One down at Parafield today
 

Pilot walks away uninjured after Parafield Airport aircraft crash in Adelaide’s north.
A pilot has made a lucky escape after his aircraft crashed into the ground and caught fire, in remarkable scenes at Parafield in Adelaide’s north.
A small aircraft has crashed at an airport in Adelaide’s north, bursting into flames as the pilot and sole occupant made a lucky escape.
Emergency services rushed to Parafield Airport at 12.30pm on Monday after reports of a plane catching alight.
An SA Police spokesman said it was believed the aircraft landed heavily on the tarmac and caught fire after the impact.
The fire spread to nearby grass, however has since been extinguished by MFS crews.
The pilot, who was the sole occupant of the aircraft, escaped the plane uninjured as it burst into flames.
There were no other aircraft involved in the crash.
An airport spokesman said Parafield Airport was assisting with fire and emergency crews on scene, and would assist the Australian Transport Safety Bureau — which is the body that investigates plane crashes and other incidents — with its investigation.
An ATSB spokesman said the bureau had been “notified of a light aircraft collision with terrain at Parafield and is gathering further information”.

DF.

Student on solo flight escaped completely unscathed, fortunately. In an interview on 7, he said he hopes to 'practice more and fly better'.

Incredibly the pilot has already given a TV interview!

Hasn’t learnt the golden rule yet.
Say nothing to the media

Not sure I like his chances! Oh, and btw - sorry about the huge type in my post - it didn't look like that before I posted it!

DF.

Seems like looking at the playback he got caught out with low airspeed on short final, explains the kept coming down comment.

The press are the absolute pits. I think it was 9, but he didn’t answer the question and said he has the hospital waiting for him and needs to go, so what does she do, ignores that and rattles off some more questions to him. They are the worst.

If you ever need to declare an emergency or something, rest assured a reporter will be waiting for you in the terminal, just like that QF crew that got hounded at Mascot by one outlet.

Channel 7 reported he’d just been cleared to complete some ‘loops’. :ugh:

Isn't every aircraft landing a collision with terrain? It's just a question of severity.
Is the identity of the aircraft known?

LGE. (not much left of it except 1/4 of the tail and STBD wing. although most of the media photos are just of the ensuing grass fire)

I find it odd that no ambulance attended. He was taken to a nearby medical center for a checkup as a precaution? It looks like the aircraft hit the ground pretty hard to leave it in that condition, you'd want a pretty thorough medical exam on the spot to find out if you might need insurance cover later. From personal experience you want everything properly documented on the day, as saying you have back pain several weeks later will be hard to attribute to the accident.

Some video of the incident shown on nine news facebook feed. . Looks like a go around or takeoff gone wrong, high AOA, left wing stall. Very lucky!

FR24 shows a series of circuits with touch and goes prior to the event, all of them seemingly uneventful. The underlying reason why this one turned out as it did with such a high AoA being commanded is not readily apparent.

Agreed! I have an extremely low opinion of most, if not all TV News Reporters. I think most of them are ignorant and arrogant scum, and I wouldn't even p&*s on any of them even if they were on fire in the gutter!

Link to that ch9 facebook video:-

https://www.facebook.com/9NewsAdelaide/videos/cctv-has-captured-the-moment-a-light-plane-crashed-at-parafield-airport-the-21-y/879606614522370/

https://www.facebook.com/9NewsAdelaide/videos/cctv-has-captured-the-moment-a-light-plane-crashed-at-parafield-airport-the-21-y/879606614522370/

From what I understand, an instructor needs to see you do 3 circuits first before they will sign you go for a solo.
On FR, I noted there were 3 circuits, with the aircraft having a gap of 10 minutes before going up again for the 4th and final circuit.
I assume this was the instructor assessing the student as competent, and he pulled over to get out and therefore was possibly watching this unfold.
I'd imagine that was not a good feeling either.

Unfortunately, at some point in earning this thing we call a pilot licence, we all need to go solo eventually.
And someone needs to make the decision that we are ready for it.
But once we are all alone in that plane, all sorts of things can happen.
You can't always predict everything that will happen at that point, nor how someone will respond.
There are a few dangerous points in flight training, and early solos I would imagine are an unfortunately inescapable, but necessary risk and I'm sure they did their upmost to reduce that risk as much as possible.
Even as someone preparing for CPL, I still have instructors that I've hopped in with who have not flown with me before and admit to feeling unrelaxed as we near the runway for the first few tiems.
It's a hard (probably a good) habit for them to 'kick'.

I had one guy that wasn't an instructor, just a friendly club member that did the intros at the time, coming over the fence start repeating over and over in my ear "65 across the fence" or something like that...
I'm like..
Can you shut up for a sec, a sudden unexpected burst of loud words from you is not what I need at 50 feet.
But I understood where he was coming from.

IN fact people just keep having the same accident over and over again.
If you are low, slow and out of balance then you have all the ingredients for a loss of control.

It will be interesting to find out why a heavy landing caused a 172 to catch fire.

It hit pretty hard on the wing, no doubt it ruptured the tank(s)/connections. I’ve seen a similar outcome on a high-wing where the pilot was sitting in there and fuel was pissing down the windscreen. They got out ok.

Is the LH pilot's seat fixed or adjustable in the 172 ?