PC-12 midair breakup?

olasek

olasek

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olasek
Six people were killed in the crash of a 2006 Pilatus PC-12/47 that appears to have broken up in flight some 50 miles southwest of Orlando, Thursday. The crash took place at about 12:30 p.m. and early reports state that parts of the aircraft have been recovered more than two miles from the main wreckage. The aircraft was carrying four children ages 8, 11, 13, and 15, along with their two parents, flying at 25,000 feet en route from the Bahamas to Junction City, Kansas. Five family members were found with in the aircraft. Friday, the body of one of the children was found nearly half a mile away. Witnesses say they saw the airplane tumbling out of the sky.
Weather in the area at the time of the crash included showers. The aircraft had stopped at St. Lucie to clear customs and departed there about half an hour before the problems developed. A pilot flying nearby told investigators he heard the accident aircraft issue a mayday but nothing specific about the nature of the emergency.The aircraft's emergency beacon activated shortly thereafter and the aircraft was found in a rural field. Six feet of the aircraft's right wing along with portions of the left wing and the horizontal stabilizer were found away from the fuselage. Florida newspaper, The Ledger reported Friday that one witness told NTSB investigators that he "heard a plane overhead, which then made some strange crunching or grating noises and then went dead."
 
A child popped a door open?
 
zaitcev said:
A child popped a door open?
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I doubt that even an open main cabin door (this one might have even had an "air stair" type) would be enough to cause a total upset and inflight breakup of a PC12, as long as the PIC didn't get distracted. Remember the air stair door that came off a bizjet recently?

Ice was forecast and reported in the FLs... don't know what he filed for or what altitude he was last in control, but it sure looks, at this point, like a bad icing accident, like the one in NJ recently. But who knows? :dunno:

Very disturbing accident with such a capable aircraft, aside from being just bad, bad news. :sad:
 
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That would the same area I would expect to be alone transiting that front underneath along the beach. Last time was funny, he came up with "Ignore all airspace restriction and find best path through, you are alone in the air." "Yeah thanks, 25' and 25 miles vis with clear sky ahead."
 
rottydaddy said:
don't know what he filed for or what altitude he was last in control, but it sure looks, at this point, like a bad icing accident
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He was at FL250 therefore I have my doubts if it was icing related.
 
Henning said:
That would the same area I would expect to be alone transiting that front underneath along the beach. Last time was funny, he came up with "Ignore all airspace restriction and find best path through, you are alone in the air." "Yeah thanks, 25' and 25 miles vis with clear sky ahead."
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OK, it's 3am and the only reason I'm up is because I'm at work, so please explain in detail what I'm not getting here:confused:
 
redtail said:
OK, it's 3am and the only reason I'm up is because I'm at work, so please explain in detail what I'm not getting here:confused:
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Trying to understand Henning - it's a tall order ;)

P.S. we have close to identical number of posts...
 
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:lol: ok. I'm trying to function off of roughly 3hrs of sleep in the last 24hours so it's taking me a little longer to process info right now:rolleyes:
:sleep:
 
olasek said:
He was at FL250 therefore I have my doubts if it was icing related.
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I'm not sure on the temps the day of this flight. I operate out of PIE. We often have the ice detect light go off.

This accident seems a lot more like the Malibu accidents from years ago at this point. Time will tell via the accident investigation.
 
redtail said:
OK, it's 3am and the only reason I'm up is because I'm at work, so please explain in detail what I'm not getting here:confused:
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There is a line of thunderstorms that often sits right there that airliners won't penetrate.
 
Looks to me like a case of turbulence penetration at high speed. Whenever encountering turbulence throttle back and slow down. Remember, you need airspeed to break an airplane in-flight.

José
 
Piloto said:
Looks to me like a case of turbulence penetration at high speed. Whenever encountering turbulence throttle back and slow down. Remember, you need airspeed to break an airplane in-flight.

José
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Not sure that is entirely the case. He could also have found himself in an upset situation and over stressed the airframe trying to recover. Some folks have commented that in some of the photos it looks like the gear and flaps may have been extended. Still too early to know for certain.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
I'm not sure where you obtained this information, but it's not true. King Air doors open frequently.

gismo said:
It's generally not possible to open a cabin door when the plane is pressurized but I don't know if this is true for the Pilatus.
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rottydaddy said:
I doubt that even an open main cabin door (this one might have even had an "air stair" type) would be enough to cause a total upset and inflight breakup of a PC12, as long as the PIC didn't get distracted. Remember the air stair door that came off a bizjet recently?
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It's not just distraction, but also the altitude. That bizjet door came off when they just took off. But this was at FL25. Useful consciouseness time at that altitude is not very long, probably.
 
Thunderstorms can tear an airplane into little pieces. Accident investigators have seen damage indicating more than 20Gs acceleration. A friend of mine told me of a former student who flew a charter passenger into a thunderboomer in a retractable four-place GA airplane; the passenger and what remained of his seat went through the bottom of the airplane. The rest of it was scattered far and wide.

