Originally Posted by
SATCOS WHIPPING BOY
An absence of trees in the photos does not rule out the aircraft hitting one. I was looking in particular at the semi-circular fold in the leading edge of the starboard wing close to the tip. Any thoughts on that please?
I agree that we cannot rule out it hitting a tree and that some damage COULD have been caused by a tree but it makes everything else that has gone on here very hard to explain if it did hit a tree. I will go through what I am seeing bit by bit but bear in mind I am not an expert (in crashes - aeroplanes I do know a thing about!) and this is just my OPINION and not fact.
The witness report stated seeing an aircraft 'in a tree'. Not having gone through a tree so I'm not sure why so much emphasis is put on this mystery tree? The statement is clearly erroneous in part so why not in full?
The wing spars on a PA-28 are very very strong. You could land this aircraft through a hedge and the wings would stay on. It would take considerable force to pull the wings off - either hitting something solid in passing (like the trunk of a substantial tree but not branches, they are not solid enough) at high speed or an extreme deceleration. I say high speed as if you hit slowly enough you can land actually in a tree and the wings stay on despite the tree stopping you (pictures online of PA-28's intact in trees) I have seen the wings broken at the root fitting (sheared clean through level with the fuse) on a PA-28 aircraft that landed and shortly after went between a pair of trees. Here is the rub though - the wings themselves are incredibly light. For them to have been 'removed' by hitting something with forward motion the fuselage tends to keep going but the wings have next to no inertia (and what they had was robbed by the solid 'thing') so remain where they get removed. So if these wings got removed going through a tree they would not be sat beside it in these images. OK so someone could have moved these wings and laid them beside the fuse but why? That is completely against AAIB protocol and the site was instantly in police lock down.
If you look at the fuse pictures the engine has been pushed up and to the right. The instrument panel is actually outside the cockpit to the right of the fuse so that whole front end has been rotated on impact meaning impact had to be on the lower left corner of the front of the aircraft. The port wing has been sheared off and shows incredible impact deformation the entire length of the wing. Both of these factors show that the aircraft hit the ground left wing and nose down in at least a 45 degree nose down angle. This force ripped the port wing off and forced it up against the port side of the fuse damaging that and taking the port stab off (or at least severely damaging it - hard to see from the photo angles).
Next lets look at the prop blades. If the engine was seized only one blade (if any) would be bent. When these engines stop in flight without seizing the blades continue to windmill. Due to the slow rotation of the windmill the blades tend to bend toward the root of the prop and with a slighter radius bend. The faster the rotation at impact the shorter and sharper the bend. The bends are relatively short (and both are bent) so I conclude the engine was turning fast. The second blade is bent forwards not backwards. For this to happen, by the time that second blade hit the ground the prop disk has to have been angled up away from the ground which clearly agrees with the angle the engine is sat at in the pictures. Had the aircraft been traveling forward this is far less likely to happen so this again agrees with the theory that there was no forward motion but that the aircraft came almost completely vertically down.
As already mentioned in previous posts - there are no marks in the field. This means it stopped where it hit and hasn't slid here.
As to the cartwheel theory - the engine and wings get ripped off and left in the trail when that happens. All this wreckage is in one place exactly as you would expect to find it if had been dropped vertically down. The tail section of all aircraft are EXTREMELY light and fragile. Had it cartwheeled there would be much much more damage to the tail of the aircraft which is pretty much intact in these shots.
What you call a 'semi-circle' at the stbd wingtip I don't think is. The wing tip on these is either made of thermo-plastic or GRP and there is a rib in the tip there. So I think it is actuality more indicative of a flat impact than that a tree trunk... This damage is consistent with this wing being ripped off when the rest of the aircraft came to a very sudden stop (that tells you how much force was involved here). The wing tip would have been pointing up at an angle as the rest of the airframe hit the ground and what inertia there was in the wing (which as stated above isn't much so again - tells how much force we are talking about here) pulled it off. the momentum (resistance at the root) would have caused the very tip then to contact the ground first causing the damage you see in the picture. Note also the main wheel is free of any mud so definitely never got dragged on the ground. The slope here is slight so if it was flown straight and level into the ground this wheel would at least be covered in ground - more likely the entire leg ripped off.
I have said before and I will say again - I don't think this was CFIT. Unless they had turned around they were flying AWAY from the high ground not towards it. EVERYONE flies with skydemon or etc these days so IFR equipped panel or not they would have had warnings on that for terrain. This was loss of control but why is the question we all want answered. Mechanical issues, disorientation, physical incapacitation etc etc...?
I'm more than happy to be wrong but that is how I see it. A near vertical trajectory with the left wing and nose down (as in a spin but that doesn't mean it was spinning).
The extreme rapid deceleration is what would have caused the fatalities (mercifully instantly so no pain or mental stress) which you can read between the lines of the statement the emergency services said which was along the lines of 'immediately apparent' there was nothing to be done.
Condolences to all who knew either of these poor folk. A very sad case indeed.