Wiggins 1046, B99 N53RP down outside of KMHT 1/26/24

Flying Keys

Flying Keys

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Lost radio contact just after departure. One brief communication several minutes later, then lost again for remainder of the flight. Pilot survived.

Icing AIRMET active from the freezing level to FL230. Freezing level multiple from surface to 080. SLD indicated at 030 on the icing severity products. Also AIRMETs for moderate turbulence from sfc-160 and IFR.

METAR:

KMHT 261153Z 00000KT 4SM RA BR BKN009 BKN014 OVC021 02/00 A3016 RMK AO2 SLP231 P0015 60024 70024 T00220000 10039 20022 58013

aviation-safety.net

Accident Beechcraft C99 Commuter N53RP,

Wiggins flight 1046, a Beechcraft C99 Commuter, N53RP, crashed in a wooded area immediately next to a residential neighbourhood near Wiggins Hill Road in Londonderry, NH. The pilot was so...
aviation-safety.net
 
I flew Beech C99s, including one with that N number, over 35 years ago. The big problem in icing is that during a climb ice would build up on the cargo pod that is on the belly. So in icing conditions we would have to lower the rate of climb.
 
His later transmissions sound very noisy, almost sounding like wind noise. Big strike on the canopy? Who knows.
 
It had nothing to do with the weather, WMUR is reporting the pilot hatch was found in someone’s yard. IMG_5902.jpeg
 
Michael_J said:
It had nothing to do with the weather, WMUR is reporting the pilot hatch was found in someone’s yard. View attachment 124824
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Damn

If it hit one of the rear control surfaces that would explain the erratic flight path. Poor guy would have been a test pilot.
 
Bill said:
Damn

If it hit one of the rear control surfaces that would explain the erratic flight path. Poor guy would have been a test pilot.
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True. It did seem to be at least somewhat controllable well after the initial upset. If you look at the flight path in 3D, he nearly bought it after the first left turn. The door was found not far from there. Got very close to the ground, down to 700’ before a rapid pull up, then up and down a few times before it looks like some control was regained. But then lost it at the end.

Maybe damage that progressively got worse? Also have to consider the ride through that IMC and potential icing, and weather in the cockpit. Consider also it could have been an intentional ejection from a fire or something onboard.

Crazy ride. There couldn’t have been a worse time to lose a door. Will love to hear the “so there I was” from this one.
 
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The other weird thing I noticed: there’s a video of the crash itself and you can very easily hear the impacts. What I don’t hear is engine noise. At all.

The video begins only a half second prior to the point of first impact, but still, you think you’d hear all of that just prior, and any remnants of a free-turbine spool-down in the crash sequence itself.
 
The pic of the door is interesting. There is a LOT of ice on it. However, who knows when that pic was taken in relation to the time of the accident. Could have been FZRA later while it was on the ground. But if so, you’d think there’d also be some on the grass divot that attached to it on impact.

Edit for clarification: MHT did not report freezing temps for the remainder of the accident day. Nor did it report freezing precip on the ground. The precipitation ended two to three hours after the accident.
 
WX a non-factor? I dunno about that. The second comm from departure after check in (he reported the wrong heading as well, called it "150" while heading northeast) was no kidding: "WG 1046 you'll be entering an area of MODERATE precipitation for the next two zero miles with {unintelligible} white after that".
1706490470840.png
Look at that transition line. 2C at the surface, ceilings merely 900agl, with 3 layers in less than 2 thousand feet. SLD city baby. That windshield would have glazed up real thick and quick too. Given rapidly-ensuing peripheral visibility loss (he was probably still acclimating to the instrument transition, given the broken layer at 1400agl as a spoofer VMC siren song), Spatial D on top of degrading climb performance wouldn't be too far a stretch either.

I'm not saying the weather blew the door off that airplane or whatever happened to it, but weather sure as heck was a contribution to that thing crashing, if not outright causal (well, other than spatial D, which this guy had given that flight track. control failure/jammed ground tracks don't look like that).

The good news is the guy is alive and should be able to fill in the gaps on what the heck was going on in the cockpit.
 
Must have been absolutely terrifying. Absent a tbi, id imagine he'll have one helluva story.
 
