Cessna 172 crash at zephyrhills 12/07/23

[francisco collazos]

Accident Cessna 172N Skyhawk 100 N906KS,

The Cessna 172N Skyhawk 100 crashed at Zephyrhills Municipal Airport, FL, seriously injuring both occupants. <br /> <br />

aviation-safety.net

flightaware tracking

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N906KS

The plane is registered to a flight school located at Lakeland and crashed around 2p est. The front is pretty crumpled and pushed into the pilot compartment. Hard to tell based off the picture where the airplane is located.

 

[Flying Keys]

They were doing closed left pattern work on runway 5. The crash site looks like it’s along South Ave, about 600’ lateral (to the NW) to the last 600’ of the departure end of the runway. The flaps are still fairly extended.

It looks an awful lot like a stall and left spin after takeoff or go around. Possibly coincidental with an early crosswind turn, but no ADS-B track seems to be visible after the previous landing, so it’s hard to confirm.

 

[francisco collazos]

but no ADS-B track seems to be visible after the previous landing, so it’s hard to confirm.

If you follow the flightaware track it seems to end 1000ft from the runway. IDK if that's the crash or just end of the tracking but normally the tracking ends over the runway

 

[Flying Keys]

If you follow the flightaware track it seems to end 1000ft from the runway. IDK if that's the crash or just end of the tracking but normally the tracking ends over the runway

Right. At some airports they get below the altitude whatever ADS-B receiver that’s picking them up can see. The commercial
sites will usually just fill in the blanks (guesstimate) between where the signal is lost and the next hit when they’re high enough to get picked up again. And it’s not always consistent between FlightAware, FR24, ADS-B exchange and others as to how that’s done (I’m not sure of those details).

Since the last hit on was on short final and the aircraft clearly crashed toward the departure end, I’m going to go with it never got back up in range of the ADS-B receiver.

 

[frfly172]

Looks like some serious damage ,hope for a quick and full recovery of the pilots involved.

 

[traumamed]

I was overflying the area around the time of the mishap. There was **a lot** of parachute jumping activity being announced for KZPH when I was on with Tampa Approach. Not to play Monday Morning QB, but I'm not so sure how great of an idea it was to take a student to an airport with a bunch of jumpers constantly in the air for pattern work. It may have had nothing to do with the accident, but it is worth mentioning.

 

[Ed Haywood]

I was overflying the area around the time of the mishap. There was **a lot** of parachute jumping activity being announced for KZPH when I was on with Tampa Approach. Not to play Monday Morning QB, but I'm not so sure how great of an idea it was to take a student to an airport with a bunch of jumpers constantly in the air for pattern work. It may have had nothing to do with the accident, but it is worth mentioning.

There is ALWAYS a lot of skydiving activity at ZPH. Normally no factor for flights on 05-23.

 

[tobnpr]

They were doing closed left pattern work on runway 5. The crash site looks like it’s along South Ave, about 600’ lateral (to the NW) to the last 600’ of the departure end of the runway. The flaps are still fairly extended.

It looks an awful lot like a stall and left spin after takeoff or go around. Possibly coincidental with an early crosswind turn, but no ADS-B track seems to be visible after the previous landing, so it’s hard to confirm.

Visible right flap does appear to be extended. My son's property is 1/2 mile directly off the end of rwy 5, busy place on fair weather weekends, sure was Saturday when I was there.

If it was another touch and go, the plane wasn't cleaned up on the runway, Skyhawk POH calls for zero flaps for normal takeoff. This article i came across (student always reading everything...) questions whether touch and goes are worth the risk. I get the economies of it when training- but it's not an operation one would typically do as a part of normal flight operations.

Touch And Goes? - Aviation Safety

Most of us do them to sharpen our landings. But are they worth the risk? Heres what you need to know about touch-and-go landings.

www.aviationsafetymagazine.com

My thinking is full stop landings/ taxi back/normal takeoff , and concentrating more on go-arounds than touch and goes is the better way to train, albeit taking longer/more $$.

Am I wrong?

 

[Ed Haywood]

Visible right flap does appear to be extended. My son's property is 1/2 mile directly off the end of rwy 5, busy place on fair weather weekends, sure was Saturday when I was there.

If it was another touch and go, the plane wasn't cleaned up on the runway, Skyhawk POH calls for zero flaps for normal takeoff. This article i came across (student always reading everything...) questions whether touch and goes are worth the risk. I get the economies of it when training- but it's not an operation one would typically do as a part of normal flight operations.

Touch And Goes? - Aviation Safety

Most of us do them to sharpen our landings. But are they worth the risk? Heres what you need to know about touch-and-go landings.

www.aviationsafetymagazine.com

My thinking is full stop landings/ taxi back/normal takeoff , and concentrating more on go-arounds than touch and goes is the better way to train, albeit taking longer/more $$.

Am I wrong?

Personal opinion, if T&G are dangerous, then the CFI is incompetent. Only caveat is runway length, but ZPH is plenty long for that.

 

[traumamed]

This article i came across (student always reading everything...) questions whether touch and goes are worth the risk. I get the economies of it when training- but it's not an operation one would typically do as a part of normal flight operations.

