7/24/24 Ogden, UT area crash landing (video)

[FPK1]

Piper PA-34-220T Seneca III

Registration: N134MG

Amazing, just 2 with minor injuries!

Incident Piper PA-34-220T Seneca III N134MG, Wednesday 24 July 2024

The aircraft, a Piper PA-34-220T Seneca III, Registration N134MG, sustained substantial damage subsequent to impact with residential terrain in Weber County at Roy in the vicinity of Ogde...

asn.flightsafety.org

Video of crash landing, trees helped:

Police: Plane crashes in Roy neighborhood, two people hurt

Two people are hurt after a plane crashed in a Roy neighborhood Wednesday afternoon, police say.

ksltv.com

 

[Sluggo63]

Sounds like they ran out of fuel waiting for the fire trucks. How ironic.

 

[Kenny Phillips]

That is the biggest mess of a plane I've seen people hop out of, shaken but not stirred.

 

[geezer]

One of the big advantages of an engine out "crash" landing is the engines have cooled, and there is no fuel for a fire. The hope of getting out with no enveloping flame is amazingly good. Decelerating with more than one tree strike helps too, as long as the strikes are off center enough that the cockpit is not destroyed.

The pilot deserves some big credit for flying, all the way to the scene of the crash, they came in right side up, and shallow angle.

Lucky people.

 

[Flying Keys]

Sounds like they ran out of fuel waiting for the fire trucks. How ironic.

Crazy that they went from a reported 40 gallons to supposedly empty in about 10 minutes. Something’s not adding up.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

One of the big advantages of an engine out "crash" landing is the engines have cooled, and there is no fuel for a fire.

You could have a point, however I had thought the ignition source for a lot of fires was metal (steel parts) scraping or impacting hard surfaces?

 

[morleyz]

Crazy that they went from a reported 40 gallons to supposedly empty in about 10 minutes. Something’s not adding up.

I wonder if they reported how much fuel they started with. The flight was probably close to 2 hours when you add everything up to the 90ish minutes of ADS-B.

 

[Sluggo63]

Crazy that they went from a reported 40 gallons to supposedly empty in about 10 minutes. Something’s not adding up.

I fly a Seneca III. I use 25-28 gph for my fuel burn up high. I really can't tell you what it is with the gear hanging. But when they initially said they had 40 gallons/2 hours I was thinking to myself... that's not 2 hours.

Maybe they had it leaned back, and that's definitely a possibility, but next time I fly I'm going to have to peek at the fuel flow in level flight with the gear down.

 

[Flying Keys]

I fly a Seneca III. I use 25-28 gph for my fuel burn up high. I really can't tell you what it is with the gear hanging. But when they initially said they had 40 gallons/2 hours I was thinking to myself... that's not 2 hours.

Maybe they had it leaned back, and that's definitely a possibility, but next time I fly I'm going to have to peek at the fuel flow in level flight with the gear down.

Doing the math, if what they claimed (40 gallons remaining, including 5 gals unuseable) was true, in the ensuing 12 minutes between that communication and the crash, they would have had to have burned at a rate of 87.5gph per side, or 175gph total. I don’t think you can get a Seneca to do that at sea-level takeoff power.

I’m thinking either what they reported was incorrect (perhaps, as @morleyz said, they reported their initial fuel state, or they were just mistaken), or there was still fuel on board and somehow the props stopped turning and the airplane didn’t catch fire on the ground. My money is on the former, in whatever form it takes.