Posted on 04/20/2013 10:19:11 AM PDT by Fennie
A pilot who died when his light aircraft crashed just a few metres away from a house was reportedly a US Air Force general.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...
Thanks for the information..One more question...lets assume that he ran out of gas, and tried to stretch the glide..could the loss of control at the last minute be due to a sudden attempt to avoid crashing into a house..IOW, he thought he could make a dead-stick landing..which as I understand it, the pilot is mentally doing the calculations..air-speed, rate of descent...to see if he can make it to whatever possible landing area he’s picked out..at the last second, he realizes he’s misjudged it..there’s a house directly ahead, so he attempts to evade..to avoid killing anyone inside the house and also because he has a much better chance to survive an impact with a grass lawn than with a brick house..
“Dead stick” is not possible. Flame out and you have no hydraulics and you are toast. If you have altitude and time and the engines are windmilling, then you can attempt a re-start.
So, NO, you don’t get dead stick training because you CAN’T dead stick the jet. Same with other jets.
Was in the Omaha World Hearld newspaper this morning. Family lived in Nebraska. Must have had ties to Offutt AFB.
Or had a white stripe around his head.
Or bird strike.
I flew a light plane until I read that doing so eventually ends in death by crash for one in 250. (or something like that)
Then I thought of the life insurance forms where they ALWAYS inquire: “Do you pilot your own airplane?”
Sorry for your loss. I know how strong the bonds can be sometimes for a fellow Rat.
[I didn’t notice his age before I posted, but once I did I realized you and he were after my time.]
*****So, NO, you don’t get dead stick training because you CAN’T dead stick the jet. Same with other jets.*****
I met a former F-104 pilot who assured me that he personally knew a fellow pilot who dead sticked a starfighter.
I can only imagine the pilot dove at 60 degrees or so, building up max IAS, and then managed to flair out at the last second.
I was always told that they glide like a brick...
No one was flying that airplane when it crashed. It was out of control.
Controlled flight into the woods, even after loss of engine power, would have destroyed the airplane while likely leaving passengers unharmed. That happens all the time.
The worse thing a pilot can do is to try to save the airplane. That's when they try to stretch the glide or do something else that's not possible.
That airplane stopped flying somewhere way up in the air and not just before crashing.
There is some crucial information that we just don't have. None of the news reports say whether the flight originated at Williamsburg or whether that was the destination. Makes guessing about fuel exhaustion vs. mechanical problems difficult to assess. Engine failure immediately after takeoff vs. after a 5 hour flight suggests different potential causes. There is nothing in any of the articles that says anything about fuel exhaustion. Even in the presence of fuel post-crash fires are not inevitable. It will be months before the NTSB releases a final report. When preliminary information becomes available look for comments about the presence or absence of fuel smell, amount of fuel drained from tanks, etc.
Good stuff. I hate unnecessary “quotes”.
So, NO, you don’t get dead stick training because you CAN’T dead stick the jet. Same with other jets.
You couldn't be more wrong.
From your link:
FLIGHT INFORMATION
Rating: Command pilot
Flight hours: More than 4,300 hours
Aircraft flown: T-37, T-38, E-3, KC-135, E-6B, B-52 and B-1
Because the pilot was a USAF general officer, will a USAF accident investigation board be involved along with the NTSB?
I believe that would be wrong. They do but now they don’t train them to do much of anything. A lot of squadrons are GROUNDED.
Don’t sleep well tonight, you Air Force is GROUNDED.
the effects of sequestration.
I wouldn't know, but I doubt it. They'll probably do the sort of investigation run by personnel office when an officer is killed in an auto accident.
NTSB final report will be posted Here. Could be as long as 18 months hence. With the sequester, even longer!
Whether they teach dead stick landings or not, they do in all training, whether civilian or military, teach the importance of certain air speeds.
No matter single engine, twin or multi, there are certain airspeeds that make the difference in life and death.
The bigger the aircraft and the more engines, the more numbers you have to remember.
And with the really big birds, there is a different number for each critical flight situation according to gross weight.
So he should have nailed the correct glide speed for a 210 and stuck with it no matter what.
I don’t have any idea what that speed would be in a 210 nor what the spread between that and the stall speed is.Then you have to factor in a pad for gusts when pre frontal weather is involved.
When I looked at the radar display in my truck, it showed a line of rotational storms, lined up like fence posts, in that area or just west of it.
And they were fast moving along the squall line.
(I assume it was a squall line and not the front, which appeared from the truck radar to be slightly to the west, but without aviation weather showing wind shifts, pressure, etc., that is just a guess.)
Not really a good day for a 210.
I am way out of the loop in these days on the electronics in general use today, but when I was flying, very few 210’s had airborne weather radar. It would have been, in those days, a day for twins with airborne radar.
I realize there have been huge changes and multiple ways now of detecting cells and we don’t know what he had on that aircraft.
However, it still would have been a rough ride.
Reminds me of a pilot joke.
You know what the propeller is for ?
To keep the pilot cool. If it stops turning, the pilot starts sweating.
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