Plane Crash in CT - intentional?

Speculating based on the witness reports "the plane went silent" and "it tipped over and fell out of the sky", I wonder whether the student simply turned off mags on both engines. If I was the MEI in the right seat, I think I would have died of a heart attack. :eek2:
 
Mason said:
I have an engineer friend who works in a nuclear power plant. A long time ago, he and I decided that based upon our knowledge of how the media handles our individual areas of expertise, we couldn't trust their accuracy about ANYTHING.
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If someone is writing a book, they might get it right.

If they are writing a newspaper story they won't get it right.

If they have a TV camera on their shoulder, run in the opposite direction.
 
Mason said:
I have an engineer friend who works in a nuclear power plant. A long time ago, he and I decided that based upon our knowledge of how the media handles our individual areas of expertise, we couldn't trust their accuracy about ANYTHING.
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Agreed.

I have never, not once, read a newspaper story about a matter where I had personal knowledge and seen the reporter get it right. Local, national, whatever - always wrong. Sports, politics, crime, disasters, whatever - always wrong.
 
Pilot: "The wind caught us a little harder than expected and we made a hard landing."

Media: "The small "home-made" aircraft, which looks to be a Cessna, encountered violent weather and was forced to make an emergency landing after the engine exploded just before it landed, we have yet to confirm if it was indeed an act of terror, count on us to bring you the most reliable and up to date information."

That's their job isn't it? Exploiting any news worthy material. They can't broadcast anything untrue. ;)
 
RyanShort1 said:
The description of the crash sounds a lot like a VMC rollover.
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Are your suggesting they were doing a VMC demo that close to the airport and over a congested area or are you attributing it to a possible single engine practice landing and the student got too slow or possibly the student secured the wrong engine on an engine out procedure?
 
Ryanb said:
Pilot: "The wind caught us a little harder than expected and we made a hard landing."

Media: "The small "home-made" aircraft, which looks to be a Cessna, encountered violent weather and was forced to make an emergency landing after the engine exploded just before it landed, we have yet to confirm if it was indeed an act of terror, count on us to bring you the most reliable and up to date information."

That's their job isn't it? Exploiting any news worthy material. They can't broadcast anything untrue. ;)
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I once mocked the media in the description of one of my videos. posting the link via Tapatalk so not sure if it'll embed...read the description.

 
SkyDog58 said:
Are your suggesting they were doing a VMC demo that close to the airport and over a congested area or are you attributing it to a possible single engine practice landing and the student got too slow or possibly the student secured the wrong engine on an engine out procedure?
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The latter. Or that they were single engine and something happened in the cockpit.
 
Local news is now reporting that officials are saying it was not an attempted act of terror, but an attempt of suicide. The student and CFI struggled over controls and the student won.
 
Cajun_Flyer said:
Local news is now reporting that officials are saying it was not an attempted act of terror, but an attempt of suicide. The student and CFI struggled over controls and the student won.
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Wow. If that's true, it's a CFI's worst nightmare. It'd be a contest of who could overpower whom on the controls...and the student would have the element of surprise.
 
GRG55 said:
Two, count 'em, TWO ailerons. Two flaps; two wings (horrors!). Two of those horizontal thingies sticking out either side of the tail. And two pilots sitting in two seats with two yokes to handle all those extra controls.
Yeesh...:sigh:
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I thought all moveable surfaces were flaps? Of course, I'm still stuck on this "twin, so it had two sets of controls" thing...does that mean the inverse is true? That would be great, it would mean all the stuff on the right side of my 182 is for looks, and I could gain some useful load by removing it...

In a serious note, my earlier post wasn't trying to throw a CFI under the bus, it was merely pointing out a possibility. Cajun, sadly there are plenty of people that heartless and lacking my in integrity. I deal with them almost daily at work.
 
I am sorry for the family's loss and for the CFI's injuries. A struggle in the cockpit is a lot like airspeed and approaching terrain. What must be done is often counter-intuitive. It is almost always a losing battle to struggle over control. You incapacitate the offending party. It is easier when they are hyperfocussed trying to control the aircraft.

Then again, talk is cheap. I've never been there.
 
Omalley1537 said:
I thought all moveable surfaces were flaps? Of course, I'm still stuck on this "twin, so it had two sets of controls" thing...does that mean the inverse is true? That would be great, it would mean all the stuff on the right side of my 182 is for looks, and I could gain some useful load by removing it...

.;.
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Apparently there's others that have had the same thought...:D


110709_Geneseo2011_InterstateCadet-1.JPG
 
SoCal RV Flyer said:
Wow. If that's true, it's a CFI's worst nightmare. It'd be a contest of who could overpower whom on the controls...and the student would have the element of surprise.
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There's still some oddities here.

