Cirrus down Gundaroo, 06/10/23
 

From the ABC:
Both FA & FR24 show VH-MSF, a Cirrus planned YSCB-YARM in the area at the time, and in a rapid descent from ~9,000 in the vicinity, and failing to reappear. Whoever it was, hopefully they've been able to walk away from it, but it doesn't sound promising...:(

EDIT:Added photos from onthesceneACT.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....21356cb151.jpg

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....afb05b8f0f.jpg

Channel 10 news is saying there are no survivors.

DF

[[color=#333333]Looks like pancaked from vision I can see, could shute been deployed?
Or is there slide marks across the road?

It's about 3 km from my strip. Deepest condolences.

Very sad.

Last radio call to departures was ops normal.

FR suggests 12,000fpm descent rate at <120 knots.

It’s a G1 and they have a one piece wing.

It sounds catastrophic.

There's nothing left to investigate . It looks like the remains of an ancient campfire.

Yes. If you weren't told it was the scene of an aircraft crash it would be hard to know what it was.

DF.

I thought they had a ballistic chute

They do.
Still need to deploy it in (relative) reasonable conditions.

Icing?

They're supposed to! Which makes this one strange. Looking at FA and the recent flights, they've all been filed at set 1000's in altitudes, not Alt+500, indicative of routine operations under the IFR.

Latest news reports are saying a pilot + 3 kids on board, too. :mad:

FZL per the 0500-1100Z GAF was listed as 8000'N / 5000'S for the area, with BKN CU/SC5000/10000. Possible...
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....80c55f53f5.jpg

FR shows maintaining groundspeed in low fpm descent at time 20231006 03:47 UTC after reaching top of climb, then followed by slowing groundspeed with increasingly rapid descent. Explanations?

Looks like something catastrophic happened. KMZ and CSV from RealTraffic - Fly with real air traffic attached.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....895ce9f042.png

Worse…..grandpa took three of the grandkids out for a School holiday blast.

https://www.news.com.au/national/at-...be08567f2f00e5


the flight profile is heartbreaking…


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....88adf11198.png

Some observations:

From flightaware - Flight out of Canberra shows straight tracking upto 7800’ (1013 datum) then tracking looks handflown.



On the way down, at 7300’ (1013 datum) the ROD is 9811 at around 80° angle of depression. 18 seconds later the ROD at 3550’ (1013 datum) is reduced 41% to 5714 fpm at an 83° angle of depression.

Maybe an evil thought…

No mayday and no chute. Quite unusual. Incapacitation?

Hate to think it right.

It's a bit hard to imagine incapacitation leading to that sort of flight profile unless it was a seizure or something causing a total lockup on the controls. I'd think even with someone slumped over the stick (which doesn't seem very likely with a Cirrus sidestick anyway) the aerodynamic forces involved would eventually shallow the descent out a bit. You would assume he would have shown the kids how to operate the parachute too in case he suddenly keeled over.

Autopilot on VS climb. Heart attack or similar. Young children not understanding anything about the aircraft or 'chute. Stall. Descent to terrain. :(

I was thinking the same and was also thinking that my 10 year old would know enough to try and pull the chute, I will admit though, that in the heat of the moment he wound likely forget and I’d be keen to know how hard you actually have to pull it which he may struggle with.

As I was saying earlier they are a one piece wing, I doubt something happened there, however this is a 2002 model, serial number 157, something could have happened with the tail of the aircraft… there looked to be some dirty clouds around at the time and it didn’t look overly smooth.

65 is not exactly the age you’d expect for a sudden incapacitation, but of course( it could happen to anyone I guess.

Terribly sad.

A lot of tears being shed in a few homes, poor kids sitting there knowing nowt. :{:{:{Can happen at any age unfortunately.

Very sad indeed

From what I recall, SR22 Autopilot will disconnect in severe turbulence.

Certainly seems like it was in use, then disconnected for whatever reason looking at that profile.

Unknown why the chute wasn’t deployed however. Has been a few Cirrus IMC events however still successfully deployed the chute and lives saved. However it could have been deployed, we don’t know.

Truly tragic event. No words.

