N452TS Citation 501SP crash Jan 12 2014 Germany
 

Skynews newsdesk is reporting a small business jet on a flight form the UK to a German airfield has crashed with 4 fatalities - all on board.

No details yet. Reported 4 minutes ago.

Yes heard it too ! We are a small band of pilots so hope no one I know !

Pace

BERLIN (AP) — Police say a small jet has crashed near an airfield in western Germany and four people on board are believed to have died.
The plane came down Sunday lunchtime at a landfill site near the city of Trier. City police said in a statement that it appears to have been a Cessna Citation business jet carrying two pilots and two passengers from England to an airfield at Foehren, near the crash site.
The aircraft damaged an electricity pylon as it came down and was ablaze when firefighters arrived at the scene.

Biz jet crash in Trier Germany
 

Reports are it's a Citation flying from the UK , sadly no survivors :( RIP

Föhren is a VFR field. Have a look at the apparently foggy conditions...

Look at the webcam:

Flugplatz Trier-Föhren EDRT | Webcam


Heres a pic:

Nahe Trier: Vier Tote bei Flugzeugabsturz - N24.de

Looks like a straight citation...

More pics:

Vier Tote bei Flugzeugabsturz nahe Trier

According to:

In der Nähe von Trier: Vier Tote bei Flugzeugabsturz - Panorama - Stuttgarter Zeitung

its N-reg.

The crash site seems to be at about 2-3nm final:

http://goo.gl/maps/sy0BZ

Point B is the landfill site the reports talk about ("Mülldeponie")


Apparently a C501:

In Rheinland-Pfalz: 4 Tote bei Flugzeugabsturz - News Inland - Bild.de

ASN has reported it is a N.... number?

You can see the hydro lines in the photo;

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdyUlGpCMAAhtLK.jpg:large

Trier-Föhren Airport @ OurAirports

N reg ? CJ or 500 series ? Anyone know departure airfield uk ?

Pace

Needs confirmation but a twitter post has it as N452TS.

Propably:
Reg: N452TS

Last flight:
Flightradar24.com - Live flight tracker!

Live flight information - Brighton Airport

Cessna 501 Citation. N452TS. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

What a relief to see your post Pace :):ok:

I have just heard the type and departure airfield and thought of you instantly.

As much joy as flying does give to us, it also draws reflection to the sudden sadness that can follow.

Condolences to family and friends.

News indicated that they might have struck a powerline in bad viz.
However, aircraft was based at EDRT and owned by a local company, guess they know the area well enough not to hit one of those?

Horrible CFIT crash - unexcuseable seen the circumstances.
Trier-Föhren is a plain VFR / VMC landingsite, no navaid - no nothing !!
Trier - Föhren lies in a valley with the surrounding hills topping field elevation by 600 - 1000 ft. Possible diversion a/d nearby are on top of these hills.
Weather was definately IMC at a bad state >> see Metar Spangdahlem airbase attached to the report in Aviation Safety Network.
Apparently at the time of the crash nearby Frankfurt-Hahn airport - just south of the Mosel valley had gone to VFR conditions.
Even if still at IMC Hahn has a 3800 m long RWY and cat III ILS on both ends.
Luxemburg obviously was down to IFR minima at the time of the crash, so no good diversion a/d.
Finally, EDDK - Cologne - was plain CAVOK the entire day !! So why no diversion into safety, followed by a 1:45 h car drive??

I guess we will never know. Having to get there kills time and again.

If you can´t see em cause they are in bloody fog ?

My home base has a 460ft minima partly because of powerlines crossing the approach path. Knowing that they are there does not help.

These accidents will never stop, cause there is always an idiot out there flying. Unless there was a very temporary very steep positive change in visibilty when they tried to approach this was simply not flyable. ELLX was fogged out all day and EDFH was CAVOK from 1020utc onwards. I have lived in the area for a year -> this is not a place to mess around.

perhaps an accident with a root cause in flawed decision making? :confused:

It is unfortunate that they left us too early under some how avoidable circumstances.

RIP.

WP

Regional TV news (SWR) yesterday evening quoted airport officials as saying visibility <200m and no contact with tower prior to crash.

I was flying VFR yesterday in the area. The ground fog was only a few hundred feet thick in the valleys with full blue sky/CAVOK above.
In places the High Power lines poles and windmills tops were sticking out the fog base on some hills.
As Annex 14 correctly and wisely said earlier , there were plenty on airfields open in full sunshine on the high terrain, all around Trier. Attempting yesterday to go inside the Mosel valley with this weather ( plus the fog was in icing conditions as well ) on a strip with no Nav aids is not understandable for me.

