Small Plane Pilots: Flying in a Corkscrew

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have been wondering about the ill-fated pilot who flew into the famed Meteor Crater in AZ. It is said he flew in as a stunt, but quickly learned the required angle of ascent was too steep to escape without stalling the plane. But, why wouldn’t it be possible to fly in a spiral and “corkscrew” around and around to fly out to safety? This way, the angle of attack of the wings would be shallow. Could it be too shallow to build (or, maintain) the required minimum amount of lift?

If it helps, the crater is about 0.7 miles across at its mouth and about 500 ft deep.

2

Without making an in-depth analysis that would seem to be a reasonable plan, however…
It’s basically a variant of the “box canyon” problem where you attempt to turn the airplane in a confined space without slamming into the landscape or other obstruction. This is not a skill taught in most flight schools and is considered a specialized technique. It does require practice (obviously, away from such obstacles, such as at higher altitudes).

The second factor, beyond “does the pilot know the proper techniques” is what specific airplane said pilot is flying. Different airplanes have different minimum turn radii.

Once you have a pilot with the required skills and know the capabilities of his/her airplane it then becomes a question of whether or not said combination can execute a rising turn within the space provided.

I hadn’t heard about someone flying into meteor crater, so if you can provide a link to the incident or provide more information it might then be possible to give a definitive answer to your question.

3

Plane crash in 1964

4

A couple of links:

https://www.meteorite-times.com/jims-fragments/plane-crash-meteor-crater/

The claim is that it was not a stunt, but that they lost lift as they crossed over the crater, apparently due to warm/thin air. It was somewhat warm that day, about 93F, and the altitude at the crater is around 5000 feet above sea level, so it’s plausible. If that’s the case, then it would also have made it difficult to recover once they had descended into the crater: not only do they need more speed and/or more angle of attack to maintain altitude, but the engine is now also making less power because of the thin air.

The accounts claim that they did indeed try to circle within the crater to gain altitude, but ultimately crashed. If they were already struggling to stay in the air, then one slight misstep - a bit too much elevator, a slightly warmer pocket of air - begins the stall, and there’s no altitude for recovery.

This plane crash footage shows what happens when things are marginal. Plane is heavily loaded, the ground is at high altitude, and it’s a hot day. Because of the heat the wings need a lot of speed to generate adequate lift, but because of the heat the engine isn’t making much power. The takeoff roll lasts forever, but the pilot stubbornly refuses to abort. They take to the air, but they can’t build any altitude, and finally sink into the trees. Serious injuries, but AIUI they all survived.

5

OK, that I can speak about as I have flown a Cessna 150 in hot weather at a 4500-6000 foot altitude.

The rate of climb sucks.

When I flew a C150 in such weather conditions it was just me in the airplane, not two adult men, and I had, if I recall, no more than half full fuel tanks (short flight, hot weather, anticipated poor performance). Best rate of climb I got that day at that altitude was around 200-300 feet per minute, which is what was anticipated based on conditions (I had planned this out along with Evelyn “Mama Bird” Johnson, a woman with almost as many hours in the air as God, and we determined this could be done safely at the location the flight was taking place). I will also qualify that this was at a lower altitude than Meteor Crater, so performance at that location would be even worse than what I’m describing.

I did, indeed, “corkscrew” in order to gain the needed altitude for my planned flight so the maneuver is possible in a broad sense in that airplane. However, performance was marginal - there was little spare power even in a straight-ahead climb, a turning climb requires even more power. And I was on a plateau, not in a crater, with a plan to head to a runway at lower altitude if conditions were worse than expected or something went wrong with the airplane (even some alternate emergency landing areas in case things went really wrong), and the airplane was not fully loaded. My “corkscrew” was the traffic pattern of the airport, which is more than twice as wide as the mouth of Meteor Crater.

I haven’t crunched the hard numbers, but in the stated conditions, based on my experience with the C150 (the plane in which I have the majority of my flight hours) even in straight ahead flight there wasn’t enough power for the C150 to maintain level flight with two adult men aboard if they encountered a downdraft… which is consistent with the narrative in that when they flew over the crater they started to descend without planning to do so.

While the mouth of the crater has been given as “.7” miles as you descend the circumference of the crater becomes more and more narrow, requiring a steeper turn to avoid hitting the crater wall. One of the links states the floor of the crater is only a half mile wide. With performance marginal at best, maintaining level flight in anything other than a shallow turn might require more power than available. The turn required would be more than “shallow”.

Given the altitude and temperature, no, I don’t think that a C150 with two people aboard and even half full fuel tanks could have maintained a sufficiently steep turn to avoid hitting the crater wall AND maintain level flight, much less the needed climb to escape the crater.

Now, if they were at sea level and the temperature was 32 F/0 C yeah, that becomes at least *theoretically *possible (although still tight enough conditions to make the maneuver a real challenge), but they weren’t. They were higher and the air was hotter, both of which reduce both engine power and wing lift generation.

Nope, in that particular airplane under those conditions I don’t think a rising turn would have been possible.

6

IANAPilot.

But similar problem happens for small aircraft flying in the mountains. Flying up a valley, gaining altitude and can’t make it over the ‘pass’ because they are losing lift due to thinner air. And they can’t turn around because it’s either two tight, or because of the lift they lose in a turn.

I was a member of the Civil Air Patrol (ground rescue). And we actually recovered a plane (Piper Cub if I recall) that had that happen to it that also had a video camera running. The video survived, the pilot and passenger did not.

