Plane down in Mississippi-Sad

deyoung said:
Perhaps she lost the cylinder and started to panic when the engine acted up, which led her to take the tailwind runway she was (I assume) already aligned with, in a "get down now!" mindset, rather than try to come around and land the other way. Then, tailwind eats up more runway than she expected, and the engine isn't making enough power for the go-around, or at least for the climb rate she tried to force.

All speculation, of course.
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That's the exact scenario I had playing in my head. Engine coughs approaching the field, she panics and runs for rwy 9, realizes the tailwind is going to make her land long, initiates so around with 3 jugs, panics and sees the golf course to her right and makes a run for it. South of the field is trees/neighborhood, Jackson Avenue which is always busy, and then Ole Miss. The flaps being up baffles me...
 
The fact that the FAA called looking for her before she arrived suggest she may have gotten lost while en route. An 11 knot wind is pretty stiff for a student pilot who may have already been in distress. Chain of events seems to have overwhelmed her and diverted her attention from the first rule of flying.. aviate. Nice gesture from FedEx and a sad loss for the community and family.
 
ktup-flyer said:
The flaps being up baffles me...
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No way to know, of course. Maybe she did clean them up for the go around. Or maybe she forgot to lower them on approach -- she had enough hours and was close enough to her check ride that it seems a bit unlikely, but if true it would have eaten up even more runway...
 
ktup-flyer said:
she panics and runs for rwy 9, realizes the tailwind is going to make her land long,
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Which obviously would absolutely make no sense since a mere 10 kt tailwind is not going to make much difference on a 5600 ft long runway in a Skyhawk.
 
olasek said:
Which obviously would absolutely make no sense since a mere 10 kt tailwind is not going to make much difference on a 5600 ft long runway in a Skyhawk.
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You would think. She started off the GTR-UOX XC by departing GTR and turning to the NE instead of the NW like she should've. She contacted Memphis Center saying she was lost and they helped her out and eventually got her back on track. It looks like she turned to the SW to intercept the initial magenta line, for some reason, and then had trouble holding a heading for the remainder of the flight. Her track log shows erratic altitude changes from 3500-800ft throughout the XC leg. I was told she came into UOX with the tailwind on runway 9 and did a go around. On departure, she stalled, but recovered, and then stalled again and couldn't get it back. Memphis Center actually called UOX to make sure she made it there, because they were worried about her.
 
Kritchlow said:
And you know this how...??

Just cracks me up when folks assume exactly why a crash happened before an investigation.

We don’t need the NTSB... we have POA to figure it out!!!
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Yeah, and I'll bet you $10 he nailed it.

Some accidents are just a little more obvious than others. Is it possible something totally different happened? Sure. But given what we do know, is it more likely this is what happened? Probably.

Just cracks me up when folks assume that another pilot isn't capable of making an educated guess with the given information.

Prayers to the family and friends. Very sad.
 
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ktup-flyer said:
Memphis Center actually called UOX to make sure she made it there, because they were worried about her.
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So yeah, this actually shows there was a myriad of other problems with this flight, perhaps human problems, not a tailwind on landing.



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ktup-flyer said:
You would think. She started off the GTR-UOX XC by departing GTR and turning to the NE instead of the NW like she should've. She contacted Memphis Center saying she was lost and they helped her out and eventually got her back on track. It looks like she turned to the SW to intercept the initial magenta line, for some reason, and then had trouble holding a heading for the remainder of the flight. Her track log shows erratic altitude changes from 3500-800ft throughout the XC leg. I was told she came into UOX with the tailwind on runway 9 and did a go around. On departure, she stalled, but recovered, and then stalled again and couldn't get it back. Memphis Center actually called UOX to make sure she made it there, because they were worried about her.
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Where did you get the info on her contact with Memphis Center?
 
Wonder when that one jug started acting up, if it did? That could have been a distraction early in the flight if the engine wasn't running smooth.
 
Piperonca said:
Wonder when that one jug started acting up, if it did? That could have been a distraction early in the flight if the engine wasn't running smooth.
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If it had happened early in the flight, one would hope she'd RTB or land at one of the other airports she passed by.
 
SkyDog58 said:
If it had happened early in the flight, one would hope she'd RTB or land at one of the other airports she passed by.
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That would be the logical expectation, but some of us have seen people in a panic state do strange things (in aircraft). Something has to explain that crazy flight track and airspeeds all over the place.
 
