Cessna 310 hits a house in Riverside, CA

Wow! Curious to know what happened on that one. Condolences.
 
Three homes involved; one totally obliterated and on fire. An eyewitness said there was an injured woman who crawled out of the house, clothes on fire, who indicated there were four others in the plane. Terrible scene.
 
News reporting it was a Cessna 310. One witness described what sounds like a Vmc roll. Engine failure followed by loss of control - rolled wings perpendicular to ground. Sad.
 
Sounds more like Vmc roll in this case, but I was driving home eastbound from OC during the time of the accident, and the wx was not great at all looking out to where RAL is. Very low ceilings / vis, lots of ground-hugging ragged stratus. METAR may say otherwise, I'm just telling you what I observed with the eyeballs...

Terrible accident. Ugh.
 
4 Dead, 2 hurt - 5 persons were in the plane. This gets more terrible by minute...
 
According to the Airman database, the owner of that plane has an ATP. Not sure if he was flying it at the time or not though...
 
Now reporting 3 dead and 2 survivors. Amazingly no injuries on the ground.
 
The reports on how many fatalities and whether or not they were occupants in the house seem to be changing a lot. The occupants were a husband and wife returning home from a cheerleading competition in Anaheim. There were 3 teen girls in the plane as well, at least one of them was their daughter. We do know that one of the survivors was ejected from the plane on impact and only had minor injuries. That alone is amazing.

A home's security camera also captured the final moments.

 
mscard88 said:
Yeah, weird, almost like it was on approach, just "floating" straight down. Horrible.
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Very weird...almost looks like a recovery in progress and ran out of room? When the plane first enters the frame the rate of descent appears very high, then it's almost as if he's pulling out of it.
 
3 in the green said:
Very weird...almost looks like a recovery in progress and ran out of room? When the plane first enters the frame the rate of descent appears very high, then it's almost as if he's pulling out of it.
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Wonder if the plane was stalled and like you said, not enough altitude to recover. Or pilot saw the ground coming up and kept it in a stall.
 
Yeah, in either case, definitely not spun in, which probably contributed to the fact that there were survivors (hearing now 3 fatal, 2 survivors, no one was home at the time of the crash), which is still remarkable to me. I hope their statements shed some light on what happened.
 
Wow, looks like it fell tail low straight down. Maybe the W&B didn't let him recover from the stall? Are two adults and three teenage girls (and bags/gear I presume) likely to cause an issue like this in a 310? Like maybe the CG was too far aft?
 
I was thinking maybe CG earlier too. I've flown various models of C310s and it's easy to get into aft CG situations with earlier models of 310s, especially on take off. The R model is the best with the bigger nose baggage compartment and not as much of a problem. Forget the weight capacity but you can stick a lot in the nose. All the earlier versions don't have this advantage of the R.
 
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So sad. This plane was based at my airport, KSJC. It's a Class C, so not conducive to the usual airport camraderie due to the security etc. However, I've had a couple of conversations with Nouri, the last one was a couple of days ago when he saw my Bellanca Super Viking outside the hangar and stopped to chat. He said he had quite a bit of time in a Viking. Seemed like a really nice guy, and I enjoyed talking with him.

The FAA was at his hangar today, not sure what they were looking for. Deepest sympathies to his survivors. Extra tough when it's someone you know.


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D&D Airport Café co-owner Delmy Pennington said she didn’t know what attracted her attention to the green Cessna 310. But she noticed that when the pilot was unable to start the plane initially, the plane taxied to the terminal and all five people got off.

The second time the engine failed to start, the family came into the café to eat.

But when the weather improved - it had been raining on and off all day Monday - one of the adult women rushed the family out the door.

“The woman said, ‘Sorry, we’ve got to go,’" Pennington said.

Pennington had just delivered the silverware when the family left.

“I had some sort of feeling, I don’t know,” Pennington said. “My heart was telling me something.”

She watched as the plane slowly taxied for takeoff. As it did, the plane rocked back and forth, front to back. Pennington said she doesn’t know much about airplanes, but “I’ve been here 25 years and I’ve never seen an airplane go like this,” she said, motioning with her hand.
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3 in the green said:
Wow, Jim, sorry to hear. That's tough.
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Went to the airport today to work on my hangar, and there was a TV van outside the GA access gate. The reporter said that they were trying to find out if the crashed plane was based at San Jose. I said "I don't know" and drove into the secure area leaving the TV van behind. I trust the media only to get things wrong, so I thought it best to just leave them in the dark.


