Why did the wings fall off in flight?

Vance Breese

Vance Breese

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Vance Breese
1954 Cessna 180 N3683C crashed near Ventura yesterday.

One wing ended up on the beach a long way from the fuselage and the plane ended up with no wings.

I don’t know where the other wing landed; it is not visible to me in the picture.

Please help me understand what might cause both wings to separate from the fuselage in flight.
 

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There is a suggestion of a possible mid-air.

What happened to the other aircraft..???
 
The question I have is: Where is the tail? Did something happen to it, causing the wings to fail?
 
If you really want to know, wait for the investigation.

There is next to nothing now, and no one here has access to any physical evidence whatsoever. I see no reason at all to jump to the conclusion of a mid-air. Just an anonymous suggestion with absolutely nothing to back it up.

Midairs are not hard to distinguish from overspeeds given access to actual physical evidence. It's impossible with what is publicly available.

Speculation is silly. Especially the "drone." Maybe if it was a Global Hawk....
 
Zeldman said:
There is a suggestion of a possible mid-air.

What happened to the other aircraft..???
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ASN is the Wiki of Aviation accidents. They're interesting to read, but a lot of times they're just speculation hogwash.
 
Pulled too hard? Spar corroded? Hit another object with one wing, then tore the other off trying to survive? Really, really bad repair job sometime in the past? Loss of atomic union? He knew who killed Kennedy and had to be silenced?

Try not to worry about it, especially if you don't fly that model. Anyway, it hardly ever happens without the pilot messing up. So many more likely ways to kill yourself in GA than this.
 
kkoran said:
The question I have is: Where is the tail? Did something happen to it, causing the wings to fail?
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If the tail fails suddenly in cruise a metal aircraft leaves a distinct signature. It goes nose down and the upper skins of the wing will be concaved between the ribs. Rare, but not unknown occurrence.
 
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Thank you all.

Because it is local two of my clients had asked about this accident.

They feel their CFI I should know everything about aviation.

I did not even know enough to speculate.

I could not imagine a situation that would pull the wings off a 1954 Cessna 180.

A friend of mine flew into a thunderstorm and had the aircraft break up in flight. It appears there is nothing like that here.
 
There are plenty of things that could cause wings to fold or fail in flight. Neither I, nor anybody else on this forum can give you a clear cause in this case. However, in general, over-stressing the airframe, fatigue, and flutter could all cause catastrophic failures.

In a poorly maintained/inspected aircraft, it would be hypothetically be possible for unknown corrosion to affect fatigue and load limits
 
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We can give answers to the general question "What are some of the reasons wings come off in flight" because it has happened in the past and investigations have concluded. A lot of those possibilities have already been stated up thread.

We can't give the specific reason in this particular case because not enough information is available.
 
No other aircraft has been spotted as of this time. Investigators are mostly ruling out a collision.
 
This one perplexes... will be very curious to know what caused this, if we ever find out. "Wings falling off a plane" are one of those golden rule things that "can't" happen, short of flying into a thunderstorm...
 
They will figure it out.
If the airframe was overstressed there may be some uncertainty about what the pilot was doing or why it was overstressed.
But there's unlikely to be any uncertainty about what happened to cause the aircraft to break up in flight.
 
I heard mention he recently signed divorce papers too? If so, add that into the mix as another possible contributor. I haven't seen evidence of another plane involved.
 
Corrosion is a likely suspect, that will be easy to determine. I recently changed out the wing attach bolts on my 1974 baby Beech for the hell of it during an annual. Just something I did, no evidence of problems. Figured a 40 year old plane needs new parts from time to time..:)
 
AKBill said:
Corrosion is a likely suspect, that will be easy to determine. I recently changed out the wing attach bolts on my 1974 baby Beech for the hell of it during an annual. Just something I did, no evidence of problems. Figured a 40 year old plane needs new parts from time to time..:)
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How did they look?
 
Sundancer said:
How did they look?
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They looked like new.....:) Just something I did, also replaced the stabalator attach bolt and bearingss, flap attach bolts and bearings,aileron attach bolts and bearins. Replaced rudder upper and lower attach bolts and bearings. Found out the stab trim tab bolt was incorrect, needs to be a magna fluxed bolt which it was not. I try to do progressive maintenance focusing on areas of the plane I feel is important
 
Thanks - good to hear; pretty neat they were in good shape. I saw a horror story on a 172 spar - pretty grim, just eaten up. Ours was on it's back a couple decades ago, and between that repair, and a new interior recently, they've gotten a good look at it, and it's somewhat reassuring.
 
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