Quote:
I remain by my belief that the aircraft stalled due to ice, that was the start of the incident.
Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
Did anyone say that’s impossible? My first post started with the words: “Perhaps severe icing, stall and spin….” I usually say nothing about the cause of accidents, but in this case I couldn’t stay silent in the face of the immediate speculation which put the entire blame on the pilot. Before the smoke had dissipated from the site of the horrific death of four souls.
Yes you did say that. However, you said that you couldn't accept speculation which put the entire blame on the pilot yet in my eyes, a stall and subsequent spin usually
ARE typically caused by pilot error..... except with severe icing; here, any pilot aware of the danger would typically be looking for a way out - higher or lower - and whilst on an IFR flight plan, he's not going to depart from his assigned altitude without clearance. Maybe the pilot thought: at 10000 feet he would be on top and could get the ice burnt off but as soon as he's starting to descend due to icing, I can pretty much guarantee he'd be calling up the controllers - this has happened with multiple aircraft suffering icing, they didn't stay silent and accept their fates....
At the same time, I wouldn't blame a pilot who became incapacitated due to an unknown medical condition as being guilty of pilot error because, after all, none of us know when our time has come. It's not a crime to become involuntarily incapacitated, it's not as if the pilot said "yes please, I want a massive stroke / heart attack right now...." If it happens, it happens - why do you believe we mustn't consider such issues as most likely but rather want to suggest BRS malfunction or some other mechanical reason for the accident?
Quote:
Why did the pilot not react?
Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
You don’t know that he didn’t.
The fact that the aircraft departed controlled flight so abruptly would indicate otherwise.... from 800fpm climb to 3700feet descent rate within 15 seconds is a pretty rapid change, wouldn't you say? The descent rate then only increased as the ground speed decreased. My first thoughts were that the plane was descending in a flat spin but that would mean the aircraft would have had to have stalled extremely tail heavy, beyond its aft CG limits - however with 3 small children aboard, I think we can safely rule that out....
Quote:
Why did he not recover or at least pull the chute?
Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
You don’t know that he didn’t.
Again, the fact that the aircraft descended so rapidly and crashed whereas BRS are rightly proud of their records for deployments within the recommended flight envelope would indicate that he did neither.....the plane was already dropping like a stone, just 15 seconds after the last datapoint showing a cruise climb was transmitted. What "recovery actions" would cause a plane in a cruise climb suddenly descend at a terrifying rate, so quickly? If the Chute was the cause of the issue, why was it deployed in the first instance? If it deployed accidentally, they would have been within normal operating parameters, why would it have suddenly caused the plane to drop? Assuming it was pulled whilst inverted or whilst at an unusual attitude, what caused the upset in the first place?
Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
I’ll now wait for the report of the poor bastards who have to sift through the aftermath of this tragedy to try work out what actually happened. I’ll standby for you to say: “Told you so” when their report backs your theory.
I'm pretty sure that based on the wreckage left that they have available to investigate, they won't be able to define a clear root cause for the accident because the plane was completely destroyed and burnt - unless, of course, they find parts of it which detached in flight which would point to an in flight breakup or perhaps a video capturing it's last moments of descent.... Also, I doubt a coroner would be able to carry out an autopsy on the remains of the pilot either to identify whether he had any unknown medical conditions which could have caused his sudden incapacitation.....
But again. let's look to Occam's Razor or, if you prefer, the Swiss cheese model. What scenario needs fewest number of slices of Swiss cheese to line up for the outcome we have seen? We know the plane wasn't flying on autopilot, we know that there was moderate freezing forecasted in clouds between 5000 and 10000 feet, we know he was climbing to 10000 when the incident started. Icing was therefore likely to have been present.
I'd love for it to be the result of poor maintenance or something like that - maybe he lost an aileron, the plane then rolled inverted, the pilot then triggered caps whilst inverted which led to the chute wrapping itself around the aircraft whilst ripping off his communication antenna - you know, something like that - but that requires multiple layers of cheese to line up. How likely do you believe that scenario is?
With my scenario, all I need is the icing to be a little more severe than forecasted with the pilot unable to react, for whatever reason.....