Commuter crash off Hyannis

[Airbubba]

CNN is reporting a commuter crash off Hyannis, Mass.

Conflicting reports whether it was going to Albany, NY with 21 pax or a maintenance test flight.

__________________________________

washingtonpost.com
Coast Guard: Plane Crashes Off Cape Cod

The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 26, 2003; 4:25 PM


YARMOUTH, Mass. - A plane that may have been carrying 21 people crashed in Hyannis Harbor off Cape Cod on Tuesday, the Coast Guard. The fate of those aboard was not immediately known.

A Coast Guard spokesman, Chief Warrant Officer John Warner, said he had no immediate information on the type of plane.

He said he had received information 21 people were aboard but could not confirm that.


____________________________________

Update:

Plane Carrying Two Crashes Off Cape Cod

YARMOUTH, Mass. - A plane carrying two crew members crashed Tuesday off Cape Cod, a spokeswoman for Colgan airline said.

The conditions of the two pilots was not immediately known. It was on its way from Hyannis to Albany, N.Y., said Mary Finnegan, a Colgan spokeswoman.

She said initial reports that the plane was carrying as many as 21 passengers were not accurate.

The plane is operated by Colgan Air, which is a carrier for U.S. Airways Express serving Cape Cod. It was in the middle of a "repositioning" flight, not a scheduled flight, Finnegan said.

The plane crashed 3 miles short of the runway at Hyannis Airport.

An aerial view of the crash site showed debris floating in the water.

"Our thoughts and prayers are that our crew members are OK," Finnegan said.

Colgan Air provides service to 31 cities and 11 states on the East Coast. It has hubs in Boston, New York, Pittsburgh and Washington.

[RiverCity]

Associated Press --

The plane, a Beech 1900, crashed 3 miles short of the runway at Hyannis Airport.

An aerial view of the crash site showed debris floating in the water.

"Our thoughts and prayers are that our crew members are OK," Finnegan said.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the pilot declared an emergency shortly after takeoff and was returning to land at Hyannis when the crash occurred about 3 miles off land. The plane was a Beechcraft 1900, the FAA said.

Rescue crews from area fire departments were on the scene. Television images from the crash site showed a small boat in the water near submerged sections of the plane, and a Coast Guard helicopter was hovering overhead.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Amy Thomas confirmed that two people on board. She described the plane as at twin engine Beechcraft with seating for 19 passengers.

[Airbubba]

Perhaps not ironically, an offshore crash drill was held today down in FLL:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6622765.htm

[BAe 146-100]

Hi,

It was a Colgan Air (US Airways Express) Beech 1900D N240CJ. FOX News reports: Pilots radioed and told ATC they were having trouble. Wreckage has been recovered from the water. The aircraft was on a positioning flight from Hyannis to Albany.

BAe 146-100 :(

[Airbubba]

From the Wall Street Journal web site:

_______________________________

"...Joel Finley, 30 years old, of Sandwich, was in a plane scheduled to take off directly after the Beechcraft, and said he saw the plane's tail flutter shortly after takeoff. He said he heard the pilot say in radio transmissions with the control tower that he had lost "trim."

The trim on the plane's tail helps it stay level, he said.

"He banked left and we lost sight of him. We were listening to the whole thing on the radio. We heard the tower say he fell off the radar screen," Mr. Finley said."

_______________________________

Another 1900 with pitch problems on takeoff?

[RiverCity]

AP report in the Boston Herald site:

Tim Bischoff, a businessman who said he witnessed the crash, told WHDH-TV, Channel 7, that he saw the plane with its landing gear down. He said the plane made a couple of ``nose up and nose down movements'' before crashing.

Divers were seen near the wreck, and a section of what appeared to be the plane's trail could be seen just below the water.

[RiverCity]

AP/Boston Globe

Eyewitness Peter Joselow said it was obvious that something was wrong with the aircraft.

"It looked like it was veering very quickly to the left to come back to the airport, but it kept getting lower and lower and lower," said the Ossining, N.Y. resident who summers in Yarmouth. "It went behind the tree line and the next thing we saw was a huge plume of water twice as high as the trees. Then it was silent, no smoke, no fire, no crashing sounds. We knew that the plane hit the water."

"It was horrific to watch what was going on. I thought 'Oh my God, I just saw someone die,"' he said.

State police interviewed a couple boating in the area who said the plane appeared headed straight for them before it veered away at the last second.

