Cessna 414 Down in Santa Ana, California

[cavuman1]

Aircraft Down in Staples Parking Lot (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/santa-ana-california-small-plane-deadly-crash-parking-lot-today-2018-08-05/)

Dashcam Video (https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/video/3912160-new-dashcam-video-shows-deadly-small-plane-crash/)

Happened yesterday. English-as-a-second-language witness stated that "The airplane was twirling down." A stall/spin LOC accident, I fear. RIP victims and condolences to surviving family members. :{

- Ed

[Mark in CA]

Dramatic footage. Sure seems to be a stall, but I wonder what the actual emergency was that they called in.

If this is correct, the owner of the plane is the United States Department Of Interior:

Aircraft Data N727, 1982 Cessna A185F Skywagon 185 C/N 18504371 (http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N727.html)

[treadigraph]

Mark, that's a different aircraft, a Cessna 185.

[Hoppe]

Emergency declared just a minut before. Flightaware shows last recorded at 1000' and 107 knots. What is blue line on a 414?

[runway30]

I was staying in the Crowne Plaza just down the road at the beginning of June. It’s lucky there were no casualties on the ground because South Coast Plaza across the road is a really busy mall. From the pictures I’ve seen I can’t see any evidence of fire.

[Mark in CA]

Mark, that's a different aircraft, a Cessna 185.
My bad. The full tail number is 727RP. The RP wasn't obvious from the photos. Registered to a charter company in San Francisco.

[Concours77]

Emergency declared just a minut before. Flightaware shows last recorded at 1000' and 107 knots. What is blue line on a 414?

Flown that route. With a mayday one minute prior, and no fire, my surmise is low/no fuel.

[Hoppe]

Flown that route. With a mayday one minute prior, and no fire, my surmise is low/no fuel.


Doubt it. Did you see the video? He came down like a lawn dart, almost vertical.

[what next]

Flightaware shows last recorded at 1000' and 107 knots. What is blue line on a 414?

110kt if I remember correctly. But there are so many modifications for these planes (e.g. RAM conversion or vortex generators) that one really must look it up for each individual airframe. And then these flightaware speeds are ground speeds, not airspeeds and not very precise either.

[AndiKunzi]

Spins frequently do start with a roll over with extreme descent. Recovery may look as what we could see in the videos available at present (the last few seconds, not showing how the dive started).

The accident site doesn‘t look like if there was plenty of fuel spilled. If there was fuel, a fire would have been very likely with a high impact crash like that.

C414 VYSE is 108 KIAS and VS1 is about 80 KIAS without vortex generators (which most C414s do have).

[Concours77]

Doubt it. Did you see the video? He came down like a lawn dart, almost vertical.



There were two videos. The second one showed what may have been a partial recovery. I saw rapid nose up, then lost the aircraft when it was probably 100agl? May have restalled.

Crash site showed a full length section, (starboard fuselage?), with most windows intact. Not much horizontal on impact, so the nose up may only have added some extra pancake. No lawn dart, not at that airspeed, the airframe would have been demolished. Completely.

imo.

btw, what did you think I was trying to say? That running out of fuel and losing the flight path cannot result in a near vertical impact?

[Deadstick126]

My brother has the 425 and I can't imagine getting it out of a spin from 1000 feet. It's so fast and slick that even with that big tail fin it's going to take a couple thousand feet to recover. What I see in the video sure looks like a spin to me. The other puzzling thing to me is the twin engine failure. I don't see how you run out of fuel in both engines at the same time, so I would guess one failed, then the turn into the dead engine may have caused excessive control input as the second engine failed. I do spins in approved aircraft and I'd hate to spin that beast.

[runway30]

My brother has the 425 and I can't imagine getting it out of a spin from 1000 feet. It's so fast and slick that even with that big tail fin it's going to take a couple thousand feet to recover. What I see in the video sure looks like a spin to me. The other puzzling thing to me is the twin engine failure. I don't see how you run out of fuel in both engines at the same time, so I would guess one failed, then the turn into the dead engine may have caused excessive control input as the second engine failed. I do spins in approved aircraft and I'd hate to spin that beast.

We don’t know all the circumstances so I’m not trying to criticise this particular pilot and I have never experienced a double engine failure but surely you are going to have to severely mishandle the controls to get yourself in a spin?

[Deadstick126]

We don’t know all the circumstances so I’m not trying to criticise this particular pilot and I have never experienced a double engine failure but surely you are going to have to severely mishandle the controls to get yourself in a spin?
Absolutely! But think about being in a right turn and the right engine fails. Suddenly you're skidding from the asymmetrical thrust now coming from the left engine. The big four bladed prop on the right engine is inducing severe drag and the airplane becomes very difficult to control. As you start to break into the spin the left engine quits and now you're banked hard right, full left aileron (more drag) and the airplane gives it up and around you go. Recovery is yoke neutral, full left rudder. The airplane is so slick that it would take a couple of thousand feet to stop the rotation and level out. That's test pilot stuff. The average pilot today has very little or no spin training and would likely not react in time to prevent it. Then insufficient altitude for recovery and it's over.

[runway30]

Absolutely! But think about being in a right turn and the right engine fails. Suddenly you're skidding from the asymmetrical thrust now coming from the left engine. The big four bladed prop on the right engine is inducing severe drag and the airplane becomes very difficult to control. As you start to break into the spin the left engine quits and now you're banked hard right, full left aileron (more drag) and the airplane gives it up and around you go. Recovery is yoke neutral, full left rudder. The airplane is so slick that it would take a couple of thousand feet to stop the rotation and level out. That's test pilot stuff. The average pilot today has very little or no spin training and would likely not react in time to prevent it. Then insufficient altitude for recovery and it's over.