The other big killer is loss of control in IMC. Most often happens to VFR pilots who continue into IMC. An old estimate gave 173 seconds lifespan remaining to the guy who does this, between entering cloud, getting into a spiral dive, and either impacting terrain in that attitude or tearing something important off when the airplane pops out of the clouds and he sees the ground coming real fast and pulls back hard.

Dan
 
LearDriver said:
TUC at FL250 is from 3 to 5 minutes.
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Still, I think the door opening at FL250 would be much more of an event than at 1,000' AGL. Seems like most of the door open incidents I've heard of occur right after takeoff when the door has not been latched properly and the airplane starts to pressurize. I don't know what caused this accident but I doubt it was the door.
 
zaitcev said:
It's not just distraction, but also the altitude. That bizjet door came off when they just took off. But this was at FL25. Useful consciouseness time at that altitude is not very long, probably.
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A good point- I was thinking aerodynamics, not decompression. And it raises another possibility- a pressurization problem that had nothing to do with the door.
 
Everskyward said:
Still, I think the door opening at FL250 would be much more of an event than at 1,000' AGL. Seems like most of the door open incidents I've heard of occur right after takeoff when the door has not been latched properly and the airplane starts to pressurize. I don't know what caused this accident but I doubt it was the door.
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I completely agree with that.
 
I noticed there are no Live ATC recordings posted from their flight, so no details leading up to the accident like a warning of active sigmet, pilot reports, etc. There were reports of a "may day" call from the pilot ( by another pilot nearby), and he likely would have been on a recorded frequency. Maybe it was unpublished in respect for the family?
 
KS Arrow Pilot said:
I noticed there are no Live ATC recordings posted from their flight, so no details leading up to the accident like a warning of active sigmet, pilot reports, etc.
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NTSB is very slow in publishing stuff like that, often they never do it for variety of reasons, but they clearly have access and can collect such data. You will see this stuff in the final (probable cause) report, so it is only matter of time.
 
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KS Arrow Pilot said:
I noticed there are no Live ATC recordings posted from their flight, so no details leading up to the accident like a warning of active sigmet, pilot reports, etc. There were reports of a "may day" call from the pilot ( by another pilot nearby), and he likely would have been on a recorded frequency. Maybe it was unpublished in respect for the family?
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Their departure from Fort Pierce was recorded... and he was advised of an area of moderate precip ahead. I can't upload the file due to the current quota restrictions issue.
 
That's good information, but those are given with a pretty broad brush now if one is generally headed into precip. They wouldn't know where the tops of the precip was. He could have been well on top or could have circumnavigated, but it does confirm there was moderate precip in the area. The NEXRAD posts of the area at the time don't show much right where he was. There was visible NEXRAD activity about 40 miles away and a turbulence report.

Best,

Dave
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Tand he was advised of an area of moderate precip ahead.
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OK, so now what a PC-12 pilot's reaction should be?
Is moderate precipitation and immediate 'no go' for an aircraft of this class? I guess not.
 
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olasek said:
OK, so now what a PC-12 pilot's reaction should be?
Is moderate precipitation and immediate 'no go' for an aircraft of this class? I guess not.
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No, that's why this stuff is not easy to decide on and why I tend to stay VFR around this type of weather patterns. Local knowledge would have had him go to a coast first before heading North and that drives you around the worst of it.
 
olasek said:
OK, so now what a PC-12 pilot's reaction should be?
Is moderate precipitation and immediate 'no go' for an aircraft of this class? I guess not.
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My comment about him receiving a report of moderate precip ahead was in reply to this, and not a generalization of what someone should do on getting such a report.

I noticed there are no Live ATC recordings posted from their flight, so no details leading up to the accident like a warning of active sigmet, pilot reports, etc. There were reports of a "may day" call from the pilot ( by another pilot nearby), and he likely would have been on a recorded frequency. Maybe it was unpublished in respect for the family?
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Not sure how to take the comments on bringing the whole family. Commercial, GA? Long/short trip? Same rule apply to scuba diving, atv riding, road trips? Seems like if I worried that much or thought that I should bring my kids in case we die, I just wouldn't do it.
 
raider said:
Not sure how to take the comments on bringing the whole family. Commercial, GA? Long/short trip? Same rule apply to scuba diving, atv riding, road trips? Seems like if I worried that much or thought that I should bring my kids in case we die, I just wouldn't do it.
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I was thinking the same thing. Do the people who do this also use the same rule for driving?
 
Henning said:
No, that's why this stuff is not easy to decide on and why I tend to stay VFR around this type of weather patterns. Local knowledge would have had him go to a coast first before heading North and that drives you around the worst of it.
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:yeahthat:


Embedded T-storms are as common as time share salesmen in that area. I recall thrashing along offshore on routine patrols in fine conditions while listening to folks a few miles inland asking for multiple course changes.
 
Most of our trips to Florida I fly down the West coast 5 miles off shore and have a smooth trip while listening to reports of CB and turbulence inland...
 
Henning said:
Not to be morbid about it but I know where families when mom and dad fly, everybody flies.
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Sorry but do you mean that the parents want everyone to die together or something? need explanation.. wTF
 
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