I’ve flown into and out of SMO (admittedly, mostly in helicopter), and almost all of my fixed-wing time has been in Skyhawks. I’m not clear how you can flip a Skyhawk at that airport. (Actually, I’m not sure how you can flip a Skyhawk, unless it’s on a wet grass field or a beach.)
FWIW, N819KS is a 2000 Cessna 172R.
Specific details:
Just stream-of-consciousness spit-balling here, not an essay.
Get crossed up in a crosswind, panic and stand on one rudder + brake. Have the nose gear wheel fall off & the strut digs in.
Agree that SMO is pretty much one big rectangle of asphalt/concrete these days, but there’s probably some big seams or drainage ruts or something that if you get crossways enough to the runway you dig in something and flip.
But with no crunched wingtips or stab tips, all 3 gear intact, and the prop still attached it’s a mystery.
One of my Dad’s C-150s ended up on its back after the not so bright PP taxied right up behind the left engine of an Air Cal 737-200. Who then gassed it to cross the threshold of one runway on the way to the other. Instant flip.
No 737s at SMO, but if he got too close to a large enough helicopter lifting off plus some wind that might do it.
Looking at the lead pic in your cite, there is a suspicious gouge / skid mark coming up from the bottom of the pic and ending near the nose of the aircraft. If that was from this airplane, his path was about 80 degrees off from the runway alignment.
Looking more closely at the pic in high zoom, I think maybe his left gear leg is damaged. Sorta like the axle assembly came partly off the leg or the leg snapped just above the axle. The wheel & tire are still attached but the spatial relationship between the leg & wheel/tire look very different from the right one.
If so … he lands, unaware anything is wrong. Either the gear fails on touchdown or shortly after. Now he’s skidding on the stump of steel on the left side with normal tire & brake on the right side. Real quickly he’s going to be veering off the left side of the runway. The gear “trips” over a small obstacle, perhaps even a runway light, and he’s flipped.
All guesswork, but not insane.
‘But have you ever seen a runway so wide?’
My guess on the crash: Pilot lost control on the runway somehow, maybe through bad crosswind control or something. Plane veers to the left and skids, passenger-side wingtip digs in, and the plane flops onto its back by nose and wingtip. That kind of rollover can do surprisingly little damage, and can happen at relatively low speed.
Or maybe he veered off, the wing came up, and a strong crosswind flipped the plane.
You see a lot of these kinds of accidents with tailcraggers. It looks like a fairly classic ground loop result. It takes real skill to pull that off in a 172, though. Even an RG.
Heh. My old home field had a 200 ft X 15,000 ft runway. Some of our planes could have taken off or landed 90 degrees across it, at least with a breezy crosswind on the nose.
When they closed the field permanently, I wasn’t notified and still had my plane parked there. The runway was actually blocked, and they told me I’d have to dismantle the plane and truck it out. I asked if I could take off on the taxiway. The controllers were surprised and then said, “well, we’re good with it if your plane can get airborne in that distance.”
The taxiway was 100’ wide and 7500 ft long. I could have done several touch and goes on it before flying away. You could fit four copies of our local GA field’s runway into that taxiway.
We often joke “That runway looks kinda short.” Mandatory rejoinder: “Yeah, but it’s real wide!”. Har har har. “Do you like gladiator movies?” etc.
One of the odd things about operating in the Caribbean is the large number of airports that are one runway, no taxiways and a rectangular ramp connected to the runway by two short stubs of pavement at the ends of the ramp. Depending on where the ramp is along the runway, most or all landings, and 100% of takeoffs, involve a back-taxi and 180 turn on the runway.
It’s weird the first few times you pull onto the runway, turn towards an end just say, 2,000 feet away and push up the power to hustle down there. Then brake, pivot, and go. In a Cessna? Sure. In even a small Boeing? Kinda weird at first. Works good, and I/we have a lot more fun down there than banging around the more “civilized” big-city USA.
Have you flown into St. Bart’s? That’s quite the runway. I haven’t, but I have seen it from the water.
Always a fun watch:
Heh, as soon as I got to that line of LSL’s post, I was going to do this!
“OK, glidepath set at 3-0 degrees for final approach.”
“Uh, you added an extra 0 there?”
“Nope.”
I think if LSLGuy attempted to land one of his regular rigs there, they wouldn’t be flying out again…
And then there’s Juancho E. Irausquin Airport on the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba, which makes the St. Bart’s runway look positively spacious! Runway length 400 m (1,312 ft) and for added fun, there is an ocean cliff on both ends. The largest aircraft routinely landing there is a DHC-6 Twin Otter STOL which can just barely make it without falling into the sea.