Thinking about this more, if the pic of the door was contaminated by ice after the accident, then all bets are off. However, if the pic of the door was taken fairly quickly after the accident and the ice accumulation was not post-accident, that’s a lot of ice. It had been airborne for only two minutes to that point
 
Flying Keys said:
Thinking about this more, if the pic of the door was contaminated by ice after the accident, then all bets are off. However, if the pic of the door was taken fairly quickly after the accident and the ice accumulation was not post-accident, that’s a lot of ice. It had been airborne for only two minutes to that point
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I can't tell if there is ice accumulation on the ground in the photo, or if it's sorta melted snow. The ice on the hatch window sure looks like it was accreted in flight.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1751648374267236807
 
Hard to tell from the photo, is the ice over the dirt, or is the dirt on top of the ice?
 
hindsight2020 said:
SLD city baby. That windshield would have glazed up real thick and quick too.
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hindsight2020 said:
I'm not saying the weather blew the door off that airplane or whatever happened to it
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This is way out there, but if the windows iced up real quick, would he have popped the hatch to try and see where he was going?
 
Bill said:
This is way out there, but if the windows iced up real quick, would he have popped the hatch to try and see where he was going?
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No.
 
Back on 3/19/22, an Ameriflight BE99 (N8227P) lost a door departing KBUR at around 2000 AGL. Unclear which door was lost as pilot simply reported “my door fell off.” In that incident, after briefly going NORDO, pilot reestablished what sounded like normal comms and returned to KBUR with no emergency declared.
 
Flying Keys said:
The other weird thing I noticed: there’s a video of the crash itself and you can very easily hear the impacts. What I don’t hear is engine noise. At all.

The video begins only a half second prior to the point of first impact, but still, you think you’d hear all of that just prior, and any remnants of a free-turbine spool-down in the crash sequence itself.
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I was thinking the same exact thing! I watched it a few times trying to hear everything I could, and I didn’t hear anything and that engine / prop combo growls pretty dang loud!
 
Flying Keys said:
Thinking about this more, if the pic of the door was contaminated by ice after the accident, then all bets are off. However, if the pic of the door was taken fairly quickly after the accident and the ice accumulation was not post-accident, that’s a lot of ice. It had been airborne for only two minutes to that point
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It had to of been contaminated after. It was in the back yard of some random home several hours before it was noticed “hmmm… something out there doesn’t look quite right…”. I believe there’s been problems mid flight with that type of aircraft involving that door. I did see where the PIC had a hard landing and his knee hit the gear switch causing a semi gear up landing back in 2012 so I’d say Beechcraft makes a pretty dang tough aircraft..
 
I don't miss that door or the ladder used to clamber up into it every morning.

Glad this dude survived. The 99 is hella stout, but that had to be a miserable fight to get it back to earth in mostly one piece.
 
AdamJ121 said:
It had to of been contaminated after. It was in the back yard of some random home several hours before it was noticed “hmmm… something out there doesn’t look quite right…”. I believe there’s been problems mid flight with that type of aircraft involving that door. I did see where the PIC had a hard landing and his knee hit the gear switch causing a semi gear up landing back in 2012 so I’d say Beechcraft makes a pretty dang tough aircraft..
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The homeowner said he heard the thud. It could have been taken well after but there wasn’t any freezing precip reported on the local ASOS/AWOS.

Edit: Apparently there was some freezing precip on the ground reported by locals. If true, that could explain the ice on the door.
 
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AquaLand said:
Back on 3/19/22, an Ameriflight BE99 (N8227P) lost a door departing KBUR at around 2000 AGL. Unclear which door was lost as pilot simply reported “my door fell off.” In that incident, after briefly going NORDO, pilot reestablished what sounded like normal comms and returned to KBUR with no emergency declared.
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Ameriflight C-99 loses door Burbank
 
And Juan Browne explain the c-99 door
 
Wiggins lost another 99 last year up my way. That was on a training mission in VFR if memory serves. Don’t recall hearing anything about the door separating from it. Hope the pilot makes a full recovery. What a nightmare!
 
3393RP said:
I can't tell if there is ice accumulation on the ground in the photo, or if it's sorta melted snow. The ice on the hatch window sure looks like it was accreted in flight.
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Thanks for the links to twitter photos. Twitter (at least browser twitter, no idea about app) tends not to show full resolution images. Here is the max res available from twitter. I have uploaded the images and there are links to twitter below. Changing "name=whatever-they-give-you" to "name=orig" in a direct image URL persuades twitter to relinquish the max resolution image.

N53RP-door-with iceQ.jpg
N53RP-door-with iceQ-2.jpg


 
I wouldn't imagine you would have that type of icing in flight on the side window. In my opinion, that would have either been the result of ice accumulation prior to takeoff while stationary, or after the window was laying on the ground.
 
Spring Ford said:
Thanks for the links to twitter photos. Twitter (at least browser twitter, no idea about app) tends not to show full resolution images. Here is the max res available from twitter. I have uploaded the images and there are links to twitter below. Changing "name=whatever-they-give-you" to "name=orig" in a direct image URL persuades twitter to relinquish the max resolution image.

