“Everyone in the street said it would happen at some point.”
 

The bleeding hearts have started already................https://www.theage.com.au/melbourne-...08-p4zkg6.html

I've seen mention on "Social Media" that this was a LAME on a test flight after the replacement of a propeller. (I take these mentions with a large grain of salt)
I'd be interested to see if the prop was present in the wreckage, if that was the case.

My condolences to the family & friends of the pilot

As much as I love to fly to Moorabbin and it's super convenient and I'd love for it to always be there, you've got to feel for them and can understand they don't want it to be there any more.

Nobody wants a plane crashing into their street and burning with meters high flames, but you have to be realistic... this has happened before and will happen again. It's just a numbers game. I took off last week and was in line behind 5 other aircraft lined up to take off and waited over 20 minutes as there were 6-7 already in the circuit. Pilots are coming here by the plane load to learn to fly because there's too much pollution in their own countries to fly without an instrument rating and with the looming world-wide pilot shortage it's only going to get busier.

They need to be moving these schools to the regional airports for many reasons and this is just one of them.

Poor fellow, so very sad for him, my thoughts with his family :(:sad:

Let's face it, when taking off on 17L/R the Woodlands golf course is commonly mentioned as a good option for a forced landing in the event of an engine failure. But that requires being quite high already as the course threshold is 1.1 km from the end of the runway. With a glide ratio of 1: 8, you'd need to be at 500 ft and carry out a glide at best glide speed in no headwind to make it. Otherwise, it's such a built up area that I find it hard to find any option. What do you do if your engine fails in the 200-300 ft range? You're too high to land on the field and too low to make the golf course. I just find that building so close to the airport was a very irresponsible thing to do.

I'm not saying the unfortunate pilot was indeed taking off on 17 L/R as the wind yesterday was apparently a northerly, making 35 L/R rather the ideal runway.

I just thought I'd emphasize that there's hardly any place for emergencies to the south of the airfield . I might be ill-informed but it seems to me that the airport was there first. Dwellings came next.

Sqauwk 7700 - moving these schools to regional airports, lets look at that -

1. Many many country communities that would love an economical kick that a flying academy would provide
2. Cheap airport operating costs
3. Less holding on the ground awaiting takeoff clearances - as such economical advantages
4. Cheap living for young instructors trying to build hours (and cheap living for the support staff)
4.5 Cheap rent or purchase costs for housing
5. Minimal risk of aircraft coming down in suburban streets
6. Generally other country airfields are in close proximity so the load between airports can be shared

Disadvantages would of course exist - fuel would probably be dearer, dumb**** councils would no doubt very quickly start gouging the school - take Shellharbour council for example. Jetgo provided advantages for the locals, one being use Albion Park and avoid the drive to Sydney and horrendous parking fees. So the council instantly introduced passenger parking fees.

Anyway the argument could be expanded but tragedies like this could in many, not all, but many cases be avoided.

Condolences to the pilot, the family and all Oxford staff.

News is now reporting that the aircraft was flown down towards Wonthaggi for a test flight after a new engine was fitted and the engine stopped 1hr 7minutes into the flight and that he got out a mayday.

"ATSB Transport Safety executive director Nat Nagy said the single-engine aircraft had been in the air for more than an hour before it plummeted to the ground."

Is the flightradar track wrong then? It shows a 40 minute flight, barely reaching Tooradin.

Just to confirm the reports here are wrong the aircraft involved was VH-EWE, not VH-KFN - both CAE aircraft were landing parallel - VH-KFN successfully landed on 35R

Because some people want to discuss the incident and maybe have an answer before the year 2025.

NOT VHEWE, the aircraft involved was VHKFN:
I'm not clear which it was anymore, but KFN appears to be an even newer example of the same model:
https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/VHKFN

The airport is a postwar development, apparently opening in 1948.
As it happens there is a website with aerial photography of Melbourne taken in 1945; I've been meaning to have a look at the area to the south of the airport and you've successfully prodded me into action.
There doesn't seem to be a way to link to a particular view, but the site is here so you can have a look around yourself. There looks to have been very little development in Mordialloc beyond a well built up wedge defined by White Street and Chute Street, which matches my own observations on the ground while house hunting in the area.

BTW, as a non-flying home owner who regularly hears Oxford training flights passing directly overhead in the evenings, I have little sympathy for residents complaining about low aircraft, with the possible exception of one resident quoted in the news, who is a public housing tenant who commented that she has very little choice but to take what is offered. I previously lived next to a railway line; if you're going to live in a city you're going to have noisy infrastructure nearby. You choose if you're prepared to tolerate what's nearby before buying/renting, and in my case I take a bit of interest in what is going past, rather than complain about it.

It was pretty much paddocks until the mid 1970s when the land was rezoned to residential from then until this day. Aspendale, Mentone and Epsom Race Tracks became housing estates. The "green wedge" of farming land has been eroded away by greedy property developers who are hell bent on having Moorabbin closed one way or another. Local and State Govts have rezoned the land not the Commonwealth. The committment of the current operators to maintain the site as an airport lasts only as long as the Federal Govt wants an airport there. When Canberra sells it off to the current operators, its all over.

A parcel of land abt 5k to the n/e of Moorabbin about half the size of the airport was sold by the farmer a few years ago for 4 mil. It then sold for 14 mil. It was rezoned to housing and sold again for 40 mil. It was then cleared by the developer, carved up into lots and roads instated and sold to the Superannuation Trust of Australia for 400 million and a house hasnt been built yet. So the land at Moorabbin, whats left of it would be worth a couple of billion once its sold as housing lots. Probably more as they would fill it with 10 story towers to get sea views not 3 bedroom brick veneers.

The best view of the current airport minus the new factories to the south but in anyones eyes, its a bloody joke.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.gmf...005096e784.jpg


This photo is from 1972 35l/r centre of screen by my reckoning. The collection of structures on the left are cars and machinery associated with the packing sheds you can see. In other words there may be an odd farmhouse but there are no dwellings to be seen.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.gmf...d28e61375e.jpg
This image is from about 1956 the airport is the large mown section.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.gmf...ec52a04bab.jpg

@nonsense, @flopzone: Many thanks for these very informative travel back in time. Back then the fields surrounding Moorabbin made the airport the perfect location to learn to fly. These days being too low on final will attract pointless comments in the news such as: "Oh boy do some of those birds fly low". Luckily no one told them about glide approaches.

As a foreigner living in Australia, it is indeed somewhat of a joke to think that the population density here is one of the world's lowest, save for the immediate surroundings of the busiest flight training airport in the country, of course.

I lived for 20 years under the flightpath of the sthn approach for 35L.
I would sit in the backyard with the scanner and watch. I seen some dubious airmanship but nothing alarming, given it is a training airport.
The only time I was worried was about 9pm one dark and stormy winter night when a twin doing a bank cheque run came in during dreadful weather.
His strobes lit up the house like a disco I ran outside to see him miss the TV antenna of the opposite house by a few feet. The occupants of that house fled in fear of their lives into the street.
In the 20 years I think 11 aircraft failed to return to the field. This latest one, one into a swimming pool, one into a factory, one into a dam, one on the golf course, one into a house, one into a lane and a chopper into a factory and three forced landings in fields.
5 of these have hit buildings of some sort within 500 metres or so of the runway.
These are the locations that I can recall
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.gmf...4b857fb772.jpg

ATSB Preliminary report is out today.
https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications...r/ao-2018-048/

Nothing wrong with the engine.

That's slightly disingenuous Rick, the report actually says

"This examination did not identify evidence of a mechanical failure of the engine. Some additional components, including those associated with the fuel system, were retained for further examination."