Originally Posted by
Jet Jockey A4
Too early to know what happened in this crash and I don't want to speculate but this accident reminds me of the Challenger 600 crash in Teterborro. Both very high speed rejects where the aircraft failed to get airborne because of some sort of issue. Of course now we know the reasons behind that Challenger crash, and wonder if something similar happened here. Could a G IV be loaded in such a way as to prevent a normal rotation at Vr?
I can't think of any operational load-out of a GIV that would produce a fwd CG so far out of limits that the aircraft would be unable to rotate. It is a completely different design than the Challenger 600, which
On a GIV, one would have to load many hundreds of pounds of cargo in the forward entrance corridor to move the fwd CG out of limits. Not something likely to be done in a high-end executive jet.
The fuel and pax load of the Challenger at TEB put them over gross, and out of CG limits.
The GIV has a max fuel capacity of 29,500 pounds. They probably had less than half of that for the short hop from BED to ACY, and with just 4 pax, it stands to reason that they were loaded well within the normal envelope.
I'm pretty sure that this accident was the result of some sort of major failure in the flight control system - but I will leave it to the on-scene NTSB and manufacturer's investigators to determine the exact nature of the failure. Because of the massive destruction of the airframe from the impact and fire, that investigation may take quite some time.