I've been thinking the same. The profile looks almost like a bomb dropped from level flight and hard to fathom that something with wings would sustain that on its own. However the rate of descent only reaches 120 or so mph, so some sort of drag is stopping it from going faster. Is it possible the chute partially deployed and fouled the controls? As someone else has hinted at the other option for that sort of profile is not something we want to hear.

Perhaps severe icing, stall and spin, tangling the chute and damaging comms antennas.

Please everyone: Don’t feed the beast with speculation about sudden incapacitation and ‘evil thought’, especially when it’s a nonsensical explanation just on the cockpit ergonomics of a Cirrus and what actually happens if you point most any ‘light’ aircraft straight at the ground. It’s an awful enough outcome without the AvMeds of the world milking it before the smoke’s dissipated. The pilot’s medical history and domestic circumstances will be revealed, eventually.

Descent rate under chute is less than 2,000 fpm, forward speed less than 20 knots and time to deploy down to near zero forward speed is less than 10 seconds.

There are only a very limited number of ways that an aircraft can lose that much altitude in that short space of time and pushing the nose forward does not result in the profile shown above.

If it was in a spin for whatever reason it entered, the chute was the only practical solution available. Build date 2002, so in theory it would have just had it’s second 10 year chute re-pack completed, so presumably it was in good operating condition.

Assuming his Cirrus was fitted with (eg) an STEC 55 - the pilot would have had to have engaged a roll mode first - heading, nav or similar; however looking at Flightaware track log, either it was extremely bumpy at the altitude he was flying, with heading fluctuations left and right or, more likely, the pilot was hand flying - compare the track log with the previous flight where you can see the pilot was definitely using his autopilot - hardly any fluctuation in heading at all.

Ice certainly a possibility but if the plane had iced up, was descending uncontrollably, I would have expected the pilot to pull the chute - assuming he was capable of doing so. I don't believe that the pilot would have "forgotten" the chute because when I owned a Cirrus, we always brought CAPS into our decision making process, even when practicing emergencies. And if you're transporting your grandchildren, you'll be even less inclined to take risks, so I believe the pilot was incapacitated, the plane simply stalled whilst iced up.

Unfortunately if the pilot is incapacitated, this meant that most likely a small boy aged 11 was sitting in the front seat, I'm not so sure he could have reached, certainly not have pulled with the force required, the parachute, especially if the aircraft was spinning.....

My thoughts go out to the families.....

My comment about the chute was more in regards to some sort of chute malfunction, of course fully deployed RoD would be well less. But what if somehow it was activated and fouled in the tail surface, or only opened enough to basically turn the aircraft into an unguided retarded bomb.

On spins or spiral dives, the profile and heading seems to be a turn to the right as it descends, but not in the pattern of a spiral dive for sure and the heading stability would suggest not a spin. And speed wise it looked like it was accelerating to cruise when it suddenly just dived, so it doesn't look like a stall spin scenario, at least at the onset.

Oh I wasn’t disagreeing with you 43, I was just quoting some rough numbers on the chute operation.

Diabolical. Even more so when kids are involved. Will be very interested to hear what the investigation has to say when done. And I hope ATSB do a very through job on it.
RIP those 4. Tragic in the extreme.

Not much wreckage left for the ATSB to investigate. Some accidents can remain a mystery.

Very early days. There could well be more than one debris field. It’s pretty hard to envisage scenarios for that kind of ROD for an intact airframe.

Hopefully that will be confirmed as part of the ATSB's investigation into the maintenance history of the aircraft.

Four seats not five. Refer to TCDS. Later serials had five seats. Media jumped onto five seats too early.
R

Was the pilot a student perhaps, fresh gfpt on a fun flight, could be trying to have fun around clouds for the kids?

CAPS Event database here.

According to the Aero Club, PPL holder 20+ years, IFR rated.

Have you read any of the articles yet? Clearly not well!

This is the only accident I could find that is remotely similar;

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/310048

However it seems once the parachute failed and detached the aircraft then accelerated to very high speed as you would expect from such nose down attitude.

​​​​​​​Experienced pilot with hundreds of hours is what is quoted by the media.