Orlando Crash Video

Jay Honeck wrote:
I finally got some time to put this one up on our site. See it at


http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photoga...ash_1-2005.mpg



It looked like the pilot originally tried to set up for the golf course
and then opted to try for the road at the last minute when they saw the
golfer on the field. They appeared to be much too high to make the
golf course however.

Once they turned towards the road on the left, the pilot may have
suddenly realized that he was going to overshoot the centerline of the
road and made some small corrections to the right to compensate for the
drift to the left. It did look like he had everything under control
before disappearing behind a set of trees. Once the plane was behind
the trees, the bottom of the left wing settled down on top of a power
line running along side of the road. You can see the power lines sag
down before the plane reappears from behind the trees. Since the left
wing was now riding on top of the power line, the continuing descent
set the plane on a knife edge, shearing off parts of the right wing as
it struck the ground and unfortunately guided the cockpit straight into
the utility pole. The video seems to also show that he was able to
clear the truck if he had made it to the road.

A quick look on terraserver NW of Orlando Executive revealed this golf
course that looks like the site they were aiming for:

http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ima...rlando%7cfl%7c

What a tragedy this is. It looked like they had a real shot of a
successful forced landing. Since most of my flying is over densely
populated areas, I have to wonder how I would've reacted if I were in
their shoes at the time.