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"She watched as the plane slowly taxied for takeoff. As it did, the plane rocked back and forth, front to back. Pennington said she doesn’t know much about airplanes, but “I’ve been here 25 years and I’ve never seen an airplane go like this,” she said, motioning with her hand."

Wow, I know it's a witness account and that they don't always get it right, but that suggests an extreme rearward cg.

I know my plane will do a static tail strike if both passenger and pilot try to board at once, standing on the steps simultaneously.
 
Eeek. Yeah take it for what it is as an eye witness account but it sure makes you wonder.
 
arkvet said:
Eeek. Yeah take it for what it is as an eye witness account but it sure makes you wonder.
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Since she is the owner of the airport cafe, you have to think she has seen enough aircraft taxiing to make a judgement about something out of the ordinary.

What a terrible thing.
 
3393RP said:
Since she is the owner of the airport cafe, you have to think she has seen enough aircraft taxiing to make a judgement about something out of the ordinary.

What a terrible thing.
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She said the tail was striking the ground. That is pretty damning. Well, we will see once they analyze the W&B I suspect we will find out it was way aft of the allowed range and probably over gross too.
 
Ugh. One of the three deadly sins.

Running out of gas
Flying into bad weather
Taking off over gross and/or ignoring DA.

RIP
 
Bill Jennings said:
Ugh. One of the three deadly sins.

Running out of gas
Flying into bad weather
Taking off over gross and/or ignoring DA.

RIP
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I like this...never heard someone put it like that...does seem like the biggest killers in GA that's for sure
 
a lot of wild assumptions on this thread without a shred of analysis being released.
 
Tx_Flyboy said:
a lot of wild assumptions on this thread without a shred of analysis being released.
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I understand you must consider the source but if you believe the report regarding tail strike on taxi out then I think there is no harm in speculating the cause of this accident.

Worst case scenario the eyewitness lied and POA still got to have a decent discussion on the importance of W&B. We aren't going to persuade the NTSB or FAA in their formal investigation.

What formal "analysis" should we look for before starting a discussion?
 
arkvet said:
I understand you must consider the source but if you believe the report regarding tail strike on taxi out then I think there is no harm in speculating the cause of this accident.

Worst case scenario the eyewitness lied and POA still got to have a decent discussion on the importance of W&B. We aren't going to persuade the NTSB or FAA in their formal investigation.

What formal "analysis" should we look for before starting a discussion?
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Worst case scenario is the POA "pundits" totally miss the real issue chasing BS. If you want to learn about accidents, use an old one where all the facts are known. Pilots very, very seldom invent new ways to crash.

My airplanes "rock back and forth" during taxi all the time due to all the damn potholes, even with a relatively forward CG.

This is not about learning. It never has been. It's about excluding self. Such as "That guy is an idiot and he crashed. I'm not an idiot so I won't."
 
Still waiting for the low time experts here to tie the accident to the phase of the moon. At least that would have a piece of actual, factual data instead of the drivel that is being posted so far. The actual investigators really get a laugh out of junk like this.
 
MAKG1 said:
My airplanes "rock back and forth" during taxi all the time due to all the damn potholes, even with a relatively forward CG.
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Which is exactly why I didn't mention the "rock back and forth" in my post. What I did say (in the post you quoted) was "if you believe the report regarding tail strike..." Now I admit I'm a relatively new aviator but to my knowledge the only planes where this would be normal would be the ones that have a small wheel under the tail.

But yeah lets assume the eyewitness is lying and the tail strike during taxi didn't occur... We all still get some discussion on the fact often pilots disregard or downplay the "B" in "W&B". If the plane was indeed striking it's tail on taxi then is there any way in hell it was within CG limitations? Whether it's relevant to the crash we will potentially find out with the NTSB report.

And I completely disagree with your last sentence. I know the personality traits of the average pilot. They're usually successful people with a "never lose" attitude. I admit, I often fall into that category. I was told many times to have a back up plan when I wanted to go to veterinary school because it was so hard to get in. I never had a back up plan. I was also told my life would be miserable starting my clinic from scratch by building out an old nasty building. Life's never been better. I know I'm prone to mistakes as much as anyone. I see "smart" people make "dumb" mistakes. That doesn't make them an idiot. I'm not immune to mistakes either.
 
If it turns out to be the CG thing I wonder what was different from the flight down. I always thought the 310 was a four seat airplane.
 
The news story I saw said that the amount of jet fuel the 310 carries caused the intense fire that consumed the houses.

Zero jet fuel causes intense fires?
 
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