Crazy Plane Crash Video from Inside Cockpit

AdamZ said:
REALLY? They also shot up a blurb from the initial NTSB report that read that a down draft pushed the plane down. :mad2: Et Tu NTSB?
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Maybe the news report made it appear that these were the words of the NTSB. The whole part about the down draft pushing the plane down was from statements made by one of the passengers.

NTSB Identification: WPR12LA283
14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation
Accident occurred Saturday, June 30, 2012 in Stanley, ID
Aircraft: STINSON 108, registration: N773C
Injuries: 1 Serious,3 Minor.​

This is preliminary information, subject to change, and may contain errors. Any errors in this report will be corrected when the final report has been completed.​

On June 30, 2012, about 1405 mountain daylight time, a Stinson 108-3, N773C, was substantially damaged after impacting terrain during initial climb near the Bruce Meadows Airport (U63), Stanley, Idaho. The certified commercial pilot sustained serious injuries, and the three passengers sustained minor injuries. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the local flight, which was being operated in accordance with 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91, and a flight plan was not filed. The flight was destined for the McCall Municipal Airport (MYL), McCall, Idaho.

In a telephone interview with the National Transportation Safety Board investigator-in-charge, the passenger who occupied the right rear seat reported that after taking off the pilot flew straight out for about three or four minutes, but the airplane would only ascend to about 60 to 70 feet above the tops of the trees. The passenger stated that the airplane started losing altitude and experienced a downdraft, which was followed by its wings impacting the tops of the surrounding trees. The airplane subsequently came down through the trees before impacting terrain inverted and sliding to a stop.

The airplane was recovered to a secured storage facility for further examination.
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HLN ran it this morning with commentary suggesting it was the 50 year old airplane that was at fault (because it is old) rather than the dumbass pilot (who was even older).
 
flyingron said:
HLN ran it this morning with commentary suggesting it was the 50 year old airplane that was at fault (because it is old) rather than the dumbass pilot (who was even older).
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Surely this can't be incorrect.:rolleyes: The news media knows EVERYTHING about aviation don't they?:confused:

If the pilot would have mentioned "stall" the news media would have been saying that the engine died.
 
MBDiagMan said:
The preliminary report showed that he DID file a flight plan. I was really surprised at that.

Since he filed a flight plan, it's impossible to understand how anything went wrong.:confused: At least in the eyes of the press, that's probably what they think.:dunno:
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:eek:

That has got to be a first! :rofl:t
 
Based on the excerpt from the NTSB report that B. Ferguson posted, there was no flight plan filed. Why are people saying there was?

Not that it means anything. Oh wait, we're talking about the press reaction, so I guess it does. :crazy:
 
MBDiagMan said:
The link comes up but won't play. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for posting it by the way.:)
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Sorry about that. I was cutting & pasting from my iPad. Don't know what went wrong. Try this one.

abcnews.go.com/gma/t/index

Scroll down the right side of the page and you'll see the video.
 
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AdamZ said:
I didn't see GoPros, I saw the guys in the back with hand held cameras.
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In the video description he states that his camera is a GoPro. Also you can tell by the fish eye look of the video. The audio also has the signs of it being in a case.
 
ARFlyer said:
In the video description he states that his camera is a GoPro. Also you can tell by the fish eye look of the video. The audio also has the signs of it being in a case.
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You can also see him removing it from the battered case when they pick it up after the crash.
 
redtail said:
Sorry about that. I was cutting & pasting from my iPad. Don't know what went wrong. Try this one.

abcnews.go.com/gma/t/index

Scroll down the right side of the page and you'll see the video.
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Problem is that Chrome (and some other browsers), even with the latest updates, aren't capable of playing an m3u8 HTML5 stream.
 
Edited video was on the Today show this morning, too. Same spin as GMA, sounds like. They also had an interview this morning with the young lady from TX that walked into the prop last Christmas season. All in all, not a good day for GA promotion...
 
azure said:
Based on the excerpt from the NTSB report that B. Ferguson posted, there was no flight plan filed. Why are people saying there was?

Not that it means anything. Oh wait, we're talking about the press reaction, so I guess it does. :crazy:
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I don't recall there being cell coverage at Bruce Meadows, so filing a flight plan would be difficult. The only thing there is an outhouse, a couple of picnic tables and a bunch of cow pies. :yesnod:
 
Showed this to my girlfriend, who took about 5 small flights with me. Even she was shocked he continued the takeoff after that bounce.
 
So one could guess there was a chain of errors, or some missed opportunities to maybe safely end the flight before hitting the trees.