"The plane came in at about a 45 degree angle and was heading straight for them and it appeard to them at the last second that the plane veered sharply to the left of where they were," Trooper John Kotfila said.

[RiverCity]

CNN.com

(CNN) -- A couple boating in Nantucket Sound on Tuesday afternoon told investigators that they believe the pilot of a crashing commuter plane must have steered the aircraft away from them at the last minute, a Massachusetts State Police trooper said.

The plane hit the water 75 yards from the couple and showered the area with debris, Trooper John Kotfila told CNN.

"The wife was, you know, very shaken up. The husband was shaken up," Kotfila said. "But they wanted to make sure we understood what they saw."

[ORAC]

CNN:

......The two members of the Colgan Air flight crew are still missing and no bodies have been recovered, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The search for the crew was called off at dusk, just hours after the 3:38 p.m. EDT crash. Officials expect to resume the search Wednesday morning.

Colgan Air identified the crew members as Capt. Scott Knabe, 39, of Cincinnati and 1st Officer Steven Dean, 38, of Euless, Texas.....

Knabe was hired as a first officer at Colgan in 2001 and upgraded to captain in January of this year. He was based at Hyannis and had 2,886 hours of flying time, half of them in the Beech 1900, Colgan Air said. Knabe had an accounting degree from Ohio State, held an airframe and power plant license and performed aerial surveys before joining Colgan, the company said.

Dean was hired last year, the company said. He also was based in Hyannis and had 2,500 total hours of flying time with 682 in the Beech 1900. Before joining Colgan, Dean was a flight instructor on single-engine aircraft, a pilot for a Dallas company, and a flight simulator instructor, the company said.

RIP

[RiverCity]

AP/Boston Globe

Early Wednesday morning, Mary Finnigan, spokeswoman for Colgan Air, said, "It's our understanding that the bodies were recovered after 9 p.m. last evening, and have been transported to Boston" to the state medical examiner's office.

[Huck]

Any chance the the elevator had been misrigged a la Charlotte USAir Express?

[RiverCity]

Boston Globe:

According to witnesses and one aviation source, the plane's movements suggested problems with controls that move the plane's nose up or down, such as elevators, which are moveable parts on the plane's tail. That has heightened concern at the National Transportation Safety Board, which is sending personnel who worked on the January crash in Charlotte, N.C., of another Beech 1900 to assist in the investigation, a federal transportation official said. Investigators are studying an outside contractor's maintenance of tail controls as a cause of that crash, which killed 21 people.

Joel Finley, a 30-year-old pilot from Sandwich, was the next in line to take off on Runway 24 behind the Colgan plane as he headed for tuna spotting. As the plane took off, Finley said he noticed its tail "porpoise a bit" -- move up and down like a porpoise. "As soon as he got up in the air he declared an emergency over the radio," Finley said in a telephone interview. "He banked left, he was going to turn left and return to Runway 33. A minute after that, the tower controller said that the plane fell off the radar."

Finley said the pilot reported a "runaway trim" problem, referring to the portion of the horizontal tail wing that controls the plane's equilibrium and "eases the pressure on the stick" or pilot controls.

An aviation source said a controller watching the airplane on radar thought it was performing as if there was a problem with the plane's elevators, tail flaps that help move the plane's nose up and down.

Chris Tarozzi, 19, of Centerville, an air dispatcher for Air Cape Cod at the Barnstable airport, said people at the airport told him that the plane's crew had asked for and received a special permit for a "ferry flight" to Albany to fix a "trim tab," a component that helps control the plane. But Tarozzi said he had no direct knowledge of the flight crew's plans.

* * * * *

Cape Cod Times (edited for here):

Tim Travis, a spokesman for Raytheon Aircraft Co., which manufactured the Beechcraft 1900D: Runaway trim can cause a pilot to lose control of a plane, but it is not a common cause of crashes, Travis said. "I don't think you could point to trim as a factor in a large number of accidents," he said.

Federal investigators are looking at the possibility of trim malfunctions in another Beechcraft 1900D crash in Charlotte, N.C. Twenty-one people were killed in the January crash, which was a US Airways Express flight operated by Air Midwest Airlines.

Investigators in that crash also are looking at a possible sudden shift in balance in the plane and recent maintenance.

John Nichols saw the plane. "It almost looked like a meteor came out of the sky. It looked like someone tossed it straight down into the water."