Brings another question, how can you cancel IFR, ( they had to at some point for destination Trier ) and then enter known IMC ?
Pressure of the guy in the back paying for the trip ?

An accident that should not have happenned.

jetBlu

Thanks for concern Surprisingly the reg is very close to one of the Citations I fly which are both 550s and never taken a jet into Shoreham.

Graham Hill and get me home Itis springs to mind

Pace

The Graham Hill accident is precisely the first thing that came to my mind too.

Well, the accident crew must have had some reasonable expectation of getting away with it, going VFR into IMC.

There have been a couple of similar accidents at Egelsbach, near Frankfurt am Main, so that it's not that unusual a thing to see happen, a bizjet crew hitting obstructions while trying to make it into a place without aids or even one with weather below minimums. You try it and get away with it, you are an ace; you divert, you are a putz, so ....

There was even a profile of an ex-CEO of a big German manufacturer that showed him boasting about how his crew made it into someplace or other when lesser mortals were all forced to divert because of bad weather, due to the force of his personality. The point was to show what a hard charger the CEO was, and this was in a mass-circulation non-aviation magazine so that his sheer stupidity went unremarked. (I think it was a guy running Daimler-Benz, profiled in Stern, certainly not the incumbent. I might have those details wrong; it was a while ago that I read the article, when it caught my eye since I am a pilot.)

Before we condemn the pilots I noticed that one of the local newspapers noticed a large number of birds around the aircraft and concluded they had been pheasant shooting in the UK? I had seen the UK chart earlier and it did not seem like pheasant shooting weather to me. Perhaps this is a clue, as I had seen a large number of ducks in the area a few days before flying in formation.
As for a GPS approach High voltage power lines in fog generate a large amount of interference. In hindsight a safe look at the conditions knowing a safe diversion airfield is in reach, and next thing all the holes in the cheese line up fast.

F900 EX
I initially have spend some thoughts to that possibility of a self braided GPS procedure.What doesn´t fit as I see it is the fact they where at field elevation 2 NM prior target coordinates. At the same time off the centre line by about 700 m.
Hard to believe that an experienced crew would fall for such faults. And GPS is in generell a much too precise device for navigation.
JGBC
Kind of honest try that should be appreciated to point towards the possibility of a multiple bird strike. The mystery of the many reported pheasants around the wreckage might be lifted. However what speaks against a birdstrike is the fact that part of the right wing was located on the pole they hit.As one can see on div. Foto of the inverted wreckage the right wing and gear is missing.

I believe, as was mentioned by others, most likely the "big boss" in the rear of the plane wanted them to try. Probably they got a glimps of the Autobahn and tried to follow it. The tricky part of that idea is, the Autobahn follows the valley of river Salm and one has to swing to the right to get onto final. The impacted power pole stands on a terrain step that rises roughly 150 ft from the valley floor. Terrain elevation at crash site is comparable to that of the airport.
Though we will not know what actually made them take that decision, the fact they were that low so early in approach doesn´t leave much different possibilties. Especially if one considers what ATC Watcher wrote in his post about the fog situation.
Jo

Birds congestion around garbage landfills are very common. However most birds have a stronger conservation instinct than humans and they do not fly in formation in Fog. Certainly not ducks. And birds do not Fly VFR on top either. So I do not believe bird strike was a factor, but , seen the wreckage, the investigation surely will detect if it was.

But the decision to enter a dense fog layer so close to terrain for a VFR/Visual APP is the primary cause.

A German news agency (Sueddeutsche Zeitung Newsticker) is reporting that the crew might have actually violated aviation rules by cancelling IFR flight plan and changing to VFR for a destination without VMC.:ugh:

Flying VFR under IMC is a basic tenet that I was constantly reminded of when I started my PPL training. It is hard to believe that some pilots out there put their lives at risk by not observing this simple rule.

WP

WP, most likely they were VMC the time they cancelled. Their destination wasn´t.

If it was fog or low cloud no amount of home made GPS approach accuracy would make any difference!
It would not matter if there was an ILS on the field unless the pilot was prepared to go below minima.
No pilot should use GPS on its own! In my piston twin days I used to operate into an airfield with terrain around. There was an NDB and a DME but no approved approach.
I overlayed a GPS approach over the NDB/DME used the GPS for precision and the NDB/DME as well a a RadAlt to confirm the GPS.
Just to use GPS would be very foolhardy.
More likely with areas being in the clear that the pilots were flying in visually and seeing cloud ahead made some mistake on their location especially if you think you know the area well.
That fact alone will make a pilot less cautious but more prone to a serious mistake.
Hence why Graham Hills crash came to mind as he misidentified visually albeit at night where he was and continued beleving he knew where he was on an approach he had made many times.