But, thankfully, the pilot did not stall/spin while trying to do a 180* and still attempt to maintain the low AGL altitude he was stuck at? I'm guessing it must take some discipline to continue forward flight knowing that you'll strike something in short time, vs. being tempted to do an "impossible turn"?

I'm only saying this assuming that at some point the pilot knew he was not going to outclimb the terrain.

I'm glad they survived, and some even walked away from it shortly after "landing".
 
Someone elsewhere posted that in some other forum a bunch of pilots started counting the number of distinct times the pilot still had an "out" and didn't take it. They came up with 11.

I don't know how (or where) they quantified that but it doesn't sound too far off to me. He ignored sign after sign that the airplane didn't want to fly, uphill, performing badly, into higher terrain, and had multitudes of options for a far better outcome.

I agree that about the only thing he did right was fly it into the trees and not pull into a stall/spin, but as little action as he was taking to save his own skin, I fear it was possibly just continued "frozen" behavior all the way to the crash site.

Definitely seems odd, and I wonder how much rest the pilot had and whether or not they were mildly hypoxic to begin with.

Really impossible to say, but it's just too much time straight and level just waiting for the aircraft to behave better with little upward "tests" of the elevator along the uphill path, seemingly trying to squeak out every tiny bit of climb the old girl had in her.

Very odd.
 
iWantWings said:
So one could guess there was a chain of errors, or some missed opportunities to maybe safely end the flight before hitting the trees.

But, thankfully, the pilot did not stall/spin while trying to do a 180* and still attempt to maintain the low AGL altitude he was stuck at? I'm guessing it must take some discipline to continue forward flight knowing that you'll strike something in short time, vs. being tempted to do an "impossible turn"?

I'm only saying this assuming that at some point the pilot knew he was not going to outclimb the terrain.

I'm glad they survived, and some even walked away from it shortly after "landing".
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To be honest, if I found myself in a situation like this where I cannot gain any altitude, my actions would be to level off and stop attempts to gain altitude to gain a bit of speed, and start very shallow turn towards clear area. And attempt to land there.
 
I think what we see in that video is the impairment brought on by shock. The pilot should have known as soon as he lifted off he was in trouble. Then as the plane refused to perform the realization that he was going to crash hit him and he basically went on "automatic", just flying the plane until he crashed. He was out of options and finally realized it. Call it denial, disbelief, resignation or whatever, his brain shut down. He wasn't communicating, he wasn't trying to get more performance out of the plane; even at that late moment leaning the mixture might have saved the flight. He was detached from reality, just sitting there waiting. I hope on reflection he realizes where the fault lies. "Downdraft" my a**.
 
I only watched it to the crash since I'm hotspotting off my phone, but that was funny.:rofl:
 
Threefingeredjack said:
I think what we see in that video is the impairment brought on by shock. The pilot should have known as soon as he lifted off he was in trouble.
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If you watch it carefully, he lifted off TWICE, that's the point where I realized he was just a passenger.

Hope and Change didn't work. ;) (Sorry can I get away with that joke? Heh. Naughty me. Was that my outside voice?)

We've all read Bob's stories of "hopping the fence" to get a longer ground roll at his little airport out west, but this guy rolled for thousands of feet, lifted off, set down and then rolled some more.

Was he thinking he'd magically lose 100 lbs of load while rolling?!

That airplane wasn't going flying. There was no indication that it had the performance necessary to clear that rising terrain ahead.

On the first touchdown the proper solution would have been to chop the throttle and stop if you even made it that far.

The chop and stop should have happened before the first liftoff, really.

There may have been a downdraft, I won't judge that. But when you're already at stall speed with no altitude, headed into rising terrain and obstacles, it's over long before the downdraft matters.

The downdraft will just choose the crash site for you.
 
I wonder how many times he's been there and what the weather was like. If he has taken off from there on cold days with the same guys, he just didn't think DA would be as much a factor as it was. Of that, he wouldn't be the first. He should have aborted the takeoff roll, taxied back to parking, and waited until it was a whole lot cooler, even if it was tomorrow morning.
They were extremely fortunate as there were a group of retired EMTs and firefighters camping nearby.
 
I can see the settle back down then lift off again scenario happening. After that though, the airplane is not climbing at all going into rising terrain with trees and still over a huge extremely long tract of unobstructed terrain... What is a pilot thinking that says continue instead of pull throttle and set down. Even if it's break the airplane rough terrain (doesn't look like it's that bad) that is still better than treetops at flying speed.
 