I can’t see that happening if you make the correct rudder inputs which after my twin training became instinctive. On the other hand if you made a steep turn towards the airfield and allowed the speed to bleed off? Just conjecture because we don’t know what happened. I wonder how many twin pilots know their best gliding speed? I think I would have gone for a landing on the 405 freeway as another Cessna twin did last year after experiencing an engine failure after take off.

[Concours77]

Flying in to this airport from NoCal needs attention. With five aboard and a boring drone down the valley, once descending into the valley over the Big Bear, the pace needs focus. The valley is a surprise after the boring valley, and the cockpit environment can get busy. Excitement of the expectation of a fun convention, the demands of a complex aircraft, and an adjustment to a busy airborne environment, a bad time to get behind. If the aircraft was a charter, or a rental, time in type would be a factor. A friend owned a 414 and also had a 440. He loved the turbine, and was trying to sell the piston twin.

I don’t like to rely on the eyewitnesses, but “sputtering” is a troubling word. Fuel issues? Loss of an engine should not have been fatal, of course, but just to say it may have come at the “wrong time”. Low, and slow, crowded airspace, after a drone down valley? Such a tragic thing. The Mayday was more likely an engine failure, not fuel starvation, giving the pilot the benefit of the doubt. Not much to go on yet. Concord was my home and the airfield was my base. Lost a friend in a crash at the airfield in the eighties. Flying a Baron, he was returning from LA.

Best
concours

[ksjc]

Flying in to this airport from NoCal needs attention. With five aboard and a boring drone down the valley, once descending into the valley over the Big Bear, the pace needs focus. The valley is a surprise after the boring valley, and the cockpit environment can get busy. Excitement of the expectation of a fun convention, the demands of a complex aircraft, and an adjustment to a busy airborne environment, a bad time to get behind. If the aircraft was a charter, or a rental, time in type would be a factor. A friend owned a 414 and also had a 440. He loved the turbine, and was trying to sell the piston twin.

I don’t like to rely on the eyewitnesses, but “sputtering” is a troubling word. Fuel issues? Loss of an engine should not have been fatal, of course, but just to say it may have come at the “wrong time”. Low, and slow, crowded airspace, after a drone down valley? Such a tragic thing. The Mayday was more likely an engine failure, not fuel starvation, giving the pilot the benefit of the doubt. Not much to go on yet. Concord was my home and the airfield was my base. Lost a friend in a crash at the airfield in the eighties. Flying a Baron, he was returning from LA.

Best
concours

Have you even read this thread? Jesus dude. Flight came from Catalina direction, not the north as you say.

[runway30]

Have you even read this thread? Jesus dude. Flight came from Catalina direction, not the north as you say.


Flight departed CCR which I believe is in North California. It coasted out south of Ventura then made a left turn at Catalina for the south west arrival over Huntington Pier.


Which when they crashed would have put them downwind for 20R. If one engine had failed, I know this aircraft has pretty poor single engine performance but it should have been drama free to complete the circuit and land. If both engines stopped, well that’s something different. Landing from downwind after an engine failure is something I used to practice in singles. In my view, in a twin, where he was, if both engines had stopped, not a hope.

[Concours77]

CCR is a very busy GA field that at one time had scheduled service flying the 727. The airfield is located in Concord, California. My assumption was he flew direct. Apologies if he had a different route, I missed that. If he was flying other than direct, and lengthened his flight time, might bring fuel issues back into the realm of possibilities.

DeCaf bud

[Deadstick126]

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N727RP

[Concours77]

3:24:53. At this point, watch his flight track. Trouble. This looks like a loss of engine(s).
What time, precisely, was his Mayday?

What jumps to mind is a pair of piston engines at eleven thousand feet for two hours, temp stabilized, being “cooled” by relatively thin air. What follows is a descent into lower level, where air is thicker, cools better, and is in a marine environment.

Shock cooling. The bane of all piston pilots. These engines need close monitoring in descent. At low power, rapidly cooling, things can break. It wouldn’t be the first time an engine gave up completely. And losing both has happened.

[megan]

Shock cooling? Bollox.. Descent was made at a comfortable 500 ft/min, or just a tad over, highest shown being 633. Record shows good descent planning and execution.

[Concours77]

It’s possible (engine failure due mismanagement) but I defer to your omniscience. Having been there, how did you survive?

[B2N2]

I’m not very familiar with a 414 but some of these Cessna medium size twins have complex fuel systems.
Inboard/outboard tanks, some tip tanks and some with nacelle tanks. Fuel returning to a different tank then it came from and all different capacities.
STC’s can make one plane significantly different from another.
Transfer pumps that transfer at a rate which is less then the engine fuel consumption at a high power setting so yes it’s possible to starve both engines of fuel while you have plenty on board.

[megan]

This particular 414 came standard with two tanks per wing, tip tank and an aux tank in the wing. To this could be added a locker tank. The later 414A had just an integral tank in each wing, simplifying management. The diagram is for a 310, which is a similar system to the 414. Had sufficient tip fuel not been burnt initially it was possible, if you switched to the aux, to lose fuel via the tip vent as the tank overfilled with engine return fuel, or when transferring to the tip from the locker tank. You wanted to transfer the locker tank early in the flight to ensure that the pumps worked and did transfer, bearing in mind the previous necessity to have room for it in the tip.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.gmforum.com-vbulletin/654x1024/c310r_2968ba268a7b100e71bddc64e89b9b0ccaf0237d.jpg

[Concours77]

Thanks, that’s first rate, it helps a lot.