Several beachgoers at Kalmus Beach in Hyannis said they noticed the plane flying parallel to the beach. It was flying smoothly, but was going down fast and steep. "It just dropped right out of the sky," said Lynn Spaulding.

Marstons Mills resident Bruce Reid said the plane's motor was running when he first spotted it. Then suddenly it went quiet.

* * * * *

Cape Cod Times

Capt. Scott A. Knabe followed his dream to become a pilot even though it meant leaving his accounting career in his early 30s. Knabe, 39, of Cincinnati died along with First Officer Steven Dean, 38, of Euless, Texas, when their 19-passenger aircraft plummeted into Nantucket Sound yesterday afternoon.

They were the only two on board and had been taking the plane to Albany International Airport for a future passenger flight.

Knabe made his short life count. He followed his passions "even from a young age," said his mother, Alice Knabe of New Smyrna Beach, Fla.

He became an accountant after graduating from Ohio State University, she said. But then he developed an interest in flying, and got the hours necessary to become a commercial pilot when he was 33 or 34.

He flew spotter planes to find forest fires in Kentucky to complete his hours, said his mother.

"Before that, he was very active in the Indy car racing," Mrs. Knabe said. "Not as a driver, but in the pit crew."

Knabe has worked for Colgan Air since 2001. He was hired as a first officer at Colgan in 2001 and upgraded to captain in January this year. He was based in Hyannis and had 2,886 hours of flying time, 1,358 of them in the Beechcraft 1900, according to US Airways Express. He held an airframe and powerplant license.

Knabe was not married. His father died three years ago. He is survived by his mother, a brother and a long-time girlfriend in Cincinnati.

Dean, a Colgan Air employee since 2002, was married and had an 8-year-old daughter, said Mary Finnigan, spokeswoman for Colgan Air.

Before joining Colgan, Dean was a flight instructor on single-engine aircraft, a pilot for a Dallas company and a flight simulator instructor, according to US Airways. He had 2,500 hours of flying time with 682 hours in the Beechcraft 1900.

Finnigan said the death of the two crew members devastated Colgan, a company of 550 employees, and more than 200 pilots.

"We're a small, close-knit family," she said.

[Groaner]

Darren Shannon, Washington DC (27Aug03, 22:05 GMT, 239 words)


The Colgan Air Raytheon Beech 1900D that crashed yesterday shortly after takeoff from Barnstable airport in Hyannis, Massachusetts had undergone in-house maintenance the previous day during which trim tab actuators and a trim cable were replaced.

In a press conference today near the crash site in Lewis Bay, about 100 yards from Yarmouth, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator-in-charge Bob Gretz said two trim tab actuators and the forward elevator trim cable were replaced on 25 August by Colgan Air mechanics.

Shortly after takeoff from runway 24, the aircraft’s pilot reported a “runaway trim” to the airport’s tower, says Gretz. This would have affected the aircraft’s ability to remain horizontal.

At 3.38pm, 12min after takeoff, the aircraft disappeared from radar, apparently during an attempt to return to the airport.

The NTSB says it has recovered both the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage, which lies about 14ft under water. Both recorders are en route to NTSB headquarters in Washington DC, says the agency.

A recovery team will attempt to raise the fuselage tomorrow, adds Gretz.

The bodies of the pilot and co-pilot, the only occupants on the aircraft, were recovered late yesterday, say local police officials.

Colgan Air operates as a regional carrier for US Airways Express. The Beech 1900D was en route to Albany, New York for a repositioning flight to return to schedule service after its maintenance overhaul at Barnstable airport.


Source: Air Transport Intelligence news

[RiverCity]

Boston Globe:

Charles J. "Chuck" Colgan, company chairman, told an airline trade publication recently that the airline is now doing its own heavy maintenance as a cost-cutting effort. "We used to farm all that out before," he said.

There have been three fatal crashes involving Beech 1900D planes since 1998, according to the FAA.

Tarozzi [FBO?] was fueling a plane when he saw the airport's emergency vehicles scurrying on the tarmac. On his handheld radio, he heard air traffic controllers urging the Colgan Air pilots to return whenever they could. "The airport's yours. You have it. Let me know what's going on," Tarozzi recalled the tower saying. He could not hear the pilots. Next, tower officials told the pilots, "You're OK now."

"And that was it," he said. "I didn't hear anything after that. . . . I almost felt like sick afterwards, being a pilot myself."

