Forced landing near Bankstown
 

Pilot was the only occupant and is OK..
VH-VPO Piper Warrior (Basair Flying school)
https://7news.com.au/travel/plane-cr...lub--c-8906205

Oops at Bankstown
 

Trainee was doing touch and go's when the engine cut out. The instructor attempted to make a power unassisted landing on the local horse racing track but sadly skipped across it, across the carpark and came to rest after hitting a parked car. No serious injuries but no doubt ATSB will be investigating the incident.

DF.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6f6a5cb06a.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....73e6088416.jpg

See my prior post. The pilot was solo.

Ok - I did not see your thread when I posted. However, I quoted what I was told.

DF.

Looks like 9 circuits - at about 6 or 7 mins a circuit that's an hour's flying before the failure.

No switching tanks maybe,

his first solo!

his first solo!

I would doubt that.

In the dim dark ages, I was sent off on my first solo (also at BK) with the princely total of about 4 hours but the instructor forgot to say "only one and then come back for a coffee". By about my third or fourth circuit, he had contacted the tower and it was suggested that I should get my sorry a- back onto the ground ....

Cec was a big bloke and the little Victa went like a rocket with only me on board so I was having some youthfully exuberant fun, I guess.

It looks as if it lost part of the LHS wing on a pole (shown in the TV clip) prior to hitting the fence+car?

Interesting comment by the person first spoken to by the pilot post landing - 'it stalled at 300'". Although no mention of engine failure that's not to say it hadn't, and the comment simply related to the attempted glide out...

Actually JT it may have been a first solo…. the last circuit. The aircraft stopped and backtracked prior to its final circuit.
Does it count as a first solo if the instructor can’t see the landing? :}

Nice job by that man.

FlightAware tells me there were two flights 10.41 - 11.18 when multiple circuits were done then the flight in question 1125-1129 which failed to complete one circuit.
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/...055Z/YSBK/YSBK

Listening to LiveATC.net it does sound like the same pilot on both flights. Maybe the instructor stepped off and sent him solo.

Does seem like a number of circuits with an instructor on board, then instructor jumped out. The ATC recording would probably confirm it one way or the other, because there’s usually a ‘first solo’ call.

Actually JT it may have been a first solo

Indeed. However, I couldn't see any evidence of stopping/repositioning in post #2 ?

Looking at the ground speed it doesn't look like a stall.
VH-VPO - Piper PA-28-161 Warrior III [2842142] - Flightradar24

Eyewitnesses/journalists are notoriously unreliable and don't understand what the word means in aviation. Usually about the only correct thing on the article is the date. They've already reported it as a "six seater". At least we should be grateful that nobody is saying that the pilot "voluntarily jettisoned the wings"
There is an F in BUMFH....
People just keep on having the same accident over and over again.

Groundspeed, and IAS are poor indicators of a stall.

The media made mention of a stall, which was in reference to the stalled engine! They would have no idea what an aerodynamic stall is!

I suspect a stall around 300 ft would have resulted in a far more "newsworthy" outcome than the extant mishap ?

It does seem like a "forgot to change tanks in all the excitement of First Solo" to me, although even if they started on tabs (typical) they should have around 1.5hrs endurance per side.

Having said that, on some Warrior II's' it's certainly possible to not quite swing the fuel selector across properly when changing tanks and, depending exactly where he was in the circuit when he swapped tanks (and what RPM he had set), it can then take a surprisingly long amount of time for the engine to cut. If he'd messed up a tank change during his downwind checks, the end result could look very much like what happened here.

Hopefully not too many instructors get their students to do a tank change on their first solo! (Trivia but VPO's a Warrior 111.)

You'd hope not - but stranger things have happened.

Warrior IIs and IIIs describe almost everything I've flown in recent years and the fuel selector issue is common to both (and many other Cherokee singles). It's really not a big deal.. it's just important to switch it positively and correctly and not to the 'off' position (which is easy to do in older models without the detent) and preferably not on downwind either!... unless you're up for a glide approach.