Fatal Plane Crash From Inside The Plane

Link to the NTSB accident report:
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20001214X40670&key=1
Cessna L-19 Bird Dog pilot leaves himself no escape route and crashes killing himself and his friend in the back. He stalls the airplane at least 3 times in the last few seconds of flight and each time it stalls he pulls the stick back. Lets see, I teach my students to add full power and decrease the angle of attack. Since this pilot was already at full power he had only one thing to do to gain airspeed. PUSH FORWARD on the stick. Also his bank angle was about 60 degrees in the last portion of the turn. Stall speed, as indicated on the airspeed indicator, increases with bank angle. This is because in a turn, to maintain altitude, the angle of attack has to be increased by pulling the stick back. The reason for this is the plane loses some vertical component of lift, the amount depends on the bank angle. 60 degrees of bank requires the wing to produce twice the lift, to maintain altitude, as that needed to fly straight and level. Ie: gross weight is say 2300 lbs. 45 degrees of bank means the wing has to produce 4600 lbs. of lift just to maintain altitude. Some airspeed is also lost to do this and if you're already at full power then you need to determine if you can push the nose down to maintain airspeed. In this case the pilot was at about 10,000 ft MSL but only a few hundred feet AGL. He had no altitude to spare to accomplish this safely at the bank angle he chose. I believe he could have made the turn to the left and less bank and came out of this terrible situation alive.

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[frentrup]

WTH was his sea level altitude? That things got about 220 hp. It's a 470 I think

[av8rdav]

@frentrup Yes, it's an O-470 230 HP. Density altitude for this flight was about 13000 ft.

[PRSwannaB]

Rip

[brucostaff]

I am a complete ignorant but.... why can't he use a parashoot for himself??

[hmparisano]

The camera broke.



[ubermarklar]

@bremolincolin aircraft like this are made of thin sheets of aluminum. They're not flying volvos. Watch the final moments again and try to imagine surviving that.

[hawkeyesurfer]

@otissumnerbrown Should not have put himself in such a position to begin with. If he had any problems at all their are no safe options for him. The air is too thin and he is too close to the ground. What if he had an engine failure?

[otissumnerbrown]

@hawkeyesurfer The pilot turned towards the ridge line. He had to maintain a shallow bank. He pulled back on the stick, and did a snap-roll into the trees. He has space to turn left and go back. But he was low-and-slow. I hope that all pilots could understand this issue -- if they fly in mountains.

[hawkeyesurfer]

The bottom line is he's flying in thin air only a few hundred feet AGL in mountainous terrain.

If anything goes wrong your in serious trouble with no way out.

[goose8041]

Its easy to comment in hind sight and I would have to agree with the information provided on this video, decreasing the bank angle straight away when hearing the stall warning may have averted the crash. Not the first time pilots have pulled back in the event of a stall even in the airline industry.

[PRSwannaB]

It says in description they died

[bremolincolin]

@PRSwannaB i wouldn't guess that they died, because the airplane wasn't above the clouds, and it wasn't going fast, so a few minor injuries, but maybe they were found by a resque helicopter.

[Sophiatimezone]

I dont understand what he did. He was turning and then all of a sudden just ate shit.