colyncase on earthlink wrote:

Yes I read that post.   What I don't get is why the airspeed would get more attention than the EFIS which would presumably say you are straight and level.

I obviously have no way of knowing what was going through the deceased pilot's mind, so all I can do is speculate.

The reality is that our minds get attracted to what is abnormal and can lock on to it to the exclusion of everything else -- it is called tunnel vision.  A slight variation of this phenomenon, getting focused on something to the point of tunnel vision because we are directed to it, is the basis of most magic tricks.  If you have ever seen a live magic trick and have not been able to figure out how it was done, it was because you were focused on what the performer wanted you to focus on and did not notice what was going on in the periphery, often in plain sight.  Exactly the same principle is used in makeup as well as fashion design -- using cuts of clothes, colors and shades to focus the attention on certain physical features and away from other ones.

Getting back to aviation and the situation in question, if you are climbing in IMC and notice that your airspeed is too low and get an aural warning, what would you do?  Would you take the time to cross check with the attitude, the GPS and the engine instruments while the airplane enters a fully developed stall or are you going to lower the nose?  My training at least is to lower the nose first and ask questions later.  If lowering the nose with the expectation that the immediate problem will go away does not produce the expected results, you have a fully developed abnormal situation that you never anticipated or trained for.  How are you going to go about diagnosing the problem in the next few seconds before it kills you? 

You have 3 different sensors telling you that your airspeed is too low.  Will you remember that they are all working off the same pitot/static system and could be reporting the same erroneous information?  There is an alarm sounding reminding you about the low airspeed.  From the first day you sat down in an airplane it has been drilled into you head to never let the airplane get too slow, so you really need to focus on getting the airspeed up somehow.

If you even remember to look at the attitude indicator, it is showing a normal attitude (early on in the event), or a nose low attitude (later in the event), or a very nose low attitude (very late in the event).  What does it mean?  It does not jive with what you are focused on and believe to be your immediate problem, an imminent or developed stall.  Oh, by the way there is an alarm still going on about the airspeed.  The altitude is rapidly decreasing, the airspeed is continuing to decrease and the decrease is correlated by a decreasing ground speed (when you are in a steep dive, there is little movement across the ground).  And the airspeed alarm is still going on.  At that point, can you reboot your brain and start diagnosing the problem from scratch?  All while the low airspeed alarm is going off. 

In the comfort of your chair, with your feet firmly on the ground, you can take your time to look at all the data and diagnose what may be wrong.  But can you do that in the air with your life as the penalty for a wrong decision?  Another thing to remember.  When you are reviewing the data, you already have the knowledge of what the outcome was and what the problem was.  You have to be REALLY honest with yourself and ask yourself if you could have come up with the right answer if you did not know the outcome and the cause beforehand and do so in the time available.

Regards,

Hamid