It was apparently the first fatal crash for the airline, founded by Colgan, a Democratic state senator from Virginia. Calls to his home were not returned. His son, Mike, the company's president, issued a statement mourning the pilots, whom he called "well-respected and well-liked crewmembers."

[OVERTALK]

Don't think that the Beech 1900D has a variable incidence horizontal stabilizer (run by a jackscrew) - but it may have....nor that it's got a varicam (variable camber stabilizer). Does someone here know what the actual arrangment is? Another possibility is an all-flying tailplane (a slab) or a force-trim (elevator held at a stick-force removing angular displacement bias by an electric motor).

But it certainly does seem to have a multiplicity of pitch stability enhancing devices - and the hoz stabilizer/all-flying tailplane(?) chord seems rather narrow. That would lead to a fairly sharp tail-plane stall if the CofG was out of limits (I'd imagine).

Certainly seems like the sudden incident could have been due to an elevator circuit mis-rig or a function of the aircraft trim state at a very low all-up weight. However without knowledge of whether or not they were in extremis right from take-off, it's hard to know. There were reports that they had called in that they had had a runaway trim. I imagine that it's got an electrically-operated elevator trim-tab and that probably has two motors (giving two selectable rates of trim). If the trim ran away to the mechanical stop (beyond the electrical stop) is there a drill for getting it back?

Can anyone elucidate on this? Looking more for info on the system on the Beech 1900D and facts rather than speculation (although not wholly averse to that either there would seem to be a lot for pilots to ruminate on where the Beech 1900D pitch control system is concerned).

[OVERTALK]

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/6808051.htm

The Probable cause is becoming clearer now (see_revelations in the article above)

Misrig the direction of an elevator trim cable's winding around a take-up drum (because the illustration in the manual is incorrect (reversed) and the trim_will be_set opposite to what it should be for take-off - say 10deg nose-down instead of nose-up -but it will look OK on the trim wheel indicator).. Once airborne the situation is then compounded by the pilot winding the trim in the natural sense to oppose the_limited out-of-trim situation - but that only_(very confusingly) worsens the condition. If they were trimming it electrically they'd first up be thinking uppermost about a trim runaway_(as they said over the R/T) and opposing it on their thumbwheels. Unfortunately that would just run the trim even further in the wrong direction -all the way to the stops. I'd guess that neither pilot would've tumbled to the real cause in the time available.

Think about it as being exactly the same as hooking up aileron backwards mechanically (or the A320 incident where the PF's sidestick controller was electrically connected in reverse). Murphy's Law wins again - with a lot of assistance from the maker's manual. in fact it's not dissimilar to the Osprey's Marana_crash scenario. Incipient asymmVR causes one wing to drop and the pilot tries to pick up that wing with opposite stick. Unfortunately, because the control method in_a tilt-rotor's helo mode is differential collective,_an increased collective blade angle_only exacerbates the problem_so the MV-22 just rolled faster through the vertical with the nose dropping - an instantly unrecoverable attitude near the ground._An instinctive control input was the accident clincher. Undetected reversed control hookup is every pilot's unimaginable nightmare - but it's also the circumstance that you have to actively look for. Because full free unrestricted travel is reassuringly there, the fact that it is in the wrong sense_can go unnoticed.

It may well turn out that the Charlotte accident was a similar scenario to the later Cape Cod crash. Why would there be suddenly two of these in a row? Because Raytheon are responsible for updating the maintenance manual with amendments on a regular basis, I'd suggest that a recent amendment incorporated the reversed illustration..... and that unfortunately would have sucked in a number of maintainers who were doing the right thing_by religiously following the manual.

[RatherBeFlying]

When working on my PPL, one of my instructors, Al Dare, taught me to run the trim both ways to the maximum to verify it was working correctly when inspecting the a/c.

Wouldn't be a bad idea for the mechs either.

Explicit description in maintenance manual of trim verification procedure with the obvious diagrams highly recommended.

Maintenance test flight should also be required before return to service after any work on flight controls.

[Belgique]

RatherBeFlying

But did you always conscientiously check that it was working in the correct sense?

If I hooked up a set of ailerons to work differentially and smoothly with full travel in the incorrect sense I'd guess that 45 to 65% of pilots (of any experience level) would miss it.

[RatherBeFlying]

Ahhh Belgique, That's always a good exercise to wake up the remaining brain cells.

Ann Welch wrote up one case where one partner preflighted the a/c, began takeoff and promptly headed off into the grass. A more thorough inspection revealed his partner had removed the rudder for painting:uhoh:

[UNCTUOUS]

A lot of lucky pax didn't die this day.

