Cessna #N8056L crashes on Railroad Tracks

Considering the immediate circumstances I think it's instead a *win to have avoided major damages to both planes seeing how close the Red Bull was closing in on the white Cessna) .

There is so much wrong with this video I don't even know where to start. First, there are only two types of aircraft engines, piston and turbine. When a turbine is used to drive a propeller, it's called a turbo prop. When he is talking about turbo props, he shows pictures of a piston driven propeller aircraft (Cessna 41x), and piston engines are the most common type of engine used on propeller driven aircraft, not turbo props.

He mostly gets it right about turbo jets, except again, every aircraft he shows when talking about turbo jets uses a turbo fan (the F-15 and F-16 both use afterburning turbofan engines). They get their thrust from the hot expansion of exhaust gasses, but he gets it wrong with turbo fans, which get most of their thrust from the bypass air from the fan.

We've done this with a little Cessna around Anchorage here... I remember spinning my 35mm camera in front of my face for a few seconds.

Quite the agile little plane they've got there!

In the Cessna I flew in with my dad at roughly that age, we were limited to parabolic arc "zero-g dives". But that was quite fun, and I still remember my dad letting me take the yoke and try them out myself (after he climbed to a safe altitude).

Get that girl behind a stick or yoke in a two-seater ASAP!

Another angle


And another from a Cessna at 3000 ft.

More info here - http://avherald.com/h?article=46d32419

Initially they had to hold because of a Cessna disabled on the Kilimanjaro runway, but it actually sounds like they just landed at the wrong airport afterwards. They had been cleared for landing at Kilimanjaro, but Arusha's runway was visible from their position and with the same orientation as their intended destination.

The passengers were initially told they had in fact landed at Kilimanjaro, 50 km away, and were then stuck on board the aircraft for 3.5 hours until stairs could be brought from there.

Reader N writes:

At least 100 people (police, fireman, military, airport officials) were on the runway, taking pictures with their phones, and no one gave us any explanation, no words from the pilot, nothing.

Funny now, but it was not quite funny 2 weeks ago.

I had a similar experience doing my instrument training. I was landing at a medium sized international airport operating parallel runways, except I was flying a Cessna 172 coming in at ~90 KTS and got to see half a dozen airliners and business jets pass by me landing on the other runway.

Not silly at all, if you've never been involved. Electric planes like this one tend to be extremely light...most of them under a couple of pounds, and some as little as a couple of ounces. At those weights, they don't have to move very fast to generate plenty of lift. [edit: looks like they're even lighter now, some are less than 1.25 oz]

The guy that got me into the hobby had an electric Cessna that couldn't be flown in winds faster than 6-7 mph, because the plane would have had a negative groundspeed when flying into the wind (that makes it awful hard to get back to the airfield).

I did a little amateur investigation, a bit of reading and some numbers but you can skip to the bottom for a summary.

The plane is a Stinson 108-3, 16500 foot service ceiling, 2400 pound gross weight limit (1300 empty weight), 50 gallon fuel capacity. Thats about 1100 of useful weight (2400-1300), with full fuel that lowers it to 800 (6lbs per gallon*50 gallons=300lbs), I saw 3 men in there the 4th passenger I'm gonna assume male, so lets say 180lbs for each (200 for the pilot) that comes to 740lbs for passenger weight. That leaves 60lbs for cargo. Although I couldn't see the cargo, they were still close to the weight limit but still could have been within normal limits.

The airport Bruce Meadows (U63) has a field elevation of 6370 feet. I couldnt find the airport temperature for that day but I did find nearby Stanley Airport 23 Miles southeast of Bruce Meadows. Their METAR history shows a high of 27 Celsius/81 Fahrenheit for June 30, 2012. Definitely a hot day but was it too hot? The closest I could find on performance data shows a 675 Feet per Minute climb at 75 Fahrenheit at sea level. Thats pretty close to what many small planes of that nature can do, so I took those numbers and transposed them over what a Cessna 172N could do. The 172N has a slighty higher climb performance about 750 for sea level and 75 Fahrenheit, a difference of 75 feet ill subtract out. At 6000 feet at 27C/81F the 172N climbs at 420FPM. Taking out the 75 feet brings it to 345 FPM, now I know this isn't perfect but I'm going with what I have. The plane began its climb out at 1:13 and crashed at 2:55, that leaves 1 minute and 42 seconds in between or 1.7 minutes. 1.7*345 means about 590 feet possible gain. But the plane isn't climbing at its best the entire video, at 2:35 it is apparent something is giving it trouble, that brings it down to about 1.58 minutes climb time which is 545 feet. Theres still another factor to consider and thats how consistent the altitude at the ground was.

