I saw them carting away the pieces they had pulled out of the pond. The whole
pile of aluminum would have fit in the back of a pickup truck. There was that
pile, plus the engine, that was it. One of the news reports said they had not
found the fuselage, for whatever that's worth. Of course, the Mooney has that
steel cage around the cabin, so either that broke up along with everything else,
or else they haven't found it yet. They are continuing to drain the pond.

I wondered why I couldn't see any of the airplane in the pond, I know the pond
is not that deep. The answer, of course, is that there wasn't an airplane in
there, just a bunch of pieces.

They snapped off a couple of pretty substantial pine trees at about the 50 foot
high mark, then hit another tree at the edge of the pond at about 10 feet. My
guess is they must have been pretty much out of control after hitting the first
trees, otherwise they surely would have steered around the tree at the water's edge.

News reports that the occupants were a couple from Arizona. You probably don't
get much practice at 800 and 2 in Arizona, I don't know. I assume an ILS
approach was in use. The aircraft was being vectored for its third attempted
approach when it veered off the assigned heading and descended. So far I haven't
seen any info from the audio tapes.

Like Maule Driver, I'll be haunted while flying this approach for a while.

Dave

Jeff wrote:
also the news report said
"Mindy Hamlin, an airport spokeswoman, said the tower was aware of that the
plane "was having trouble getting to RDU" "

not engine trouble, just trouble getting to the airport.


"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:


"Peter Gottlieb" wrote in message
. cv.net...

It is if there were a mechanical problem causing loss of power. Pop
out at 800 in the middle of a densely populated area and quick, find
a place to put it down. But we won't know until the investigation, if
then.


The prelim said it was his third attempt at the approach.




--
Dave Butler, software engineer 919-392-4367