Plane down in water off Perth beach today
 

VH-JTW (TB-20) went for a swim yesterday. Apparently only in the air for twenty minutes before suffering engine trouble & ditching. Pilot & passenger escaped unharmed - plane is a mess though.

DF.

Pilot did an XLNT job of ditching at City Beach about 10 m or so off shore onto the waves.

Passenger reportedly told the 'Press' that the beach itself was not an option due to the many beachgoers on the beach, and 'they would not have heard the approaching aircraft with the engine stopped'.
The aircraft's tail broke off on impact. The aircraft was later recovered and removed on a flatbed for further assessment.....

A job WELL DUN in difficult circumstances!

Cheers

Wasn't that one of Jim Westwards old Trinidads from AFTS? I seem to recall it as a bit if a hangar queen in the mid-nineties at BK...... it had yellow stipes on the tail , blue stripes along the side and a horrible yellow spinner.... if my 59 year old memory serves me correctly.

Awwww…poor thing


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....bbf7540f6.jpeg
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-...erth/100618720

Witness says pilot switched engines before forced landing.

How would you do that in a single ?

impressive abilities……

In fairness, the witness is quoted as saying what the pilot said. Either the witness misheard the pilot stating that he tried switching fuel tanks, or the pilot was a bit confused...

Or maybe the reporter misheard or misquoted the witness...

Thronomister Motor
 

He may have been trying to switch to the Backup Thronomister Motor but unless there was sufficient Chemtrail he would not have been able to maintain height.
It's just a theory but others have been caught out before.

According to the ABC, this is a five seat military trainer.

I'm sure Geoffrey Thomas will be able to tell us exactly what happened, though I suspect a faulty flux capacitor.

Spot On Clare, I had forgotten that this model has had problems in the past with stuck flux capacitors.
He did a good job steering away from the local school, hospital and orphanage.

It's more likely to have been a reversal of the polarity on the discharge condenser: one of those 'gotachas' on Socata TB20s (apart, of course, from the -5 variants with the schvetzer valve).

Plane down in water
 

A TB-10 with two engines! I missed the second in my check list. Could it have been the rubber bands not having enough twist in them or the Chipmunks were not peddling hard enough.

But at the end of the day it was a good forced landing. The gear-up helped it for a smooth landing and then to step on the wing and onto the shore. More beer can material in the making.

Will the French Ambassdor scurry back to France after this French aircraft was sabotaged?


On a serious note, nice work by the pilot.

Quite the impact, you don’t often see tails snapping off, so lucky to get out ok!

Probably the tail touched the water first which instinctively is a good idea for many reasons and it likely slowed things down a lot before coming off.

Good result in the situation

That fuselage damage looks like a very clean cut, almost like a prop strike. Maybe the second engine was in the back on a pallet and trying to switch to it caused the damage. :E

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/14/u...cue/index.html

I think this one qualifies as the ditching of the day; didn't even appear to get his feet wet.

Hopefully the pilot was a LAME and therefore suitably licenced to switch the engine.

Good job though in difficult circumstances. Everyone walked away. Well, swam, I guess.

Looks like the tail on that one also got a bit forked..