bit of metal,
a little bit cold. I was so cold I didn't want to touch it. I was really cold. The Velocity,
the aircraft, has the engine in the back and the main heat duct is in the back. And I was actually
going to just go to Walmart and get one of these ducts, you know, from an RV duct one of these
flexible things and duct tape it to the back there and just bring it up front so I could have
heat blowing over me. And for one reason or another I didn't do it. I can't remember I mean I was
intent on doing it but I didn't do it. I just ran into the FBO went to the space heater and warmed
up my hands. I was thinking about getting a motel there. And I called Motel 6 and that's where I
should have gone. NARRATOR: John considered staying the night but after observing the cost of keeping his airplane hangared overnight in Liberal, compared to the lower nightly rate in
Santa Fe, he decided to press on to New Mexico. Although John was not aware of it at the time,
his self-described poor judgment was due in part to the physical and mental effects of the extreme
cold temperature. Long-term exposure to such cold weather can have a significant mental and physical impact on a person. Leading to confusion, forgetfulness, disorientation, reduced vigilance,
and overall impaired decision making and reasoning. JOHN BERMAN: Previously, I'd been meticulous and consistent
about flight planning, I mean really thorough. That was really the beginning of the end when I was
just so cold I ran out of the plane without my trusty MacBook. NARRATOR: Without his MacBook, which
he typically used for weather information, John neglected to perform any weather planning for the
second leg to Santa Fe. JOHN BERMAN: I think that had I've been paying just a little bit more attention, not that much more, but there's a threshold where you can just, kind of, start making critically wrong
decisions, things would have turned out okay. I remember taxiing, I remember taking off and turning
to head Southwest and I do remember, at some point, sort of a mesmerized feeling because you're flying
over the desert and there no lights below. I did become sort of transfixed. I had things on my
mind, my mom had passed away just three months before. And when you're, you know, up in the air
at night, flying alone in particular, sometimes the mind wanders I don't remember any thing more about
that until what is on the flight track where I do remember calling ATC and telling them I thought
I was in instrument conditions (IMC). And I was on flight following so there was no call up involved,
there were monitoring. So they immediately said well look out to your left there's Tucumcari
in New Mexico, which I recognized the name I'd landed there in the past. And I looked and
I saw the lights and I think that I was, my intention was to divert land at Tucumcari which
would have been the correct thing to do. But I didn't. I made it a 360 and at a lower altitude
and I kept going. And that that was the last of my opportunities basically to get out. The
next thing I remember is seeing this gelatinous blob of liquid which I knew was super cooled
water in the center of the windscreen. You know, just my nerdy science curiosity, I started looking
closer at it you know got my head right up to it because it was really quite fascinating it was
kind of jiggling there. And I knew it was super cooled water. It didn't, I don't think it occurred
to me that well if if there's super cooled water it means you're in a cloud and there's probably
super cooled water on the airframe, which means you've got you're you're you're going
into icing. NARRATOR: When encountering super cooled large droplets in clouds as John's Velocity did. Part of the droplet freezes immediately, rapidly increasing the ice accretion rate on the
airframe. The resulting distorted air flow over the Velocity's large wing surface would quickly
render the airplane unflyable. JOHN BERMAN: So there's this gelatinous circle blob kind of jiggling like an amoeba or something right in the center of the wind screen. I was just interested
in looking at it getting closer to it. But then the... the entire windscreen froze over. It was Ice.
Could not see out the front. Basically knew my number was up. I was not going to this was not
going to be a smooth landing. But I didn't have much time to think about it because in in under ten
seconds maybe like five seconds, it suddenly by itself pitched forward into a dive. I knew I was over
mountains at that point and I was I really had only 1500 feet of clearance. And I reached over,
because it's a center stick with the right, with both hands and I pulled back. Fast enough but I
didn't yank it back. But you know, fortunately, thank God, whatever, you know that it did level out. I
was sinking then, I was full power and I had the pitch as far as it would go go and uh I couldn't
keep it from from sinking. It was slow, as I said, it was at most 500 ft. a minute but it could have
been just a couple hundred feet a minute and that's when I called ATC. NARRATOR: John declared an emergency with ATC about 12 miles from Santa Fe Airport and 8 minutes after he accepted an IFR
clearance with a climb in icing conditions. Had he declared the emergency upon first contact
with Albuquerque Center, they would have been able to initiate immediate emergency assistance
providing minimum terrain and obstacle clearance altitudes and radar vectors to lower terrain. JOHN BERMAN: The map display was there and the big purple line was pointing, at that point, at about 2 o' clock
and I just went for it. I went for the airport. Um, I think it was the correct decision.
Somehow clear the mountains if you can go for the airport and then, you know, I
knew I wasn't going to make the airport. I was sinking there wasn't the the the
altitude. But at least I cleared the mountains and I don't remember
anything after heading that way. It took them three hours to find me. You know, even though they had a basic location. They said it there was no moon, it was very
dark, it was very cold and windy. But they did manage. And I went back and thank the rescuers March of the following year. And met with about a dozen of them. And, you know,
we told about we told our various recollections. And they said I didn't have much more time, I was so cold, so hypothermic. The thing I do remember, was seeing the rescue lights off in the distance. I'm literally praying that they
would return when the when the line of sight they went behind an outcropping
or something they disappeared. And um... um... praying, concentrating with
all my might that I would see the lights again. I remember being on
my back and looking up at them in the lights, I can't say, I said thank
God you're here, thank God. God bless you. I was in a medical coma
for two weeks so I have mobility and sensory problems in my leg, legs. But I can walk. I'm my
balance is poor but um I haven't fallen in a long time. And it's not good, it's not fun at all
but you know there there are people who are much much worse off than I am. To say nothing of those
who who didn't survive accidents. A sobering fact of this report is that while the NTSB stated
that icing condition were not present or forecast, supplemental satellite weather data indicated a
local potential for icing at the accident site. But without any corroborating pilot reports of
icing, an advisory was not issued for the area around the accident site. However, a METAR for Santa Fe Airport issued half an hour before the accident, showed a temperature/dewpoint spread
of 3° C, indicative of the area's high humidity and cold temperatures. That plus two AIRMETS, one
for IFR and another for Mountain Obscuration which both contained warnings of precipitation
and mist and a third AIRMET for icing in the Northeastern corner of New Mexico, all offer
more clues that point to the potential for icing conditions. So in addition to local METARS
and terminal forecasts, how can GA Pilots form a bigger picture of developing weather, even if
not explicitly observed in PIREPS or issued in AIRMETS and SIGMETS? Various to tools such as the aviationweather.gov Icing Chart could
identify where potential icing might form. According to the NTSB meteorological report, the icing forecast did not mention severe icing or super cooled large
droplets. Just trace to moderate icing at different flight levels. However, the icing reports indicated
between a 30% to 50% probability of trace to light icing at 8,000 and 9,000 ft. at the accident site
and an unknown chance of super cooled large droplets around the accident time. Lastly, confirm your observations with a weather briefer,
as they are trained to interpret weather conditions.
Remember, trust your knowledge but verify that you are right. As is often the case, not one, but
several links combining in the accident chain can cause an accident. On this January 15th flight,
self-imposed constraints such such as the urgency to get home, misplaced monetary pressures, and
impaired decision making because of the extreme cold weather, formed the links in the chain that
John could not break. There are all these things that, you know, you just really have to
stop, you know, and think about... What you may be missing. [Wind howls]
