Cessna 172 fatal plane crash in SE Michigan

Don't know about you guys but if I see someone fixing to load four Americans in a 172, I walk over and ask them if they have worked out the weight and balance. Has happened a few times. Either they were OK and the folks looked light enough that they probably were or the 4th person was just seeing them off.
 
alfadog said:
Don't know about you guys but if I see someone fixing to load four Americans in a 172, I walk over and ask them if they have worked out the weight and balance. Has happened a few times. Either they were OK and the folks looked light enough that they probably were or the 4th person was just seeing them off.
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Well, when I did it 2 of them were German so it must have been alright!

Also - the safety of the flight is the duty of the PIC and not someone who thinks it "don't look quite right"

It's a nice thought but I'm surprised no one has gotten mad at you for second guessing them.
 
DavidWhite said:
Well, when I did it 2 of them were German so it must have been alright!

Also - the safety of the flight is the duty of the PIC and not someone who thinks it "don't look quite right"

It's a nice thought but I'm surprised no one has gotten mad at you for second guessing them.
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So maybe if some stranger had seen this "PIC" about to kill himself and his friends, he should have held his tongue for fear of getting a mean look? F*ck that, I'm walking over.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
If we were talking Leadville, I'd buy that. Michigan with a sub-3000ft DA, not a chance.
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Why? Even with a sub-3000' DA, there's some weight at which the plane won't climb much, right? So why couldn't he have been at just around that weight? That hypothesis seems to fit the available facts (namely, that he was failing to climb much and that he said over the radio that the plane was overweight), doesn't it?
 
alfadog said:
So maybe if some stranger had seen this "PIC" about to kill himself and his friends, he should have held his tongue for fear of getting a mean look? F*ck that, I'm walking over.
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I am just starting my flight training, but for the record, if you see me doing something potentially deadly on the ground, please feel free to let me know.
 
acrophile said:
Why? Even with a sub-3000' DA, there's some weight at which the plane won't climb much, right? So why couldn't he have been at just around that weight? That hypothesis seems to fit the available facts (namely, that he was failing to climb much and that he said over the radio that the plane was overweight), doesn't it?
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Not being able to climb doesn't mean the aircraft was at its ceiling. Yanking the aircraft off and trying to climb on the back side of the power curve (or any speed other than Vy) will bring climb performance to a halt just as easily as density altitude.
 
When our kids were little, we bought a 150 HP Piper Warrior.

By the time we sold it, we had to stop for fuel between Iowa City, IA and Oshkosh, WI. THAT is how overweight we were, flying that so-called 4-seat plane. In real life, it was a 2 adults-plus-two-LITTLE-kids airplane.

The Piper Pathfinder, with 56% more horsepower and 1400 pounds of useful load, resolved that issue for us. We never worried about useful load or being overweight again.

The Skyhawk is only marginally different than our old Warrior, and should NEVER be considered a real 4-seat-with-full-fuel-and-baggage airplane.

Someone apparently forgot to tell this unfortunate young pilot these important facts. May they RIP.
 
alfadog said:
So maybe if some stranger had seen this "PIC" about to kill himself and his friends, he should have held his tongue for fear of getting a mean look? F*ck that, I'm walking over.
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Apparently he knew he was overweight, or atleast thought he was. Him rechecking his W&B would have just affirmed he was overweight.

I bet it was a partial power failure and he couldn't climb out, which leads me to believe he thought the airplane wasn't performing because of weight. He started to turn back towards the runway too steep and he lost too much lift and stalled.
 
The fact that an airplane is overweight will not make the forces of flight stop working and cause the airplane to plummet out of the sky Hollywood style (as the FAA would lead some to believe)

During war (especially WW2) planes would fly almost all the time at "combat weight" which was usually significantly higher than max gross. If I remember right on the B25 max gross is 26k but combat load is 32k.
 
DavidWhite said:
Well, when I did it 2 of them were German so it must have been alright!

