Interesting Video on SR22 Crash

So once in that insipiant LEFT spin what would have been the best way to "unload' the wing?
 
60 degree bank at 300'? No real good reason for that as far as I can think of.
 
Unless the airplane is out of fuel or on fire one can go around and set it up again.
 
60 degree bank, in the pattern, wayyy below pattern altitude, CFI on board, during a flight review...
-harry
 
Way out of control from the start...
Any bets the CFI suggested a landing on Rwy 19 and then let the pilot do some yanking and banking to "save the approach" instead of breaking out of the traffic pattern and starting over?
 
A good friend of mine who is a glider and power pilot, was at that airport on the day of the accident, and was close friends with the pilot told me this: The CFI had been asked repeatedly over the course of weeks to do the flight review and had apparently expressed reservations about doing it. He was an experienced instructor but didn't have a lot of experience with the Cirrus. He was known for practicing emergency approaches in other aircraft during instruction and flight reviews and was respected for expecting people to be able to handle such emergencies.
 
As an instructor, if I was conducting a bfr and the pilot was approaching the pattern way too low I'd likely do something to get their attention like announce a simulated traffic conflict or runway closure, fail an instrument or system, or pull the power. The intent being to see if they will notice the initial error and re-think the approach.
 
This reminds me of the turnback debate a few weeks ago where I was castigated for suggesting that maneuvering flight with aggressive banks near the ground was a bad idea.

Once again, a perfectly functional plane with a functioning engine and two pilots made a smoking hole while maneuvering in the vicinity of the airport.
 
This reminds me of the turnback debate a few weeks ago where I was castigated for suggesting that maneuvering flight with aggressive banks near the ground was a bad idea.
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This pilot was said to have been making a 60 degree bank, which exceeds the 45 degree bank of the turnback. He began his first turn lower than a turnback should be commenced, and began his second turn at an altitude comparable to where a turnback would be rolling wings-level.
-harry
 
"... the more things change, the more they stay the same..." a very fitting observation in this case.

That "stall-resistant wing" is nothing new... they used to call that change of incidence angle "washout", and it didn't involve a discontinuity in the leading edge of the wing. I'm not even sure why this was mentioned. :dunno:Lots of designs, old and new, have this sort of stall resistance built in. And they've all been spun into the ground in the pattern at one time or another.

It's not magically going to protect you from a stall/spin situation when you are horsing a plane around in this manner... if it really happen as indicated in the video, all I can say is "why?" Why the TPA more appropriate for an ultralight? Why the sudden zigzag to make 19? Why top rudder as things unraveled, instead of down elevator? I can only wonder what the CFI was thinking, saying, and doing as this progressed... it's the kind of thing CFIs must have nightmares about.

This was a classic screwup, and no matter how many safety gimmicks get added to airplanes, it will happen again, sadly. :frown2:
 
The stock no rudder pedals Ercoupe was certified stall/spin proof and I believe lived up to that status. Of course they would still mush out of the sky and crash and modified ones would spin. Just saying...
 
wby0nder said:
The stock no rudder pedals Ercoupe was certified stall/spin proof and I believe lived up to that status. Of course they would still mush out of the sky and crash and modified ones would spin. Just saying...
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Right you are, including about the "mush out of the sky" part.
Put an Ercoupe in the same place (extreme A of A, extremely low airspeed, 60 degrees of bank, very close to the ground), and it's still a recipe for disaster.
My point is not that there's no use in enhancing safety through design (split leading edges, stall/spin-proof control setups, BRS, etc. are terrific ideas that work very well most of the time); it's that the pilot's decisions ultimately make most of the difference. Every known safeguard, and probably all conceivable safeguards, can be overwhelmed by bad decision-making. There's no way you can convince me that this "approach" was the result of sound decision-making.
Even in a very small, slow, draggy airplane it would be a bad idea. Even in a dire emergency (on fire, with snakes), having decided to forgo finishing the downwind leg for 01 and just put it on 19, it would have made more sense to just go for the midfield point of the runway, or even alongside the runway, instead of trying to make a "Z turn" from near the end of the runway back to some sort of base, from an altitude where one would normally be on final!


An afterthought: played the vid again, and realized I'd missed that the reason they mention the split wing at the beginning was to make the same point that I did ("if you use abusive control imputs, the split leading edge won't protect you")... :rolleyes:
Fortunately, I'm more attentive when flying an approach. :D
 
On the brightside, it is really cool to see how well the Avidyne captured the flight information (and survived the crash). This data will be useful for GA in a lot of manners... if nothing else, hopefully it can be used to help against lawsuits... ie no shape way or form did Cirrus contribute to this crash.
 
The Cirrus is a fine airplane, fast, efficient, comfortable...
The type of person the Cirrus seems to attract frequently is not fine - the person who can throw down that kind of money is not a type B personality - they tend to be low flying time, impatient, demanding, cocky, just sure that their brains and their self made money will get them out of anything...
The real bad guy here is the CFI allowing the aircraft to get to 300 agl in other than a STABILIZED final landing configuration and position... He paid the ultimate price for his bad judgment..

denny-o [really old pilot who is not bold]
 
The gist of what I was told was that in any other airplane the CFI would have been absolutely fine letting this pilot get that far behind the approach. His unfamiliarity with the cirrus combined with some pressure to fly the mission may have led to the accident. No excuse but perhaps an explanation of how decent intelligent humans ended up dead. My friend Jim was one of the first at the scene and his good pal was in the burning wreckage.



Dr. O said:
The Cirrus is a fine airplane, fast, efficient, comfortable...
The type of person the Cirrus seems to attract frequently is not fine - the person who can throw down that kind of money is not a type B personality - they tend to be low flying time, impatient, demanding, cocky, just sure that their brains and their self made money will get them out of anything...
The real bad guy here is the CFI allowing the aircraft to get to 300 agl in other than a STABILIZED final landing configuration and position... He paid the ultimate price for his bad judgment..

denny-o [really old pilot who is not bold]
Click to expand...
 
I own a SR22. The comments about personality types that own these birds might be overgeneralized, but to some degree accurate. I hope the video provides a reminder that , if seems like a risky thing to do in any way, skip it and try again.
 
wby0nder said:
The gist of what I was told was that in any other airplane the CFI would have been absolutely fine letting this pilot get that far behind the approach.
Click to expand...

I don't get this... I don't think the outcome would have been different in another airplane, being that low and in that bank angle.

If the CFI was "comfortable" being in that situation in other airplanes... I don't get it. Getting whacked by the ground stings - my personal rule is that if I'm not under control with wings level or very close to level below 300 feet I've really screwed the pooch.
 
To clarify, I didn't mean "that far behind the approach" to mean to the point of departure of controlled flight. Somewhere between approaching the airport and descending through 500 ft the CFI got behind the airplane and student. Perhaps his typical instructional tactics were unsuited for his level of familiarity with the airplane. The cockpit displays, the feel of the AOA, ergonomics, the sound, the rate at which things change, are all somewhat unique and may have been unfamiliar. Add to that the typical delay that results from observing, second guessing, and allowing seconds for a student to notice and react in an instructional setting. Together, a situation could easily develop in which many small increments of time combine to place recovery just out of reach of the moment of perception.

And, there could have easily been a struggle over control of the aircraft in the final seconds.

I'm not suggesting the CFI was faultless. This accident may have started days prior to the crash when the CFI succumbed to pressure to provide a BFR, not when they were at 300 ft and still maneuvering.

Attempting to understand how perfectly intelligent people get killed is far more useful then simply dismissing them as somehow defective or worse.
 
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