Piperonca said:
Something has to explain that crazy flight track and airspeeds all over the place.
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Poor airmanship, hand flying, no autopilot?
Actually her altitude/airspeed (this is GS btw) wasn't that bad, she started her descent too early - hence this sudden dip. Her track was probably affected by the wind, I assume the aircraft had some GPS though it is possible she wasn't proficient in its use. Ultimately she found her destination, this is a big plus, it normally should be a big morale boost ( I recall butterflies in my stomach when I could not find my destination on my first solo cross country). NTSB's initial report doesn't mention anything about her interactions with the center.
 
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Article says she recently got her certificate. Not really enough hard facts here for me to even begin to form any conclusions.
 
Maybe it stacked up on her - wind, nav issues, maybe engine acting up, too?

CAP maintenance varies a bunch - mostly it averages about as good as a reputable FBO, though there were some CAP planes I wouldn't fly twice, and I'm not a real stickler. But well kept machines break, too.

My knee jerk, uninformed guess is she had more than one problem to deal with. It sucks she didn't have more time to build the experience that might have helped her deal with the situation. . .
 
olasek said:
Poor airmanship, hand flying, no autopilot?
Actually her altitude/airspeed (this is GS btw) wasn't that bad, she started her descent too early - hence this sudden dip. Her track was probably affected by the wind, I assume the aircraft had some GPS though it is possible she wasn't proficient in its use. Ultimately she found her destination, this is a big plus, it normally should be a big morale boost ( I recall butterflies in my stomach when I could not find my destination on my first solo cross country). NTSB's initial report doesn't mention anything about her interactions with the center.
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Flew that plane several times. It had an A/P and a 430 in it.
 
deyoung said:
Perhaps she lost the cylinder and started to panic when the engine acted up, which led her to take the tailwind runway she was (I assume) already aligned with, in a "get down now!" mindset, rather than try to come around and land the other way. Then, tailwind eats up more runway than she expected, and the engine isn't making enough power for the go-around, or at least for the climb rate she tried to force.

All speculation, of course.
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This makes the most sense. The report says she was panicked on CTAF, not completing her sentences, even before she tried to land on RWY 9. Something had already happened, most likely some kind of engine trouble.

She goes for RWY 9, the tailwind (11 knots is a lot to land with for even experienced pilots) pushes her to the point where she knows she's not going to have enough runway, so she tries to go around. Cleans the flaps up but she's still not climbing and pulls the nose up too high. Stalls and ends up falling into the golf course.

She had enough total time that she would not have been panicking prior to landing if there wasn't something wrong with the plane and with the flaps up, an accidental full power departure stall is unlikely as well. You'd really have to fight a 180HP 172 to stall it that way. JMO.
 
It’s crazy and also sad to think that someone would consider the engine issue severe enough to make such a landing decision but not so severe as to take a go-around off the table.
 
SkyDog58 said:
It’s crazy and also sad to think that someone would consider the engine issue severe enough to make such a landing decision but not so severe as to take a go-around off the table.
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Yes it is.

All people handle stressful situations in different ways. Some people just work through it, some people just can't cope with stress.

Pure speculation on my part is task saturation. Too much happening all at once and add a little panic was too much at this experience level.

We will just never know.
 
SkyDog58 said:
It’s crazy and also sad to think that someone would consider the engine issue severe enough to make such a landing decision but not so severe as to take a go-around off the table.
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Maybe so, but a lot of people seem to not think about the fact that going off the end of the runway at 30 knots is FAR preferable to going into the trees at 100 knots. It's kind of a binary "accident bad, must avoid" thought process that leads one to avoid a minor accident, and in the process of trying to avoid it, have a major accident. It's very hard to make the decision to have an accident at all, even a minor one.
 
SkyDog58 said:
It’s crazy and also sad to think that someone would consider the engine issue severe enough to make such a landing decision but not so severe as to take a go-around off the table.
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Yup. I’ve seen a student make a botched landing in a crosswind and wrapped a wing around a tree totaling the aircraft but he walked away with literally a scratch on his finger. You never know.
 
The full NTSB report, which if as usual, will be 12-18 months from now, will maybe shed light on the possibility of a mechanical issue. It is quite possible no definitive conclusion can ever be made by the investigators--this is what happened after the low-time pilot accident at our airport--although the NTSB does comb through every little detail.

No one ever knows how they will handle a emergency until it happens. I'm just glad my test came at 600 hours--and not a few hours after certification--when I had a spinner failure on takeoff (due to improper maintenance). That was a real mind-scrambler coming off a fresh annual and a thorough pre-flight inspection for loose parts and misplaced tools. I was able to reduce power and still maintain some altitude and circle back to make an emergency landing without shaking the engine off the mounts, keeping a golf course and a crossing grass runway withing gliding distance. I honestly don't know what would have happened with less than 100 hours under my belt--I'm assuming the same result, but who knows?

Train and fly safe...
 