Also - the safety of the flight is the duty of the PIC and not someone who thinks it "don't look quite right"

It's a nice thought but I'm surprised no one has gotten mad at you for second guessing them.
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DavidWhite said:
Apparently he knew he was overweight, or atleast thought he was. Him rechecking his W&B would have just affirmed he was overweight.

I bet it was a partial power failure and he couldn't climb out, which leads me to believe he thought the airplane wasn't performing because of weight. He started to turn back towards the runway too steep and he lost too much lift and stalled.
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Perhaps but your previous point seems to be that I should not speak up if I see something that does not "look right" to me because I am not the PIC. I think I already made my feelings on that clear.

You know, if a more experienced pilot had pulled him aside, this might have not happened or it might have but at least that more experienced pilot would sleep that night.
 
dmspilot said:
Not being able to climb doesn't mean the aircraft was at its ceiling. Yanking the aircraft off and trying to climb on the back side of the power curve (or any speed other than Vy) will bring climb performance to a halt just as easily as density altitude.
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Trying to climb at any speed other than Vy will bring climb performance to a halt? I think you must have meant something else, but I'm not sure what.

Climbing in slow flight (on the back side of the power curve) may be difficult, but that seems like a difficult mistake for a pilot to make for an extended period of time. This plane flew for two or three minutes before stalling on short final. It's hard to imagine a pilot accidentally staying on the back side of the power curve that whole time if the plane's weight would have allowed it to climb well at Vy.
 
DavidWhite said:
The fact that an airplane is overweight will not make the forces of flight stop working and cause the airplane to plummet out of the sky Hollywood style (as the FAA would lead some to believe)

During war (especially WW2) planes would fly almost all the time at "combat weight" which was usually significantly higher than max gross. If I remember right on the B25 max gross is 26k but combat load is 32k.
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Agreed....:yes:..

As evidence, I submit the Voyager taking off with massive amounts of fuel on board.... They did it right and went ALL the way around the world..;)

Taking off way over gross is possible... You just need experience to pull it off safely..
 
DavidWhite said:
Apparently he knew he was overweight, or atleast thought he was. Him rechecking his W&B would have just affirmed he was overweight.

I bet it was a partial power failure and he couldn't climb out, which leads me to believe he thought the airplane wasn't performing because of weight.
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That's certainly possible, but so far the evidence for being overweight seems stronger than the evidence for a partial power failure. (Of course, it's conceivable that both occurred.)

He started to turn back towards the runway too steep and he lost too much lift and stalled.
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The video of the wreckage shows that he'd turned all the way back and was on short final when he stalled.

The fact that an airplane is overweight will not make the forces of flight stop working and cause the airplane to plummet out of the sky Hollywood style
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No, but it does increase the plane's stall speed above what's published. That could make it easier for an inexperienced pilot to stall on short final.
 
acrophile said:
Why? Even with a sub-3000' DA, there's some weight at which the plane won't climb much, right? So why couldn't he have been at just around that weight? That hypothesis seems to fit the available facts (namely, that he was failing to climb much and that he said over the radio that the plane was overweight), doesn't it?
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Sure and I'm sure someone can run the numbers on what that weight it, but I bet it is significantly higher than the weight in which either the wing would come off or the landing gear would collapse.
 
Assuming he and his pax all weighed 250 pounds (a BIGGG assumption if you catch my drift) with full fuel that would put him around 1350 pounds. Totally illegal? Yes. Will the plane still fly? Probably. Is it a good idea? No. I've seen. 172s with 1100 pound useful loads and the GTOW on an Air Plains conversion is 2550. So it isn't totally out of the realm of possibility.

I've taken a 172 up to 19k before, it'll do a lot more than people give it credit for.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
Sure and I'm sure someone can run the numbers on what that weight it, but I bet it is significantly higher than the weight in which either the wing would come off or the landing gear would collapse.
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I admit I don't know myself what that limit is. I'd be interested if anyone has factual data on that.

