Another KHOU incident this A.M.

Actually happened last night around 11pm...
 
glad the pilot made it. the roof of the warehouse doesn't look like it even felt the plane hit it. he was fortunate he made the roof and not the side of the building.
 
I'm thinking the property values around the airport are gonna start suffering if people can't keep it in the air..
 
Wonder what the fuel situation was,would make a good aircraft carrier pilot.
 
From the picture, it looks like he hit the edge of the roof coming down. Pretty lucky to have survived a night landing in an industrial area!
 
arnoha said:
"...located an hour later..."

It took an hour to find a plane that had a forced landing and crash while in contact with ATC in a densely populated city? Yikes.
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Did you see the picture of where it was located? Pretty hard to spot from the ground even if it was daylight!
 
That thing really broke up. Be interesting to know how it hit.
 
Just talked to a friend that flies Fox units for HPD out of Hobby...arriving aircraft could hear the Epirb...and they had to launch to track it down..yes it took an hour or so...Its a Macy's distribution center...
 
Yikes, that is one broken-up airplane. He walked away? ONE LUCKY DUDE!
Glad he made it. Glad he got lucky with the roof.
And I really hope the rumor of no-fuel proves not to be true, for his sake.
 
arnoha said:
"...located an hour later..."

It took an hour to find a plane that had a forced landing and crash while in contact with ATC in a densely populated city? Yikes.
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You bet. There have been cases where an airplane has crashed on an airport at night in the middle of the city, and no one noticed until the tower opened in the morning.

Locally, someone could go down in Coyote Hills and no one would notice unless they lit the hills on fire.

It's a lot harder to find a wreck than people think, even with an ELT. And ELTs in a warehouse are painfully difficult to DF. Every bit of steel reflects the signal. Hell, I've had fun chasing them at Reid due to the baseball diamond's chain link fence. And the one time I set a practice beacon at South County (in the museum), there were false signals all over the airport. The poor guy I was exercising ended up looking in every dumpster, and it wasn't in any of them.

ELT's reflect off of lots of stuff. Transmission lines are the worst. But even a tiny bit of terrain or a few trees can make them really hard to find on the ground. It's easier in the air.
 
MAKG1 said:
You bet. There have been cases where an airplane has crashed on an airport at night in the middle of the city, and no one noticed until the tower opened in the morning.

Locally, someone could go down in Coyote Hills and no one would notice unless they lit the hills on fire.

It's a lot harder to find a wreck than people think, even with an ELT. And ELTs in a warehouse are painfully difficult to DF. Every bit of steel reflects the signal. Hell, I've had fun chasing them at Reid due to the baseball diamond's chain link fence. And the one time I set a practice beacon at South County (in the museum), there were false signals all over the airport. The poor guy I was exercising ended up looking in every dumpster, and it wasn't in any of them.

ELT's reflect off of lots of stuff. Transmission lines are the worst. But even a tiny bit of terrain or a few trees can make them really hard to find on the ground. It's easier in the air.
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Huh. Are the 406 MHz any better? I would imagine the shorter wavelength would be easier to find, but shorter range. Though 121.5 MHz and 406 MHz aren't that far apart.
 
arnoha said:
Huh. Are the 406 MHz any better? I would imagine the shorter wavelength would be easier to find, but shorter range. Though 121.5 MHz and 406 MHz aren't that far apart.
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IF SARSAT gets a ping AND the 406 has been properly connected with a GPS source, yes.

But those only go once per minute, and there is a lot that can happen in that time. If the airplane comes to rest in the shade, the satellite won't see it. If it falls to a human trying to DF it, it will suffer all the same problems. There isn't that much difference between VHF and UHF.

Lots of stuff can go wrong with ELTs. Like, the airplane shearing off the antenna or coming to rest upside down. Or a fire.
 
Dude, who built that roof!

That's some craftsmanship, I'd be using those photos in my marketing if I was that roofer.

Glad the pilot was OK, if the rumors were true, please stop running out of go juice people!
 
MAKG1 said:
You bet. There have been cases where an airplane has crashed on an airport at night in the middle of the city, and no one noticed until the tower opened in the morning.
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We're those people on radar and in communication with ATC?
 
Lindberg said:
We're those people on radar and in communication with ATC?
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Unlikely while landing at an airport. They would have left flight following if they had been using it, and would be making calls on CTAF. ATC is done at that point, unless it's IFR. This is a hole in the "flight following replaces a VFR flight plan" logic -- ATC basically assumes that if you can see the airport under VFR, you will land safely at it.

Even if talking to ATC, radar seldom covers to the ground. Even in busy places in the middle of the city.
 
MAKG1 said:
You bet. There have been cases where an airplane has crashed on an airport at night in the middle of the city, and no one noticed until the tower opened in the morning.
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In Class C no less.....BNA comes to mind.
 
luvflyin said:
Sandals. Look at the medics rolling him away on the gurney. Wasn't flying in sandals a topic here awhile back?
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There's all the proof we need. Probably had plenty of gas, just wore the wrong footwear.
 
luvflyin said:
Sandals. Look at the medics rolling him away on the guerney. Wasn't flying in sandals a topic here awhile back?
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:D

Let's see if that is noted in the NTSB final report as a contributing factor...
 
I doubt he actually tried to land on a roof at night. MY guess he ran out of fuel and crashed on the roof. Or possibly thought that he was landing on the ground until the roof got in his way. At night, as we know, you usually can't see sh*t until you are too close to the ground to make a difference.
 
4 blocks from the closest fire station.... and 1 block from the closest houses... he got lucky he landed on a substantial structure, or had the choice of landing where he did.. JUST missed an empty field tho..
 
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