Learjet 24 down in Bornholm/Denmark
 

A privately operated Learjet 24 crashed on Saturday during approach to Ronne on Bornholm. The plane arrived from its homebase Strausberg EDAY (Berlin, Germany).

The two persons on board are in critical condition according to media reports.

ASN Aircraft accident Learjet 24D D-CMMM Bornholm-Rnne Airport (RNN)

TV 2/Bornholm

The two persons on board are still in critical condition (open skull fracture apparently).

There is currently some discussion in German boards around the fact that it appears that the Learjet 24D was regularly operated with a single pilot only.

Most say that there is no way to legally operate that aircraft with only one pilot. Maybe there are STCs to allow for that or other exemptions when operating it privately?

The following intrigueing report comes from: Ulykkespilot varetægtsfængslet


The pilot of the Learjet aircraft that crashed on the island on 15 September, has been remanded in custody. He is still in hospital, while police are trying to find out who he really is and what else he has on his conscience.

The 38-year-old Mexican pilot of the Learjet aircraft that crashed on the island on Saturday 15th September, was on Friday remanded in custody for four weeks. The man was jailed in absentia as he remains hospitalized in Copenhagen with serious injuries. The prosecution demanded the man in custody after police fears he will try to flee the country.

Police have charged the man for credit card fraud for 30,000 dollars for the purchase of aviation fuel at a previous visit to Bornholm Airport. He is also charged with bringing the lives of others in danger by having flown the aircraft without the statutory co-pilot and without having the required pilot's license.

"The Mexican pilot pleads "not guilty" to all charges, but he would like to acknowledge that he was in the airplane," says Peter Jørgensen, police commissioner of Bornholm Police, to TV2 Bornholm.

Wanted by Interpol
German police had before the crash called the man through Interpol, as he might in a false name has rigged three times in Germany in connection with the purchase of aviation fuel. Police on the island and in Berlin are now working to determine the man's real identity. On his computer in the plane police found a pilot's license in another name than the man has given to the police.

A Polish man was also aboard the small Learjet 24-aircraft Saturday the 15th September afternoon crashed in a cornfield during the approach to Bornholm Airport. The Polish man survived the crash but broke his back.

The Mexican has indicated a more German-sounding name to its Polish passenger than the Spanish sounding name, the man claims his real name. The man has during the police interrogations alternately denied and acknowledged knowing about the German-sounding name.

Contact from Houston
Meanwhile, police in Houston in the U.S. contacted colleagues on Bornholm. They suspect Mexican for selling aircraft parts and received the money, but forgot to send the parts to the purchaser.

Police have also identified that the German-registered aircraft airworthiness certificate was three years old.

Preliminary report
 

So a pilot without a license flies a Learjet without a valid registration and crashes it due to improper knowledge / use of checklists of the fuel system.

How much worse could it get? What would be a possible conclusion of the authorities: increase the frequency of ramp checks. Let's hope not.

What a mess.
 

Yeah, what a mess.

Registation cancelled in 2009.
Airworthiness certificate expired in 2005.
Unapproved single pilot operation by an unlicenced and unindentified pilot.
Crashes due to fuel starvation.

:suspect:

Impressive.
A factual, informative and presumably accurate Preliminary Report. All within 8 (?) days of the accident.
And without any help from Pprune speculators!

That has to be one of the most egocentric you tube clips I have seen.

We get into a froth about having our EFBs and FMSs updated, agonise over loadsheets calculated to the last elusive gramme, worry about performance-issues, terrorise our poor girls so as to not have any loose items in the cabin or the lavatorys, check, re-check and re-re-check all documentation, licenses, certificates, insurances, worry about cabotage issues, religiously keep the HIL legal, etc, and so forth ad nauseum... and these clowns apparently fling themselves about the regulated-to-death skies of the Great European Project in their completely illegal little pocket-rocket for an entire THREE YEARS, unmolested by officialdom? Hang on, keep that slick little shyster alive, I'm inbound to ask him how the hell he did it! :eek:

I am sure it's not hard.

If you learn to fly, from a mate of yours, and know the protocol (ground and radio) you can fly everywhere without any papers, and certainly without ever having to do any maintenance on the plane apart from (as on a cheap car) changing the oil periodically.

It's been done, too...

There are plenty of keen simmers who know how to start up and fly a Citation, and how to handle ATC (VATSIM etc). Combine that with a bit of hands-on, and off you go :)

I've done the JAA and FAA PPLs, the IMCR, the FAA CPL, the JAA and FAA IRs, and the portion of all that that I actually use on a flight across Europe is about 1%. Most of what's needed is operational knowledge (protocol) and some aircraft performance if crossing high ground, but a Citation is not short of perf :)

The flight training business is set up mostly upside down (training mostly stuff you don't need to know) to keep a load of old (mostly non flying) fogies in their salaries and pensions and to keep up certain barriers to entry.

And even if taken to the step of fraud by printing your own licenses on the home printer - who's checking? Fellow countryman Thomas Salme flew for over 10 years as a 737 captain (accident free, I might add) before they finally caught on. Nobody checks. And if they do, they don't verify.

How many elderly gentlemen and women that have lost their medical do you think are still farm flying their Cub's with no radios? Probably thousands. And who can blame them? Let them fly and get rid of the medical req's - that's the answer.

He should have validated/converted his fake papers to some other ones.

Once you do that, you are home and dry.

But obviously, doing a proper fuel calculation is not part of that "course" ;)

I think it was more a case of fuel management, than fuel calculation.

They had 160 liters onboard in the fuselage tank, while the wing tanks were empty. The engines only feed from the wing tanks and they obviously forgot to pump across from the center tank. Maybe he trained on a Cessna 172 and never had to worry about such things :-)

Not a great time to get a double flame out on final, with high drag and low speed.

Actually, no, as this is pretty much the only time these things really get checked (I have a few validations / conversions).

This is more or less what we have to calculate as taxi fuel in our Citations (which consume far less fuel than this museum piece!). He would have been able to fly for five or six minutes on that amount. Luckily it ended that way and not over densely populated territory.

Or more likely- in the Baltic Sea.

Considering he was on final 18nm from the threshold that would have been more than enough for him and we would have one less accident in the statistics. On the other hand, we would have had one more fake pilot flying an unairworthy plane for who knows how long still... :}

Flying around the way he did, it's a miracle that it took him so long to become part of the accident statistics.