NTSB Identification: NYC04IA010
14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation
Incident occurred Thursday, October 16, 2003 in Albany, NY
Aircraft: Beech 1900D, registration: N850CA
Injuries: 2 Uninjured.



This is preliminary information, subject to change, and may contain errors. Any errors in this report will be corrected when the final report has been completed.


On October 16, 2003, at 0805 eastern daylight time, a Beech 1900D, N850CA, operated by CommutAir as Continental Connection flight 8718, was not damaged during an aborted takeoff at Albany International Airport (ALB), Albany, New York. The certificated airline transport pilot and certificated commercial pilot were not injured. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the planned flight to Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, New York. An instrument flight rules flight plan was filed for the positioning flight conducted under 14 CFR Part 91.

According to the Director of Safety at CommutAir, the captain initiated a takeoff roll on runway 19 at ALB. As the airplane accelerated to approximately 115 knots, about V1, the captain noted that the elevator control was jammed. He subsequently aborted the takeoff and taxied back to the ramp uneventfully.

The airplane was examined at CommutAir's maintenance facility after the incident. The examination revealed that when the elevator trim wheel in the cockpit was positioned to neutral, the elevator trim was actually in a nose-down position.

A mechanic performed maintenance on the airplane one day prior to the incident, and the incident flight was the first flight after the maintenance. The mechanic stated that part of the maintenance performed on the airplane included removal and replacement of a throttle pin. To accomplish that procedure, the mechanic had removed the elevator trim wheel. However, he did not index the elevator trim wheel before removing it, and reinstalled it incorrectly.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20031023X01801&key=1

[fernytickles]

Very glad to read this as an incident and not an accident, but.....why didn't the pilot(s) notice the control jam until accelerating for take off - what about "full & free" checks prior to lining up?

[Tinstaafl]

Because without airflow over the trim tab then there can't be a force produced by it to act on the elevator/control column. Once some amount of speed is reached then the trim forces become increasingly larger (V squared effect), shoving the elevator into a position where the loads balance. Nose down, in this case. Presuming it uses a tab, of course, and not a spring.

[chuks]

They are all killer airplanes.

We had a guy crippled for life when a parked DHC-3 fell on him and broke his back. Meaning, you aren't even safe from them when they are parked! Once you start the engines and set them in motion the level of risk rises rapidly.

The one I fly now has a nice little illustration of the flight controls and the trimmers on the Multi-Function Display (MFD) that you can watch while doing your checks if you want to take the trouble.

[Dockjock]

With respect to maintenance test flights- in that case it probably would have only served to kill the engineers on the test flight. That would have reduced the body count significantly, but hardly would have been a preferred event either. Culpability in this case must lead back to Raytheon for the incorrect diagram, although there should be more thorough checks and balances, and as RatherBe suggests a full run of the trim in both directions to ensure proper rigging.

I suspect that in the Oct.16 incident the newspaper has written "jammed controls" to indicate laymens terms for the air loading being too high for the crew to rotate due misrigging. The controls were most likely not jammed at all.

[chuks]

Something I want to try on my next sim session: Get the instructor to run the pitch trim, if possible, to full range up or down without the crew noticing that. Shouldn't it be possible for the crew to over-ride the incorrect trim? (The aircraft in question has an 'out of trim' warning incorporated in the CAS panel. If you advance the throttles with the pitch trim out of the take-off range an alert sounds. That said, there must be a failure scenario that would catch us unawares.)

In a related case, Roselawn, the NTSB report stated that the crew should have been able to regain roll control even though the ailerons had gone to full deflection and would have required very heavy inputs to get them to move. The crew assumed that they were jammed when normal force wouldn't move them. I think they said it would have taken 40 kilos (88 lbs.) to move them. Both pilots on the controls should be able to come up with that, I assume.

Of course we are working from hindsight here, so that the crash crew cannot be faulted for being caught out there.

[Dockjock]

I'm not intimately familiar with the B1900 but if it does have an out of trim annunciator perhaps it was not functioning because the trim was mis rigged. Yes they may have been able to overpower it but when it is rigged opposite to normal there is precious little time to troubleshoot.

[Blank-EFIS]

Speculating on the cause of this Accident may please some people here , but the fact remains that Two of our comerades are no longer with us !

R.I.P guys

And my condolances to their respective families !