View attachment 124888
View attachment 124887


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That’s not really that much ice imo. It sounds as though the door opening is what started this incident. Hopefully the pilot will be able to shed some light on what went on. I haven’t seen any mention of his injuries, I assume he has a long road ahead of him.

I was in a situation on a demo flight out of mht, where we were going to con to do an approach, but changed our mind and decided to do an approach to mht. We had the flight plan in the 530 to con, which had the same runway ils 35. So we hit proc, loaded the ils, got our turn to intercept, blew right through it, turned back to intercept again, blew right through it again. This was coupled as that’s what I wanted to see and we were in the clouds. Meanwhile atc is wondering what we were up to, we told him we wanted to try again. Turns out we had loaded the approach to con which is 20 miles away. Rookie error,no excuses, but it was a high workload, we were moving pretty fast. This guy was under a lot of pressure, I wonder if something like this happened to him?
 
It was freezing rain for a big part of the day, I will assume that the ice on the door was from after it landed on the ground.

This guy is lucky to be alive. I'm hoping the reason for the crash is more than just a distracted pilot
 
Magman said:
Getting your A& P need not be the End of the line.

About 8 yrs ago I met a kid that was working on swimming pool and pursuing the PPL.

Now he has his A & P ( IA) , and became an Inspector on Flight Controls at MOOG.

He was hired directly rather than the typical temp route.

Currently he has a 180 hp PA22-20 and flies bizjets for a living.


Another person used the A&P (IA) to have a career with Dept of Defense.

He was extensively involved with the F-22, F-35 , Space Shuttle and projects that

were so “black“ he couldn’t discuss them with his boss.


Yet another is the Chief Maintenance Test Pilot on the 757 with FedEx.

And the list goes on.


Not everyone going after the A & P winds up with a career in Aviation.

It IS a credential that identifies the holder as possessing skills that are in

demand in many industries.

Even those that do not get the ticket still acquire many skills.
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jayhawk74 said:
I flew Beech C99s, including one with that N number, over 35 years ago. The big problem in icing is that during a climb ice would build up on the cargo pod that is on the belly. So in icing conditions we would have to lower the rate of climb.
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Remember cruise was about 180 kts or so, pull the engine deice vanes and loose about 100 lbs of torque per engine, that slowed you to about 170 kts, minimum ice speed was 160 kts. Ice formed below the boots and could not be removed. It also formed on the leading edge where it wasn't deiced, and on the pod. Yes I remember it well. One of the reasons I have grey hair.
 
Looking more closely at the photos, I don't see any accumulated ice on the grass divot at all, and the dirt particles are resting on top of ice adhered to the hatch. That, in addition to the forecast for moderate icing, reinforces my belief the accretion on the hatch may have occurred in flight.
 
3393RP said:
Looking more closely at the photos, I don't see any accumulated ice on the grass divot at all, and the dirt particles are resting on top of ice adhered to the hatch. That, in addition to the forecast for moderate icing, reinforces my belief the accretion on the hatch may have occurred in flight.
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A contrary thought is that the door hit the dirt which does NOT appear to have ice accumulation under the door... the dirt does appear to stick up through the ice on the door, but there are a few places where the ice appears to be somewhat over half of the dirt adhering to the door. I'm not fully convinced that wasn't accumulation on the ground.
 
Those Twitter pics are going to be like the Zapruder film until we hear from the pilot. It was even moved back and to the left.
 
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scottd said:
It's very likely that the ice on the door was accreted after the door had reached the surface...but in freezing rain, it can cover just about all surfaces of the aircraft. The pic below was taken shortly after landing and some of the ice had already fallen off.

View attachment 124962
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IMG_6586.jpeg
 
scottd said:
Yes, that is the case, however, there was a layer from 1000 ft to 5000 ft where freezing rain was occurring. The pilot did not climb above 5,100 ft. So most of the flight was in this freezing rain layer.
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That was my initial presumption and remains so. The question regarding the photo has become whether the ice we’re seeing on the door is a result of that initial encounter or if it was from freezing precip on the ground later, or perhaps both.

I’m not sure what we can glean from either case at this point other than to perhaps surmise whether the loss of the door had anything to do with initial icing conditions or whether lingering up there in the ice in an attempt to return, sans door and all the compounding issues that would cause in the cockpit, was a causal factor in the eventual downing of the aircraft. Or perhaps the departing door struck the empennage and caused downstream mechanical and/or control issues.

No matter what, it’s not a place I’d want to lose a door. It’s just about a worst-case scenario and I’m glad the pilot made it out alive.

Either way, we’ll get the real info soon enough and I imagine the preliminary report will be fairly revealing.
 
Anyone see any news as to how the pilot is doing?
Injuries were described as “critical”
Hope he’s ok and discharged.
 
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