Apparent plane crash on TPC Scottsdale Golf Course

sferguson524 said:
This one hit a little close to home for me.. a buddy of mine was supposed to go on this trip, but had to back out at the last minute for personal reasons. He hasn't flown since this happened
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That’s a frightening thought..:eek:

Reminds me of the interview with a guy that was supposed to be on the Colgan flight back in ‘09 but missed the flight.

It wasn’t his time.
 
Zeldman said:
A friend of mine put 11 passengers in a 9 seat caravan up in Alaska.

Ok 6 of the passengers were kids under 10 years old.

And the FAA gave him a 30 day vacation for that.
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I’m actually surprised they were that generous..
 
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Thanks for posting, Challenged. That is tough to watch knowing 6 lives ended in that fireball.

The final NTSB report will provide the cause for this crash, but from what I see, the aircraft was in a descending left turn and losing altitude when it likely stalled the inside wing and went nose down into the golf course and really low altitude.
 
Wow interesting to see that video.
 
PaulS said:
Damn, why was he turning? Too bad there isn't sound too.
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Because he barely got off the runway and after looking into the black in front of him decided that maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all.
 
Was just reading the accident report and noticed a few contributing factors that have not been mentioned. It was 83 degrees out, and a field elevation of 1510. I calculated the DA ( base on all the conditions listed in the report) at 3378 feet. So we have a possibly overweight, maybe out of CG, looks like non turbo plane, at an elevated DA that is just not capable of climbing normally. I know the DA is not that extreme, but it goes into the chain of events, and would become significant given other possible factors.

The report also mentions that the student pilot was is in the left seat based on on field videos. I would imagine then that the student pilot was in control for the takeoff. I wonder at what point the instructor took control? Who was really acting as PIC here? At what point in training was the student?

I know it may look like I am jumping to conclusions, but this crash is playing out like so many in which the pilot makes a series of potential non fatal errors, that add up to one horrible result. The whole chain of events senerio that the FAA and AOPA have been stressing for years.

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Wow watching that video from the traffic cam suggests that regardless of the weight / CG I think that plane was flying. It had already reached an altitude of probably a couple hundred feet at what was likely an anemic straight ahead climb... the turn looks to be pretty steep considering the likely AOA and airspeed when it was initiated.

If no obstructions were straight ahead (tall towers / mountains) I think that plane would have made it to Vegas if the turn had been delayed and was made less aggressively.

The video IMHO Suggests the performance was probably enough if it had been flown more delicately.
 
tawood said:
I wonder if the climb was so bad, they were trying to make the road...
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Maybe, but whatever climb he had was probably lost with that bank angle. It's easy to second guess and kibitz but straight ahead until at least 500 agl then maybe a 10 degree bank if you want to get back with a well running engine? Hopefully they can reconstruct what happened enough to give a definitive answer as to what happened.
 
And it looked from that new camera angle that they had well-cleared that berm everyone thought might be the reason for the turn.
 
Maybe they had an engine failure and they were trying to make the road? Sad video.
 
CC268 said:
Maybe they had an engine failure and they were trying to make the road? Sad video.
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I'm still going with the rising terrain made them turn. If I recall one it said there was evidence of a turning propeller on impact
 
The video appears to have been facing east at the intersection of Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd. and Greenway Hayden Loop, where the yellow 'x' is on the attached map. Thus it looks like the airplane is heading west, maybe even southwest, by the time the bank goes vertical. A straight-out departure would have been aimed at mountains within two to three miles.

Screen Shot 2018-05-03 at 9.26.15 AM.png
 
I marked where they crashed and where this video was taken. You have plenty of time to make a turn taking off of Runway 3 before you get to the McDowell mountains. Idk. It almost looks to me like they were fine climbing out and then maybe had an engine failure and tried to make a turn back, but idk.

TPC.JPG
 
CC268 said:
I marked where they crashed and where this video was taken. You have plenty of time to make a turn taking off of Runway 3 before you get to the McDowell mountains. Idk. It almost looks to me like they were fine climbing out and then maybe had an engine failure and tried to make a turn back, but idk.
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Since we're all just speculating, I'm going to say you're right on the engine failure. If they were concerned about climb rate, I don't think they would have made the steep turn just off the runway. Instead, it looks like a panic turn after an engine failure, angling hard and trying to make the road. Fixated on the road, they neglected to maintain airspeed.
 
F01LA said:
Since we're all just speculating, I'm going to say you're right on the engine failure. If they were concerned about climb rate, I don't think they would have made the steep turn just off the runway. Instead, it looks like a panic turn after an engine failure, angling hard and trying to make the road. Fixated on the road, they neglected to maintain airspeed.
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I dont see him making a turn that was too tight. I see a fairly normal looking turn right until the stall.
 
Engine failure below 500 agl, land straight ahead, with a slight turn left or right to avoid obstacles. I thought I read the witnesses saying the engine was making power, but maybe wrong.
 
I doubt the W&B or CG had much, if anything, to do with this. We don't know what went on inside the plane, but my guess would be the ATP was distracted by the passengers, and wasn't paying attention to the departure. Staring out into blackness makes it real easy to roll left on departure. By the time it was noticed it was too late.
 
