Posted on 12/13/2013 4:45:39 AM PST by WhiskeyX
It was choomgangicide. Not an accident
Look for a quick cremation; no autopsy.
Spontaneous center fuel tank explosion aggravated by potato gun discharge.
Pilot was speeding to LAX via Fort Marcey Park.
Unlucky confluence of circumstances —nothing suspicious.
I live near a couple of small airports. Small planes crash a lot.
Yes, which suggests along with the recent Cessna Caravan/Grand Caravan mishaps the likeliehood of yet another accident, which is also plausible deniability in the less likely event of a non-accident.
See:
Investigation of Cessna 208 engine failure and forced landing on Lake Burbury
[….]
A previous generator failure led to electrical discharge damage (EDD) to the engine, resulting in its failure in-flight. EDD is a known problem with the Pratt and Whitney Canada PT-6 series turbo-prop engines fitted to this aircraft type. The ATSB has investigated similar events in Australia previously and the ATSB report cites 43 similar events reported worldwide since 1992. Some of these events have also been investigated by the US National Transportation Safety Board.
[….]
http://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/2007/release/2007_037.aspx
Cessna engine failures due to EDD are evidently a known problem and risk. What is unknown and perhaps unknowable is whether or not this risk had any suspicious assistance in this particular instance.
And the federal (regime) agency that’s supposed to investigate says they probably can’t retrieve the wreckage so there won’t be any proof if there was...
But it looks like they’re setting things up to say Fuddy died of a heart attack after the crash. None of the stories seem to add up though, and the pilot needs to explain why he didn’t call for help. It seems to me that the company owner/CEO has been giving contradictory info and protecting the pilot.
I’m not a pilot so this doesn’t mean anything, but if I was a pilot and heard a bang in the engine of a single-engine plane and it was just as easy to call for help as not, I would have called for help as soon as I heard the bang, especially if I knew I’d have to make an ocean landing and was only at most a half mile away from land, where rescue crews could be there quickly and save people from drowning in the wreckage if called soon enough. Why didn’t the pilot call for help when he heard the bang?
I think I see the problem here. It's named after a Dodge product.
“But it looks like they’re setting things up to say Fuddy died of a heart attack after the crash.”
Fuddy’s death in the circumstances of this forced landing into the sea is not unlikely. In fact, what is extraordinary was the survival of the other eight souls aboard the aircraft. The pilot is reported to have sustained some serious injuries including cracked ribs, which makes his own survival highly fortunate given his injuries. We don’t know the extent of Fuddy’s injuries sustained on impact with the sea, but they could very likely have been as serious as the injuries to the pilot or worse. If so, Fuddy’s injuries, the effects of systemic shock, exposure in the water adding to the shock to produce hypothermia, and unaccustomed strenuous activites could well have resulted in anything from a heart attack to shock, unconciousness, and drowning. The fact that the others aboard the aircraft survived may have been due to lack of the sort of impact injuries sustained by Fuddy, inducing shock and hypothermia, or other differences in their conditions. Bottomline, Fuddy’s death as a result of the injuries sustained by the hard landing in the sea are quite plausible, regardless of any other contributing causes, suspicious or not.
“None of the stories seem to add up though, and the pilot needs to explain why he didn’t call for help.”
There have been quite a number of Cessna engine failures and forced landings worldwide due to electrical discharge damage (EDD) and other causes, such as fuel line vapor locks. EDD in particular and engine failures in general can sometimes result in failure of the radio transmitters. We also need to note how the pilot was probably too busy to attempt the troubleshooting of a radio system or fiddle with the transmission frequencies in an emergency of this nature. The aircraft had just taken off, so it was still at too low of an altitude to give the pilot enough altitude for gliding, time for maneuvering, or getting good radio transmission conditions. They needed an altitude of 4,000 to 6,000 feet ASL (Above Surface Leval) plus the altitude of an emergency landing strip to have time to maneuver properly. In the absence of that, the pilot had his hands full just trying to get them safely down into the sea. This was even more difficult because the landing gear striking the water was sure to nose them into a hard crash in the sea. This hard crash was almost certain to result in some serious impact injuries to one or more of the people in the aircraft. The pilot deserves praise, because he clearly averted what could have been the death of them all by impact and/or drowning.
“It seems to me that the company owner/CEO has been giving contradictory info and protecting the pilot.”
That is common under the circumstances. You know from personal experience how difficult it is to get first responders, journalists, and others to put together the fragmentary accounts into some kind of sensible much less accurate forms.
It should also be noted the airline is up for renewal of its Federal subsidy of the route to Molokai versus other airlines bidding on that route. This “accident” does not help his airline to win the contract in January 2014.
Doesn’t seem to be engine related but still a 208:
http://www.adn.com/2013/12/10/3223462/ntsb-witnesses-to-fatal-st-marys.html
Our posts crossed. See Post 11.
