Cessna 210 incident
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It's a Pressurised 210.
It needs to be to get the turbine benefits as the IAS green arc doesn't get you respectable TAS and fuel burn unless you get into the mid to high teen FLs.
4 pax with full fuel and aux's and not overweight
, Irish pilot, "unaware" that a good part of the wing is missing 
, N registered aircraft doing a charter originating out of Ireland, blah blah, blah.........nah we don't want to go there do we.
The insurance claim, if they dared, will make interesting reading.
Have they laid any charges yet,
but then I guess the Authorities have yet to sort out the jurisdictional problems? 
It needs to be to get the turbine benefits as the IAS green arc doesn't get you respectable TAS and fuel burn unless you get into the mid to high teen FLs.
4 pax with full fuel and aux's and not overweight
, Irish pilot, "unaware" that a good part of the wing is missing , N registered aircraft doing a charter originating out of Ireland, blah blah, blah.........nah we don't want to go there do we.The insurance claim, if they dared, will make interesting reading.
Have they laid any charges yet,
but then I guess the Authorities have yet to sort out the jurisdictional problems?
Thank you for the complements F3g. I'm not sure, If I'm honest, that there's enough information to go on - although I'd venture that he was very lucky that the aileron circuit didn't jam!
Looking at the photos posted, clearly the lift distribution that side would have shifted inboard a bit. This will have caused the aeroplane to roll towards the damaged wing, BUT, it's a big turbo, which will have powerful roll and yaw trimmers that the pilot is used to using. I'm not sure I'd notice that I used an extra ±20% trimmer movement when trimming out unless specifically looking for it - and why should he?
It's very hard to tell from the photos how much aileron is missing, that would proabably be the main clue in "feel", but you don't tend to use more than very small inputs in a biggish aeroplane with Pax on board.
Visually, you can see from the photos that nothing is stuck down below the wing, plus with pilot and pax having their heads just below the wing, the view of the tip would be very poor due to geometry. There is a couple of feet of cable (strobe electrics?) dangling which would have streamed out of the trailing edge, that wouldn't be very visible. (Incidentally, if that was powered, and the aircraft was losing fuel in that area....)
Overall, I'm not entirely surprised that IF there was no aileron restriction it wasn't noticed. One might however reasonably question the airmanship of somebody who knowingly took a bird on take-off, and didn't simply do a circuit for a look at it on the ground. I hope that's what I'd have the presence of mind to do.
One observation BTW, I've seen a few post-birdstrike aeroplanes in my time, and every one of them had a fair bit of blood streaked around the impact site. I can't see any red on the photos at-all. This is of-course possible, unless something else was hit (mast, model aeroplane, tree?) that wouldn't leave such a telltale.
G
(Gaunty, the other good news for all inolved, apart from that they're all alive and the aeroplane is apparently repairable, is that UK, Eire and Channel Islands - the latter come under UK for most aeronautical purposes, operate "no blame" accident reporting. I can't see any charges being made by or against anybody in such a case.)
Looking at the photos posted, clearly the lift distribution that side would have shifted inboard a bit. This will have caused the aeroplane to roll towards the damaged wing, BUT, it's a big turbo, which will have powerful roll and yaw trimmers that the pilot is used to using. I'm not sure I'd notice that I used an extra ±20% trimmer movement when trimming out unless specifically looking for it - and why should he?
It's very hard to tell from the photos how much aileron is missing, that would proabably be the main clue in "feel", but you don't tend to use more than very small inputs in a biggish aeroplane with Pax on board.
Visually, you can see from the photos that nothing is stuck down below the wing, plus with pilot and pax having their heads just below the wing, the view of the tip would be very poor due to geometry. There is a couple of feet of cable (strobe electrics?) dangling which would have streamed out of the trailing edge, that wouldn't be very visible. (Incidentally, if that was powered, and the aircraft was losing fuel in that area....)
Overall, I'm not entirely surprised that IF there was no aileron restriction it wasn't noticed. One might however reasonably question the airmanship of somebody who knowingly took a bird on take-off, and didn't simply do a circuit for a look at it on the ground. I hope that's what I'd have the presence of mind to do.
One observation BTW, I've seen a few post-birdstrike aeroplanes in my time, and every one of them had a fair bit of blood streaked around the impact site. I can't see any red on the photos at-all. This is of-course possible, unless something else was hit (mast, model aeroplane, tree?) that wouldn't leave such a telltale.