Alternatively, has anyone here ever had to abort a takeoff in a 172 because it was overweight and barely climbing? If so, how far over gross was it (and at what density altitude)? (If you'd rather not acknowledge such an event, perhaps you know of a "friend" that it happened to. :) )
 
DavidWhite said:
Assuming he and his pax all weighed 250 pounds (a BIGGG assumption if you catch my drift) with full fuel that would put him around 1350 pounds. Totally illegal? Yes. Will the plane still fly? Probably. Is it a good idea? No. I've seen. 172s with 1100 pound useful loads and the GTOW on an Air Plains conversion is 2550.
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I know the accident aircraft is a 'M' model, but an SP model is around 1700 empty weight. Add fuel and four 250# occupants and you're over 3,000 pounds. In the SP, that's ~500 pounds over MGTOW. Am I missing something?
 
TexasPilot71 said:
I know the accident aircraft is a 'M' model, but an SP model is around 1700 empty weight. Add fuel and four 250# occupants and you're over 3,000 pounds. In the SP, that's ~500 pounds over MGTOW. Am I missing something?
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I am betting it was heavier then that ...:(
 
TexasPilot71 said:
I know the accident aircraft is a 'M' model, but an SP model is around 1700 empty weight. Add fuel and four 250# occupants and you're over 3,000 pounds. In the SP, that's ~500 pounds over MGTOW. Am I missing something?
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Yup, an M model is 200 pounds lighter. Depending on if it had the Air Plains STC it might have been legal to have it up ton2550.
 
TexasPilot71 said:
I know the accident aircraft is a 'M' model, but an SP model is around 1700 empty weight. Add fuel and four 250# occupants and you're over 3,000 pounds. In the SP, that's ~500 pounds over MGTOW. Am I missing something?
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The SP is a bloated Guppy of an airplane. Structurally, the 172 should be able to handle up to 15000 pounds on the wings without catastrophic failure.
 
Stand outside a 172 and look at the pilot/copilot heads relative to CG (just aft of wing strut) and then think about where all the remaining weight will be placed (back seat and bag compartment) and decide if you think it's really a weight problem or more likely a CG problem.

DavidWhite said:
Apparently he knew he was overweight, or atleast thought he was. Him rechecking his W&B would have just affirmed he was overweight.

I bet it was a partial power failure and he couldn't climb out, which leads me to believe he thought the airplane wasn't performing because of weight. He started to turn back towards the runway too steep and he lost too much lift and stalled.
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wabower said:
Stand outside a 172 and look at the pilot/copilot heads relative to CG (just aft of wing strut) and then think about where all the remaining weight will be placed (back seat and bag compartment) and decide if you think it's really a weight problem or more likely a CG problem.
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Good point. It's not easy to get out of rear CG in a 172 though, atleast in my old one. I ran the numbers on mine and I could have 500 pounds of people in the front seat and a 100 pound person in the front with full fuel and still be in (albeit barely)
 
DavidWhite said:
Assuming he and his pax all weighed 250 pounds (a BIGGG assumption if you catch my drift) with full fuel that would put him around 1350 pounds. Totally illegal? Yes. Will the plane still fly? Probably. Is it a good idea? No. I've seen. 172s with 1100 pound useful loads and the GTOW on an Air Plains conversion is 2550. So it isn't totally out of the realm of possibility.

I've taken a 172 up to 19k before, it'll do a lot more than people give it credit for.
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N9926Q is/was a 1975 C172M. That is the same model as my club's 172's. Useful load after full fuel is less than 650#. I would be surprised if a rental airplane had an STC for more but we have no reason to think it did. Given your scenario, it could be close to 400# over gross or about 15%. That could severely compromise performance, especially if he encountered any downdraft after takeoff.
 
Warrior said:
When my wife and I were dating I was about 160 pounds and she was about 125 pounds. In those days 4 in a 172 wasn't such a challenging thing to do. Both my wife and I have gotten bigger!
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I've had four adults in a 172 several times. Of course I was 10 lbs lighter and the average weight of the four was a bit under 150 lb.
 
http://www.flyingmag.com/safety/accident-investigations/myth-gross-weight

alfadog said:
N9926Q is/was a 1975 C172M. That is the same model as my club's 172's. Useful load after full fuel is less than 650#. I would be surprised if a rental airplane had an STC for more but we have no reason to think it did. Given your scenario, it could be close to 400# over gross or about 15%. That could severely compromise performance, especially if he encountered any downdraft after takeoff.
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acrophile said:
Trying to climb at any speed other than Vy will bring climb performance to a halt?
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I'll try again.

