DA62 makes emergency landing on Dallas street

[3393RP]

This happened a couple of days ago. Fuel exhaustion seems likely, but the flight was only 250 miles. However, sometimes errors in estimates of partial fuel on board before takeoff or mismanagement of fuel totalizers occurs.

Regardless, a successful outcome is good.

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2022/10/diamond-da62-n84lt-incident-occurred.html?m=1

 

[frfly172]

No matter the cause it’s always good when there are no injuries,and the plane can be repaired.

 

[benyflyguy]

Airplanes on tarmacs always look small. When they find their way to residential roads I’m always surprised how big they look!

 

[Tantalum]

The DA62 has a good ramp presence. Noticeably larger than the 42 and with a big wingspan

I can't imagine there have been too many accidents or forced landings with the 62..

 

[PaulS]

Wtf? Fuel up the airplane.


Edit:

Damn, that was comment was way wrong. In light of the prelim, good job pilot, sorry for doubting you.

 

[Daleandee]

This happened a couple of days ago. Fuel exhaustion seems likely, but the flight was only 250 miles. However, sometimes errors in estimates of partial fuel on board before takeoff or mismanagement of fuel totalizers occurs.

Seems to me that both engines quitting would point to fuel exhaustion or mismanagement. Great to see it down and basically unharmed. Damage is going to be to the pilot and his wallet and it may be more than money that gets pried out of it ...

 

[Tantalum]

What is peculiar is that the propellers do not seem to be feathered..

 

[Dave Anderson]

Seems to me that both engines quitting would point to fuel exhaustion or mismanagement. Great to see it down and basically unharmed. Damage is going to be to the pilot and his wallet and it may be more than money that gets pried out of it ...

I'm seriously curious, I can get the fuel slightly off in my plane due to inaccuracies of dipping the tank, but my electronic gauges will still read yellow/red when I'm close to being out (<6 gallons) these modern cockpits have fairly accurate fuel gauges despite the fuel totalizer I'm not saying I will never run out of fuel, I realize these things happen but with two engines and modern avionics, it seems so less likely.

 

[Daleandee]

I'm seriously curious, I can get the fuel slightly off in my plane due to inaccuracies of dipping the tank, but my electronic gauges will still read yellow/red when I'm close to being out (<6 gallons) these modern cockpits have fairly accurate fuel gauges despite the fuel totalizer I'm not saying I will never run out of fuel, I realize these things happen but with two engines and modern avionics, it seems so less likely.

I agree ... but he put it down two miles from the destination. I'm under the impression that the plane would fly single engine pretty well. Both engines being out seems to indicate that there was too much air in the tanks. Seems that we, as pilots, can find a way to outsmart the best of instrumentation and fuel requirements. Here's a great example:

 

[asicer]

What is peculiar is that the propellers do not seem to be feathered..

Isn't the DA62 dual FADEC?

 

[3393RP]

Airplanes on tarmacs always look small. When they find their way to residential roads I’m always surprised how big they look!

I haven't seen one in person, and viewing the aircraft's size in the photo really surprised me. I didn't know they were that large.

 

[3393RP]

I agree ... but he put it down two miles from the destination. I'm under the impression that the plane would fly single engine pretty well. Both engines being out seems to indicate that there was too much air in the tanks. Seems that we, as pilots, can find a way to outsmart the best of instrumentation and fuel requirements. Here's a great example:

I remember that one. It was an ugly event with a large loss of life. I think the pilot convinced himself he had enough fuel, because the NTSB established it was above MTOW with the five passengers and what fuel was on board.

 

[Daleandee]

I remember that one. It was an ugly event with a large loss of life. I think the pilot convinced himself he had enough fuel, because the NTSB established it was above MTOW with the five passengers and what fuel was on board.

Correct. The other thing was his fuel estimates using his own hand written logs and fuel totalizers were incorrect as the information for both were input by the pilot. He also didn't get the approach he was expecting and that added more time in route. Other mistakes were also made. It's good video and less than 10 minutes.

 

[Tantalum]

Isn't the DA62 dual FADEC?

Indeed, and at least in Paul B's video the shutdown is mostly automatic..

 

[Spring Ford]

"struck a power line and a road sign"

 

[gearFX]

How are the planes that are obviously not total losses "recovered" (removed from the road and relocated to a nearby hangar, repair shop, etc.) in situations like these? Are they partially disassembled and transported on trucks? Air crane (helicopter)? Is the choice up to the pilot/owner or the insurance company or bank or local authorities?