G
(Gaunty, the other good news for all inolved, apart from that they're all alive and the aeroplane is apparently repairable, is that UK, Eire and Channel Islands - the latter come under UK for most aeronautical purposes, operate "no blame" accident reporting. I can't see any charges being made by or against anybody in such a case.)
Last edited by Genghis the Engineer; 21st Aug 2005 at 08:08.
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The damage looks even worse in those last two pix 
I would still be interested in seeing a picture taken from the LHS and what the wingtip looked like from there. Also, the fuel feed pipes etc hanging from the wing tip may have been affected by the airflow and above the wing in flight.
Not speculating about what happened nor trying to judge the pilot or his decisions, but more the interesting point for me is that he's aware he's hit something, presumably the aircraft must have handled reasonably well to get as far as they did, so to what extent did the pilot realise the order of magnitude of the damage?
As You Gimboid said, there must have been a hell of a bang, but as pilots we are trained to trust our eyes and verify most things visually .... if the damage is difficult to see/perceive, might one underrate it?
That's my main interested and learning point from this thread.
I've only once experienced a bird strike and that was on landing. Yes, there was a hell of a bang and the airport fire service reported 2/3 lapwings flying across our path, which I never saw (but I was RHS, looking at the airfield plate for taxiway info). All the evidence that remained was a red streak on the (undamaged) left main gear spat - no dead birds.
Ghengis
Its hard to argue against that, on the other hand, the commander of the bmi flight took a hail encounter with sev turb and continued for another couple of hours.
Yes, the circumstances are different, but there is a line of thinking based around visual inspection, lack of obvious damage and the lowest cost solution (with safety parameters), supported by group reinforcement (in another context the PSA 727 CVR tapes are heart rending, when 3 crew mambers and a dead heading pilot on the jump seat appear to convince themselves that they have traffic in sight, when they do not.)
When commercial pressures meet airmanship, there\'s definitely potential for conflict of interest.
In my own are of expertise (project management), exactly the same issues arise, when decisions are driven by trade offs.
Hopefully, this incident (i.e that the aircraft flew for so long with som much damage) will give commercial pilots some hard data to justify why they did a circuit and precautionary landing and remove a bit of pressure from them.
I would still be interested in seeing a picture taken from the LHS and what the wingtip looked like from there. Also, the fuel feed pipes etc hanging from the wing tip may have been affected by the airflow and above the wing in flight.
Not speculating about what happened nor trying to judge the pilot or his decisions, but more the interesting point for me is that he's aware he's hit something, presumably the aircraft must have handled reasonably well to get as far as they did, so to what extent did the pilot realise the order of magnitude of the damage?
As You Gimboid said, there must have been a hell of a bang, but as pilots we are trained to trust our eyes and verify most things visually .... if the damage is difficult to see/perceive, might one underrate it?
That's my main interested and learning point from this thread.
I've only once experienced a bird strike and that was on landing. Yes, there was a hell of a bang and the airport fire service reported 2/3 lapwings flying across our path, which I never saw (but I was RHS, looking at the airfield plate for taxiway info). All the evidence that remained was a red streak on the (undamaged) left main gear spat - no dead birds.
Ghengis
One might however reasonably question the airmanship of somebody who knowingly took a bird on take-off, and didn\'t simply do a circuit for a look at it on the ground.
Yes, the circumstances are different, but there is a line of thinking based around visual inspection, lack of obvious damage and the lowest cost solution (with safety parameters), supported by group reinforcement (in another context the PSA 727 CVR tapes are heart rending, when 3 crew mambers and a dead heading pilot on the jump seat appear to convince themselves that they have traffic in sight, when they do not.)
When commercial pressures meet airmanship, there\'s definitely potential for conflict of interest.
In my own are of expertise (project management), exactly the same issues arise, when decisions are driven by trade offs.
Hopefully, this incident (i.e that the aircraft flew for so long with som much damage) will give commercial pilots some hard data to justify why they did a circuit and precautionary landing and remove a bit of pressure from them.
Last edited by Final 3 Greens; 21st Aug 2005 at 10:54.
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I took a bird strike on takeoff from Shobdon. My passenger, who was a birdwatcher, assured me that it was a house martin, quite a small bird, but there was a hell of a bang, which I also felt through the controls. It hit the starboard wheel and then got deflected up by the propwash to hit the port elevator, putting a dent in it the size of my fist. At the time I didn't know what the damage was as I could not see either impact site, but the last thing I wanted to do was a low circuit and land back on a short runway in an aircaft that may not fly right at low speed.