Yanking the aircraft early and climbing out of ground effect by trading airspeed for altitude might get you to 100 feet if you're lucky. That doesn't mean you've reached the aircraft's ceiling. I doubt a 172M absolute ceiling is 3000 feet DA even if it was a thousand pounds overweight.

acrophile said:
It's hard to imagine a pilot accidentally staying on the back side of the power curve that whole time if the plane's weight would have allowed it to climb well at Vy.
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When you're that close to the ground the instinctive reaction is to pull back to get away from the ground.
 
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dmspilot said:
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When you're that close to the ground the instinctive reaction is to pull back to get away from the ground.
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And that is where current training is lacking... Common sense, at least to me is to stay low, build up airspeed and head for dark colored parking lots or other places for additional lift...

Airspeed is your friend...:yes::yes:

Panic at that moment will kill you..:sad: Which it clearly did..:(
 
And I think that it had much more to do with CG than weight, as the article points out, and that he simply didn't know the difference.

alfadog said:
Read the article again, what they discuss is not all that applicable to David's scenario of (4) 1/8 tonners.

BTW, I by no means think that "over gross" crashed this airplane. What I think crashed this airplane was an inexperienced pilot that mishandled the airplane due to unfamiliarity with that condition and not making the right choices when confronted with it.
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alfadog said:
So maybe if some stranger had seen this "PIC" about to kill himself and his friends, he should have held his tongue for fear of getting a mean look? F*ck that, I'm walking over.
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BTDT. In my case, I saw two big guys preflighting a 152 at KAPA in Denver. It was early morning, summer, temps already in the 80's and expected to go well into the 90's.

Went over and asked where they were headed. "Pueblo" was the answer. To go to the aircraft museum, have lunch, and come back.

"Sounds great," I said. "We're you thinking of taxiing the whole way back?" And walked away.

They were last seen re-tying down the airplane.
 
Likely over gross and stalled on short final? I'll guess (and that's all it is) that he chopped the power like normal and got too slow too quickly, especially with the higher stall speed unaccounted for. Who knows if he used flaps or not.

If you're heavy and having trouble climbing a no-flaps landing with plenty of power all the way to touchdown is likely smart. Just like landing with ice, preserve speed and fly it on. Plenty of time to slow down on the ground.
 
dmspilot said:
Yanking the aircraft early and climbing out of ground effect by trading airspeed for altitude might get you to 100 feet if you're lucky.
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Yes, but merely being on the back side of the power curve (if the plane's weight would allow a normal climb) doesn't impede climbing much. A plane at Vx is on the back side of the power curve, but it climbs just fine.

If you're way back, near stall speed, then climb performance does suffer. But it's very unlikely he got stuck near stall speed for the whole two or three minutes he was aloft. For one thing, the stall horn would be blaring. But in his final radio transmission, there's no such sound (there is an periodic beep, but its intervals sound too regular for it to be a stall warning).

More importantly, near stall speed at 100' AGL, the nose would be so high that there'd be no forward visibility. But two minutes out, the pilot managed to turn the plane around and return to the runway, crashing on short final--an implausible feat to perform blind.

I doubt a 172M absolute ceiling is 3000 feet DA even if it was a thousand pounds overweight.
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That might be true; I really don't know. That's why I'm hoping someone can point me to definitive data on the question. I'd like to know not only how much over gross a 172M (or similar) has sometimes successfully taken off at 2000-3000' DA or higher, but also how LITTLE over gross a (properly functioning) 172M has sometimes UNsuccessfully taken off at similar DA (with such poor climb performance that the plane had to abort takeoff or immediately return for landing).
 
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