In addition to Post 11, see Post 12 and its link:
See link from:
History of Hawaii Cessna accidents
Friday, December 13, 2013 6:42:34 AM · 12 of 13
mad_as_he$$ to WhiskeyX
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3101347/posts?page=6#6
NTSB: Witnesses to fatal St. Marys crash saw plane flying lowBy CASEY GROVE
casey.grove@adn.comDecember 10, 2013
2013-12-11T03:35:07Z
By CASEY GROVE Anchorage_Daily_News
Just before the plane crash last month in western Alaska that killed four people and injured six, witnesses on the ground saw the Cessna 208 fly low over the St. Marys airport and out of view.The witnesses were so concerned about the single-engine passenger plane’s low altitude and the direction it was flying that they tried to radio the pilot. There was no response.
http://www.adn.com/2013/12/10/3223462/ntsb-witnesses-to-fatal-st-marys.html
Loss of radio communications in the event of an engine failure has been a problem in the past.
It might have just been an accident and no matter what actually happened, it will ruled to be an accident.
Like with Perry Inhofe, son of Sen. Jim Inhofe, who was killed when his Mu-2B crashed last month or Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone in 2002.
Lots of crashing going on, so many it seems "normal" to a casual observer or close enough.
No one has ever died in any of the previous crashes. And of all the people on board, passengers and crew, only one person died in the most recent crash.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
This regime got rid of about 5 IG’s early on in Obama’s occupancy of our White House. The IG’s were doing their job instead of rubber-stamping anything the regime wanted to do. Gerald Walpin comes immediately to mind, but there was a whole slew of them all dismissed at the same time.
And since then EVERY scandal has been followed up by an “official” investigation that whitewashes everything, and the people who did the whitewashing are promoted. It’s happened on EVERY scandal with this regime, and now Sebelius is asking for the obligatory “official investigation” that whitewashes everything. The whitewashing of Fast and Furious and Benghazi are well-documented.
What sane people need to be asking is, “Why did they have to whitewash these big stories if everything was on the up-and-up?” The very fact of the whitewashing tells us not only that the regime is conspiring to do bad stuff but that they are also conspiring to cover it up because they KNOW they are doing bad stuff.
At this point everything is suspect. EVERYTHING will have the official whitewash but sane people wondering what really happened and knowing the whole story will never be investigated except by citizen investigators.
That’s just what it’s like to live under a thug regime. And unless we find a way to hold regimes (including the “friendly opposition” that props them up) accountable, we better just get used to having the “Truth Ministry” lie to our faces while all but the braindead know that’s exactly what’s going on.
The LAST thing a pilot should do in an emergency is call for help. First, you fly the airplane. Second, you decide if you need to perform a memorized emergency checklist or a written checklist dealing with emergency or abnormal procedures. Next, you navigate the aircraft to a spot to land. Last, you advise air traffic control.
Air traffic control cannot help you deal with the emergency. That’s why you don’t call them first. The pilot should know his divert options at all times, but if not, air traffic control can advise of possibilities. And air traffic control can, if it is a controlled airport, clear out traffic to give the emergency aircraft priority.
Do you have a link for the pilot having cracked ribs? The stories I’ve seen said he drove himself to Queens to be checked out, which seems odd if he had anything remotely serious since some were transported to the hospital by the rescue crew even though they just needed their clothes dried out, from the sounds of the media reports.
Army Air Corps, do you have any knowledge about the details WhiskeyX mentioned here? WhiskeyX, have you flown this kind of plane before?
With the current lawless regime in place that rewards its criminal friends and punishes those who oppose them, this accident could very well HELP the company get federal approval in 2014... and could explain how the regime could have gotten “help” in staging an accident, if that’s what they wanted to do. The regime had a bargaining chip - the threat to withhold approval in 2014. You know, “Nice company you got here. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it....” like they did with AIG, Chrysler, the news media companies, etc
The long and the short of it is that there will be an investigation from a regime that has had “official investigations” that whitewashed Fast & Furious, Benghazi, and every other scandal this regime has faced. Those who do the whitewashing will be promoted and the thinking public will have no way to know what really happened. That’s what life in this joke of a country has become.
“No one has ever died in any of the previous crashes. And of all the people on board, passengers and crew, only one person died in the most recent crash.”
This circumstance is not surprising and should be expected due to the difference in circumstance in this flight. The other Cessna Caravan/Grand Caravan flights typically occurred while overflying land. Unless the aircraft is forced down into a forest or mountain range, there is a far greater opportunity to make a forced landing with out fatal injuries than a forced landing in the sea.
In this instance, not only was the forced landing in the sea, it was also in a very rough sea with whitecaps on the waves. It is very dangerous to try a water landing in this Cessna aircraft, because the fixed landing gear is going to catch a wave top as it attempts to belly into the water. This not only tends to flip the aircraft over onto its nose and/or back, it also tears apart the aircraft in some cases and imparts some very bad impact injuries on the occupants of the aircraft. At best, the pilot can hope to stall the aircraft into the sea to minimize this impact on those people aboard the aircraft, but it is exceedingly difficult to accomplish in rough weather and seas without an engine. The fact that eveyone survived the impact with the water at all is to the pilot’s great credit. They were lucky to have anyone survive this crash landing at all.
There are innumerable naval pilots who have force landed in the water adjacent to naval warships who did not survive due to the dangers of such hazardous water landings.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.