Saw the huge smoke plume from my conference room this morning during a meeting. Small Plane Crashes on 405 Freeway Near John Wayne Airport; 2 Hospitalized | KTLA Sounds like the 2 passengers were alive. Hope all is well.
Looks like he did a good job of getting it down, cabin seemingly intact. Lucky for him traffic was either very light, and/or moving at a good pace.
some footage of the actual crash https://www.yahoo.com/gma/small-plane-crashes-california-freeway-174904844--abc-news-topstories.html
Yeah, hard to tell whether he was trying everything to get beyond the freeway or everything to just get to the freeway. Of course you don't achieve best glide with a dirty airplane, but maybe he was already low and configured and then very busy once the emergency occurred.
Apparently with one operative engine it appears to me that it wasn't at full power. What was directly ahead of him? I have seen some disasters from turning at low speed and this guy luckily was turning into the good engine. But he could have gone straight ahead if there was a chance to put it down under control in some place that was comparatively safe. They are lucky to survive. I'm not being a Monday Night quarterback here, just trying to sort it out mentally. I keep hearing my instructor screaming "straight ahead, straight ahead!"
Kathryn's Report: Cessna 310R, N87297, Twin Props 87297 LLC: Accident occurred June 30, 2017 near John Wayne-Orange County Airport (KSNA), Santa Ana City, California You often hear about twins crashing when one engine goes out. If you have to crash into someone you want to do this The driver of the car struck by the plane is a fire captain from Avalon on Catalina Island and pulled the pilot out of the plane and administered first aid, Fox said. The passenger was able to get out of the Cessna on her own.
I was told by a Martin B-26 pilot that when you lost an engine on take off the best procedure was to throttle back on the good engine to maintain control and go straight ahead. Hardly ever applied, I guess. A lot of lift was provided by prop wash over the short wings on the early B-26 airplane and if you lost an engine you also lost a lot of lift on that side. So, "One a day in Tampa Bay". I don't know if the long wing version was any better.
If he lost it on takeoff or shortly after, I personally would have flown straight out as there's no terrain ahead. Light twins don't climb well on one engine, but they do climb. There's the, Identify, Verify, Feather procedure that most pilots use. If you don't take your time, it's possible to shutdown the other engine by mistake. It does look like a steep right low level bank to final that resulted in a stall and roll to the left which ended up in a flat touchdown. It didn't sound like the engines were running, but it's hard to tell on my phones screen. The gear appears either down or in transit. Anyways, just my thoughts.
I had a client who was an instructor on the B-26 and I think I remember him saying engine out killed a lot of people in those. I think he said they flipped on their backs and went in. do you have a story to tell? So, "One a day in Tampa Bay"
" One A Day in Tampa Bay" was the slogan of MacDill Field when the Martin B-26's were there during the war. The south end of the main runway terminated at the water's edge and many B-26's ended up there when they had engine failure on takeoff. In nineteen-forty seven I flew over that point and several times I could see what appeared to be wreckage on the bottom. The late Tom Cloyd was killed while flying the CAF's B-26. He was the pilot of FiFi.
I wasn't fully correct when I said, " terminated at the water's edge". I should have said near the water's edge. There was an area of salt marsh and bog around the southern end of the field. Things are sure different down there now with bridges and causeways all over the place.
Bob- Funny thing is, the B-26 Marauder had the best combat record (lowest losses) of all our WW-II bombers. Once you got it away from the ground, it flew pretty well and was very tough.
Yes, that is what my late brother-in-law told me. He flew them in the South Pacific Theater and said that the B-25 was nice comfortable airplane to fly around but if he was going into action, it had to be the B-26. That was one of the most exciting things to see in flight, especially at low altitude. Once in a while they would come buzzing down the beach at 100 ft. and the sound was earth shaking and the speed was amazing. It would be great to see one that way again.
Agreed. Taking a little time to verify is a life saver. Unfortunately, there have been several incidents where the pilot pulled back on the good engine(s)...the Concorde in Paris comes to mind. I had an engine failure at rotation in an F/A-18D...it didn't matter much because of the close proximity of the engines unlike my current ride (777) where it's more critical. Of course, TAC helps a lot. ;-)
What's the point of having a twin, if you cannot handle an engine out? This is why I won't fly any twin, unless it's an inline twin (Cessna 337 / Rutan Defiant). My original instructor was test flying a customer's Mooney (carbureted engine) that just got an annual. He had the mechanic as the passenger. The engine quit at 500 feet after take-off. My instructor made no attempt to return to the runway and just pointed it between two trees. The pilot suffered minor back injury and the mechanic walked away without a scratch. Never attempt to return to the airport - just establish best glide speed and put it down some place in front of you. You'll likely survive. Try and turn back and your likely to punch a whole in the ground. Glad no one was killed.
I have a pilot friend of mine who says: in an engine failure in a single-engine plane, you quickly pick a spot to land. In a twin-engine plane, you quickly pick a spot to crash. Is this true?
No. Piston twins, especially at sea level and average temperatures, will climb out on one engine. All he had to do was raise the landing gear, climb out, feather the bad engine, continue to climb, focus on maintaining airspeed, declare an emergency and ask ATC for help in getting vectors back to a nice long runway. The quick return to the airport at low altitude is not the best plan on a plane with one engine dead. A warm day at Aspen would be another story for many fully loaded piston twins.
