Engine issues seem to always be the top speculative item. It was a brand new airplane, chances of a non-pilot induced mechanical failure is exceptionally small. My guess is just more incompetent pilots flying something beyond their experience level.
Yes I know. Chances of it in this situation are strikingly small.
It looks as if they were less than a minute to the runway.
Sounds like they have some black box like things. What all do they record?
In the G3/G5 Cirri I was flying you could bring the SD card home and get a load of CSV data.. impressive all the parameters it captured! It records virtually every engine parameter and most pilot actions. If that is intact and available it should readily show if the engine was a likely culprit.. and give clues if it was pilot induced at all
I'm sure that with the equivalent price of a house under your butt, it would be extremely tempting to hold off pulling the handle ... until it's too late.
I think that's the deal. Most of our planes we CAN dead-stick, and less than 1% of my flights have been with a parachute as an option.
Kind of an inflammatory comment considering it was a Cirrus employee that was killed on a delivery flight.
Or they're not. My employer recently installed a brand new engine from Continental on one of our fleet planes. Oil pump sheared at 25 hours. Pilot noticed on takeoff and turned back. Metal all through the engine.
Yeah, and the flip side is, the more experience you have, the more you might feel you could stretch something a little farther than the other guy in hopes of saving it - and go a little past the point of no return without realizing it.
That is true. Experience can be a both a blessing and a curse.
Suppose we’ll find out when they complete the investigation.
I think the point was they are likely not over their head due to it being a Cirrus. I’m reasonably sure they have type specific training,,,,… but who knows??
Feels less like a crash, and more like a 'wow that was close' - at least if I put myself in the shoes of someone with a dead engine hoping to glide to a runway. You're absolutely right, a big field, etc., might be a better option vs riding that Vg wave and praying to make it. But, if you do make it to the runway you can just get out.. and the plane is probably going to be okay
This might be training / pilot dependent but at least when I was flying and doing my CSIP check out; yes. However the exercise of "what would you do" was more conversational and basically boiled down to "try not to die". If you're coming in steep (the flaps work great to slow you down) you could always try raising the flaps a notch or two to reduce drag and extend that glide. Otherwise if you can't make the runway and you're below caps in a congested-no-place-to-land area basically don't stall it and try to hit the ground with as little energy as possible. It would really suck.
I guess I’ll just go ahead and say it. I had to make this very choice last Sunday afternoon.
What struck me though was that another minute and a half of the engine limping and it might have been in a place where the options were a lot less pretty - way more trees - and the temptation to stretch the glide would have been that much stronger. One of my takeaways is that with a very sick engine you might be better off staying over fields or intentionally making a precautionary landing before it gets worse rather than continuing over a less friendly area.
