Orlando Crash Video

Whether his decision to avoid the pickup truck was stupid or not, he gave
his life in missing it.

Jay, I never claimed anything the CFI did was "stupid".

I know.

But some have implied it was.

And, you know, maybe it was. But he had only a few seconds to make a
choice, and -- "there but for the grace of God" -- that could have been any
of us.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay,

Jay Honeck wrote:
Whether his decision to avoid the pickup truck was stupid or not, he
gave
his life in missing it.

Jay, I never claimed anything the CFI did was "stupid".

I know.

But some have implied it was.

And, you know, maybe it was. But he had only a few seconds to make a
choice, and -- "there but for the grace of God" -- that could have been
any
of us.

I am fascinated by a pilot's decision making. I have done 'stupid' things -
one made me go get my Instrument Rating. I sit in pilot meetings - the
speaker reads an accident report and the pilots kinda chuckle with a "I
would never do that!" look - but I bet the accident pilot would have thought
the same. I think if we can fix this broken part of flying, we could
seriously improve the statistics.

Hilton

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.

Here is the NTSB prelim report:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...13X00046&key=1

"pnw_aviator" wrote in message ups.com...

Here is the NTSB prelim report:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...13X00046&key=1


You know, hindsight is always 20-20, but if they lost oil pressure and still had a running engine, why didn't they try
to land anywhere they could right now with what engine they had left rather that trying to nurse it to get to the
airport? I'm not sure what I would do now that I think of it; I would have to watch the other engine instruments to see
if the CHT was going high (if it was installed) thus confirming oil loss. Maybe need to make a decision right here right
now, on the ground, that if I see low or zero pressure I will land immediately...

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 01:52:10 GMT, "Blueskies"
wrote:


"pnw_aviator" wrote in message ups.com...

Here is the NTSB prelim report:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...13X00046&key=1


You know, hindsight is always 20-20, but if they lost oil pressure and still had a running engine, why didn't they try
to land anywhere they could right now with what engine they had left rather that trying to nurse it to get to the
airport? I'm not sure what I would do now that I think of it; I would have to watch the other engine instruments to see
if the CHT was going high (if it was installed) thus confirming oil loss. Maybe need to make a decision right here right
now, on the ground, that if I see low or zero pressure I will land immediately...


Without knowing all the facts of what the engine was sounding like,
what their oil temp was reading, and other gauges (if they had other
gauges) were reading, I too would have gone for the airport, it was
only 8 miles out. Why risk a dangerous off airport landing in a
highly populated area for what could be a bad gauge. I too have had
to make that same decision a few years ago with a gas gauge. In a
twin, I was making a flight that was 3.5 hours long with full tanks
that have a 5.5 hour endurance. Just before I was to arrive at my
destination about 10 min, I noticed that the right tank was showing
near empty with my left tank showing 20+ gallons remaining (which was
where it should have been). I had myself convinced it was a gauge. I
was IMC at night, by myself and in icing conditions, on my final
vector to intercept the LOC when my right engine died. After the "OH
****" thought went through my mind, I hit the cross feed, continued on
with the approach, after what felt like 30min's (of course it was only
probably a few seconds) the engine sprang back to life and I continued
into the airport and landed safely. The next day, I had the thing
checked out and found out that I had a ruptured fuel bladder. Because
it was dark and IMC, I couldn't see the fuel leaking out.

Its really hard to say "I would have" without being in the cockpit and
seeing what the pilot is seeing and hearing and interpreting.

My .02


Scott D

To email remove spamcatcher

"Blueskies" wrote in
You know, hindsight is always 20-20, but if they lost oil pressure and
still had a running engine, why didn't they try to land anywhere they
could right now with what engine they had left rather that trying to nurse
it to get to the airport? I'm not sure what I would do now that I think of
it; I would have to watch the other engine instruments to see if the CHT
was going high (if it was installed) thus confirming oil loss. Maybe need
to make a decision right here right now, on the ground, that if I see low
or zero pressure I will land immediately...

