Beech Baron down in VA

I read this morning that they departed from one of our local airports, Spruce Creek. They didn't say if they were based there or not.

I hate when these things happen. May. They rest in peace.
 
From the article, either imc and way below msa or scud running and ended up in low ceilings.... Bummer.
 
Unit74 said:
From the article, either imc and way below msa or scud running and ended up in low ceilings.... Bummer.
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Please don't pay too much attention to news reports., especially early ones.

Look at the flight aware track. They were IFR at 9000' - well within the MEAs for the area and well above terrain. Rock solid at 9k with no deviations (probably autopilot) until they suddenly dropped 700' and 70 kts of airspeed in about 2 minutes and then nothing.

They were not scud running.
 
Fearless Tower,
What is your theory? Loss of engine with the sudden altitude drop?
 
chevy72402 said:
Fearless Tower,
What is your theory? Loss of engine with the sudden altitude drop?
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I don't think it was an engine failure. They flew that arc to the right for a little while before dropping off radar. I would think that losing an engine IFR, they would at least have let ATC know there was a problem. And if they were on A/P, an engine failure in cruise in a B55 is a complete non-event.

With the little info that we have right now, I can only speculate that they were deviating around storms and somehow got into a storm cell and either experienced inflight structural failure or upset. It would be interesting to know if the aircraft was intact when it hit.

Scary stuff. I've transited that area many times in my B55.
 
Carbon Monoxide + A/P failure???
 
JOhnH said:
Carbon Monoxide + A/P failure???
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Anything is possible, but this is a twin. No engine heat goes into the cabin and while there is a gas heater in the nose, I doubt they were running it this time of year, even at 9k. It has been pretty warm the last couple days.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Anything is possible, but this is a twin. No engine heat goes into the cabin and while there is a gas heater in the nose, I doubt they were running it this time of year, even at 9k. It has been pretty warm the last couple days.
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Duhh, your'e right. I forgot about that.
 
In the small twins, like the Baron is there a servo for the rudder in the AP that would help in an engine out event, or are you manually correcting the entire time?
 
Archammer said:
In the small twins, like the Baron is there a servo for the rudder in the AP that would help in an engine out event, or are you manually correcting the entire time?
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Manual everything. Auto-feather and rudder boost would be big helps for engines failures at low altitudes, but at 9k an engine failure is really easy to deal with.
 
Archammer said:
In the small twins, like the Baron is there a servo for the rudder in the AP that would help in an engine out event, or are you manually correcting the entire time?
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There is rudder trim, but you would have to manually trim it. However, like Fearless Tower mentioned, if they lost an engine with the autopilot engaged it would be a non-event. You wouldn't even need to mess with the trim.
 
Neighbors in Saltville report thunderstorms moving through the area that afternoon. Suspect encounter with convective cell as cause.
NTSB was to start today..
 
Can the B55 maintain 9,000' OEI?
 
Kritchlow said:
Can the B55 maintain 9,000' OEI?
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I doubt it. Looking at the charts leads me to believe you'd probably only be able to muster ~6,000. I've never tried it to see for myself though.
 
wrbix said:
Neighbors in Saltville report thunderstorms moving through the area that afternoon. Suspect encounter with convective cell as cause.
NTSB was to start today..
Click to expand...

That combined with the rapid descent plus 70kts decrease in speed: possible microburst? Pitch up, power, still fail to climb kind of thing.
 
I would dare to say weather very possible, but microburst doesn't sound right to me. If they were at 9,000', you won't really get the predictable type of speed fluctuations you would see closer to the surface.

I wouldn't rule out engine failure. Non issue, perhaps, but if the AP was on and trying to trim level, that's your speed. Too slow and you lose AP and there's your altitude. That said, I'm not familiar with the parameters of that AP.

For that matter everything I said is pure speculation... :D
 
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