I never checked when this accident occurred. However I wonder if he's back in the air or if an accident like that could pretty much end his time as a pilot.
 
Six weeks ago. I first read about it on BCP.

LJS1993 said:
I never checked when this accident occurred. However I wonder if he's back in the air or if an accident like that could pretty much end his time as a pilot.
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Scuttlebutt from another forum is that the pilot flipped a C150/152 on a snow-covered runway earlier this year and has wrecked at least one other aircraft.

I can't corroborate any of it. But found it interesting.
 
I see a lot of comments and speculation in this thread about what the pilot did wrong and how most pilots would never do this. I think this is a mistake as I think it creates a great loss of a learning opportunity and shows a lot of "invulnerability" attitude.

A lot of comments about the airplane being overloaded. However I don't see any evidence that this was the case and my initial running of the numbers show it is quite possible it was not overloaded.

Lots of comments on density altitude and performance, however I don't see any numbers to back this up. As I recall the Stinson has very limited performance numbers available making it very difficult to predict if the conditions would or would not allow a safe take off. The pilot likely failed here in not learning the airplanes actual performance capabilities in a safer environment and then not allowing enough of a safety factor. Pilots should learn there aircraft actual performance numbers even if they do have good data, as many will not meet these numbers any more.

Pilots tend to be optimists. I recall a comment form a former F-4 pilot that the back seaters were almost always given control of the ejection seats as it was determined the the pilots tended to be way too optimistic and would wait to long to eject. I really doubt that many pilots would have recognized a crash was impending and have reacted differently. The plane had lifted off and obviously had a positive climb rate. I suspect that most pilots would have acted just like this pilot did continuing to climb as best he could until the crash, if they did not slow to behind the power curve (he might have) and/or then stall it. The Stinson would probably not spin unless improperly loaded.

I have heard the comment the the pilot/passenger stated the encountered a downdraft. I think this very possible. I just spent the last two weeks flying my sailplane about a 100 miles southwest of the site of the accident. There have been several days that I have towed for a couple miles while not climbing or even losing altitude due to down drafts, likely wave or rotor in combination with thermal activity. In the glider I often see up and down drafts in excess of 1500ft/mi in the afternoons. The are what give me he 5 to 6 hour flights in the glider. This is one of the reasons (that can easily be forgotten) that flying in the mountains is usually done in the early mornings

In summary I agree that flying a fully loaded relatively low power aircraft in the mountains on a hot afternoon was a bad idea. It didn't leave much of a safety margin.
But I do think it was a much easier trap to get into that most pilots here are appreciating.
They may have planned on leaving much earlier when it was cooler, it would be a hard call to spend the night or even make two flights to get out. Especially when you think the plane will get out ok, thinking its only a little warmer than we planned.
I suspect there was little the pilot could do after they passed the abort point on the runway that would have resulted in a crash.

Hypoxia and/or dehydration could have been a factor.


Lessons to be learned.
Especially in the Mountains,leave larger then normal safety margins.
Learn you and your airplanes actual performance capabilities, don't depend on the book.
Then practice to insure you and your airplanes performance capabilities don't deteriorate.
Don't underestimate hypoxia or dehydration.
Learn from these accidents, the pilot may have been an idiot, but most of us have our idiotic moments, use these accidents to recognize them before we become a newspaper article or a youtube video.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
So, in summary you agree he screwed up after a lecture about invulnerability attitudes? ;)
 
brcase said:
I see a lot of comments and speculation in this thread about what the pilot did wrong and how most pilots would never do this. I think this is a mistake as I think it creates a great loss of a learning opportunity and shows a lot of "invulnerability" attitude.

A lot of comments about the airplane being overloaded. However I don't see any evidence that this was the case and my initial running of the numbers show it is quite possible it was not overloaded.

Lots of comments on density altitude and performance, however I don't see any numbers to back this up. As I recall the Stinson has very limited performance numbers available making it very difficult to predict if the conditions would or would not allow a safe take off. The pilot likely failed here in not learning the airplanes actual performance capabilities in a safer environment and then not allowing enough of a safety factor. Pilots should learn there aircraft actual performance numbers even if they do have good data, as many will not meet these numbers any more.

Pilots tend to be optimists. I recall a comment form a former F-4 pilot that the back seaters were almost always given control of the ejection seats as it was determined the the pilots tended to be way too optimistic and would wait to long to eject. I really doubt that many pilots would have recognized a crash was impending and have reacted differently. The plane had lifted off and obviously had a positive climb rate. I suspect that most pilots would have acted just like this pilot did continuing to climb as best he could until the crash, if they did not slow to behind the power curve (he might have) and/or then stall it. The Stinson would probably not spin unless improperly loaded.

