what went wrong here ?

[darrylj]

a cessna 172R going down.
overloading?.


http://noticias.canalrcn.com/media/ultimoavion.wmv





ps: hope this is in the right place....:=

[Wyler]

This was the straw that broke the camels back and made EasyJet swap to 737's.

[GearDown&Locked]

Not a specialist but it seems bad weight distribution, too much in the back ... as the plane lifts the attitude remains the same until the crash i.e pitched way up.

[ironbutt57]

182 skylane...overloaded maybe, behind the power/ drag curve

[Oshkosh George]

It looked like a medevac flight with an oxygen cylinder in the back,along with a crying patient. Also he seemed to steer right to avoid the people at the end of the runway. Possibly overloaded on a short strip,and not enough flying speed on lift off.

All speculation of course,but I don't think it was a joking matter as in Wyler's post!

[Flight Safety]

My first guess is the plane was overloaded. It looks like it had no ability to climb out of ground effect. I'm not sure there was an aft CG problem as it doesn't appear to me that there was a pitch control problem.

The plane was in a short field configuration with the flaps down for takeoff, which requires good power, so it's possible a power problem caused the lack of climb performance.

[pilotaydin]

seems to be the CG may have been too far aft, as can be seen by the nosewheel strut being very high up, and aircraft being very tail low. It also seems they were airborne in ground effect, and didnt stay in ground effect to gain airspeed, they continued to try and climb, and then being in the region of reverse command....brought them down.. :uhoh:

[Dani]

Agree. Also wrong short field tactics: You have to keep the nose wheel down until you rotate, so you can accelerate as long as possible on the ground. If you see that it doesn't climb, do not climb, try to catch up some speed und trade it later into height (departure patch was clear of obstacles).

And if you think that you are short of runway, air and power, don't take three people with you! A take off calculation wouldn't do any harm eighter...

Dani

[Taildragger67]

Did they get out of the wreck ok?

[darrylj]

Did they get out of the wreck ok?

i heard that 3 died, and the pilot survived with lots of burns.

[GearDown&Locked]

From a rough translation the only survivor of the crash was the pilot although with 50% (?) of his body severely burned. :uhoh:

[ironbutt57]

Maybe wrong tactic for short hard surface, but rough unimproved surfaces require getting the nosewheel clear early to avoid it bogging down, "soft field" which uses more ground roll...which is why tail-draggers are preferred for these ops....

[erikv]

The video quality isn't all that good, but I think I see the elevator deflected up to attain the nose-high attitude. This would point to high load and/or density altitude rather than (only) aft cg.

At an extremely aft cg, the aircraft would still perform well, but the pilot would run out of elevator authority to stop the nose from coming up. You'd expect more something like a steep climb until a wing drops and the aircraft coming down in an incipient spin.

Erik.

[pulse1]

It looks to me as if he lost directional control first and then dragged it off the ground early just as he left the side of the strip. The dust shows that there wasn't much of a cross wind though.

[kms901]

If 3 died, one survived and they were carrying an oxygen cylinder it may well have been pretty heavy for a 172. I have always wondered about the 172 and ground effect. I have about 150hrs in a few different versions. Sometimes it seems to get airborne soon enough but need a couple of seconds acceleration before a positive climbout starts. Any thoughts?

[LEVC]

Watching the smoke colomn after the crash we can tell there was a fair amount of crosswind.

The nose wheel arrangement doesn't look to extended, if the CG was to aft it will show a much higher position on the ground, so, in my opinion, not a problem of CG.


it looks that he tries to get of the ground to early, with litle control the wind starts pushing the aircraft to the side , and he doesn't crab in to the wind to avoid drift,then he sees himself very close to obstacles , pulls to avoid them and stalls.

Sad, cause he had a bit more runway left to accelerate before rotation.

€fully agree with the previous post, nose off the ground asap for soft field, rotate and accelerate on ground effect as near to the ground as you safely can then climb out

Will be interesting reading the investigation report (when there is one)

[Henry Hallam]

Which was it, 172 or 182?

[wombat13]

Couple of thoughts to add. First, as we all know, the "ground effect" for the Cessna is limited compared, for example to a PA28. Second, everyone seems happy to be running around in warm weather clothes, so the climb performance would have been further degraded in the heat.

In any event, it is impossible to say from the video if the aircraft was over / wrongly loaded. What can be said is the idiots at the end of the r/w prevented the pilot from using the full length.

So, to add to the adage that there is nothing more useless than r/w behind you on landing / take-off, it is r/w in front that has arseholes on it.

My only critisism at this stage would be that he did not check his speed on the roll. And if he did, he ignored rather important data that could have saved lives.

The Wombat

I have just watched this again and even more annoying than the idiots at the end of the r/w is that there was a VERY considerable clearway beyond.

[Charley]

Henry

It's a 182; note the cowl flaps. The only 172's fitted with them are Cutlasses (which have retractable gear) and the Reims Rocket, iirc.

[Speedpig]

The people weren't on the runway. Pilot gets nose up very early and slow, then immediately veers to the right, off the runway. As a consequence of the persons proximity to the runway, he cannot nose down to gain speed.
Very sad end to a series of errors.
RIP those who perished.

[wombat13]

The people weren't on the runway. Pilot gets nose up very early and slow, then immediately veers to the right, off the runway. As a consequence of the persons proximity to the runway, he cannot nose down to gain speed.
Very sad end to a series of errors.
RIP those who perished.

Fair point. It does show there was more r/w to use - plus lot's of clearway if it was, well, clear.

The Wombat

[Piltdown Man]

I'm glad the pilot survived - he can now tell us what he did! There is a limit to what a 182 can haul off a runway but they are pretty nifty pieces of kit. So what we need now is the aircraft's weight and distribution, temp, pressure and data about the strip. And then maybe fling some dung!

From memory, the Cessna's manual for the C172 (R or K version I think) manual I read, suggested that when operating from hot and high, short strips, you lean the engine to get max RpM, accelerate to get the nosewheel just off the ground and when approaching flying speed, lower 20 degrees of flap. There is a reasonable chance that the 182's manual said something similar. Does anybody have the book?

[funfly]

As this looks like some sort of 'mercy' dash, there must have been some adrenaline running. One crying passenger, one person in the back seriously ill, people loading all sorts of gear.you can envisage checks being missed or even ignored.Tremendous pressure on the pilot to just get going as quickly as possible!
How would any of us cope?

[Flight Safety]

Funfly, one of the kindest acts of mercy when making mercy flights, is to make sure the aircraft gets to its destination safe and sound. When flying the sick or infirmed, the decisions for safe flight are somewhat less pressured. It's the EMS helo guys who have it the worst I think. In the golden hour for trauma patients, they could die if you don't fly, or they could die if you do fly under the wrong circumstances. :sad: