Cessna Crash - Denton TX

MSmith

Line Up and Wait
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Mark Smith
There's a plane down outside Dallas. CNN video showed a Cessna upside down with the right wing tip curled down (relative to the fuselage). It was near power lines about 2 miles NW of the threshold of runway 17 for some airport (I don't know which).

Tail number - 3419V.

I don't know anything else - I just caught the helicopter video from WFAA.
 
The pilot is OK!

He clipped a power line (which I saw on the video - he was on the ground next to them). Not a very HIGH power line - he must have been REALLY low.

Dallas Morning News article
 
Yep and they are saying its a cropduster in the artilce and also on the news this afternoon .. Seriously why dont they do just a little research before they go on telling the city of Dallas what they think happend :D :D
 
I heard it was a student practicing engine outs, he got too low and snagged the power lines.
 
Darrell111 said:
Seriously why dont they do just a little research before they go on telling the city of Dallas what they think happend :D :D
But Darrell...research such as you suggest would eliminate 99% of the sensationalism that the news organizations rely on for ratings. :hairraise:

BTW, how ya been? You've been rather quiet lately.
 
wow - there's a lot of threads about this crash. Must be really big news.
 
Frank Browne said:
But Darrell...research such as you suggest would eliminate 99% of the sensationalism that the news organizations rely on for ratings. :hairraise:

BTW, how ya been? You've been rather quiet lately.

Your right,, anything to get ratings.. whatever people are thinking about whether it be terrorism, plane crashes, or a bird flu anything that comes up that even remotely relates to it will be brought up in the news.. even a littel plane crash in Denton Tx.

BTW.. how does someone really even get that low on an engine out practice.. i can tell if i can make the field i chose without going to low.

Learn from this crap people..

An Instructor and student died a couple years back doing the same thing that flew out of addison.
 
Darrell111 said:
BTW.. how does someone really even get that low on an engine out practice.. i can tell if i can make the field i chose without going to low.

Last summer or the one before that a student and instructor where practicing engine out landings and emergancy procedures around here. They got so low they clipped the corn in the field they were practicing around and bent the plane. No one was injured but the brand new C172r was a total loss. Idiots, they should never have been flying that low, it is like 6-8 feet AGL, over a corn field.
 
smigaldi said:
Last summer or the one before that a student and instructor where practicing engine out landings and emergancy procedures around here. They got so low they clipped the corn in the field they were practicing around and bent the plane. No one was injured but the brand new C172r was a total loss. Idiots, they should never have been flying that low, it is like 6-8 feet AGL, over a corn field.
Scott, am I reading you right? "clipped the corn" = totalled the plane? Or does "clipped the corn" preceed "and then pancaked it into the middle of the corn rows"?
 
gkainz said:
Scott, am I reading you right? "clipped the corn" = totalled the plane? Or does "clipped the corn" preceed "and then pancaked it into the middle of the corn rows"?
Yeah they clipped it panicked and crashed.


Found the report
http://ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20020927X05230&key=1
The airplane collided with corn and the terrain during a simulated forced landing. The CFI reported they were at 4,500 feet mean sea level when a simulated loss of engine power was initiated. He reported that the best glide speed was established and they proceeded to a field that was selected. The CFI reported that at an altitude of about 50 feet above the ground, he instructed the student to go around. He stated that the student hesitated in adding the power, and when he did hear the power increase it did not sound like full power. He continued to state, "I proceeded to say full power and tried to put my hand on the throttle but his hand was still there. I pushed his hand in and then went immediately to reduce the flaps to 20 degrees." He stated he also increased the pitch attitude of the airplane, but by that time they were 10 to 15 feet above the ground. The CFI reported that before a positive rate of climb could be established, the landing gear contacted the corn and the airplane was pulled into the field. The student pilot reported that he hesitated when he was instructed to add full power.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:
The CFI's poor inflight planning/decision to allow the airplane to get to too low of an altitude to assure a safe recovery from the simulated forced landing. Factors associated with the accident were the student pilot's delay initiating the go around and the corn crop which the airplane contacted.
 