Instead I climbed to 4000' and tried slow flight to see how the aircraft handled. When all was okay I decided that I'd if there was any damage to the undercarriage, brake pipes etc, that I'd rather return home to LPL and land on their nice long runway, with full emergency backup.
I sure as well wouldn't have been happy crossing water in it though!
Instead I climbed to 4000' and tried slow flight to see how the aircraft handled. When all was okay I decided that I'd if there was any damage to the undercarriage, brake pipes etc, that I'd rather return home to LPL and land on their nice long runway, with full emergency backup.
I sure as well wouldn't have been happy crossing water in it though!
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It's amazing how loud the noise is, isn't it?
It doesn't surprise me that the bird made a fist sized dent in the surface, since I've seen the aftermath of a Thrush meeting the l/e of a PA28 wing and that was also fist sized and quite deep.
I did accept the rental aircraft for a flight, since the incident was logged in the tech log and an engineer had inspected it and signed it off (bird type was named too), but I was surprised by the severity of the damage caused by a bird that literally weights a few ounces.
It's amazing how loud the noise is, isn't it?
It doesn't surprise me that the bird made a fist sized dent in the surface, since I've seen the aftermath of a Thrush meeting the l/e of a PA28 wing and that was also fist sized and quite deep.
I did accept the rental aircraft for a flight, since the incident was logged in the tech log and an engineer had inspected it and signed it off (bird type was named too), but I was surprised by the severity of the damage caused by a bird that literally weights a few ounces.
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Did the pilot hear it or not? Did the pilot press-on regardless or not?.........who cares. The pilot, aircraft and passengers arrived safely and that is what really matters.
But.
There is little doubt in the evidence which indicates that this was a;
Public Transport Flight.
Single Engine IFR aross water beyond glide distance to land.
The only thing he could have done to make it worse would have been to fly at night!
Ah but wait a minute.........he has done all that before (with both wings intact)! - Public Transport, IFR, Over Water at Night in a single! - It was for a organ transplant / hospital flight but that does not make it legal.
Regards,
DFC
But.
There is little doubt in the evidence which indicates that this was a;
Public Transport Flight.
Single Engine IFR aross water beyond glide distance to land.
The only thing he could have done to make it worse would have been to fly at night!
Ah but wait a minute.........he has done all that before (with both wings intact)! - Public Transport, IFR, Over Water at Night in a single! - It was for a organ transplant / hospital flight but that does not make it legal.
Regards,
DFC
Last edited by Keygrip; 22nd Aug 2005 at 11:53.
Did the pilot hear it or not? Did the pilot press-on regardless or not?.........who cares. The pilot, aircraft and passengers arrived safely and that is what really matters.
G
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bet whoever donered the organ and whoever recieved it was glad because there isn't many private charter companies out there in Shannon you know. Been there a couple of times and couldn't see a lot.
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Assumptions
A lot of assumptions being made here:
For example I'm not sure where it states that the aircraft was not VFR at all times - when public transport would be perfectly legal in a single. Also, given the reported name of the operator includes Pacific, last time I looked Ireland does not have a Pacific coast and the aircraft is "N" reg - perhaps an American company operating under a FAA AOC? Also, I'm not current on air law - particularly FAA and changes since EASA - but rule of thumb used to be two out of three make it legal (registration, licence/AOC, location) - so a pilot with an FAA IR flying an N-Reg a/c on a US AOC would have been OK - even IMC under some circumstances [I recall that last time I looked some years ago, night and IMC for public transport in Cessna Caravans was on the verge of being approved in the US/Canada].
Also, perhaps one of the engineers chartered the aircraft under a self-fly hire arrangement and then separately contracted the pilot to fly it for him - a grey area admittedly but an awful lot of aerial work is not, in fact, public transport.
Having said all that, the IAA to my certain knowledge, take a pretty dim view of illegal public transport, so I hope the pilot, his employers and the a/c owners have all their ducks in a row!
Unless suicidal, why would the pilot have flown on if he was aware? If the pilot was aware, very probably so would his passengers be. It would be a bit of a coincidence that all were suicidal at the same time. If they all were, why divert when their mutual oblivion was coing within reach? No, they patently did not know the extent of the damage.
As well as losing the lift from the missing part of the wing, the weight of the auxiliary fuel tank would be lost - ofsetting the lift imbalance. The increased form drag from the mashed up metal at the end of the port wing might be offset by the reduction in induced drag - hence decreasing the amount of rudder trim required to keep it all in balance.
