Seneca V LFAT Crash
 

I hear there was a Seneca V crashed at LFAT on sunday and just wandered if anyone had anymore information.

I think you will find it was on Sunday. A friend who flew there, saw it resting outside the restaurant with a fork lift under one wing and partially collapsed undercart. Apparently there was a strong 80 degree cross wind from the right on runway 31 !!!!.http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...ies/wibble.gif

For those of you who aren't intimately familiar with every ICAO code in the world (or even France), this is Le Touquet ...

This post has been edited by the moderators and no longer reflects what I orginally wrote.

I always liked L2K is that ICAO.

LFAT is a pretty well known identifier though :E

and I thought it was the healthy yogurt
:)

LFAT has a airfield / runway specified limit for crosswind landings with dry and wet runway....from memory I think 20 kts is the max wet x/w limit

Apparently there was a strong 80 degree cross wind from the right on runway 31 !!!!.http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...ies/wibble.gif

Never did know why they closed the cross runway. However, I don't see anything about an official crosswind limit on the VAC
https://www.sia.aviation-civile.gouv..._AD-2.LFAT.pdf
After one memorable landing with a howling crosswind I decided Abbeville was a far better bet, and cheaper, so I haven't been L2K recently. Wind was strong all over France, pretty much NE on Sunday, but at least I got a tailwind for once. 110kt g/s in a Super Cub, nice one!

For those of you who have been on pprune for some years, this gentleman is not the previously respected Hugh Jarse that we used to know.

He is apparently Hugh_Jarse so he is not exactly original.

Or is he?

Thank you for pointing that out JW411 - they are indeed 2 entirely separate accounts.

SD

Any news of the Seneca's pilot and maybe pax? Were they OK? How are they?

Sorry, came over all human for a moment then. It'll pass I'm sure.

Sir George Cayley

Sir George.
I know they are both ok and unhurt. I am sure they are grateful for the positive support from fellow flyers.
EB

Why do pilots continue to crash land senecas?

There is the famous Seneca bounce porpoise if you dont get the aircraft trimmed and land flat or nosefirst but this is all bad pilot techniques not crosswind.

I know the demonstrated crosswind component but with over 2000 hrs on the aircraft also know a five can handle 40 kts at 90 degrees.

The other gotcha is wind shear how many pilots actually adjust their reference speed for gusty conditions?

Its not the aircrafts fault but pilots who need to be pilots not passengers

Pace

The trouble with senecas is Piper had a load of bits from archers/arrows etc, left over and someone said "let's build a twin".

It was never really designed, it just happened. Bloody thing generally runs out of elevator in the flare. I used to accept some forward trim load to give more elevator authority. Whatever Pace says, and if you have 2000 hrs on the thing I would hope you can land it by now, the point is they're hired out to relatively low houred ppl's and they're a pig to land with anything approaching grace.

I found the original Seneca took a bit of getting used to, but the 2s or 3s where OK. Some say to land with a dribble of power :hmm:

Hello!

"We" have a 3 here on our airfield that has been totalled twice in landing accidents and severley damaged in another one. As it belongs to the owner of the local repair shop, it always gets rebuilt when his mechanics have no other business to do. He also owns an old 2 that has had no landing accident so far (at least not to my knowledge.) Then, there is a V (different owner) that has had it's nosewheel smacked-in once.

And this "crash count" also reflects my experience (I have flown all three of them): The 3 is a real bitch, it simply lacks another 20 percent elevator downforce in the flare; the V is still very nose-heavy but manageable and the 2 behaves just like any other aeroplane.

But the Seneca is overall the most unpleasant aeroplane I have ever flown, so for me it would be perfectly OK if they crash-landed and scrapped the whole lot.

Regards,
max

This was my experience of the III. Flew it on air taxi ops for a couple of years. Piece of Cr*p!

I have ~ 0 experience of twins (grand total of 1.5hrs ME instruction :) ) but it's obvious that Piper recycle everything.

Isn't a Seneca a Saratoga hull, with an extra engine, and the wings longer to compensate for the wing length lost by screwing the engine partway up it?

The IMHO ghastly looking "Piperjet" is a Malibu with a jet engine screwed partway up the vertical stabiliser.

The Matrix is a Malibu with the cabin bleed valves removed.

And the PA28 family??

Keeps the tooling costs down, for sure.

The Seneca has a history of problems with the undercarriage usually due cracks in the trunnions. (I speak from bitter experience.) However I would have thought by the time they got to the Seneca V they would have cured the problem.

I've flown 9 different types of twins but I'd easily say the Seneca I and II, were the worst, both pigs to fly and to look at. Some people love them of course.