Never been there by air, land, nor sea. Have seen some of the airport vids. Yeah, at ~2100ft runway length we’d get going just fast enough (or slow enough) to make a very impressive belly flop off the far end. John Wayne Orange County near Los Angeles is 5700 feet long and is very, very close to the minimum practical safe runway length for a current-generation 737.
Almost got to go to St. Kitts for the first time a couple days ago, but somebody else snagged that prize and I got Cincinnati instead. Oh well. St. Kitts has a completely normal runway by Caribbean tourist destination standards and handles widebodies to/from Europe regularly.
I the '70s, my dad was stationed at Barstow-Daggett Airport (DAG). IIRC, the main runway is 6,000 feet. I think it was a 737 that Alabama Governor George Wallace was in when it needed a place to land in a hurry. It landed at DAG. My dad, a Flight Service Specialist, got a document making him an Alabama Colonel. Either my sister has it in a box somewhere, or she tossed when dad died. I remember seeing it still in its (somewhat crushed) tube in the garage in the '80s.
I’ve been to St. Kitts, but didn’t fly in or out, so I can’t comment on the airport. If you have the chance, go. Head over to Nevis and check out Sunshine’s Beach Bar and Grill.
737s are built in Renton, WA. The airport there (where I flew my first solo) is only 5,382 ft; you can take off with a pretty light fuel load if you’re only going as far as Boeing Field. I remember hearing somewhere that in the early days of the 747 program, before there was a paint facility at the factory in Everett, Boeing would fly 747s to Renton to paint them.
An empty airliner with enough fuel aboard for a planned 30 minute flight is a very sprightly performer compared to one full of people & baggage and fuel for hours.
To the point that folks sometimes get in trouble launching a very light jet. Stuff just happens at a very different pace and it’s easy to get behind. Flap limit speeds get exceeded, silly climb angles ensue, etc.
As an example, we do run 737s though a couple of airports with 5500-5700 foot runways in good weather places near sea level. But Key West at ~5100 feet is just too short for routine ops w routine loads.
Perhaps unexpectedly, the bigger the plane e.g. 747 the better the light performance. The reason amounts to the difference in relative fuel and payload fraction versus empty weight for a big jet. Short ferry flights end up with big jets weighing a smaller percentage of their maximum weight than smaller jets do. Since all the modern jets are sized for the same length runways at max weight, that means you can ferry a 747 into/out of places you can’t fit a 737 into. Odd but true.
I chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D9PlMdQwDcan believe that. Having flown at Renton, though, it doesn’t look like there’s enough room to turn a 747 around. Maybe there was more room in the late-'60s. South of the runway is a pretty built up area, so I think they had to land southbound and takeoff northbound.
It wasn’t entirely without incident.
Ouch! It’s often the case that one brick short of the proverbial “Brick One” is a LOT worse than 10 bricks long. Don’t do that.
Per this info
the Renton runway is (now) 200 feet wide. Which is wider than the 45m = 148 foot current international standard for generic runways.
I don’t have any 747 manuals, but the 777-300 of about the same external dimensions can make a 180 in that width. In fact 185 feet is the no-slack perfect performance number, so that leaves a whopping 15 feet or 7 feet on each side for less than ideal pilot or airplane performance. I wouldn’t try that without a spotter truck to be sure, but I don’t work for Boeing.
Per the PDF airfield diagram at my cite, the taxiways at the ends connect to the runway with large fillets that would give a bunch of extra room for a turnaround. They aren’t formal “hammerheads”, but they’d serve the same function. As would the dual highspeed exit taxiways at about the 1/3rd and 2/3rd points from each end.
Still, especially when the 747 was brand new and was a quantum leap in size over any/everything else ever built, that had to feel like docking an tug boat in a swimming pool or parking a semi-truck in a 2-car garage.
Heh. Reminds me that, during Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s famous 1864 march through Georgia, his army spent a good deal of time making its way through swamps. One soldier is said to have joked, “Looks like ol’ Uncle Billy has us crossing this river lengthwise!”
We watched what I assume was a brand new C-130 take off from Boeing field. I was thinking to myself, that plane’s wayyyy too big for this field! But it was new, with no load, and probably light fuel. Looked like it was airborne in 500’. What is the minimum takeoff length for a C-130?
150 feet:
On 17 October 1980, the first fully modified Credible Sport aircraft was delivered. In a 29 October 1980 test flight, which involved landings and take offs using the rocket systems, the aircraft achieved nose gear off the ground after a take off roll of a mere 10 feet, and full take off after only 150 feet.
Okay, fine, it wasn’t exactly a stock C-130…
Even 150 feet seems pessimistic:
There’s no real takeoff roll to speak of. It just… goes up.