I have heard the comment the the pilot/passenger stated the encountered a downdraft. I think this very possible. I just spent the last two weeks flying my sailplane about a 100 miles southwest of the site of the accident. There have been several days that I have towed for a couple miles while not climbing or even losing altitude due to down drafts, likely wave or rotor in combination with thermal activity. In the glider I often see up and down drafts in excess of 1500ft/mi in the afternoons. The are what give me he 5 to 6 hour flights in the glider. This is one of the reasons (that can easily be forgotten) that flying in the mountains is usually done in the early mornings

In summary I agree that flying a fully loaded relatively low power aircraft in the mountains on a hot afternoon was a bad idea. It didn't leave much of a safety margin.
But I do think it was a much easier trap to get into that most pilots here are appreciating.
They may have planned on leaving much earlier when it was cooler, it would be a hard call to spend the night or even make two flights to get out. Especially when you think the plane will get out ok, thinking its only a little warmer than we planned.
I suspect there was little the pilot could do after they passed the abort point on the runway that would have resulted in a crash.

Hypoxia and/or dehydration could have been a factor.


Lessons to be learned.
Especially in the Mountains,leave larger then normal safety margins.
Learn you and your airplanes actual performance capabilities, don't depend on the book.
Then practice to insure you and your airplanes performance capabilities don't deteriorate.
Don't underestimate hypoxia or dehydration.
Learn from these accidents, the pilot may have been an idiot, but most of us have our idiotic moments, use these accidents to recognize them before we become a newspaper article or a youtube video.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
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Did you watch the same video???

4 adults in a Stinson 108. Yeah, he might not have been over gross, but if he wasn't, he was pretty darn close.

And there was no 'air pocket'. The damn plane never really climbed in the first place. The only thing the guy did right was hit the trees instead of stalling/spinning it in like the CO L-19 video.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
From my extremely limited perspective, he didn't appear to get much higher than ground effect, which to my inexperienced mind points to DA and weight. Not sure what his flaps were set at.
 
brcase said:
Lots of comments on density altitude and performance, however I don't see any numbers to back this up. As I recall the Stinson has very limited performance numbers available making it very difficult to predict if the conditions would or would not allow a safe take off. The pilot likely failed here in not learning the airplanes actual performance capabilities in a safer environment and then not allowing enough of a safety factor. Pilots should learn there aircraft actual performance numbers even if they do have good data, as many will not meet these numbers any more.
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Got this from AvWeb. They also have a video analysis on their site. Don't have any aircraft performance numbers though.

"The aircraft came down near Bruce Meadows airstrip near Stanley, Idaho. The strip offers 5,000 feet of grass and dirt at an elevation of 6,370 feet. Weather at the time of the accident included an altimeter setting of 30.00 inches Hg with a temperature of 27-degrees Centigrade and a dew point of three. The observations result in a density altitude of 9,167 feet.
 
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redtail said:
Got this from AvWeb. They also have a video analysis on their site. Don't have any aircraft performance numbers though.

"The aircraft came down near Bruce Meadows airstrip near Stanley, Idaho. The strip offers 5,000 feet of grass and dirt at an elevation of 6,370 feet. Weather at the time of the accident included an altimeter setting of 30.00 inches Hg with a temperature of 27-degrees Centigrade and a dew point of three. The observations result in a density altitude of 9,167 feet.
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The Colorado Pilots Association high altitude airport operations/mountain flying course recommends no flight between 1 pm & 4 pm in the summer and no more than 90% of max gross at any time for light aircraft. Obviously those aren't hard-n-fast rules but they are pretty good guides. As always, YMWV.

Edit: That's a very low altimeter setting for that elevation.
 
Not getting a warm fuzzy feeling about my impeding trip to the Idaho back country this week. Hoping my Turbo and only my 100 pound son on board will fair better than he did with four adult men.
I have done my homework at nausiam for this trip. But if the plane won't fly, you can bet I'm getting it down before the trees. Geez.....
 
andybean said:
Not getting a warm fuzzy feeling about my impeding trip to the Idaho back country this week. Hoping my Turbo and only my 100 pound son on board will fair better than he did with four adult men.
I have done my homework at nausiam for this trip. But if the plane won't fly, you can bet I'm getting it down before the trees. Geez.....
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Just remember that if it isn't flying by the second attempt to lift off......:D
 
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