The runway at Bruce meadows faces at 05/23 (Northeast/Southwest) but most likely he took runway 23 (Southwest) as immediately to the north east theres a wildlife preserve (Gotta fly at least 2000 feet over it) and he flew straight for quite some time. Although the ground increases in the direction he flew, by how much is difficult using the sectional charts. That means that although he may have been able to climb to about 545 feet higher than his original ground altitude, the ground rose with him and his absolute altitude over the ground would be less than that maximum possible 545. The passenger in the rear reported the plane could only climb to about 60-70 feet above the trees. The trees looked to be around 75-100 but thats still difficult to tell. That would mean according to the passenger they might have only been about 170 feet off the ground. It could still be wildly off as we cant exactly see the altimeter.

Finally theres that disturbance at 2:35 described as a downdraft. It could have been windshear, or a wind effect from the mountains. I don't have too much hands on knowledge of mountain flying so I cant say. If it was windshear he might have suddenly lost a headwind and got a tailwind, screwing up his performance. It could have been a downdraft effect. The actual effect on the aircraft may not have been much (lets say 50 feet) but near obstacles it was definitely enough to have a negative impact.



Summary:

Yes he was flying pretty heavy but he may not have been over the weight limit

The temperature in the area was definitely hotter than standard and the altitude was high, but he still had climbing capabilities within service limits. However he didn't give himself much of a safety threshold.

He might have been able to climb about 545 feet higher than the runway elevation, but the terrain altitude rose in the direction he flew, so his actual altitude over the ground was probably smaller than that.

The disturbance at 2:35 might have been some form of windshear which has the capacity to reduce airplane performance, and with his margins of safety so low already, that could have been the final factor.

Basically he may very well have been flying within the service limits of the aircraft, but the margins of safety he left himself were very low and the decision to fly over obstacles like those trees in that mountain enviroment could be the reason this would be declared pilot error.

Other notes:

The takeoff looks pretty rough but he trying to get off the ground as quickly as he can and ride ground effect until he gets up to speed.

I cant find anything resembling a proper PoH for this aircraft but I did find some data that looks pretty close to it. However this aircraft was a model from the late 40s, so the standards of performance may not be the same as now, and the transcribing I did to the 172N could be thrown off more.

On that note, I do realize that a 172 would have different aerobatic effects with altutude and temperature than a Stinson 108, but its the closest data I could use.

I also couldnt not find balance information to get a rough idea of how the plane was balanced. The type of balance on a plane does have effects on performance.

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N773C.html (The aircraft)

http://www.aopa.org/airports/U63 (The airport)

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120701X65804&key=1 (The NTSB link posted earlier)

http://personalpages.tdstelme.net/~westin/avtext/stn-108.txt (Closest thing I could find to performance data, the actual numbers are at the bottom)

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/cgi-bin/gen_statlog-u.cgi?ident=KSNT&pl=none2&yy=12&mm=06&dd=30 (Weather data at nearby Stanley)

http://skyvector.com (sectional chart data, type U63 into the search at the upper left, then make sure that "Salt Lake City" is selected in the upper right for the sectional chart)

That might have been self-induced at two levels.
1) He appears to hit the brakes a bit too hard--and just like you can launch yourself over your handlebars if you hit your front brakes too hard, physics bites him in the butt and
2) In my imagination, they might even have been competing to see who could pull off the shortest landing---with the start of the landing having to be between the sets of cones that everyone is standing around and the shortest landing up to that point (when he broke the airplane)marked by the orange cone that he flips the Cessna just after...

The trick here, if that's it, would have been controlling his approach speed better---and hanging on the edge of a stall or even have parts of the wing already into the stall as he landed---slower speed, short distance---no desperate last minute stab at the brakes

I bet you have had this same experience with the opposite sex because you are a damn expert! JK boner, jk.
>> ^BoneRemake:

I think the driver hit the breaks too fast/hard.

>> ^dannym3141:

Tail wind perhaps?
I haven't heard anybody fart

Tags for this video have been changed from 'cessna 180, plane, unexpected landing, landing, endo, inverted finish, fail' to 'cessna 180, taildragger, plane, unexpected landing, landing, endo, inverted finish' - edited by calvados

>> ^EMPIRE:
it's been made private. I can't watch it.


Thanks for letting me know! Fixed!