EdFred said:
I doubt the W&B or CG had much, if anything, to do with this. We don't know what went on inside the plane, but my guess would be the ATP was distracted by the passengers, and wasn't paying attention to the departure. Staring out into blackness makes it real easy to roll left on departure. By the time it was noticed it was too late.
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Perhaps, but 90 degrees and what, about 40 knots slower than Vy, is a lot of “distraction”. But it did look like it was climbing well enough to survive it, even if he was overloaded.

We now know an approximate altitude the stall occurred at, and how long the runway was, and temperature, so we can pretty easily take a SWAG at the climb rate by reversing that into the takeoff performance numbers.

At initial glance it doesn’t look great, if we say that looks like about 100’ or if we’re generous, 150’ AGL above the runway, with the berm being higher than the runway.

How much runway did he chew up getting there, and should he have had an abort point in mind, that heavy?
 
weilke said:
I dont see him making a turn that was too tight. I see a fairly normal looking turn right until the stall.
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A 40 degree (+/-), low altitude, descending turn does not strike me as normal.
 
To me in the video it does not look like the plane exceeded a 15 to 20 degree bank before the wings basically go to 90 degrees. There did appear to be some wobble in the wings with several bank changes before the crash. Initially it looked like they were slowly gaining altitude, but started coming slowly down right after the left turn occured.

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drotto said:
To me in the video it does not look like the plane exceeded a 15 to 20 degree bank before the wings basically go to 90 degrees. There did appear to be some wobble in the wings with several bank changes before the crash. Initially it looked like they were slowly gaining altitude, but started coming slowly down right after the left turn occured.
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At 0:36, pause and measure. I calculate 38 degrees of bank. There aren't a whole lot of good reasons to be doing this at low altitude right after takeoff. It would be a very unwise thing to do if you were concerned about poor climb rate. I could see someone doing this in an attempt to make it to a road or runway after power loss. My best guess given the limited facts we have.
 
drotto said:
To me in the video it does not look like the plane exceeded a 15 to 20 degree bank before the wings basically go to 90 degrees. There did appear to be some wobble in the wings with several bank changes before the crash. Initially it looked like they were slowly gaining altitude, but started coming slowly down right after the left turn occured.

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Agree. At 40 degrees the stall was already ongoing and progressed on to 90 or so before disappearing from view.

From the point where it breaks to the left rapidly, that’s an “incipient” spin. The left wing is giving up on flying...
 
F01LA said:
Since we're all just speculating, I'm going to say you're right on the engine failure. If they were concerned about climb rate, I don't think they would have made the steep turn just off the runway.
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What about their decision-making that lead up to this video makes you think they would all of the sudden start making prudent decisions at the start of it?
 
I'm having a hard time picturing what the plane is doing in the last 1/2 second before it drops out of view...is it just me, or is it banked left while in that last instance, yawing heavily right?
 
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F01LA said:
At 0:36, pause and measure. I calculate 38 degrees of bank. There aren't a whole lot of good reasons to be doing this at low altitude right after takeoff. It would be a very unwise thing to do if you were concerned about poor climb rate. I could see someone doing this in an attempt to make it to a road or runway after power loss. My best guess given the limited facts we have.
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I think they were trying to make the road not because of a power loss, but out of concern for the performance they were seeing. I can easily see one of he two pilots realizing pretty quick after liftoff that this was a poor idea and quickly deciding that the road was their best option.
 
tawood said:
I'm having a hard picturing what the plane is doing in the 1/2 second before it drops out of view...is it just me, or is it banked left while in that last instance, yawing heavily right?
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I need to look at it on a bigger screen than the iPad, but that would be consistent with trying to “save” the spin if you’ve seen enough spin entries to try to stop the rotation just as a wing drops. Or if he knew he was cheating the turn with inside rudder when it broke. (Don’t DO that!) An ATP would have seen a few. I wish more folks saw more of that.

If you’re in a very shallow slow turn in a single, you still need some right rudder... left turning tendencies got him, in a way.
 
weilke said:
I dont see him making a turn that was too tight. I see a fairly normal looking turn right until the stall.
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Ehh...Idk...you could be right, but I know KSDL quite well - I fly out of there frequently and live down the street from KSDL (although my plane is hangared at KDVT). That is definitely not what I would consider to be a normal turn taking off of runway 3. Especially towards the end of that video...they were making a pretty abrupt turn.

Damn Im good...I should be an NTSB investigator. :p
 
F01LA said:
A 40 degree (+/-), low altitude, descending turn does not strike me as normal.
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I agree. If you look at where they crashed and the video...it was greater than 40 degrees! In fact, they were pretty close to 90 degrees off from the end of runway
 
CC268 said:
Ehh...Idk...you could be right, but I know KSDL quite well - I fly out of there frequently and live down the street from KSDL (although my plane is hangared at KDVT). That is definitely not what I would consider to be a normal turn taking off of runway 3. Especially towards the end of that video...they were making a pretty abrupt turn.
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The 'abrupt turn' is when the flow over the left wing stopped being attached alltogether. The reason it doesn't look 'normal' is because he was much lower than most other light aircraft at this point in the process.
 
CC268 said:
I agree. If you look at where they crashed and the video...it was greater than 40 degrees! In fact, they were pretty close to 90 degrees off from the end of runway
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I think there’s some confusion about whether folks are talking degrees of heading or degrees of bank today.
 
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