Crews find wreckage where aircraft carrying 3 people crashed off San Clemente Island (CA)

FPK1

FPK1

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Search and rescue crews have found wreckage near where a U.S. Navy contractor’s aircraft with three people aboard crashed Wednesday morning off the Channel Islands, according to officials.

Crews found a debris field a mile southwest of San Clemente Island, close to where a Phoenix Learjet plunged into the Pacific Ocean at about 7:55 a.m., according to Levi Read, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson. Coast Guard officials arrived at the scene at about 8:55 a.m.

Minimal info...

https://www.latimes.com/california/...rch-and-rescue-san-clemente-island-california
 
“Phoenix Learjet” as in Phoenix Air or a Lear based out of Phoenix. I know Phoenix Air does contract work for the Navy with a lot of intercept stuff off shore.
 
FPK1 said:
Search and rescue crews have found wreckage near where a U.S. Navy contractor’s aircraft with three people aboard crashed Wednesday morning off the Channel Islands, according to officials.

Crews found a debris field a mile southwest of San Clemente Island, close to where a Phoenix Learjet plunged into the Pacific Ocean at about 7:55 a.m., according to Levi Read, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson. Coast Guard officials arrived at the scene at about 8:55 a.m.

Minimal info...

https://www.latimes.com/california/...rch-and-rescue-san-clemente-island-california
Click to expand...
This one is not behind a paywall. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/...owned-plane-near-san-clemente-island/3150986/
 
Yeah it’s Phoenix Air. They’re based out here in GA. Half our med crew jumped ship to go work for them. Hoping for the best.
 
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Here’s the track. The second aircraft to the NE of the island was another L35, “FENIX02,” who seemed to initiate a search immediately after FENIX01’s track disappeared. This was not anywhere near a published approach/departure procedure for the NALF on the north end of the island.

Here are the METAR at the NALF for around that time, taken with a grain of salt because there are
microclimates around the island:

KNUC 101456Z 30013KT 10SM SCT016 OVC024 13/10 A3007 RMK AO2 SLP179 T01330100 53015 $

KNUC 101416Z 30011KT 10SM SCT016 OVC024 13/10 A3005 RMK T01330100
 

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strange, seems to just gently go down

anybody know what kind of work this contractor does?
 
readytocopy995 said:
strange, seems to just gently go down

anybody know what kind of work this contractor does?
Click to expand...

They have a contract with the Navy for training practice aerial intercepts with fighters, GCI stuff, EW, target towing, etc.

They make the big bucks with overseas air ambulance on DoD contracts. Say some DoD personnel is seriously ill in a foreign country and needs to be transported back to the states. They get the call. They also specialize in high risk communicable disease transports. If you recall the Ebola outbreak years ago when they showed gray Gulfstreams offloading patients from Africa, that’s them. Bunch of our med crew got hired on with them couple years back. Tax free money and spend 30 days overseas in Guam or Italy, then come home for 30 days. They hardly ever fly to.
 
readytocopy995 said:
strange, seems to just gently go down

anybody know what kind of work this contractor does?
Click to expand...

I know part of their mission is to simulate a cruise missile attack, so they can be flying very low at times.
 
Velocity173 said:
They have a contract with the Navy for training practice aerial intercepts with fighters, GCI stuff, EW, target towing, etc.

They make the big bucks with overseas air ambulance on DoD contracts. Say some DoD personnel is seriously ill in a foreign country and needs to be transported back to the states. They get the call. They also specialize in high risk communicable disease transports. If you recall the Ebola outbreak years ago when they showed gray Gulfstreams offloading patients from Africa, that’s them. Bunch of our med crew got hired on with them couple years back. Tax free money and spend 30 days overseas in Guam or Italy, then come home for 30 days. They hardly ever fly to.
Click to expand...

That and lots of military games off of both coasts, range clearing for various things that go boom, etc. They also had the Radio Marti contract with G1's configured to transmit into Cuba. Very lucrative contract, almost never flew the airplane. Once upon a time, they had the contract to take ass and trash to Midway. Their G1's were the ticket - decent speed, load carrying ability, and enough range to get there and back without a topoff.

The guys who did the Ebola flights said WTTE "We could have smuggled anything on those flights. No matter where we stopped for fuel (Azores, for instance) nobody wanted to get near the airplanes.
 
kyleb said:
That and lots of military games off of both coasts, range clearing for various things that go boom, etc. They also had the Radio Marti contract with G1's configured to transmit into Cuba. Very lucrative contract, almost never flew the airplane. Once upon a time, they had the contract to take *** and trash to Midway. Their G1's were the ticket - decent speed, load carrying ability, and enough range to get there and back without a topoff.

The guys who did the Ebola flights said WTTE "We could have smuggled anything on those flights. No matter where we stopped for fuel (Azores, for instance) nobody wanted to get near the airplanes.
Click to expand...

Can’t be all rainbows and unicorns for the med side though. We’ve had a few only do a year with them and either come back to us or back on the truck. Being gone overseas 6 months a year gets old no matter what the pay.
 
Velocity173 said:
It’s happened to them before. Kinda wonder with all the mods they do to these aircraft if it’s not related.

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19941214-1
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Reading the NTSB report, the modification required the installation of two 150 amp capacity DC circuits for the mission equipment, one from each generator. The accident aircraft was found to be miswired, with the circuits originating from the battery charging bus, which was powered by both generators and meant the available ampacity to the wiring between the bus and each circuit overcurrent device was doubled. I suspect the greatly increased available fault current overwhelmed the overcurrent device when a fault occurred or chafing on the wiring between the bus and the overcurrent device started the fire.

An emergency AD was issued when this was discovered, and seventeen other Phoenix Air 35s were found to also have improperly wired connections to the battery charging bus. Some wiring had exhibited chafing damage. The mechanics stated they just copied the way it had been done on airplanes they had inspected for guidance.

One would think it very possible the recent crash had a related issue, and having mission equipment on board powered from those two high ampacity circuits should have required frequent inspections of the installation, particularly considering the earlier crash and chafed wiring.

I can't imagine experiencing an inflight fire of that magnitude. May those crew members rest easy.
 
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