 

[Kenny Phillips]

Isn't the DA62 dual FADEC?

Yes. But I don't know if the props will feather with engine in run position, but no fuel. You may have to hit the stop button for that.

 

[Kenny Phillips]

How are the planes that are obviously not total losses "recovered" (removed from the road and relocated to a nearby hangar, repair shop, etc.) in situations like these? Are they partially disassembled and transported on trucks? Air crane (helicopter)? Is the choice up to the pilot/owner or the insurance company or bank or local authorities?

I've seen it different ways. Gonna guess they'll de-wing the DA62 and truck it.

 

[iamtheari]

Correct. The other thing was his fuel estimates using his own hand written logs and fuel totalizers were incorrect as the information for both were input by the pilot. He also didn't get the approach he was expecting and that added more time in route. Other mistakes were also made. It's good video and less than 10 minutes.

As usual, the video about the crash is shorter than the time required to avoid the crash.

Isn't the DA62 dual FADEC?

This was my thought as a possible failure, although fuel starvation is orders of magnitude more likely. Electrical gremlins telling both engines to stop making flying power could bring this plane down.

Another thought: Was this a diesel DA62 that got topped up with Avgas instead of Jet A? It also seems unlikely, since it flew most of the way to the destination, but how do those diesel engines react when they get blended Avgas/Jet fuel? Fly okay for an hour and then melt down, or blow up immediately when you start them?

 

[Tantalum]

FADEC

This was my thought as a possible failure, although fuel starvation is orders of magnitude more likely. Electrical gremlins telling both engines to stop making flying power could bring this plane down.

I highly doubt it was FADEC related. Each engine has two separate A&B controls.. for all four to fail at once is statistically nearly impossible.. unless there was some other condition that triggered the same failure mode tree in all four. Some kind of if>then hell that competent engineers failed to realize and only manifest itself years later

The lack of apparent feather is very peculiar to me though. Feathering these things is a push of a button, if the FADEC doesn't already detect it and feather it for you. Wonder if they were making some power, which lends credence to the fuel contamination question

I'd be looking at fuel contamination.. a plane like this with accurate gauges, fuel on destination mapping, and all sorts of other tech you'd have to actively try to run out of gas, especially with four tanks (main and aux in each wing). So maybe someone topped up some of the tanks with avgas? The distance they were flying was only about 250 miles or so.. maybe less. You wouldn't need too much gas for that, the possibility exists that someone added some gas to some of the tanks which then took some time to manifest as a failure

Gas is much different than diesel, but the most immediate is a lower flashpoint, IE, it will ignite faster. You'd likely have severe knock and very rough running.. eventually the sensors and injectors get damaged and you'd have total destructive failure. I imagine the FADEC would attempt as best to counter that by timing the injection, etc., differently initially. Perhaps they had some power and landed with surging engines? Hence the no feather



RE: size
The DA-62 is huge. Much bigger than your typical GA twin, and much bigger than it's smaller brother the -42. It's closer to a twin bonanza or even approaching King Air 90 size, at least as far as wingspan and overall length is concerned. It's slender body belies it's large dimensions (tangentially related, making it a further issue for folks to find hangar space). The lack of rivets or other typical items make it hard to judge scale when viewing photos of it flying or from a distance

 

[iamtheari]

I highly doubt it was FADEC related. Each engine has two separate A&B controls.. for all four to fail at once is statistically nearly impossible.. unless there was some other condition that triggered the same failure mode tree in all four. Some kind of if>then hell that competent engineers failed to realize and only manifest itself years later

I’m thinking more of an electrical system problem, something that fried the chips in all the FADEC systems. Any post-Therac-25 computer system anywhere near an airplane should be designed for better fault tolerance than that, though, so I put this at the bottom of the list of plausible causes.

Do you know much about the aux tank usage in the DA62? Is it like a 310 where you take off and land on the mains and maybe use aux fuel en route? Maybe they had gasoline in the aux tanks and it bit them when changing tanks?

Regardless, fuel starvation is the Occam’s Razor answer. I could have run out of fuel on my 12-mile Cub flight yesterday if I had given in to time pressure instead of stopping at the gas pump. A misplaced dose of optimism can defeat any on-board systems that were designed to keep you from running out of fuel.

 

[Tantalum]

Maybe they had gasoline in the aux tanks and it bit them when changing tanks?

That's what I was guessing though I'm not entirely sure on the nuanced operation.. tbh

 

[MauleSkinner]

Over on BeechTalk, there’s discussion of a loss of electrical, and the possibility of flying more than he 30 minutes allowed by the FADEC backup batteries.

