Turbulence results in Pax death

How does that even happen? Pax not wearing seatbelts and falls? There aren't any details about the wings or the tail almost falling off, so I assume the plane is relatively fine?
 
SkyChaser said:
How does that even happen? Pax not wearing seatbelts and falls? There aren't any details about the wings or the tail almost falling off, so I assume the plane is relatively fine?
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I have no idea but it seems a passenger was having a medical issue and perhaps the turbulence made the situation more difficult for them. A little more info here but nothing that explains it (some cockpit audio in the news story video):

https://www.wcvb.com/article/passen...turbulence-massachusetts-new-england/43191524
 
I cannot speak to this flight, but i will say… I’ve flown this type of mission for 20 years before the airlines.
You can turn the seatbelt sign on, and warn them all you want. They do not listen. There is usually no flight attendant to enforce. It doesn’t take too much for someone to bounce off the ceiling, hitting their head in the process while in a smallish plane.

Again, no clue what actually happened in this situation.
 
At my last corporate job the principle never wore his seatbelt in the airplane, or even his car. I always worried about something like this happening, or having to do a high speed abort.

Yet another reason why I don't miss that part of the industry....
 
Larry in TN said:
The unbelted passenger doesn't "fall". They stay relatively still while the airplane's ceiling drops down and hits them in the head.
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unless there were strong updrafts that stopped. In that case the unbelted passenger would continue up faster than the airplane...
 
I’d like to see the mosaic of the track, weather in the area. The one on Daily Mail didn’t show much. Yes, I realize, not always convective related.

A second thing is what mitigation efforts were employed? That starts with preflight weather checking, deviations, speed reductions. When one sees bumps ahead(indications of) no sense going max speed until the 1st bump.

Lastly, some people are closer to death’s door than the next. Years ago I knew someone who died on a flight, the grim reaper was coming soon anyway. Of course, slamming into the ceiling & breaking one’s neck isn’t a good way to go. Since this was a business flight, unlikely the person was very old & frail.
 
and this was no small jet. firmly a medium sized jet - 40K lbs - 8 pax business jet.
 
40k? That’s a light sport jet….

Heavy RJ maybe…
 
Here is a picture of the CL300 I worked on. Cabin is only 6 foot tall. You don't have far to go if standing to hit your head.

IMG_1622.jpeg
 
SkyChaser said:
How does that even happen? Pax not wearing seatbelts and falls? There aren't any details about the wings or the tail almost falling off, so I assume the plane is relatively fine?
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My guess - head meets headliner when PAX refuses to wear seatbelt and sudden turbulence is encountered.

Unrelated but similar incident:
82e17929-f3c0-4969-aff5-fa8b811198b9_2d31ae2e.jpg




Flight1.jpg
 
As an aside, hit clear air turbulence one night near ABQ with a mountain thunderstorm probably 30 miles away.

Was in the Mooney with my belt cinched tightly, but hit my head on the ceiling hard enough to almost knock me silly.

Didn’t even think that was physically possible until then.
 
Wasn't there an incident over Greece a few years ago. I think that was some type of control oscillation in a falcon but it shook at least one pax to death.
 
ElPaso Pilot said:
As an aside, hit clear air turbulence one night near ABQ with a mountain thunderstorm probably 30 miles away.

Was in the Mooney with my belt cinched tightly, but hit my head on the ceiling hard enough to almost knock me silly.

Didn’t even think that was physically possible until then.
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Were you east of the Sandias?
 
3393RP said:
Were you east of the Sandias?
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No. Heading south near Socorro. Looking at the flashes off towards Magdalena, while under a starry sky.

Had to circle back to Double Eagle to land and make sure me and the plane were ok.
 
Now talk about a ‘trim malfunction’ or failure of some sort. It seems there was a related issue with trim on that type of aircraft.