Touch And Goes? - Aviation Safety

Most of us do them to sharpen our landings. But are they worth the risk? Heres what you need to know about touch-and-go landings.

www.aviationsafetymagazine.com

My thinking is full stop landings/ taxi back/normal takeoff , and concentrating more on go-arounds than touch and goes is the better way to train, albeit taking longer/more $$.

Am I wrong?

It's probably not so much "right or wrong" as opposed to just one of those individual risk tolerance things. As is the case for most of us, I did seemingly countless touch-and-goes in my primary training and didn't think twice about it. It became more of a thing for me when I decided to pursue serious crosswind landing training (think: max demonstrated xwind), and when moving to hotter complex/HP planes. I stumbled on that same article after a couple sporty T&Gs, and decided they weren't for me anymore.

That said, I have zero aversion to flying single engine night XC in IMC, or overflying open water in a single engine out of glide distance (in a low wing retract with a raft aboard). Some people call that crazy, others totally get it. Risk tolerance is a funny thing and highly dependent on one's own prior experiences.

But the cold, hard fact is that landing is the most dangerous phase of flight. Is it worth it to increase the risk even further in the interest of saving a couple minutes? Not to me anymore, but to someone else, maybe it is - and that's totally fine too. You do you.

As it relates to this accident: sounds like a power loss issue is in play from the latest data. If so, maybe a full stop-taxi back could have prevented this, either from having the benefit of a run-up, or the added time to run the takeoff checklist and make sure all engine and aircraft configuration settings were correct. RIP to the CFI and speedy recovery to the student. Sad.

 

[Ed Haywood]

I'll retract my comment a bit. T&G are fine as long as you don't lose power. But loss of power could be worse during a T&G because of less runway to abort on, and less time to evaluate whether the engine is making full power.

 

[Ghghghgh8]

It's probably not so much "right or wrong" as opposed to just one of those individual risk tolerance things. As is the case for most of us, I did seemingly countless touch-and-goes in my primary training and didn't think twice about it. It became more of a thing for me when I decided to pursue serious crosswind landing training (think: max demonstrated xwind), and when moving to hotter complex/HP planes. I stumbled on that same article after a couple sporty T&Gs, and decided they weren't for me anymore.

That said, I have zero aversion to flying single engine night XC in IMC, or overflying open water in a single engine out of glide distance (in a low wing retract with a raft aboard). Some people call that crazy, others totally get it. Risk tolerance is a funny thing and highly dependent on one's own prior experiences.

But the cold, hard fact is that landing is the most dangerous phase of flight. Is it worth it to increase the risk even further in the interest of saving a couple minutes? Not to me anymore, but to someone else, maybe it is - and that's totally fine too. You do you.

As it relates to this accident: sounds like a power loss issue is in play from the latest data. If so, maybe a full stop-taxi back could have prevented this, either from having the benefit of a run-up, or the added time to run the takeoff checklist and make sure all engine and aircraft configuration settings were correct. RIP to the CFI and speedy recovery to the student. Sad.

Can I ask where you got this new data from? I am having trouble finding anything new.

 

[tobnpr]

It's probably not so much "right or wrong" as opposed to just one of those individual risk tolerance things. As is the case for most of us, I did seemingly countless touch-and-goes in my primary training and didn't think twice about it. It became more of a thing for me when I decided to pursue serious crosswind landing training (think: max demonstrated xwind), and when moving to hotter complex/HP planes. I stumbled on that same article after a couple sporty T&Gs, and decided they weren't for me anymore.

That said, I have zero aversion to flying single engine night XC in IMC, or overflying open water in a single engine out of glide distance (in a low wing retract with a raft aboard). Some people call that crazy, others totally get it. Risk tolerance is a funny thing and highly dependent on one's own prior experiences.

But the cold, hard fact is that landing is the most dangerous phase of flight. Is it worth it to increase the risk even further in the interest of saving a couple minutes? Not to me anymore, but to someone else, maybe it is - and that's totally fine too. You do you.

As it relates to this accident: sounds like a power loss issue is in play from the latest data. If so, maybe a full stop-taxi back could have prevented this, either from having the benefit of a run-up, or the added time to run the takeoff checklist and make sure all engine and aircraft configuration settings were correct. RIP to the CFI and speedy recovery to the student. Sad.

Thank you for the comments...didn't mean to hijack this thread into a different subject. Agree completely on the risk tolerance aspect... to each their own. I decided I won't fly at night unless it's necessary for some reason- if I ever get to a turbine (doubtful) might be different. My son tells me it's beautiful and he loves it; I might feel the same way if I too, were sitting on an ejection seat. I wasn't aware the CFI had passed away, hopefully the student survives and can shed some light on the event.

 

[traumamed]

Can I ask where you got this new data from? I am having trouble finding anything new.

The ASN narrative was updated. Dan Gryder did the updating on 12/11. I am definitely not a fan of his, but his facts are usually accurate.

Someone else also updated the ASN report to reflect the CFI as [possibly] still alive. CFIs around my local hangar that keep up with the Tampa Bay Pilots Facebook group have been chattering about conflicting reports on that.