Strange Lancair Accident

Reminds me of a Magnum, P. I. episode...

"Magnum, P.I." Two Birds of a Feather (1983)


A single engine light aircraft being flow from California to Hawaii crashes in the tidal pool at the estate.

Quote from the pilot after crashing in the water to avoid hittinging Magnum who is jogging on the beach... "These things don't have horns, you know."
 
Trapper John said:
I would kindly suggest that Ms. Schiavo immediately proceed to Petco, so that she may be fitted with with a muzzle. Or a shock collar...


Trapper John
Click to expand...

Kinda makes you wonder what this person did for the NTSB before becoming "an expert" for the media.
 
Wow - you've ditched? Care to share more details? Type of A/C, stall speed, how fast were you going when you touched the water? Did the plane skip, or just mush into the water?

Personally, I'm petrified of ditching. I've taken enough spills waterskiing to know that at high speeds... water is much harder than it looks.

And that's one thing that a Lancair IVP would not have going for it... Stall speed is ~75mph. Add a bit of margin and it would touch down around 80-85mph. That's a ton more energy than for example my Cherokee, which (with speed mods) stalls around 50mph.


PittsDriver said:
I'm not sure what you call the club of pilots that have ditched but I'm in it. I realize a statistical sample of one isn't significant but based upon my experience I'd say the ditching thing is a very benign way to bring yourself back to earth in an emergency assuming you can get yourself dry again (swim to shore, picked up by a boat, etc) before the water temp takes it's toll on you. The aircraft certainly didn't sink like a stone and there was nearly no impact damage to it other than form fitting the cowling to the bottom of the engine and ripping the wheel pants off.
Click to expand...
 
PittsDriver said:
Kinda makes you wonder what this person did for the NTSB before becoming "an expert" for the media.
Click to expand...

IIRC, she worked for the Inspector General that oversees the NTSB, so she never did know squat about plane crashes or what causes them, then or now.


Trapper John
 
Trapper John said:
IIRC, she worked for the Inspector General that oversees the NTSB, so she never did know squat about plane crashes or what causes them, then or now.


Trapper John
Click to expand...

I've seen her as "an expert" on numerous news and opinion showns on television. The sad thing is that not only is she an alarmist, she usually gets her facts wrong when building up to whatever shrill conclusion(s) she makes. It amazes me that the news organizations continue going back to her given the absolutely bizzarre things she says.
 
kyleb said:
I've seen her as "an expert" on numerous news and opinion showns on television. The sad thing is that not only is she an alarmist, she usually gets her facts wrong when building up to whatever shrill conclusion(s) she makes. It amazes me that the news organizations continue going back to her given the absolutely bizzarre things she says.
Click to expand...
Why does it amaze you? That is what TV news loves the most.
 
nyoung said:
Wow - you've ditched? Care to share more details? Type of A/C, stall speed, how fast were you going when you touched the water? Did the plane skip, or just mush into the water?
Click to expand...

Pitts S-2C, put it in the water at about 80 mph, not a scratch on either of us though we did have to hold our breath for about a minute to extract ourselves from the plane. The plane floated for several minutes though the cockpit was underwater due to flipping over on it's back. As I said before, hardly any damage to the plane and not even a bruise on either of us. The choice was a trees, neighborhood street, or the South River off the Chesapeake Bay. One factor that probably helped in keeping us unharmed was that we were wearing 5 point harnesses which is something I think all small aircraft should have. Neither of us were wearing helmets.

Every time you come back to earth in an aircraft, it's always an exercise in dissipating energy whether you're landing on a 10,000' runway or putting it in the trees. I'm no Physics Phd or crash expert, but I'd reckon that my chance of injury is proportional to how quickly that energy gets dissipated among other factors. Imagine hitting a tree or some big rocks at 50 mph in your car. That's probably gonna hurt a lot and cars are way more substantial at dissipating energy before the occupants are involved. Water is an excellent way to slow down and stop an airplane and, to me, way preferable to soft sand, trees, rocks, buildings, city streets, etc. as long as I have a way to get dry without freezing first.

If I could see where I was landing, and had the choice between the hard packed sand near the edge of the water, the softer sand further back, or the water, I'd take the hard pack near the edge every time and try to roll it on softly at a reasonable speed (not too slowly) - If I could see. Not being able to see where I was landing like in this case, I think I'd look out the side window, try to keep myself a few hundred feet off shore and try to judge my flare into the water by looking to the side. Looking straight out the side at the trees or shore is the way I was taught to land a sea plane on glassy water because you can't judge anything by looking over the nose. In a fixed gear plane, it's going over on it's back but as long as you land straight ahead with no side load or without catching a wing tip and cart wheeling, it should be a pretty reasonable way to stop. Then it's just unbuckle and swim ashore. In my incident, we got picked up by a boat that saw us go in and weren't in the water more than a minute or two.
 
PittsDriver said:
Pitts S-2C, put it in the water at about 80 mph, not a scratch on either of us though we did have to hold our breath for about a minute to extract ourselves from the plane. The plane floated for several minutes though the cockpit was underwater due to flipping over on it's back.
Click to expand...

:yikes:

Any more details you wish to share on this incident? Am I correct in assuming you jettisoned the canopy ahead of time?

Glad to hear nobody was hurt!
 
RMCN172RG said:
That's the problem, landing on water with the gear down tends to flip.
Click to expand...

It's definitely going over on it's back but I don't necessarily see that as a problem as long as you're strapped in nice and tight. If you're going to ditch, you're going to give your seat belts an extra little firm tug, right? I guess it might be a little disorienting to be upside down in the water and the water I was in was so turbid that the viz was zero but it was still pretty easy to figure out which was was up to where the air was.

