Holy Smokes!

tonycondon

tonycondon

Gastons CRO (Chief Dinner Reservation Officer)
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Tony
http://www.semissourian.com/story/1188041.html

Chip, you hear anything about this?

Ive never understood why people fly pressurized up that high without knowing the status of oxygen system. Seems SOP on most business jets is that if one crew member leaves the flight deck then the other goes on O2 no matter what. Above FL250 or so though I dont see the difference. If the pressurization craps out on you or you have to depressurize you wont probably will pass out before you can find your mask and get it on with O2 running, regardless if there is another guy in the other seat.

At any rate, these guys are lucky to be alive.
 
They used up an inordinate share of luck. That's amazing and scary.

I wish there were more pics of the plane - I would like to see those wings - "an inverted v-shape", indeed!
 
When I was a lot younger I went through altitude chamber training at Shepard AFB and I remember that pulling the mask off at 23,000 wasn't that big of a deal. It took about 20 minutes to feel my legs tingle and another 10 minutes to slow down on the little board game we used to test reaction. But at 43,000, it only took 8 seconds before blacking out.

So my question is, at 27,000, even without oxygen, shouldn't they have had ample time to get down to a lower altitude before feeling any signs of hypoxia?
 
JohnAJohnson said:
When I was a lot younger I went through altitude chamber training at Shepard AFB and I remember that pulling the mask off at 23,000 wasn't that big of a deal. It took about 20 minutes to feel my legs tingle and another 10 minutes to slow down on the little board game we used to test reaction. But at 43,000, it only took 8 seconds before blacking out.

So my question is, at 27,000, even without oxygen, shouldn't they have had ample time to get down to a lower altitude before feeling any signs of hypoxia?
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_Useful_Consciousness

the difference between 23,000 and 27,000 is the difference between 10min and 2.5 minutes. air gets thin fast. everyone reacts differently.
 
Here's a video on this. I posted Tony's article on AvSig and several folks asked why the crew depressurized the cabin. The checklist on many planes says to increase the differential to help support the front panel. There are two for this reason. Of course, if the broken panel depressurized the plane, that's another matter.

http://www.kfvs.com

Best,

Dave
 
this seems to be what other king air pilots i have asked have said. seems that the windows are triple pane and any one can hold against the pressure differential. pilots definitely made it more interesting than it had to be. thanks for the video dave!
 
tonycondon said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_Useful_Consciousness

the difference between 23,000 and 27,000 is the difference between 10min and 2.5 minutes. air gets thin fast. everyone reacts differently.
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In a previous life, we used to do semi-routine HAHO insertions and would normally egress around FL320--that way your airplane looks like just another commercial flight. You definitely have to have an ox bottle strapped to you. Aside from hypoxia, you also worry about hypothermia which will exacerbate the effects of hypoxia.

I know guys who have had malfunctioning ox bottles who DID pass out shortly after deploying their main and who did finally wake back up many, many thousands of feet lower and with a splitting headache.

Worst times was when you'd plug your O2 line into the onboard ox on a C-130 when the a/c was depressurizing before lowering the back gate. . . . and no oxygen would come out. You had to suck on your ox bottle and PRAY that you would have enough to keep your senses in check before clearing 10,000.

As fast as they guys were descending (as evidenced by the structural damage to the aircraft), my opinion is that it is nothing short of divine intervention that they not only woke up, but woke up in a state that allowed them to think clearly, control the aircraft and land it--and then walk away.

I'll tell what would be interesting to ME. . . and that would be sitting in Heaven when these two fellows walk through the Pearly Gates and hearing what the Lord has to say and how He recalled that day when they were all in that airplane.

Yessiree.

Regards.

-JD
 
CowboyPilot said:
I'll tell what would be interesting to ME. . . and that would be sitting in Heaven when these two fellows walk through the Pearly Gates and hearing what the Lord has to say and how He recalled that day when they were all in that airplane.
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Amen to that one!
 
etsisk said:
I wish there were more pics of the plane - I would like to see those wings - "an inverted v-shape", indeed!
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I'm trying to figure out how that happened... I mean, they must have exceeded Vne inverted or something! :hairraise:
 
From the video it appeared the wing and tail damage were from a pull out. The wing crease shown is a compression failure. I question the reason for depressurizing, too, but I wasn't there.

What's this with planes flying to FL from AR? Last week we had a Piper Malibu from AR belly in north of Jackson, MS while headed to Destin, FL.