Guy wasn't a student. He has single rating. He could have taken a single up and killed himself any time he wanted.*

Seems to me like if you wait until you're up with an instructor in the multi to do this, it might be personal. Maybe he couldn't handle some sort of struggle to meet standards that this instructor demanded. We are talking about students who sometimes are members of powerful families from places where that is a golden ticket to "success".

(Two friends who've worked for airline style operations in Jordan were just floored with the amount of nepotism involved and ingrained into the culture. Relatives of particular families had jobs way above their ability and it had a negative impact on safety.)

*There is also the possibility that he was studying under a system that didn't allow for just renting or taking an aircraft up on a whim, and/or didn't have access to money and it was being doled out in some way for the training so he had to do it in the twin. Don't know anything about the school or the program.

Still, something doesn't sit right with this story. And if the CFI is somehow involved in driving him to suicidal behavior, and is the only survivor...

Just seems odd that all the individual photos of both of them are all happy-happy around airplanes and then suddenly there's a life or death struggle in a twin. Smell test says there's more to this story.
 
Everskyward said:
Not even close to the first time.
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Speaking of that. My Ground School Instructor told us about a guy that was looking to get proficient again, then when they were at altitude, the CFI looks over and the guy was gone.

Jumped because he had some nefarious financial dealings.

Does anyone know about this?
 
Well the city will be happy. They have been wanting to shut this airport down for a while. They will use this as the final excuse.
 
SoCal RV Flyer said:
Wow. If that's true, it's a CFI's worst nightmare. It'd be a contest of who could overpower whom on the controls...and the student would have the element of surprise.
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Quite frankly that's one of the reasons I carry any time I'm flying with a student or someone I don't know well. I know it won't make a lick of difference at low altitude but I'd rather have the option to incapacitate someone who might have the strength to overpower me, if there's a little bit of time available.

An LCP in a pocket or ankle holster is surprisingly accessible quickly while seated and buckled in.
 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ng-one-person-injuring-three-intentional.html

"But an official close to the investigation, told CNN that Freitekh had been frustrated with his family and felt as though he was being forced to become a pilot."

I was watching one of the talking heads on TV this afternoon and they reported the same thing. I've been to that region of the world and absolutely believe the pressure parents put on their kids over there. Most have zero choice in what they want to do for a living...really sad.

Brian
 
denverpilot said:
Guy wasn't a student. He has single rating. He could have taken a single up and killed himself any time he wanted.
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Good point.

I checked the airman database, and sure enough, he had a private pilot ASEL certificate, issued May 2015.

He had a medical certificate: Second Class, issued November 2012. I suppose if he was using that under third-class privileges, it had another year of validity remaining.

So yes, it seems he could have just taken a single plane up solo, and crashed that. And so, this looks like a purposeful suicide-murder attempt, not just a suicide.

True suicide-murder events are rather rare, according to this article about the German Wings incident. It says that murder-suicide, when it happens, is usually committed by a young man, and that typical factors include disillusionment, alienation, and attraction towards notorious glamor from headline news stories.
 
flight2000 said:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ng-one-person-injuring-three-intentional.html

"But an official close to the investigation, told CNN that Freitekh had been frustrated with his family and felt as though he was being forced to become a pilot."

I was watching one of the talking heads on TV this afternoon and they reported the same thing. I've been to that region of the world and absolutely believe the pressure parents put on their kids over there. Most have zero choice in what they want to do for a living...really sad.

Brian
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Called it. Cultural crap.
 
Jeffythequick said:
Speaking of that. My Ground School Instructor told us about a guy that was looking to get proficient again, then when they were at altitude, the CFI looks over and the guy was gone.

Jumped because he had some nefarious financial dealings.

Does anyone know about this?
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I think it happened in Texas. If I am thinking of the one you are thinking of, it was a student that his day job was something with real estate. He was about to be indicted on some charges on real estate fraud. He talked his instructor into taking a flight with the purpose of photographing some land. The instructor set up a turn, looked the other way, looked back and the student was gone, along with a laptop.
 
denverpilot said:
Called it. Cultural crap.
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Hold your horses..

It's frickin' CNN, also known as the "Clinton News Network"

And with Hillary getting slammed with even more leaked emails, I wouldn't put it past them to try to play the good old distraction "hey look over here folks!" game and blow some other story out of proportion.


As others said, this whole offing himself story just doesn't smell right, I'll be waiting a while before I make my mind up about this one.
 
GRG55 said:
Apparently there's others that have had the same thought...:D


110709_Geneseo2011_InterstateCadet-1.JPG
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If you ever get a chance to see or meet Kent Pietsch who flies that 1942 Jelly Belly Interstate Cadet, do it. He does things with that plane at a very low level that will leave your jaw vertically challenged and even lands and takes off from the back of a pickup. At our last airshow, one of our new inexperienced watch supervisors rang out the crash phone because he didn't know that the aileron falling off was part of the act.
 