Never never underestimate human factors and our ability to convince ourselves that everything is allright.
"(Very) loud bang, very close to tree tops on a take-off that was perhaps ill-advised - but everything still seems to work (fuel guages not checked yet, but then the engine had only been run for a few minutes). Maybe a little sluggish and unbalanced on the controls, but within "normal" tolerances - might be due to uneven loading due to size & distribution of pax and their gear. Yeah, everything seems OK. Phew, looks like I got away with the takeoff, must have been a bird. Press on"
Lucky, lucky people! Seems likely that a similar "oh I'm sure they have everything under control" scenario may have had the cabin crew of a Helios 737 continuing to sit in their seats when their a/c recommenced a climb having already deployed the pax oxygen system - by the time they found the hypoxic pilots it was already too late and the results were tragic.
The lesson for me from this is "just because it looks OK from where I'm sitting doesn't mean it is" Pilots that live to be too old to fly make conservative decisions and never, never assume the best. If you hear a loud bang, you need to establish what caused it and what it has done. If there are bits you can't see (and there always are) get someone else to check those bits out. I'm not sure I would "test the envelope" either. Supposing slow speed checks reveal an aerodynamic fault you can't recover from. Keep it flying as close as possible to the speed and configuration its already in (after all, it's staying up like that). In this case, a short flight without touching trim, undercarriage and flap controls unless absolutely essential) and approach to a nice long strip with good emergency services (such as Shannon) would seem to be favourite.
For example I'm not sure where it states that the aircraft was not VFR at all times - when public transport would be perfectly legal in a single. Also, given the reported name of the operator includes Pacific, last time I looked Ireland does not have a Pacific coast and the aircraft is "N" reg - perhaps an American company operating under a FAA AOC? Also, I'm not current on air law - particularly FAA and changes since EASA - but rule of thumb used to be two out of three make it legal (registration, licence/AOC, location) - so a pilot with an FAA IR flying an N-Reg a/c on a US AOC would have been OK - even IMC under some circumstances [I recall that last time I looked some years ago, night and IMC for public transport in Cessna Caravans was on the verge of being approved in the US/Canada].
Also, perhaps one of the engineers chartered the aircraft under a self-fly hire arrangement and then separately contracted the pilot to fly it for him - a grey area admittedly but an awful lot of aerial work is not, in fact, public transport.
Having said all that, the IAA to my certain knowledge, take a pretty dim view of illegal public transport, so I hope the pilot, his employers and the a/c owners have all their ducks in a row!
Unless suicidal, why would the pilot have flown on if he was aware? If the pilot was aware, very probably so would his passengers be. It would be a bit of a coincidence that all were suicidal at the same time. If they all were, why divert when their mutual oblivion was coing within reach? No, they patently did not know the extent of the damage.
As well as losing the lift from the missing part of the wing, the weight of the auxiliary fuel tank would be lost - ofsetting the lift imbalance. The increased form drag from the mashed up metal at the end of the port wing might be offset by the reduction in induced drag - hence decreasing the amount of rudder trim required to keep it all in balance.
Never never underestimate human factors and our ability to convince ourselves that everything is allright.
"(Very) loud bang, very close to tree tops on a take-off that was perhaps ill-advised - but everything still seems to work (fuel guages not checked yet, but then the engine had only been run for a few minutes). Maybe a little sluggish and unbalanced on the controls, but within "normal" tolerances - might be due to uneven loading due to size & distribution of pax and their gear. Yeah, everything seems OK. Phew, looks like I got away with the takeoff, must have been a bird. Press on"
Lucky, lucky people! Seems likely that a similar "oh I'm sure they have everything under control" scenario may have had the cabin crew of a Helios 737 continuing to sit in their seats when their a/c recommenced a climb having already deployed the pax oxygen system - by the time they found the hypoxic pilots it was already too late and the results were tragic.
The lesson for me from this is "just because it looks OK from where I'm sitting doesn't mean it is" Pilots that live to be too old to fly make conservative decisions and never, never assume the best. If you hear a loud bang, you need to establish what caused it and what it has done. If there are bits you can't see (and there always are) get someone else to check those bits out. I'm not sure I would "test the envelope" either. Supposing slow speed checks reveal an aerodynamic fault you can't recover from. Keep it flying as close as possible to the speed and configuration its already in (after all, it's staying up like that). In this case, a short flight without touching trim, undercarriage and flap controls unless absolutely essential) and approach to a nice long strip with good emergency services (such as Shannon) would seem to be favourite.
