There are many things that could have gone wrong with the Beechcraft Bonanza, a single-engine, six-seater plane that Haris and Babar Suleman were flying around the world in.

It was said to be fitted with all the latest gear and gadgets to aid them on their way but Wing Commander (retd) Naseem Ahmed, president of the Society of Air Safety Investigators, Pakistan, said that there is always the possibility of failure in a single-engine plane. “They are very similar to cars. If your car has engine trouble, you may pull over on one side of the road. But in the air, you can only glide a little and if you are lucky until you find a safe place to make an emergency landing. Over water, you can’t even do that. You can only ditch the plane. Then you don’t know how the sea is behaving, if the waves are rough … there are so many things that make it more difficult and dangerous,” he pointed out.

“Your chances would depend more on your survival training in water then and how you coordinate with the rescue and survival organisations,” he added. “Also how capable are your survival suits, are you even wearing them, which, quite frankly many people don’t, though they won’t admit it, of course.”

Pilots and aviation experts here look at different scenarios and try to shed light on the various problems that the two pilots could have faced

The aviation expert also said that single-engine planes can fail for any number of reasons. For example, you make three stops and ask someone to fill up the fuel tanks. Now, what if all the tanks are not filled and the fuel gauge is not giving the correct reading? It is a very common occurrence,” he said.

Also he mentioned that there are always inherent risks involved when you have a father and son team attempting such records. “It’s an emotionally charged environment where they are more self-assured with the sense of completing the mission becoming paramount. Even if they do notice something wrong, they may not stop or go back. Their handling of aircraft and handling of emergencies won’t be how, say, two professional air force pilots would behave in a similar scenario. Private flying is a big responsibility on the pilot. I know that some time back Babar Suleman did have to make an emergency landing on a highway due to engine failure. Such past experiences build up your confidence levels and you start thinking that bad things happen to others not me.”

Another experienced pilot, Capt Sohail Baluch, former president Pakistan Airlines Pilots’ Association, said that the area Haris and his father were flying in shortly before they crashed is known for sudden changes in weather. “And I’m talking about severe weather conditions. There could have been a wind shear. One is not to take off during a lone wind shear. Usually, pilots are informed about such conditions when another plane that may have taken off earlier reports back. It could be that they were the first to be taking off that day and couldn’t be warned of the weather up there until they faced it themselves. It could also be that they may not have been able to read the weather very well themselves.

“Weather pattern, too, changes with different places. Before taking on a challenge such as

flying around the world, the pilot should be familiar with intended routes and the weathers there.”

“It is also possible that they got caught in a cumulonimbus cloud or CB, as it is known. CBs can throw a jumbo off its course and this was just a little single-engine plane,” he pointed out.

“Another thing, which also shouldn’t be taken lightly, is the fatigue factor. They crossed the Atlantic and reached here and then they had to cross the Pacific, too. They must have been really tired,” he said. “Haris was just a 17-year-old kid with only 50 hours of flying experience. And Babar, who was a little junior to me in Sargodha, did take his license and everything after moving to the US, but he was really not that experienced. They had a six-seater plane. It would have helped to take along another professional pilot. Still, their cause of doing it for collecting funds for education of underprivileged children in Pakistan was a very noble one. They must be lauded for it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Capt Fahim Zaman, former head of Edhi Air Ambulance, was of the view that it was a miracle that Haris and Babar Suleman got as far as they did in their single-engine plane. “Then Haris, also, was simply too young and inexperienced for such a challenge. Aircraft on long cross-country flights spread over many days need thorough maintenance. Babar, Haris’s father, wasn’t an airframe and power mechanic [A&P]. There you are constantly flying from one airport to another, you need dedicated aircraft engineer to inspect the plane and check it. There are daily, weekly, 25-hourly and even monthly inspections but the level of inspection the Beechcraft Bonanza received is not clear.

“Annual inspections, of course, are more detailed in nature. But routine inspections are based on the pilot’s report. There are gauges a pilot needs to constantly monitor. Seasoned pilots watch the behaviour of their plane through keen observation of their gauges. For instance, oil pressure, engine temperature, exhaust gas temperature, etc. The needle may be in the green but despite that the pilot would monitor if the oil pressure is dropping or the engine temperature is increasing. And if a pilot is not able to see that, his engine can seize,” he explained.

“Pilots maintain logs in which they make entries such as engine, instruments ‘ok’ or otherwise for ground crew to take care,” he said.

“Then if we suppose they were able to notice such ‘cautions’ and had a good understanding of their instruments, where was their maintenance support? You need proper maintenance support for people to see different things such as a person to note tyre pressure, check the propeller, etc. When, during a period of rigorous flying it’s the same people handling the aircraft, they can tell if there has been any adverse change through monitoring trends or you have a recipe for disaster right there,” he pointed out.

“Also every aircraft is structurally certified to a certain extent. It can be 3G or 7G for example. A good pilot will not subject his plane to go beyond its design capacity of stress,” he said.

“Weather pattern, too, changes with different places. Before taking on a challenge such as flying around the world, the pilot should be familiar with intended routes and the weathers there,” he added.

“Yes, fatigue, too, is a major factor here. You may be able to see the horizon as a sharp line on a crisp cool morning but as the day passes, you may start losing the horizon due to fog, haze or otherwise. Then you have to depend on your instruments. But there, too, if you are staring at the instrument for long your eyes start playing games. So you have to take your eyes off the instruments for a while at least. That’s where the autopilot becomes useful. But the autopilot also needs to be fed correct information about the changes in the ambient conditions.

“In a fixed-wing aircraft the pilot-in-command sits in the left seat. Babar Suleman was the more experienced of the two pilots but if he had put Haris in the left seat he must have been sitting on the right, of which he must have less experience and he was not an instructor himself. I don’t know what happened or what they did but these are some of my concerns. There are no shortcuts to experience in aviation, more so flying a single engine aircraft over the ocean,” he concluded.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 24th, 2014