Piper down, no sign of the pilot?
 

ASN Aircraft accident 16-SEP-2015 Piper PA-28-161 Cadet D-ENEU

According to news the plane did some circling before hitting powerline and going down, so there must have been someone on board. Search did not find any person from the plane, x-files?

Probably delivering some Columbian marching powder.

Westflug is a flying school , and a serious one, also renting a/c, so surely they know who the pilot was . Also seeing the photo of the wreck, difficult to beleive he/she went out unscratched.

It's happened before that a pilotless aircraft departed after being hand propped - perhaps again?

Perhaps the pilot stepped out before the crash, and there's a body in a field somewhere uptrack?

It'd be tough to squeeze out of a Cadet door at flying speed.

I know a guy that tried to kill himself that way in a Cardinal. He couldn't get the door open enough, and his passenger got him back down safe.

Just do a tail slide. The door will open without you having to use force...

Oh, and try to avoid the prop on the way out!

A couple of years ago a guy rented a 172 at our field. He intentionally exited the aircraft at FL100 without a parachute. The aircraft itself hit a farm building half an hour later. Took some time to find the body.

Many years ago whilst working at Farnborough, I handed over a C182 to Benson. A short time later Benson phoned to say one of the occupants, a female, had deliberately exited the aircraft which had been at about 3,500ft.

The sad thing is that he may now be in dire need. I reckon he could have survived if his harness was good and tight and may have walked some distance, have staggered around with concussion and be unable to explain what happened to anyone who is helping him, who may not have put two and two together and are assuming it was a car crash.

It is alarming, and quite shocking, that the authorities have stopped searching.

They should get out and try and little harder, maybe with the help of local scouts, Air Cadets or equivalent.

I can understand suicidal passengers jumping out, but pilot? Why not stay in the plane until the end?

I guess it has happened before.

A more typical scenario might be a fake death attempt:

Businessman 'faked death by jumping from plane' | US news | The Guardian

Think this guy takes the biscuit


New Twist in Errant-Plane Case - The Pilot Was Shot in Midflight - NYTimes.com

QDM360 says:
"Today, an analysis of radar tracks suggested the pilot likely exited the aircraft much earlier, from high altitude"


How does analysis of radar conclude this?

We see much more than you think ! :E
Joke aside , with the numbers of radars illuminating the target in this area, it is possible to reconstruct a good 3D tracking afterwards,( but only afterwards) what they have seen I do not know exactly but they seem to think there is a possibility the pilot jumped out well before the crash . Suicide or with a parachute are also just hypothesis .

I'm guessing, but if the pilot jumped out of an aeroplane of this nature - that'll lighten the aeroplane and move the CG aft. Plus, clearly, nobody's now flying it.

The result is probaly a sudden climb rate, and significantly less smooth flightpath control.

Never tried, but I would have thought you could see - or at least hazard a useful guess at - that on a transponder return.

G

I'll never understand this - take your own life if you have to, but why endanger others? Imagine the damage this could have caused if plane would have crashed on a busy autobahn or urban area..

I agree. If the pilot was determined to commit suicide, he could have stayed with the aircraft and spun it in to an unpopulated area. Very strange, but who know the state of mind of person at that point. Logic does not always come to the fore.

Genghis opines in #18:
"... that'll lighten the aeroplane and move the CG aft..."

Interesting observations about radar, thanks.

I'm not so sure about CG shift. He was sitting almost exactly above the centre of lift of the wing which should be roughly the CG. If he left carefully, assuming he could get the door open, i wonder if the a/c would have proceeded until it ran out of fuel (as is suggested for MH370 which, of course, had the benefit of an autopilot), thereby creating, as his legacy, a bizarre mystery 100 miles away somewhere or other.

People suffering from suicidal thoughts and deep depression are basically mentally ill - and their brains and thought processes are unbalanced due to chemical imbalances in their brains.
As a result, logical trains of thought, and the consequences of our actions - that those of us who are not suicidal, carry out - are not able to be carried out by the suicidal person, because thoughts of suicide and the constant outlook, that there's "no other way out", dominate their thoughts, to the exclusion of all else - including the consideration of what may happen when they bale out of a flying aircraft and leave it to crash.

Unfortunately, suicidal tendencies tend to be hereditary and run in families - and people who have suicidal tendencies regularly fall into deep depression and try to take their lives - as their disordered thoughts see no way to move forward out of their depression and their "need to end it all".
I have personally known a couple of families who had several family members over several generations, develop suicidal tendencies - and I have personally known several people who suffered from suicidal tendencies, who regularly attempted to take their lives - and who eventually succeeded in doing so.

It's important to develop the skill to be able to recognise when someone is suffering from suicidal tendencies and the attendant deep depression, and to get help for them.
I'm not talking about the occasional bouts of depression that a large percentage of people get, when they feel overwhelmed by a constant run of adverse life events - and who always manage to climb out of that depression.
I'm talking about the people who regularly speak of suicide as the only course of action, and who fall into deep depression, that they cannot shake off, or be cheered up, and talked out of it.