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007701290351
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I'm trying to figure out how that happened... I mean, they must have exceeded Vne inverted or something! :hairraise:
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Not inverted, from what I saw in the video. The wing was wrinkled on the top side, just outboard of the engine. That's exactly what one would expect from an over-g. The engine weight will be pushing down, the wingtips are pushing up (hard). The top skin buckles in compression, just like Steve said.

I think Steve is probably right about the wing being damaged during the pullup (no extra g unless somebody's pulling). The only thing that makes me wonder is most of the tail is missing. Could they pull up that hard without effective elevators? Or was there a big pitching moment while the elevator was departing the aircraft and this damaged the wing?

My guess would be that the elevator departed due to flutter. They would have felt it if it departed due to the pull up.

I can't wait to read the NTSB report.

Chris
 
I would surmise the elevator surfaces and the left horizontal stabilizer departed during the pull up after the main wing was deflected, possibly saving the wing. It would be interesting to know the ultimate design load for the main spar vs the horizontal stabilizer.

After the pieces separated there was still some tail surface area remaining that was effective at higher speeds, but as noted, became ineffective when power was reduced during landing approach. Being a t-tail affected the responsiveness, also, imho, at lower speed.


cwyckham said:
The only thing that makes me wonder is most of the tail is missing. Could they pull up that hard without effective elevators? Or was there a big pitching moment while the elevator was departing the aircraft and this damaged the wing?


Chris
Click to expand...
 
They seem to have depressurized rapidly, to avoid the potential for blowing out the shattered window and being sucked out with it. I wonder why they did not just reduce pressure so they could relieve the pressure on the window but still have some O2 available. I assume they were pressurized to about the 8000 foot level. Reducing pressure to the 12,000 foot level would have helped. In addition to everything else, I imagine their ears were hurting bigtime.
 
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Friend of mine up at Cape sent these to me. My father lives there, so I know a couple of folks at the airport.
 

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Watch this plane show up on E-bay with "minor damage, easy repair" in a year or two after the insurance has paid off and the investigations are done. Does anyone have any idea what would have fractured the windshield like that? How many birds get up to 27,000 feet? I don't see a point of impact.
 
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cwyckham said:
Not inverted, from what I saw in the video. The wing was wrinkled on the top side, just outboard of the engine. That's exactly what one would expect from an over-g.
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OK. I hadn't seen the video, but they said something about the wings being in an "inverted V" shape, which led me to believe that they'd managed to make the dihedral into negative dihedral. :hairraise:

Looking at the pictures Brent posted, I agree with your analysis.
 
Dwight B. Van Zanen said:
They seem to have depressurized rapidly, to avoid the potential for blowing out the shattered window and being sucked out with it. I wonder why they did not just reduce pressure so they could relieve the pressure on the window but still have some O2 available. I assume they were pressurized to about the 8000 foot level. Reducing pressure to the 12,000 foot level would have helped. In addition to everything else, I imagine their ears were hurting bigtime.
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Dwight:

The King Air checklist (and many jets) actually advise one to increase the pressure differential to help hold the remaining panes in. There is tremendous pressure on that front pane as the wind from forward airspeed hit it. Depressurizing them actually increased the differential (removed pressure from inside that was helping to hold it). These guys may have actually made a situation that wasn't too bad, unmanageable.

John Deakin commented on this on another board. He has lost more than one windshield and had the main hold (there are actually two or three layers on these.) Made a routine descent 15 minutes later in a 747.

The King Air also comes with quick donning oxygen masks. Doesn't sound like their oxygen was working or that they knew how to use it. If the pressure differential could be maintained in the plane, they could have descended without oxygen.

Of course, we don't know exactly what happened, but if it occurred as the article described, these guys turned what could have been a manageable situation into an emergency they were very luck to walk away from.

Best,

Dave
 
King Air windshields are triple-paned. Loss of the outer pane does not compromise the pressure hull, by design. The FBO here changes King Air windows out routinely. The quality control appears to be variable regarding transparent components on these aircraft.
 
Dave Siciliano said:
The King Air also comes with quick donning oxygen masks. Doesn't sound like their oxygen was working or that they knew how to use it. If the pressure differential could be maintained in the plane, they could have descended without oxygen.

Of course, we don't know exactly what happened, but if it occurred as the article described, these guys turned what could have been a manageable situation into an emergency they were very luck to walk away from.

Best,

Dave
Click to expand...

First off, I'm glad these guys survived. But they were lucky. Damn lucky.

Secondly, something ain't right. Know what I mean?