I have a question for CFIs. How much time do you spend explaining possible failure modes, and the importance of staying cool and flying the airplane?

I'm thinking of a sorta matrix, where "If this happens, do this". A good example is an open baggage door. I personally know of a 421 crash that began with an open nose baggage door and ended with six deaths.

Do you drill partial loss of power scenarios, where a sick airplane might bite if you get too slow? I'm wondering about that sort of thing.
 
3393RP said:
I have a question for CFIs. How much time do you spend explaining possible failure modes, and the importance of staying cool and flying the airplane?
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That’s a hard question to answer. Some students move faster than others, some don’t hear things you say. Also, there are plenty of CFIs out there that don’t have enough real world experience to know the kinds of things that can happen.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Also, there are plenty of CFIs out there that don’t have enough real world experience to know the kinds of things that can happen.
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Correct. I had very, very little real life aviation experience when I was instructing. One thing I did once as a student was not take note that the AWOS was not working once, and did a downwind landing.

A real eye opener.

So I would take students to the big, wide and long runway and do a few downwind landings so they would see what it was like.
 
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SkyDog58 said:
It’s crazy and also sad to think that someone would consider the engine issue severe enough to make such a landing decision but not so severe as to take a go-around off the table.
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Engine issue? If I were to bet (I rather not) I would say this accident will be shown (like most similar accidents) to have no relevance to any real on-board equipment failures.
 
3393RP said:
I have a question for CFIs. How much time do you spend explaining possible failure modes, and the importance of staying cool and flying the airplane?

I'm thinking of a sorta matrix, where "If this happens, do this".
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The answer is always the same, and it will never change. "If this happens, FLY THE AIRCRAFT".

After you're doing that, then work on the problem, but never stop flying the aircraft.

I know that sounds so simplistic, and it really is, but just look how many people forget to do exactly that.
 
3393RP said:
I have a question for CFIs. How much time do you spend explaining possible failure modes, and the importance of staying cool and flying the airplane?
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Many of the older (nay, "crusty") CFIs I flew with did quite a bit of emergency drilling. In my primary training there was at least one "engine failure" every flight after the first few hours. It got to be a joke, but I got good at spotting cabbage and corn fields quickly and going through the loss of power motions. We did a lot of "power losses" on takeoff ("Where you landing if it fails now?", or a power cut at a reasonable safe altitude during takeoff) and some real, practice, aborted takeoffs. And we had the occasional accidental loose door, which was a good learning experience that it was not really an issue. (Grummans ain't got no doors) I think this kind of training is essential.

I think this training served me well in my two in-flight emergencies. One I related here, which involved a spinner failure. Main lesson: fly the airplane, just like I was trained. I had little time to troubleshoot in this case, as the plane was a handful with partial power and lots of vibration. I think I did manage to try the mags while looking for landing options. (It didn't help.) A shaking engine didn't sound like a fuel issue to me, so I didn't touch the fuel, but was prepared o shut it off if needed. I figured I'd swallowed a valve. The second in-flight emergency occurred with my CFII on board, a pilot who trained at the same time I did with the same crusty instructor. We had a complete loss of power returning from an IPC flight. We had the same thoughts simultaneously: trim to best glide, pick a landing spot (we agreed on an open field on the top of a hill within glide range) and then started through the power loss items. Nothing immediately helped, but about 30 seconds after completing the power loss items (mags, fuel tank, fuel pumps, carb heat), the engine roared back to life and we climbed to gain lots of altitude to nurse the plane back to home base, keeping a close tab on landing sites. No definitive cause of power loss was ever found: chalked up to possible carb ice. The main reason for a successful outcome was that we committed to an off-airport landing, safely controlled the aircraft, THEN started troubleshooting in a quick but systematic way. Worst case scenario: we land in the stupid field.

In our low-time pilot accident near our airport (also a likely carb icing encounter) the pilot, for reasons unknown, failed to control the aircraft after a power loss and spun it into an open field that could have been an option for off-airport landing. Everyone was mystified that it happened that way.
 
olasek said:
Engine issue? If I were to bet (I rather not) I would say this accident will be shown (like most similar accidents) to have no relevance to any real on-board equipment failures.
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Yes I agree there is a very high probability that there was no equipment failure. My post was simply my thoughts on the craziness and sadness of one of the prevailing theories on this thread. That theory was that she had a sick engine and thus rushed a landing decision and then after a botched landing attempted to perform a go-around on that same sick engine. Whether the post crash investigation discovery of a possible weak cylinder will prove an inflight failure or was a result of the accident is unknown at this time. However, it is enough of a motive for speculation as to why she attempted the downwind landing and if this “engine issue” did cause that decision, one can only shake their head at an attempted go-around on that engine.
 
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