It looks to me like the nose cone and electronics have been removed.
Can anyone explain that (or am I not seeing it correctly)?


Peter Duniho wrote:
"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V06LBgfuxgA
Dang!

Was there actually someone inside the plane at the end, trying to power
it out of the water?

I didn't see anyone in the cockpit. Granted, the video quality sucks, but
there are a few places where you can see straight through the cockpit from
one window to the other side, and there's no sign of someone in there.

Also, only one engine was powered up. It seems like if someone was actually
trying to drive the airplane out of the water, they'd get both engines
started and then use them both. With just the one engine, the airplane just
turns and makes no real progress toward the shore.

Unfortunately, the accident report offers no commentary on the
after-accident high-power operation of the engine. It does mention that
"the right throttle lever was bent to the right at the idle stop", but I
don't know whether that would have anything to do with the engine throttling
up on its own. Maybe the lever itself somehow became disconnected from the
control mechanism, resulting in the uncommanded power-up?

I would ordinarily say that I can't imagine any person, after having landed
long like that, actually doing something so foolhardy as to sit in the
cockpit and try to power a half-submerged jet to shore, but after reading
the accident narrative, I have to say that if anyone would do such a thing,
maybe the pilot involved in this accident would.

Apparently, even in zero wind, the runway was 52 feet too short for the
attempted landing, and the tailwind added almost 600 feet to the
requirement. In addition, apparently the pilot made a low pass over the
runway, followed by a low-altitude (200-300') circling maneuver at 180
knots, before trying to land. Even a normal circle-to-land would likely
happen at a higher altitude, and conditions were VMC and the pilot had been
cleared for a visual approach. As if that weren't enough, the airport was
closed to jets, and the pilot had the airport diagram right in front of him
that said so.

Clearly, this was a pilot not operating on all cylinders.

But even so, it doesn't appear that the power-up in the water was
intentional (or even occurred while anyone was still on the airplane).

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...26X00676&key=1

Interestingly, while trying to find this accident in the NTSB database
(hint: it didn't happen at a place called "Atlanta Bay", assuming there even
is such a place), I came across a surprisingly similar one that happened in
Montana:

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...02X01078&key=1

I wonder how many other Citations have gone into the drink after being
landed long.

Pete