And no, we did not shed the canopy before we went in. The S-2C POH says that you should but I'm pretty happy that we didn't. When it went over on it's back it hit the water hard enough to crack it. I was happy to let it protect me until I was done with it. There was no problem at all opening it after going in.
 
Yeah, because the aircraft stalled into the beach... :skeptical:

Joe Bartels is correct - the aircraft are unforgiving and require discipline to fly them the way they're meant to be flown, which is fast. Not different than the sort of performance you see from a number of high performance aircraft (jets and MU-2s come to mind).

Gotta love the media giving all the facts. :mad2:
 
On the subject of ditching:

I'm based at the same Annapolis, MD, airport as Pitts Driver and (I assume) the 76-year-old pilot who just ditched in the South River. Short field, lots of houses and roads and power lines around, and I always pause to think where I'll go if I lose the engine on takeoff or approach. Water has always seemed to be my best option, but I remember my first flying lesson in 1975, in New Orleans, taking off over Lake Pontchartrain.

The instructor said (as I desperately tried to make sense of the shaking Cessna 150 panel in front of me): OK, you've just lost your engine. What do you do?

Me: (After the huh? moment) Well, I'm a pretty good swimmer, so I'd glide over near the shore and put it there, and swim to shore (which as I recall was pretty swampy and didn't look like a solid place to land).

Instructor: Really? Well, the last time this actually happened, the instructor set up a glide and slowed the plane. The student jumped out when they got close to the water. He lived. The instructor rode the plane down into the water, dug the wheels in, flipped the plane over, hit his head on the roof and drowned.

Me: Ulp.

I always have this story in the back of my head when I consider ditching my Cessna 182, but ditching is still the best option at my field, I think. Crack the doors, get as slow as possible and try to belly in. And oh yeah -- cinch the lap and shoulder harnesses as tight as possible -- which, alas, will never be as tight as Pitts Driver's 5-point harness, which is why I worry about conking myself out. And get ready to swim up from underneath an overturned plane. And help my pax do the same.

I assume the default mode for a plane with gear welded down is that they flip on ditching -- it would be nice to figure out how to avoid that if possible. Maybe there's a way.

It would obviously be different if I had my choice of open fields or wide roads without telephone poles -- and there are a few fields I might shoehorn into ... but lots of unobstructed water.

I just hope I'll be able to resist the urge to do a 180 and try to get back to the runway. Every once in awhile it's instructive to go out and try that at 3,000 feet or so to see just how much altitude you lose.

I'm always encouraged when I hear about others who have done this and lived to tell about it. Remember the guy who flew his 172 down toward Florida about 20 years ago, supposedly shot himself in the stomach with a .22, ditched in the Atlantic -- and lived? Bizarre, but oddly encouraging that he could survive a ditching AND a shooting.
 
There's a strong case to be made that all aircraft should have 5-point harnesses. We went from 80 mph to 0 and on our backs in about 2 seconds - someone smarter than I can calculate the G load of that but it's probably not that impressive. The 5 point harness was definitely a welcomed feature though and instrumental in coming out without injury.
 
A friend who used to fly multis once rented a plane It was either a Seneca or Seminole from florida to fly to the Bahamas. The guy or place that rented to him required that he take a short ditching class.

They taught him to ditch with the swells AND to get as slow as he could and to have the first contat with the water be the pilots side wingtip. He said they told him this would swing the plane around to the pilots side keeping the exit door high and hopefully out of the water and would dissapate energy better than straight in.

Now both the Seneac and Seminole are retracts so perhaps that makes a difference, I'm not sure. I would think that you have to get slowed down enough though to prevent a cartwheel.
 
If not a good runway or clear road anywhere close I am headed for the water every time .. because.

Water does not burn.

Ben
 
AdamZ said:
They taught him to ditch with the swells AND to get as slow as he could and to have the first contat with the water be the pilots side wingtip. He said they told him this would swing the plane around to the pilots side keeping the exit door high and hopefully out of the water and would dissapate energy better than straight in.

\.
Click to expand...

I am no expert, but that sounds like a recipe for cartwheeling the airplane to me.
 
PittsDriver said:
There's a strong case to be made that all aircraft should have 5-point harnesses. We went from 80 mph to 0 and on our backs in about 2 seconds - someone smarter than I can calculate the G load of that but it's probably not that impressive. The 5 point harness was definitely a welcomed feature though and instrumental in coming out without injury.
Click to expand...

All plane owners don't have that option. We explored it on our P-Baron and an STC is not available. We have three point harnesses which are notorious for allowing the passenger to slide out. Pressurized hull, we can't just put screws in anywhere and a limited number of these probably discouraged from someone getting an STC. Not everyone is comfortable with flipping upside down underwater and getting out. We have to ingress/egress points....period. If someone is hurt during the landing, it would be very difficult to get them out upside down underwater, and they could block an exit.

Lots to think about. Hopefully, in a twin, I won't have that problem, or, if I do, I'll have a lot of time to get near help before ditching.

Best,

Dave
 
N801BH said:
If not a good runway or clear road anywhere close I am headed for the water every time .. because.

Water does not burn.

Ben
Click to expand...

I suppose you also need to balance that decision with the possibility of being knocked unconscious or otherwise being unable to exit the aircraft. If I crash on land and am knocked out, hopefully there won't be a fire. If I crash on water and am knocked out, the plane will most certainly sink after some brief time.


Trapper John
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top