IIRC, on the Cessna Lycoming, the Gauge and the Idiot Light are separate
circuits. If one or the other remains in the Oil Pressure OK state, and the
temps don't rise, you have oil pressure. If they both indicate oil pressure
loss, it is over. Unless you need to travel some distance (over water,
perhaps) perform a forced approach. Don't rely on the fan for anything.

The video shows him way too high and fast for the fairway. And, if I read
the Terraserver image correctly, that was his only option at that point.

moo

"Happy Dog" wrote in message .. .
"Blueskies" wrote in
You know, hindsight is always 20-20, but if they lost oil pressure and still had a running engine, why didn't they
try to land anywhere they could right now with what engine they had left rather that trying to nurse it to get to the
airport? I'm not sure what I would do now that I think of it; I would have to watch the other engine instruments to
see if the CHT was going high (if it was installed) thus confirming oil loss. Maybe need to make a decision right
here right now, on the ground, that if I see low or zero pressure I will land immediately...

IIRC, on the Cessna Lycoming, the Gauge and the Idiot Light are separate circuits. If one or the other remains in the
Oil Pressure OK state, and the temps don't rise, you have oil pressure. If they both indicate oil pressure loss, it
is over. Unless you need to travel some distance (over water, perhaps) perform a forced approach. Don't rely on the
fan for anything.

The video shows him way too high and fast for the fairway. And, if I read the Terraserver image correctly, that was
his only option at that point.

moo



It looks like they had almost 8 minutes from the time they reported loss of oil pressure to the time they crashed. They
had about 5 minutes from the time they reported loss of pressure to the time they reported the engine failed.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
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's a HUGE file, sent to us by a fellow newsgroupie who used his TIVO
set-up to capture the video, enlarge it, and run it in slow-motion.

For future reference, to you and whoever did the video capture from his
Tivo...

It makes no sense whatsoever to capture the video in slow motion. All that
does is add unnecessary frames. The end viewer can slow the video down if
they like (any decent media player will do that), and adding frames
proportionally expands the size of the file with NO benefit.

On the bright side, you were incorrect about the video being enlarged. It's
actually been reduced from NTSC size (DV capture is usually 640x480, once
the video's been resampled to make square pixels) down to 321x240 pixels,
effectively reducing the size of the file by 3/4ths.

I would agree with people who suggest that rather than saying "HUGE" you
just state how large the file is. "HUGE" means practically nothing in terms
of understanding exactly how large the file actually is.

It really shows how little choice the poor Cessna pilot had at the last
moment, when that pickup truck suddenly appeared out of no where. His
choices were either (a) hit the truck, or (b) try to veer to the right
and avoid it.

He chose (b), thus saving everyone in the pickup truck, but gave his
life in exchange. A true hero.

I disagree that the pickup "suddenly appeared out of no where". Maybe it
did, but nothing about the video suggests that the truck was anywhere other
than right on the road all along. It's there traveling in that lane as soon
as the camera's panned enough to the left to show it.

Furthermore, while the outcome was positive for the occupants of the truck,
that's simply a matter of good luck. The resulting crash could just as
easily have ended up with the airplane dropping at 0 forward speed right in
front of the truck. That likely would have had worse consequences than
simply landing the airplane in front of or even on top of the traffic in the
road.

More importantly, a hero would not have lined up on a busy roadway in the
first place when selecting an emergency landing site. Roads are one of the
worst choices for an emergency landing, at least in any developed area, due
to the traffic and (oddly enough) utility poles and lines.

Pete

Peter Duniho wrote:


For future reference, to you and whoever did the video capture from his
Tivo...

It makes no sense whatsoever to capture the video in slow motion. All that
does is add unnecessary frames. The end viewer can slow the video down if
they like (any decent media player will do that), and adding frames
proportionally expands the size of the file with NO benefit.

On the bright side, you were incorrect about the video being enlarged. It's
actually been reduced from NTSC size (DV capture is usually 640x480, once
the video's been resampled to make square pixels) down to 321x240 pixels,
effectively reducing the size of the file by 3/4ths.


IF you look at the Real Player size as it was on the web site
shorter link is: http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y2622114A
Jay's version has a larger viewing area.

Thanks Jay !