Pace

F900 EX
Fully agree with what you write about all the many faults that can slip into a normal operation. Humans tend to forget that human error is a very common desease.
WP
There is nothing wrong with cancelling IFR with that type of aircraft as long as one stays in VMC afterwards. Flying fully IMC into a landing site with zero Navaid or published Instrument Procedure is what makes the case illegal.

One other point that rises additional questions and came to scene in a local TV report this afternoon where the controller on duty was interviewed. Apparently neither a standard radio contact nor a hint they were trying an approach was made.
Jo

Annex 14 : Just a point of semantics , but there is no ATC in Trier, so no controllers. Just an AFIS run but the local flying school. But journalists ususally call them Controllers.

ATC Watcher
it´s not a case of semantics, just another case of human error and trying to relay a story 1 : 1.
You are of course correct, no ATC at Trier - Föhren and I should have known better!!
Jo

DFS statement yesterday: Airport only approved for VFR with 1500m visibility. Visibility at time of accident:100m

Full stop....

Well, in theory maybe. But we have quite a few GPS-only RNAV approaches here (I fly one of them once per week) where no other navaid is in useful range. Approved, official procedures.

From today's paper...
 

There's a picture of a high-tension mast with a large piece of Citation wing jammed into it, at about 30 metres (100 feet) AGL. In the accompanying article they speak of "pilot error."

I don't think Citations are usually equipped with FDRs or CVRs, so that there probably will not be much more than guessing about what the crew were saying and doing as they entered what was reported as 100 metres (330 feet) visibility under VFR, but it should be fairly easy to guess it was something on the order of "Expletive deleted" (sound of impact).

What a waste. Divert to someplace with suitable weather, let the pax take a taxi to Trier, and catch up with them later once the fog had cleared... what's wrong with that? Hindsight: it's a wonderful thing!

"Just to use GPS would be very foolhardy"

My airplanes approved to fly the North Atlantic just with 2 GPSes. Granted - no power lines there....

Anyhow, possibly you meant no pilot should use his DIY GPS approach ? That I would sign...

To split hairs further, visibility in Trier can be "measured" only by the pilot, nobody else. (unless there is an approved and calibrated VAISALA or the like installed)
Given the white I saw 1,5 hrs after the accident on Triers Webcam, the WX reports and the witness account - "we did not see the airplane but heard a jet noise and then a crash, it was very foggy" I´d say its save to assume the weather being very well below anything remotely close to VMC.

ATCwatcher hitted the nail on the head:

In this Video - at the very end - one can see the birds, pheasants, some of them in plastic bags. I guess we can discard the birdstrike theory....

Nach Flugzeugabsturz: Pilot hätte in Föhren nicht landen dürfen - Nachrichten :: Rheinland-Pfalz | SWR.de

What next : do not compare following a published RNAV APP with trying to get to a VFR field , buiding an APP on your own using a GPS .
For info the requirements to follow a published RNAV RNP 1 GPS APP procedure :
No single-point-of-failure can cause the loss of guidance compliant with the RNP value associated with a missed approach procedure. Typically, the aircraft must have at least dual GNSS sensors, dual flight management systems, dual air data systems, dual autopilots, and a single inertial reference unit.

His dudeness. Thanks for the link to the video. explains a lot ,if not everything , unfortunately.

Just a final remark, contary to what the Jounalist ( or the Trier Staatanwalt ) said , it is not against the rules to cancel IFR in this situation, i.e. you can always divert to another open VFR field, what is against the rules is flying VFR in IMC.

Are you sure on the "and" ?

My airplane has no IRS/U, no second A/P and is RNP compliant dwon to .3.

Sorry for the offtopic.

Same for me His Dudeness, although the statement does say "typically", and wondering if you have AHRS on your aircraft? ;-)

F/o

HD and FO : I am not sure, not being an expert on RNP APP and RNAV, but based on my doc ( for ATC) it would seem that the min requirements are what I said, the word " typically " is probably there as you can mitigate the non avail of some component(s) , e.g. . an IRU if you use DME/DME. But not sure.

From another book :
The RNAV system may be based on:
• DME/DME
• DME/IRU
• GNSS/IRU

Also maybe continent specific , in the USA , they use Ground GPS augmentation systems for instance.

The commentator in the video makes reference to a GPS unit that survived the crash. That said, it'll only show the flightpath.....