Yeah. Engine running at impact sorta removes the obvious cause. Although running and developing useful thrust are two different things. A prop going flat or feather would leave the engine running, but developing negligible thrust. As would the engine rolling back to near idle due to some engine control malfunction.
If they care to, NTSB can probably derive something close to actual airspeed from either ADS-B or video analysis. Which will rule in or out a simple stall spin due to inattention after engine partial failure or airspeed indication malfunctions. Or just inattention: pilot drops something in the cockpit, or gets focused on something on the ground and suddenly he’s on his back. Or distracted by some other malfunction like an electrical failure (or fire!) that would leave rather little physical evidence in such a hefty post-crash fire.
After that you’re sorta left with some manner of control jam, perhaps from somebody in the copilot’s seat. But that doesn’t seem to have been occupied.
I noted they put more fuel in right than left tank. Suggesting they’d burned from the right more than the left on earlier flights. In any case, the side taking the heavier fuel onload was the wing that went up, not down, as they lost control. So if there was a fuel imbalance favoring left roll, it would have been worse before refueling than after. IOW worse at the previous landing than it was at the mishap takeoff. And obviously the previous flight landed with no excitement.
Is a shifting load a posible concern with a plane full of skydivers? Maybe they heard something that made them think there was a problem and, since they were already wearing parachutes, started trying to get to the door to jump out. Could the resulting weight shift put the plane out of CG limits and uncontrollable?
I suppose it could. The seating arrangements on those planes are sorta makeshift. Everybody has a place and a belt, but if somehow an entire bench broke loose and the whole unit of bench w 4 attached divers all ended up piled up back at the aft end of the passenger compartment it’d probably get real exciting real quick.
On the other hand, nobody is successfully jumping out of a plane at 200-400 feet where they apexed. If I was the parachutists immediately at the door I might risk it but nobody else is getting out while the plane is falling. So I discount the idea they got hinky about something and disturbed the CG in an attempt to beat a hasty exit.
The NTSB prelim had a single still from some security cam footage that probably recorded most of the event. A major CG excursion is real dramatic. I speculate that if there’d been one on that vid, NTSB would have said something about it, and probably included still(s) of it.
The “seating arrangements” on the Cessna jump plane I was treated to were something called “the floor”. No seats, no belts. No snack or beverage service, either!
If the prop was the issue there might be the potential for a change in audio pitch to indicate something unusual. Barring that it’s an elevator failure or a wild shift in CG as LSL suggested.
And the attendants were ugly! Would not recommend.
Speaking of CG, I read an article by an retired pilot who flew DC3s for a charter service post-war. He told of one flight where a bunch of alumni were flying to their alma mater’s homecoming game. The crew was only the pilot and co-pilot, no attendants but the pax had brought plenty of booze aboard.
After a while they started playing a game where one by one they’d get up and walk to the rear of the plane. As the weight aft increased the pilot would budge the trim wheel then all of them would rush to the front making the plane lose a couple thousand feet until the pilots could recover.
They let them have two cycles before putting their oxygen masks on and reducing air pressure in the plane a few minutes, rendering the pax unconscious for the rest of the flight.
That’s also a pretty standard aviation urban legend.
The version I heard was a KC-135 aircraft commander who was getting a checkride. Back in the day when sims were really primitive, checkrides were done in a real airplane. You’d load e.g. 20 crewmembers and one or two examiners, and each crewmember would get his turn in the hotseat making a couple of circuits around the traffic pattern, perhaps with an engine pulled back to simulate a failure. 6 hours later they’d all be done, pass or fail, and somebody would make the full stop at base.
Anyhow, the AC for this particular couple of circuits was much hated as a raging jerk, so the rest of the folks back in the cabin delighted in running from one end of the plane to the other, waiting a bit, then running back the other way. So frequently fouling up his trim.
Yeah. On the small Cessnas, say normally 4 or 6 pax, so 6-ish jumpers, they just remove the seats and pack enough people in there that they;ll all sorta cushion each other if there’s a crunch.
Beyond a certain size that switches to simple benches and everybody still crammed in like sardines..
Bob Stevens cartoon. ‘Feather’ control was depicted with push-buttons, but just go with it. The examiner thinks, ‘I’ll feather #1. Heh, heh, heh,’ and pushes the ‘feather #1’ button. The pilot pushes the ‘feather #4’ button and says, ‘Your move, sir.’
When you select a flight for playback other aircraft aren’t shown. Here’s the aircraft near the beginning of its flight with other traffic shown:
And with just that aircraft selected for playback:
Presumably the pilot has a way to create waypoints from a picture or something, then you could fly it in “nav” mode with autopilot. It might even be something an AI bot is good for (the waypoint creation).
Man, that papal charter breakdown by LSLGuy is fascinating. I always assumed the Vatican just had “Shepherd One” permanently configured and on standby, rather than gutting a commercial first-class cabin every time he travels. It’s crazy to think about the logistics of keeping a second fully customized standby jet and an all-volunteer crew just on ice like that.
As for that Hornet crash near Rimrock Lake—thankfully the pilot made it out. Wildfires started by crashes are an absolute nightmare to contain in that kind of terrain.
Here’s a real world example a bit like that and like my KC-135 checkride scenario: TWA Flight 5787 - Wikipedia. One simulated failure plus one very unlucky actual failure plus some degree of confusion amongst the working crew = one uncontrollable jet and 5 dead crewmembers
