Piper Single Prang near Griffith

[HotPete]

In this morning's paper was a picture of a Piper single which forced landed "trying to land at Griffith" on a flight from Orange to Victoria. Looked like it landed gear-up or wiped off the gear during the landing. Nose had also separated from the rest of the aircraft. Good news is that all aboard walked away.

Any additional info? e.g. where did it force land, was it an Aero Club aircraft?

[Bidgee]

VH-MUE. An arrow.
It was not a local aircraft.
Apparently landing for fuel.
The occupants "walked" away, some minor injuries from media reports.
Don't know what happened for sure, and I'm not going to speculate, but the conditions were not great.

[Capt Claret]

If this is the same accident as reported in the world revered NT News :yuk: :yuk: the other day, the pilot was reported to be landing into a headwind when caught by a crosswind the blew the aircraft into some trees!

[Bidgee]

This happened on thursday 18th. Big crosswind and very gusty. The aircraft left the runway and hit a tree. The occupants are VERY lucky they still have legs.

[Sunfish]

Was this NT aircraft incident at Mataranka by any chance? A mate tossed away a 210 there a few years ago having a tailwind getting masked by trees etc etc.

[spads]

This ac nearly took me car with it...landed about 2 metres away from the front bumper....made for an interesting check-in with a full flight of pax 5 mins later. The view from the check-in que was straight through the can-opened cabin.

Those on board were indeed VERY lucky. Dont think the wind died down below 15 knts at all that day.

[Capt Fathom]

I'm a bit concerned about your mate Sunfish. Is he the same one you mentioned in a previous post, who nearly lost the C210 during a go-around?

[Sunfish]

He did lose it - write off. No one was seriously injured - very very lucky.

I'm not sure if CASA wrote it up. A Piper pilot and owner, he says he was caught out by his newly bought Cessna's landing behaviour and was taken by surprise even though he had had about 50 hours on it (from memory) and had done his rating. He was high, landed long, bounced and went around - only to be unprepared for the yaw of the 210 under full throttle. He went into small trees at the side of the strip.

He hasn't flown since.

He told me the CASA interviewers comment was something like "yeah, a lot of Piper pilots get into trouble landing a Cessna" which begs the question about an article on the subject in the digest.