CNN reporting. It was a Pilatus PC-12. I’ve flown on that airplane before and it’s a very sophisticated plane for a single-engine turboprop. Lots of automated systems, etc. and very stable even in high winds.
It crashed into a cemetery… how odd is that?
Emergency personnel have recovered 83 bodies so far…
(Incidentally, there’s a cemetery at the end of one of the runways at Mojave.)
We used to operate 4 PC12 aircraft. They are exceptionally good airplanes in terms of speed, comfort, reliability, utility and efficiency.
The knock on the PC12 for commercial commuter operations is the single engine instead of the more common 2 engines. Mitigating the single engine liability is the glide ratio of the aircraft. It is a very very rare occurrence for the PT6 engine to fail to the point of zero power. However if the engine should need to be shut down, the PC12 can glide for over 100 miles from an altitude of 25,000 feet.
I truly hope the number of dead is not accurate. In Canada, the PC12 is approved for a maximum of 9 passengers plus 2 pilots. I assume it is the same in the USA. Might be able to wedge a 10th seat in there, but there is no way to safely put 17 people inside a PC12.
Hadn’t thought about the number of pax. The one I used to fly on had, I think, a max capacity of 12, including the pilot and 2nd chair. Could have been eleven. Loved flying in it and the pilot did a good job of touting the single engine over a twin. He said most twin engine crashes happen because of the sudden loss of power on one side during takeoff or landing.
NBC says witnesses claim it burst into flames just before crashing.
NBC just showed a FedEx jet crashing in London (I think).
Tokyo.
:eek:
Darn, never thought an airliner could bounce like that… well, apparently it can’t.
Yes, something is odd here, the specs I see report that this kind of plane seats 9 or 10 passengers and 2 pilots.
Even though kids would be small, 17 passengers could generate seating and balance problems. I hope that the number of people reported was wrong.
Now they’re reporting 14, including 7 children. Lapsitters?
I’m going to sound like a heartless materialist bastard, but I have to wonder if the FedEx plane was loaded with cargo? A huge material loss (possibly vintage musical instruments, very rare books, any kinds of rarities) in addition to loss of life.
They’re going to look into the possibility of overloading. Stated here.
Well, not more than one episode of bouncing, at any rate. Well, actually, they can bounce like that and survive, but only if they avoid losing all control and cartwheeling in flames down the runway. Small planes are more likely to survive such events than big, massive airliners for reasons having to do with speed, mass, and momentum but really it’s not good to bounce any airplane on landing.
The first time I saw something like that I thought “So that’s why my flight instructor was so adamant about not bouncing when landing the Cessna…”
Correct procedure when an airplane goes >boing!< is to immediately go to full power, get away from the ground, and circle for another attempt. (In the video note that the airplane actually bounced more than once, not breaking up until control was lost after the second bounce). No doubt there will be a thorough investigation.
Almost certainly it was full of cargo, as that is the reason why Fed Ex exists.
Back when I have a corporate office job there was a FedEx crash-and-burn at their Tennessee hub one day (in that case, the pilots got out and there was no loss of life). I actually wound up investigating to see if any of our stuff we’d shipped was on the airplane, and had to inform some folks there stuff would be delayed for a day, the airport in question being closed for a bit while the mess was cleaned up. Sometimes stuff can be salvaged from cargo crashes, sometimes not, it all depends on how bad the end result is.
Uh, yeah, airplane designed to carry a maximum of 11 people has 14 aboard - yeah, pretty certain it was overloaded or out of balance or both. While, granted, children weigh less than adults that doesn’t make it OK to cram more people aboard than seats. One also presumes everyone on board would have gear/luggage as well, which can also contribute to such problems.
A wiki on the Pilatus PC-12 is here for those interested in what the airplane looks like and a bit of info.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTER BACKING SECTION STARTS HERE:
It seems the pilot asked to land 75 miles short of their intended destination, without saying why. Well, he doesn’t have to say why, pilots are allowed to make such changes. It MIGHT (very speculative here) be that they were running low on fuel, which could be consistent with carrying more weight than they should as more weight makes the airplane burn fuel faster. Or maybe someone really had to go pee really really bad (such airplanes typically do not have rest rooms aboard). Likely, we’ll never know for sure.
From the New York Times:
From an AP Article:
This, to me, suggests that the airplane might have stalled/spun on approach to landing - “stall” in this case being an aerodynamic condition and having nothing to do with the engine. This is a classic “don’t ever do this” scenario, because if you stall and/or spin like that on approach, at low altitude, you simply don’t have enough time to recover normal flight before you hit the ground. The key here is the airplane’s “angle of attack” (AoA), the angle at which the wing meets the on-coming air and it has to within a certain range in order for the airplane to continue flying. High angles of attack are usually (although not always) associated with low airspeeds. If the AoA exceeds the wing’s limit, the wing “stalls” and drops as it loses lift. A spin is a more extreme form of the phenomena. Either way, the airplane nose drops and descent is very rapid. If the airplane is high enough off the ground recovery back to normal flight is possible, but on approach to landing the airplane is usually not high enough for that. The usual set up is the pilot is turning (which requires more lift to maintain altitude), descending (you’ve decreased the lift being generated), and slowing (which can involve increasing AoA) and basically botches up, exceeding the critical angle of attack. One or both wings drop, the nose drops, and it looks like the airplane goes straight into the ground.
Overloading the airplane can make this a more likely scenario, as it increases the AoA required to maintain altitude at any given airspeed and thus reduces your margin for error in certain parts of the flight envelope.
DISCLAIMER: all of the above is strictly speculative and may be totally wrong. Opinions subject to change upon receipt of further facts.
The Times story also said there were 15 accidents with this model plane since 2001, 6 involving fatalities. Is it just me or does that seem like a LOT?
Death toll down to 14: 7 adults, 7 kids, from three families.
Not enough information - it could be 14 very minor things and no one hurt with just one of those accidents causing all 6 deaths, or a bunch of more serious things, or… well, just not enough info.
In general, if no one is killed you don’t hear about accidents in airplanes. Unless, of course, an accident with no one killed lands in a very visible place like the Hudson River.
“Journalists” like to go to the accident databases and pull numbers out of context whenever anything smaller than a 747 crashes. It’s great for scaring the crap out of people but lousy for imparting information.