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Navajo down in SA

From the ABC website...

Plane crashes in paddock but pair escapes injury

Two people have walked away from a light plane that crash-landed in a paddock south of Adelaide.

The twin-engine Piper was forced to make an emergency landing one kilometre from the Aldinga airfield about 11:30am.

The plane's wheels were not down and it landed on its belly in the paddock north of Colville Road after a short flight.

Two people were on-board and police say the pair appears to have escaped injury but may be suffering from shock.

Paramedics at the scene are assessing them.

While the Adelaide Advertiser website says it was a twin-engine Piper , it shows a picture of what appears to be a small ultralight (Jabiru etc) upside down in a paddock! :ugh:

DF.

ABC site shows a picture of a Navajo/Chieftain on it's belly in a paddock!

ABC News

Looks like The Advertiser has updated it's photo!

Advertiser

I wonder if it's the same Chieftain that ran into some trouble last year - VH-OFF?

DF.

Two people on board? Training flight?

Adelaide Advertiser
"The plane's engines are identical to those which failed on a Whyalla Airlines Piper Chieftain which crashed into Spencer Gulf in 2000, killing eight people."

Wow! Which genius made that connection?? :ugh:

Quote:

A local pilot said the plane's call sign - VH-OFF - had also been spray painted to stop media identifying the aircraft.

"They had an engine cutout on takeoff," the man said.

"I'm a pilot and these things happen. It's a fact of life that accidents happen - it's lucky that this time the two people are fine.

"This is the same plane that couldn't get a wheel to lock down and tipped on its wing at Adelaide Airport not long ago.

"You can see that they sprayed the rego numbers out with a spray can."

Photos taken by The Advertiser show the registration call sign on the plane's tail to be covered in black spray-paint.

Numpty.

Quote:

The plane's engines are identical to those which failed on a Whyalla Airlines Piper Chieftain which crashed into Spencer Gulf in 2000, killing eight people.

No they're not. They're 40hp short. Next thing will be the calls for an investigation "due to facts uncovered by this reporter about the safety of these engines, which, unbeknownst to the public, are fitted to roughly half of the GA twin engine aircraft fleet!":ugh:

Fools.

Quote:

Wow! Which genius made that connection??

Yeah - was wondering that myself. Anyway it's now been confirmed that it was VH-OFF, like I thought.

DF.

No ... You don't understand ... I've got it now!

Whyalla was 'cause they were using -A2C's!

[sarc-off]

Here's a better article with more pics - and yes, it's VH-OFF. Seems like someone is very touchy about aircraft ID??

No Cookies | The Advertiser

EFATO?

Aren't these supposed to be able to climb out on one engine?

:)

The Green Goblin, you looking for a nomination for "Best joke of the year"? :E

From the ABC, the only text with the photo says;

Quote:

The twin-engine Piper crashed in an Aldinga paddock, narrowly missing a vineyard.

Struth....thank heavens for that. Vineyards are sacred in SA. :}

Props are pretty beaten up for engine failure

Also... 2 questions come to mind after seeing the latest pictures:

1. Why if they had the failure at only 50ft why are the gears retracted? I know, some people are going to tell me "Son, you always get the gears up as soon as bloody possible incase you have an engine failure so it'll perform better.." But this doesn't seem to have assisted at all!

2. I'm no expert, but if an engine had failed completely, wouldn't one of those propellers be looking a bit less bent? Looks like all 3 props on both engines are pretty badly bent, I was under the impression this signified a reasonable amount of power.

As The Green Goblin mentioned, one of these SHOULD be able to maintain or even climb with an engine out...hehehe... but surely with only 2 people onboard and what appears to be a decent amount of power still available to them, they should have been able to at least climb to 500ft and make a turn back to the field? Feels like there's a bit more to this than just an EFATO.

Also, I'm assuming the Journos were onto this pretty quickly which makes it really impressive how quickly they got themselves a can of black spray paint!! Or were they carrying some in the kit for just such a situation? :E

*EDIT*

Huh, interesting, just read the ATSB report, apparently the Pilot opted to Raise the gear after he felt a yaw to the left and power surges, so this could explain why he may have had extra power towards the end and why the gear was up.

I’ve never heard of anyone spraying over aircraft rego numbers after a prang.

I wonder what possessed whoever did it to think it was a good idea. And where did they get the paint from? :confused:

Extraordinary. :eek:

One operator I used to work for had a crash kit back at base, included black garbage bags, duct tape etc to cover rego.

Wonder if there was too much air in the aux's.

Really cream puff?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/thai-airways-tries-logo-cover-up-after-a330-300-skids-off-runway/story-e6frg6so-1226715235550