Coincidentally (or scarily) a suggested post popped up in my Facebook feed from Martin Baker today. It has some pictures and a first hand account of th PC9 crash in East Sale.
I lurched slightly forward in my seat as I felt the engine suddenly wind back and heard the cockpit go eerily quiet. I quickly scanned the engine instruments and systems display to see a decaying engine and a concerning amount of red coloured warning captions.
Not entirely ready to accept that this was an unrecoverable flame out, I started carrying out the immediate actions for an engine failure/loss of power. The first step was to convert excess speed to height, turn to point the aircraft towards the nearest suitable field and capture the best glide speed.
At first glance the ‘visual picture’ out the front indicated we were going to make our departure field safely. Not long after that the front-seat instructor took over and we continued the checklist actions in an attempt to relight the engine, but to no avail. Getting very low on altitude, it was apparent that the glide was no longer performing as expected and we weren’t going to make the runway.
...the high-pressure fuel pump which starved the engine of fuel and resulted in a flame out. An unfortunate second malfunction caused the propeller to fail to feather correctly which drastically reduced the expected glide potential."