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Being a twin it does have two sets of engine controls which does set it aside from single engine aircraft. Or did someone specifically mention flight controls? I did not read or hear the actual quote or its context.
 
Don't want to speculate at all but I'll just say this- the media in The United States really has fallen to an all time low recently. Facts are irrelevant and speculation is key. If the author can pass that soeculation as fact then it's even better! I'm totally ashamed of the media coverage of anything these days!
 
I listen to a lot of BBC. They do a far better job of covering our news than any domestic news outlets do. And it's always fun to see what others think of us...which isn't much these days.

We must remember that our media, just like our government, are simply society looking at itself in a mirror. It's not a matter of how eff'ed up they are. It's how eff'ed up we are. "Everyone else" is not the problem..."we" are the problem...look in the mirror.
 
James331 said:
And with Hillary getting slammed with even more leaked emails,
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:rolleyes: "OMG the emails, the emails!" :Do_O What does Hillary's emails have to do with this incident anyway?

James331 said:
As others said, this whole offing himself story just doesn't smell right, I'll be waiting a while before I make my mind up about this one.
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We will be waiting with bated breath for your expert analysis of this incident. :)
 
timwinters said:
I listen to a lot of BBC. They do a far better job of covering our news than any domestic news outlets do. And it's always fun to see what others think of us...which isn't much these days.
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Even BBC has some interesting bias differences between BBC America and BBC in the Old Country (usually difficult to get here unless you're a satellite geek using a non-commercial satellite receiver setup or you're streaming it on the net from various sources).

I know a guy who purposefully watches Deutche Welle (sp? German world news) in German on an old C-Band dish just to get their take on it all. Which of course, is also usually interesting and different than BBC, too.

Helps to know German, I suppose. :)

The main thing you notice is that each is tailored to the biases people want to watch.
 
Did they have a flight plan on file? Did it have destination = eternity and S.O.B = One that matters? :)
 
Jeffythequick said:
Speaking of that. My Ground School Instructor told us about a guy that was looking to get proficient again, then when they were at altitude, the CFI looks over and the guy was gone.

Jumped because he had some nefarious financial dealings.

Does anyone know about this?
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I call ********. Most airplanes, you can't open the door in flight, much less do it without the guy you're rubbing shoulders with not noticing.
 
James331 said:
It's frickin' CNN, also known as the "Clinton News Network"

And with Hillary getting slammed with even more leaked emails, I wouldn't put it past them to try to play the good old distraction "hey look over here folks!" game and blow some other story out of proportion.
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Media bias works both ways. Want to hear something favorable about Trump?...a tall order, I realize...then tune into Fox.

I think of Assange carefully plotting to time-release these emails, and then the Trump bombshell audio/video tape drops, completely nullifying anything he's done. It's fascinating political theater.
 
sounds like he was talking about a cub since he looked back and didn't see him there.
 
Jeffythequick said:
Speaking of that. My Ground School Instructor told us about a guy that was looking to get proficient again, then when they were at altitude, the CFI looks over and the guy was gone.

Jumped because he had some nefarious financial dealings.

Does anyone know about this?
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I haven't heard that story but a few years ago something similar happened down in Florida. Passenger opens the door and jumps out of a PA46 in an apparent suicide.
 
timwinters said:
I listen to a lot of BBC. They do a far better job of covering our news than any domestic news outlets do. And it's always fun to see what others think of us...which isn't much these days.

We must remember that our media, just like our government, are simply society looking at itself in a mirror. It's not a matter of how eff'ed up they are. It's how eff'ed up we are. "Everyone else" is not the problem..."we" are the problem...look in the mirror.
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Informing, and information content, is now secondary to entertainment. The MSM here sell advertising and thus have to compete with the entertainment rush of Facebooking, Twittering, mobile gaming and whatever else is competing for the public's attention. We have turned shopping into an entertainment activity to build traffic through the malls, which are giant arcades now. And every time I see a group of teens I can't help but notice they are all head down interacting with their phones instead of with each other - texting I would presume.

We've become addicts of instant and immediate entertainment gratification over other pursuits - which is one reason a lot of things that were not unusual in the past such as reading newspapers, learning to fly a plane and even playing golf are in decline and slowly going by the wayside now. The instant entertainment rush just isn't there I suppose...
 
So the hub bub I got about the crash was that the AC was flying extremely low, tree top level and clipped a power line, it may have gotten hung up in the powerline which allowed the CFI to jump out to the ground and get away from the burning wreck. The CFI was apparently burned badly on the front of his torso.
 
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