For some reason not clear, the plane also had two 5 gallon ‘jerry cans’ of water aboard. The extra weight didn’t help I’m sure. The last words on the video where “Hang on Ronnie” as the pilot cranked it to the left trying to return down the valley. Then the video fills with trees being crashed into.

7

As I was reading the thread I thought, ‘Hm. I’ve never circled for altitude.’ But then I remembered a flight my dad and I were making to Southern Oregon. We were in his Skyhawk, and the tanks were full as we launched into the pre-dawn darkness. Storm clouds covered the Tehachapis. We had to get to an altitude safely above the cumulogranite. (We were IFR, so we didn’t need to get above the clouds.) With the winds and the heavy plane, we did have to circle for altitude. But we had the whole Mojave Desert to do it in, so it wasn’t accurately a ‘corkscrew’.

I don’t think it’s the thinner air, as such (though it does affect performance), but the winds. As the air flows over the mountains, there are downdrafts on the lee side. These can push an aircraft down faster than it can climb even without a box canyon. One of the helicopters I rented was lost when the pilot attempted to make a ridge landing. His approach was too shallow, and he was unable to climb faster than the downdraft was pushing him down. (He hit the ridge about 100 feet short of the top, then rolled a few hundred feet down the hill. He suffered scratches and bruises. The helicopter was destroyed.)

8

There’s always multiple factors at work. In the accident in the OP you have both high altitude/less dense air and hot/less dense air working to degrade performance. Add in a fully loaded, or likely overloaded airplane and you have some bad news.

9

Definitely.

I haven’t read the links (no time right now), but I’m not clear if Captain Kidd (heh) flew into the crater intentionally, or accidentally.

10

High and hot.

Any bank angle used to turn reduces lift you could otherwise use for climbing, and puts you closer to the critical angle of attack (stall).

Canyons, confined spaces and apparently craters cause weird things to happen with air movement.

So, don’t fly into craters. It will cause talk on message boards decades after your death.

11

The two men aboard did, in fact, survive the crash.

Also, it seems that the flight into the crater was not intentional but rather due to those “weird things” you mentioned.

But yeah, don’t fly into craters and canyons. At least not without a LOT more planning, calculating, and forethought.

12

This is true. Modern planes are engineered to stall like gentlemen. My 172 would accept FULL up elevator and FULL power and a 60 degree bank without stalling. You could hold it there all day, slowly losing altitude, until your buddy thinks it would be funny to kick the bottom rudder pedal hard. (he was a flight instructor)

That is exactly what happens when someone flies into a canyon and tries turning around without enough room… More bank, more power, more bank, then tighten it up with a little inside rudder and hello incipient spin. Boom, the end. (unless you were high enough to recover)

Here is a YouTube video of how it all happens. You can see the break and how fast everything happens. Imagine that happening at 500 or 600 feet. Boom.

13

I bet your right in lots of cases. Hadn’t thought about the downdrafts. Saw the video. It was clearly an ‘uphill’ slog for the overweight plane. Not sure how much they climbed up the canyon (this was 30 years ago). My guess is from 9000 to 9500 feet, and they got boxed in.

He may have also be flying into a headwind giving him lift and that lift died when he made the turn. The video was kinda creepy. It was pretty clear he was in trouble way before his turn.

14

A couple of months ago a pilot and a bounty hunter flew to Reno to apprehend a female with a California warrant. They found her and departed the next day. Their last day on Earth. I haven’t seen the report on the fatal accident but somehow the pilot was not able to climb out and returned to Reno only to end up crashing in a parking lot killing all on board. The bounty hunter weighed 400 pounds, and sat in the right seat. I can’t help but think that may have caused issues for a plane that probably had at MAX a 1000 pound useful load. (Cherokee Arrow IIRC) Add a potentially overweight plane, high altitude, and some unfriendly winds, and you have to assume you’re in for a trying experience.

If the birds are walking and not flying, there’s a reason.

15

Headwind doesn’t add lift nor does it subtract from it when you do a 180. You’re part of the air mass so you kind of go with the flow so to speak. You might be thinking of a microburst like event, but that’s not really a headwind per se.

16

That reminds me of an old joke I can’t quite remember. If anyone does, please post it.

A couple of moose hunters hired a bush pilot to take them out of the back country, but they were over gross and crashed. They called another pilot, who was leery about the weight of the hunters and their kill, but the hunters assured him that another pilot had told them it was OK. Again, the plane was over gross and crashed. The hunters said, ‘Oh, that’s OK. You made it much farther than the last guy!’

It was funnier the way I originally read it.

17

Ouch. I’m thinking that whatever the person on the lam did, they probably didn’t earn the death penalty. They don’t send bounty hunters after murderers, do they? I thought bounty hunters were for much less offenses, where the State can’t be bothered to hunt the criminal down, but the bail bond provides a certain budget for catching them.

In fact, this would mean that if you had a bond of a certain amount, but the crime wasn’t so serious that the authorities are going to go themselves, the amount of the bond determines how far you should flee and how hard you need to be to be found. If the bond is only $5000, that doesn’t cover much in the way of bounty hunting expenses.

18

Here, turns out the fugitive was shackled in the back seat when her body was removed from the plane.

19

My google-fu fails me, I can’t find out what the victim, Ronnie Hernandez, did to deserve being kidnapped and transported by an unsafe mode of transportation.

20

I stand corrected. It was a turbo Arrow. He shouldn’t have had any problem climbing out of Reno.

Found Kathryn Report on it.