C172 Down at Westerly (KWST) - 1 Fatal

KE5BM

KE5BM

Pre-takeoff checklist
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This one came up on the Boston news this morning. Happened yesterday at about noon. Couldn't have asked for a better day for flying around here. ADS-B track doesn't provide much. Appears to be one lap in the pattern, 500' base turn. Engine issues or another base-to-final stall?

www.boston25news.com

Pilot dies after small plane crashes at Rhode Island airport

The pilot of a small plane is dead after it crashed at Westerly State Airport in Rhode Island on Monday.
www.boston25news.com www.boston25news.com

 
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Judging from pictures of the wreckage, that thing hit hard. Sounds like a student pilot from the reports.
 
KE5BM said:
Engine issues or another base-to-final stall?
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Turns out the "yet another base-to-final stall" thing is a bit of a myth.

wanttaja

Thread 'Where Stalls Occur'

I ran this analysis several years back based on my homebuilt accident database. Been looking at writing a follow-up to my article on common myths regarding General Aviation accidents, so I ran the same analysis on a 5,700-accident database I have of accidents involving Standard category airplanes.

Basically, I extracted the accidents where the pilots accidentally stalled, and identified where the aircraft was at the time. The stalls, in this case, are of *perfectly fine* aircraft. This has nothing to do with engine failures; it's stalls involving aircraft with fully-functional engines...
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Dana said:
Judging from pictures of the wreckage, that thing hit hard. Sounds like a student pilot from the reports.
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One news source said CFI, draw your own conclusions.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Turns out the "yet another base-to-final stall" thing is a bit of a myth.
Click to expand...
I had quite forgotten about this graphic. It just seems I hear a lot about those kinds of accidents. So then the over/under is engine issues? I have to agree with Dana, that was a hard hit. Folded the plane pretty badly.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Turns out the "yet another base-to-final stall" thing is a bit of a myth.
Click to expand...
It's not that it's a myth; it's just that it's not as common as people believe. But it does happen sometimes, particularly in the case of an engine failure (no idea yet whether this was or not).
 
Ed Haywood said:
Turns out the "yet another base-to-final stall" thing is a bit of a myth.
Click to expand...
But only a "bit" of a myth. It does indeed happen. I watched it happen one time. Killed the guy dead. Get the airplane a little slow, cross the controls in the turn to get the skid, and it can happen, even in the forgiving 172.
 
Really don’t see how you can stall/spin a 172 yet it happened near me years ago.

“Instead, the early Thursday morning trip of two Florida Atlantic University students, one university employee and their pilot ended abruptly when the Cessna 172 Skyhawk plane crashed in a cow pasture in rural western Martin County, instantly killing all onboard.”

IMG_0654.jpeg
 
I think he means a CP training to be a CFI shouldn't stall a plain old 172 on a normal day. Maybe he was flying from the right seat and did not get an adequate right seat checkout?
 
dmspilot said:
I think he means a CP training to be a CFI shouldn't stall a plain old 172 on a normal day. Maybe he was flying from the right seat and did not get an adequate right seat checkout?
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His comments referred to a 2008 crash.
 
bonefishpete said:
Really don’t see how you can stall/spin a 172 yet it happened near me years ago.
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Fully cross controlled and pitched up with full power will do it. That could be a base-to-final turn gone arwy coupled with a panicked and bungled attempt at recovery. The 172 will then, typically, flip over and enter a spin, but amazingly with that sort of abuse, it still sometimes resists doing so! You can't recover at low altitude. Recovery at higher AGL's is straight forward with proper technique. What's amazed me when I did spin training is how one of the most docile planes ever made turns into such a beast, but only if severely provoked -- but it's a beast that is still quite recoverable. Disclaimer: of course is that this must be done only with a very qualified CFI with you.
 
davela said:
Fully cross controlled and pitched up with full power will do it. That could be a base-to-final turn gone arwy coupled with a panicked and bungled attempt at recovery. The 172 will then, typically, flip over and enter a spin, but amazingly with that sort of abuse, it still sometimes resists doing so! You can't recover at low altitude. Recovery at higher AGL's is straight forward with proper technique. What's amazed me when I did spin training is how one of the most docile planes ever made turns into such a beast, but only if severely provoked -- but it's a beast that is still quite recoverable. Disclaimer: of course is that this must be done only with a very qualified CFI with you.
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Of course I know you CAN stall / spin a 172 on purpose but my meaning was it's to me very difficult to without trying. Can rigging cause this?

My example If I remember was that normal pilot was not available for the flight so the manager of Kemper klna flight school took the flight. Normal pilot said in investigation that the scientists wanted the pilot to skid the plane so as to be able to take pictures of the birds they were taking pictures of. Just so happens I had a old dirt bike friend that was building fence who saw the accident. Said the plane came straight down and impacted the ground.
 
bonefishpete said:
Of course I know you CAN stall / spin a 172 on purpose but my meaning was it's to me very difficult to without trying. Can rigging cause this?
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A 172 is difficult to spin even on purpose. Rigging can definitely be a factor. When I was learning to fly one of the school 150s must have been bent, because it had a tendency for one wing to drop (incipient spin) during a stall even if the ball was perfectly centered.
 
Dana said:
A 172 is difficult to spin even on purpose. Rigging can definitely be a factor. When I was learning to fly one of the school 150s must have been bent, because it had a tendency for one wing to drop (incipient spin) during a stall even if the ball was perfectly centered.
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Many older training aircraft are somewhat out of whack due to decades of monkeying with the rigging. When I restored my Decathlon, I rerigged everything to service manual baselines and it was much more consistent.
 
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