Maybe it wasn’t severe turbulence after all?
 
scottd said:
I tend to lean this direction as well. The weather wasn't all that remarkable. In fact, it was on the downwind side of an upper level ridge which normally is fairly tranquil. In the transcript that I provided after reviewing the ATC conversation with the pilot, there was no mention of an encounter with weather. The pilot was very tight-lipped. I would have thought that a turbulence encounter may sound more like, "yeah, we hit some rough air and one of the pax received a laceration and needs immediate medical attention." There was no pilot weather report filed for severe turbulence. However, the NTSB's tweet initially mentioned turbulence.
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In the news article Chip just posted:

In addition to probing what it initially described as a turbulence event, the NTSB said Monday, its investigators are “now looking at a reported trim issue that occurred prior to the in-flight upset.” The agency did not describe the nature of the reported issue, but trim generally refers to a plane’s ability to maintain its altitude.
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I wonder how big the lawsuit is going to be.
 
Mongoose Aviator said:
My guess is $3~5M based on how foreseeable this was and whether mistakes were made?
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Mom and Dad were using a fair-sized biz jet to fly their kid around to look at colleges. If there is a lawsuit, I predict it will be much larger.

But absolutely a tragic event.
 
Pretty sad when you can't just fly around looking at schools without having to worry about trim issues.

Very sad.
 
Wear your fricken seatbelt in an airplane.

I fly to that airport pretty frequently and it doesn’t take much to induce some impressive turbulence there. Mountains and hills nearby can make it bumpy down low.

Hopefully the cause of this is straight forward, RIP
 
CNN reports that NTSB has concluded the incident was not caused by turbulence or otherwise weather related:

The National Transportation Safety Board said the aircraft experienced a force about four times the pull of gravity when the pilots disabled a setting that is used to stabilize the aircraft. The pilots were in the process of resolving warning messages from the aircraft.
“As soon as the switch position was moved, the airplane abruptly pitched up,” the preliminary report said.
One of the pilots “immediately with both hands regained control of the airplane in what he estimated to be a few seconds after the airplane’s pitch oscillated up and down.”
The plane pitched up and down like a roller coaster several times: First 3.8Gs up, then 2.3Gs downward, followed by 4.2Gs upward.
​
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/us/turbulence-jet-death-ntsb/index.html

HHH, MD

Screen Shot 2022-12-28 at 9.38.21 AM.png
 
https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news...man-suffered-fatal-medical-emergency/3000926/

No turbulence. Not exactly the best performance from this crew to begin with, taking off with the pitot tube cover on, and turning off the trim stabilizer, but that seems to be what the checklist says...

Sounds like a harrowing ride... and unfortunately deadly.

"The airplane immediately pitched up to about 11° and reached a vertical acceleration of about +3.8g. The airplane subsequently entered a negative vertical acceleration to about -2.3g. The airplane pitched up again to about 20° and a vertical acceleration of +4.2g was recorded. The stall protection stick pusher activated during this pitch up; subsequently, vertical acceleration lowered to about +2.2g which was followed by a cutout of FDR data."
 
No, it wasn’t. It was a similar checklist, but the wrong one. This flight got off to the wrong start during the preflight and just got progressively worse as it wore on.
 
80ish hours on the plane for both pilots. What's that, 2-3 months employment at these part 91 outfits? Seems kinda light for the PIC. I can understand the SIC, but the PIC I expected to have a quite a bit of make and model time before upgrade no?

That pilot shartage I tell ya....
 
hindsight2020 said:
That pilot shartage I tell ya....
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I have no idea what happened here, but in my corporate/135 days I've witnessed a couple of instances of green crews placed together because the PIC knew all the right people, right place at the right time, etc. In fact, I was pretty close to a high profile accident where exactly that happened, and that was in 2008 when the industry was being wrecked by the economy. So it could have also been the good old boy club doing some good old boy stuff. ;)
 
hindsight2020 said:
80ish hours on the plane for both pilots. What's that, 2-3 months employment at these part 91 outfits? Seems kinda light for the PIC. I can understand the SIC, but the PIC I expected to have a quite a bit of make and model time before upgrade no?

That pilot shartage I tell ya....
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My first flight as a jet PIC without another PIC onboard I had about 50 hours total jet time and got stuck with an FO who had done a whopping 3 flights out of CAE.

Scary stuff.
 
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