Posted on 03/23/2009 6:34:04 AM PDT by pabianice
An FAA spokesman is quoted by the New York Times as saying as many as 17 people, many of them children, were on board a 12-seat Pilatus PC-12 and all died when the aircraft crashed and exploded in a cemetery in Butte, Montana on Sunday. Les Dorr told the Times that 14 to 17 people were on the aircraft, which left Oroville, Calif., 70 miles north of Sacramento, Calif. for Bozeman, Mont.. The plane diverted to Butte en route and crashed within 500 feet of the airport. The reason for the diversion has not been released but Butte would have been a closer alternative if the pilot had been experiencing problems. According to FlightAware, the flight originated at Brown Field in San Diego and made three stops before the crash.
Local media is reporting that the aircraft was loaded with children heading for a ski vacation...
(Excerpt) Read more at avweb.com ...
What does being "Finnish" have to do with it?
From the article:
The aircraft involved was owned by Eagle Cap Leasing, of Enterprise, Ore., and had reportedly been rented.
Chuck Yeager is pretty old.
In bad taste, but still humorous
While the plane was certainly overloaded, I’m not convinced that was the primary cause of the crash. After all, they flew all the way from California to Butte, Montana before they crashed. Bingo fuel, perhaps?
many years ago, before jets were used for commercial aircraft, an airliner went straight down and all that was left was a deep crater. The story told was there were no bodies, only a huge body of flesh. The hole was covered and a monument erected. I saw it somewhere in Southern Indiana, not far from Tell City.
An old flight instructor once told me "The three things a pilot has no use for are fuel left in the truck, altitude above you and ideas you haven't thought of yet." Unfortunately one or more of these applied to this situation. God bless the families.
Look at the fireball - if the plane was out of fuel, you wouldn’t have seen that.
May I ask that while it’s natural to speculate (I have), it would be nice to cast permanent aspersions against the pilot until we know something.
Also, the PC-12 was certified to have the same stall speed (about 61-65 knots) as most single-engine piston aircraft. It’s a well-made, extremely capable plane. If I had the dough, I’d get one.
Ask around the office ... unless you work for in a government office of course!
Five children sitting in people's laps? Maybe one of them got loose. Very sad either way.
Maybe if Octo-mom was on the flight...IIRC lap children rules only apply to kids under the age of two. Above that, they get their own seat. So if there were a lot of sub-two-year-olds on the flight, yeah. I don’t know how you’d even fit 17 people in a PC-12 otherwise...you’d almost have to have kids sitting on the floor.
}:-)4
No, no gubmint worker here. I don't work in any office other than my own, but I asked around, and I know of no FBO anywhere near me that has anything much better than a 172 for rent, maybe the occasional Arrow or a Diamond 4 placer, but certainly not a PC-12. I don't even want to know what that costs for insurance, much less the hourly rate. Probably would have been much cheaper to go commercial.....
Skydivers could probably fit 40 in a PC-12. You'd be stunned if you saw the load I saw get out of a Cessna Caravan near a local DZ when I was taking my reserve 'chute over for a repack. It was unbelievable. I quit counting at 18....
The plane wasn’t necessarily overloaded. Several of the passengers were children and could have been riding on laps.
NYT article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/22/us/AP-Plane-Crash-Montana.html?_r=2&hp
...said an airport worker in Oroville saw 10+ kids and four adults in the group before the plane took off. The kids were probably 6-10 years old.
If that’s right, there is no way that airplane could legally carry them. Maybe it could lift them, and maybe it could keep the weight and balance in limits, but there’s just not enough seats and seatbelts on a PC-12 for that many passengers. It’s not big enough.
}:-)4
I am not an aircraft expert, and I don’t want to make excuses, but it seems to me we are concentrated on the wrong thing. What was it’s payload rating rather than it’s seating capacity. After all kids do not weigh as much as adults.
Well, a Caravan’s just a church van with wings and a turboprop anyway, isn’t it? :)
The PC-12 is a great airplane with a marvelous safety record and fantastic capabilities—heck, some guy landed one in a downtown street in Indiana a few years ago when the engine died and didn’t do any more damage than knock off one winglet. I just can’t wrap my head around shoving 15-16 passengers + 1-2 crew into one, even if half or more of the passengers are kids.
}:-)4
From the Butte, Montana newspaper:
http://mtstandard.com/articles/2009/03/23/area/hjjajghgjcicfg.txt
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