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Darn corn always in the way.. why's do they plant it .. dont they know we have to do our engine out procedures.. ???? GOSH! :mad:
 
"I proceeded to say full power and tried to put my hand on the throttle but his hand was still there. I pushed his hand in and then went immediately to reduce the flaps to 20 degrees."

I don't know about Cessna flaps. I assume that the reason that they had more than 20 degrees of flaps is that they were flying the final segment of an engine out: field made, flaps to slow to minimum airspeed, and flare - hold it off, etc.

When you are that low, do you dump flaps before establishing a positive rate of climb in a Cessna? 30* to 20*, I bet not. 40* to 20*, I bet not. The plane would drop like a rock. 40* to 30* maybe. With the "big barn door" flaps fully extended, the climb is going to be pretty doggy...

Just another question relating to this CFI's judgement.

-Skip
 
Skip Miller said:
I don't know about Cessna flaps. I assume that the reason that they had more than 20 degrees of flaps is that they were flying the final segment of an engine out: field made, flaps to slow to minimum airspeed, and flare - hold it off, etc.

When you are that low, do you dump flaps before establishing a positive rate of climb in a Cessna? 30* to 20*, I bet not. 40* to 20*, I bet not. The plane would drop like a rock. 40* to 30* maybe. With the "big barn door" flaps fully extended, the climb is going to be pretty doggy...

Just another question relating to this CFI's judgement.

-Skip

The R model only has flaps 30 as the max setting. But still, if you do not get a positive rate prior to raising them you are going to sink once they come up to 20. Too low, poor planning, poor procedures, and poor knowledge of aerodynamics all came to play that day. They are just lucky that it wasn't worse.
 
Tunnel vision and Forced approach vs Forced landing

Darrell111 said:
BTW.. how does someone really even get that low on an engine out practice.. i can tell if i can make the field i chose without going to low.

IMHO, two main contributing factors. Both related to the classic tunnel vision mindset:
(1) You will go where you are looking. If you don't look away from the landing area, you will likely continue the approach below your base altitude and possibly won't initiate the go-around until the world outside is lifesize.
(2) Losing the ability to think beyond the maneuver while it's in progress. The mind instinctively wants to switch from "set the approach up as best as possible, when at xxx AGL check to see if the energy works out, then power up without exception no matter what the approach looks like" to "this is a forced landing and it must work, keep working the energy out until the landing is made..then(?afterthought?) go around from there." (You are NOT going for a functional solution here, you ARE going for a setup that would lead to a functional solution)
(2)(a) If it's not being done solo and an instructor (or other pilot) is onboard when this happens, the instructor/2nd pilot isn't keeping up with the real world (see 1 and 2 above) and lets the approach continue below the minimum descent altitude that he/she can force an abort from.

There's other contributing factors but those two alone can cause a world of grief.

Darrell111 said:
Learn from this crap people..

When I practice forced landings (solo or with someone), I tell myself this is a forced approach with an unconditional go around at xxx AGL, and it is not a full down forced landing.
It's also very important to be able to realize when you're starting to experience tunnel vision with a one track mindset and know how to break the pattern. I deliberately look out the side window at the wingtip during an approach for just a second. It breaks any tunnel vision and as a useful side effect, it helps recalibrate depth perception and velocity estimates as well as lets me see details that I might miss otherwise.

...my two marbles worth...
 
Darrell111 said:
BTW.. how does someone really even get that low on an engine out practice.. i can tell if i can make the field i chose without going to low.

If you go for your commercial you will do a power-off precision landing. It's impossible to practice that without going all the way to landing.
 
wsuffa said:
If you go for your commercial you will do a power-off precision landing. It's impossible to practice that without going all the way to landing.

Can't you practice that at an airport?
 
wsuffa said:
If you go for your commercial you will do a power-off precision landing. It's impossible to practice that without going all the way to landing.

Yea i have my commercial but of course we practice that with a runway :D
 
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