Dave, you and I flew and rode in some of the most questionable equipment ever to take flight since the Sopwith Camel back when we were jungle hopping, and even when we'd get shot up and lose an engine or hydraulics or whatever system Charlie could screw up, we never had the chain of one failure after another like these guys described.

As I kept reading that account, my mind and experience kept telling me, "Son, something ain't right about this."

I reckon we'll see, but. . .

Regards.

-JD
 
CowboyPilot said:
First off, I'm glad these guys survived. But they were lucky. Damn lucky.

Secondly, something ain't right. Know what I mean?

Dave, you and I flew and rode in some of the most questionable equipment ever to take flight since the Sopwith Camel back when we were jungle hopping, and even when we'd get shot up and lose an engine or hydraulics or whatever system Charlie could screw up, we never had the chain of one failure after another like these guys described.

As I kept reading that account, my mind and experience kept telling me, "Son, something ain't right about this."

I reckon we'll see, but. . .

Regards.

-JD
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That's the track I'm on JD. Don't want to be critical, we all make mistakes. But, a plane reading of what they said ----what did Crosby Stills say about it---Really makes me wonder.

Best,

Dave
 
What if something else caused the decompression they don't want to talk about; and the windshield, tail, and wing damage are all from a +Vne dive and recovery?
 
Dave Siciliano said:
That's the track I'm on JD. Don't want to be critical, we all make mistakes. But, a plane reading of what they said ----what did Crosby Stills say about it---Really makes me wonder. Best,Dave
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what then, they were trying some of those spins and loops they'd always heard about? :eek:
 
Dwight B. Van Zanen said:
What if something else caused the decompression they don't want to talk about; and the windshield, tail, and wing damage are all from a +Vne dive and recovery?
Click to expand...

Until there is a full accident report, we won't know all the details. The news article above said the crew depressurized the plane. That's not what the emergency procedure calls for. If this happened, they made a manageable situation worse.

The crew is also supposed to check to see if their oxygen is in working order--that's also on my P-Baron checklist.

If things were different than how they've been described, then, perhaps they did what was needed.

Best,

Dave
 
Dwight B. Van Zanen said:
They seem to have depressurized rapidly, to avoid the potential for blowing out the shattered window and being sucked out with it. I wonder why they did not just reduce pressure so they could relieve the pressure on the window but still have some O2 available. I assume they were pressurized to about the 8000 foot level. Reducing pressure to the 12,000 foot level would have helped. In addition to everything else, I imagine their ears were hurting bigtime.
Click to expand...

For what it's worth, there's no chance that either pilot would get sucked out the windshield of a de-pressurized King Air--especially while strapped in.

We went through countless emergency-depressurization drills for our HAHO and HALO missions, and we did it at the commercial airline flight levels. Not one of us ops guys ever got sucked out the back end of that Hercie Bird or Starlifter.

TOSSED out is another story.:D

The whole "getting sucked out" of a plane that rapidly loses pressurization is largely another typical "informed media" myth. There can be a vaccum effect near the opening/hole, etc similar to what happens when you lose a fuel cap, but that can happen regardless of ambient atmospheric pressure.

Regards.

-JD
 
CowboyPilot said:
For what it's worth, there's no chance that either pilot would get sucked out the windshield of a de-pressurized King Air--especially while strapped in.

We went through countless emergency-depressurization drills for our HAHO and HALO missions, and we did it at the commercial airline flight levels. Not one of us ops guys ever got sucked out the back end of that Hercie Bird or Starlifter.

TOSSED out is another story.:D

The whole "getting sucked out" of a plane that rapidly loses pressurization is largely another typical "informed media" myth. There can be a vaccum effect near the opening/hole, etc similar to what happens when you lose a fuel cap, but that can happen regardless of ambient atmospheric pressure.

Regards.

-JD
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I wondered about that. However, there was that case of an airline captain who got sucked out the front window during climbout in Britain a few years back. His foot got caught on the yoke, and a steward held onto his feet while the FO landed with him plastered accross the front of the aircraft. I don't know what altitude they were at. I assume he wasn't strapped in.

Chris
 
What they were reported to have said was they decompressed to prevent the windshield faling, which they expected would kill them. The "sucked out" was my interpretation of what they expected to happen. If they were worried about the window being blown in by ram pressure, it makes no sense for them to reduce cabin pressure. Whatever they were thinking, from what was said here earlier they may have had an unjustified level of concern about the windshield. They seem to have had a lot of hours in this aircraft, so should have known the information others here reported is in the manual for it, and should have had a working O2 system. Although, with an apparently failing windshield right in front of you, I can see that someone may not take a lot of time to evaluate the situation before taking some kind of action that "seemed like a good idea at the time." A lot of accidents come down to a very few seconds of stupidity, by otherwise smart people.
 