 

[Tantalum]

open the pod bay doors

 

[iamtheari]

open the pod bay doors

Dave's not here, man.

Over on BeechTalk, there’s discussion of a loss of electrical, and the possibility of flying more than he 30 minutes allowed by the FADEC backup batteries.

I hadn't thought of the backup batteries. 30 minutes is a pretty short duration but should be enough to handle most emergencies. Are the FADEC backup batteries separate per engine or some other setup?

 

[MauleSkinner]

I hadn't thought of the backup batteries. 30 minutes is a pretty short duration but should be enough to handle most emergencies. Are the FADEC backup batteries separate per engine or some other setup?

Sounds like there’s one for each engine.

30 minutes is pretty standard for emergency power systems…I think that’s a certification minimum.

the FAA came out with a SAFO a few years back about flying past battery capacity…not a direct application, but same general idea.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/f...irline_operators/airline_safety/SAFO09001.pdf

 

[Tantalum]

The whole point of a twin is redundancy.. and diesel is reliability. No fail safe operations without a FADEC seems like a screaming issue. 30 minutes doesn't leave you a lot of options if you're at night, over the water, over the mountains, or other inhospitable terrain to put it down in..

 

[PaulS]

Over on BeechTalk, there’s discussion of a loss of electrical, and the possibility of flying more than he 30 minutes allowed by the FADEC backup batteries.

I'm not sure which is dumber, running it out of gas, or continuing on with a fault like that.

 

[Tantalum]

..running out of gas while you're extending the 30 minute FADEC battery range

 

[MauleSkinner]

I'm not sure which is dumber, running it out of gas, or continuing on with a fault like that.

Probably running out of gas, because if you read the SAFO, you’d see professional airline crews running the battery dead with no generators, and since that’s what the pros do…

 

[Kenny Phillips]

The whole point of a twin is redundancy.. and diesel is reliability. No fail safe operations without a FADEC seems like a screaming issue. 30 minutes doesn't leave you a lot of options if you're at night, over the water, over the mountains, or other inhospitable terrain to put it down in..

Shockingly, there are a million items that meet the "no fail-safe operation" criteria. There are two engine controllers, only one is needed (or even used.) But just as with reserve fuel, when you hit the 30 minute reserve FADEC time, the failure point is the pilot.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Shockingly, there are a million items that meet the "no fail-safe operation" criteria. There are two engine controllers, only one is needed (or even used.) But just as with reserve fuel, when you hit the 30 minute reserve FADEC time, the failure point is the pilot.

The least reliable part of any airplane is the nut that connects the yoke and the seat.

 

[iamtheari]

Probably running out of gas, because if you read the SAFO, you’d see professional airline crews running the battery dead with no generators, and since that’s what the pros do…

Also, you should plan ahead to run out of gas. That is, you start the flight knowing how long you can fly before you start eating into your 30-plus-minute reserve. The time at which you start burning the 30-minute FADEC battery reserve is unpredictable. Therefore, messing that up requires the pilot to make fewer mistakes than running out of fuel.

 

[DavidWhite]

One of the Kathryns commenters (who by their comment I assume is either the pilot or someone very familiar with them) said that the plane departed SNK with full tanks.

This will be an interesting one if thats accurate.

 

[geezer]

Especially if the line boy "filled" the tanks, and the pilot did not check.

 

[DavidWhite]

Especially if the line boy "filled" the tanks, and the pilot did not check.

On an airplane with a 1500 mile range even if the line guy missed the fueling mark by a large margin it wouldn’t matter.

On a $1.2+ million dollar airplane one would hope that the fuel gauges work and you don’t need to visually verify the fuel quantity with ones eyeballs or a stick.

 

[geezer]

Sniff for gasoline?

I have done the paper test for Jet A when I was not present during fueling.

 

[DavidWhite]

Sniff for gasoline?

I have done the paper test for Jet A when I was not present during fueling.

If fueled with 100LL I wouldn’t figure they’d have made it much past the opposite end of the departure runway.

 

[Lindberg]

Especially if the line boy "filled" the tanks, and the pilot did not check.

The anonymous Kathryn's commenter claims the tanks were filled with Jet A in the owner's presence.

 

[Albany Tom]

Completely random question - do diesel aviation engines have the same risk of water in the fuel that gas engines do? I'd think yes, but I don't know what systems jet fuel delivery systems have to prevent water problems, or if jet engines are as intolerant of water as IC engines are.