PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Plane of singer Jenni Rivera missing in Mexico
Old 12th Dec 2012, 03:56
  #64 (permalink)  
Airbubba
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Rockytop, Tennessee, USA
Posts: 5,898
Likes: 0
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
I wonder if they really made it to FL350 in 62 miles or if that was the filed altitude? As in the AA Cali crash, the translation sometimes helps propagate reporting errors among journalists not familiar with aviation.
From a Mexican transportation official:

The plane carrying Mexican-American music superstar Jenni Rivera plunged almost vertically from more than 28,000 feet and hit the ground in a nose-dive at a speed that may have exceeded 600 miles per hour, Mexico's top transportation official said Tuesday.
The article cited above also has this quote:

Ruiz did not offer any explanation of what may have caused the plane to plummet, saying only that "The plane fell from an altitude of 28,000 feet ... It may have hit a speed higher than 1,000 kph (621 mph)."
Somehow the 'an altitude of 28,000 feet' in Mr. Ruiz's sound bite changed to 'more than 28,000 feet' in the 'lede' of the AP article. Either way, it is different from the FL 350 in earlier reports.

Could coffin corner have reared its ugly head or is Lear/coffin corner propensity an old wives' tale?
If the altitude was anywhere near 28,000 I don't believe that coffin corner would be a player in a Lear since the margin between stall and Vmo/Mmo is still generous.

But, if you pulled back the power way back to slow down on level off and forgot to put it back on (as in the BUF commuter crash in 2009) you could quickly slow to a stall. Also, if you let the plane overspeed and didn't get a warning (or it was inhibited as I discussed in a previous post), you could get mach tuck and enter a dive that would ruin your whole day.

The Lear is a small plane with high wing loading and excess power so it really bears close watching in my experience years ago. It made the Airbus I flew next seem stable.

The actual high and low speed characteristics on these early Lears also varied depending on which wing was installed, there were many retrofits offered. Century III, Softflite, Mark II come to mind, not sure if this Lear 25 was retrofited at some point but the interior did look pretty modern in the posted Instagram shots before the fatal flight.

Last edited by Airbubba; 12th Dec 2012 at 06:00.
Airbubba is offline