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cwyckham said:
I wondered about that. However, there was that case of an airline captain who got sucked out the front window during climbout in Britain a few years back. His foot got caught on the yoke, and a steward held onto his feet while the FO landed with him plastered accross the front of the aircraft. I don't know what altitude they were at. I assume he wasn't strapped in.
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What is the two letter metar abbreviation for vis reduced by the captain? :rofl:
 
Wow...just wow. I look at the tail section and can only say ..... wow.
 
The Cessna 414 checklist says to dump pressurization if there is an impending windshield failure. My question is what kind of pressure is the relative wind putting on the windscreen in PSI? Is it less than what most planes pressurize to? I suppose the best situation is if you could equalize the pressure on both sides of the windshield.
 
Ben:

There was quite a bit of discussion on this on the AvSig board. Almost everyone agreed not to dump pressure until there was a failure. Guess impending is open to interpretation. The pressure differential at least exerts some pressure behind the windshield to hold it in place.

Is this the most recent checklist? Have to say, there are some changes I've made on mine.

Best,

Dave
 
Looking through the AFM, I couldn't find any revisions to that specific checklist, but I can't guarantee anything. I was just wondering if the ram air pressure was less than, say 4.2 PSI at cruise? If it was, wouldn't it make sense to depressurize only to the point where ram air pressure and cabin differential pressure were the same? Would this make the windshield feel a zero net force?

Found this thread in another forum, according to the original poster, there isn't much pressure at 150 or 200 knots.
 
cwyckham said:
I wondered about that. However, there was that case of an airline captain who got sucked out the front window during climbout in Britain a few years back. His foot got caught on the yoke, and a steward held onto his feet while the FO landed with him plastered accross the front of the aircraft. I don't know what altitude they were at. I assume he wasn't strapped in.

Chris
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I'd have an awful hard time believing that story.

The ram air coming in alone would negate a vaccum effect--especially in such a small area like the cockpit.

I keep thinking back to all those hundreds of times getting ready to jump out of a plane where I was standing at the aft ramp of a C-130 at FL32 or in the port-side hatch a C-141 making around 350 kts at FL34 when they depressurized and somehow didn't get sucked out.

I was in the jump seat of a Super Jolly making better than 160 kts headed to a rescue mission when an RPM took out our left windshield, and subsequently, our FO. Nobody got sucked out then either.

Damn glad these two guys walked away from this accident, but it sure sounds like a case of panic-induced decisions. . .

Regards.

-JD
 
CowboyPilot said:
I'd have an awful hard time believing that story.
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Sounds unbelievable. But, it did happen. I found the two best pages I could on the event and the original report. I saw a show on it a while back on "Air Disasters" or something titled like that had shown on either History Channel or Discovery.

All survived but the captain never flew again. It took quite a long time for his body to heal, not to mention the effects of being subject to subzero temperatures and loss of oxygen for an extended period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19900610-1

Original AAIB Report

Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript

All of it, the result of a mechanic matching fasteners by sight and not by part number. The fasteners he removed were wrong from the windscreen installation some four years earlier. Additionally, investigators discovered a prior mechanic had placed used fasteners in the bin with new.

While in the Navy, I was with a with a corrosion control team detachment. Although I dealt mostly with avionics, I spent a lot of time just turning screws to remove or replace large panels for other inspection work. Some panels would use in well in excess of a hundred screws with most of them being replaced every time. I'd joke about new fasteners coming to us individually packaged in cellophane. That had to cost a pretty penny for a screw specified for that aircraft panel alone. When I think back, it was probably a pretty good idea they were so carefully numbered in those packages.
 
KennyFlys said:
Sounds unbelievable. But, it did happen.
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Ah, a portside windscreen. That I could believe because of a vaccum effect. But being "sucked out" of a forward windscreen at an altitude of 17,500 and at their airspeed was hard to believe.

Regards.

-JD
 
The Cessna 441 (comparable to a 200 King Air) procedure for any impending windscreen failure is to don mask, then depressurize and begin an emergency descent.

Back in my turbine days our SOP was to have the quick don masks off of the hook and around both pilot's necks above FL 250. Always.

Jay
 
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