172 crashes into people in Germany

Reading the German source at Hessenschau.de confirms Adam’s brief summary. The aircraft wasn’t properly aligned with the runway, the pilot seems to have decided to go around too late and then botched this attempt and stalled, crashing into the three persons on the ground. It is as of yet unknown if there was a technical defect on the aircraft. There were 4 adult men on board the C172, which departed from Mannheim, and who were lightly injured.

BfU has taken over the investigation along with the Fulda criminal police.

Very tragic and especially so due to the third party damage!

This is very sad!

Very sad indeed. But this:

MedEwok wrote:

There were 4 adult men on board the C172

is food for thought.

Density altitude was above 4000ft, and the Wasserkuppe is not an airfield to take lightly. Runway 24 is 2200ft long and has an upslope of about 4,5%, which makes a go-around difficult for many airplanes. Adding a little tailwind doesn´t make it any easier. What a tragedy.

MedEwok wrote:

and then botched this attempt and stalled

From the photographs available it does not look like they stalled. The plane is pretty much intact apart from a broken L/H strut (from the collision) and a drooped left wing. And it is still more or less aligned with the extended RWY centerline.
I would say that for whatever reason the airplane did not outclimb the (fairly rapidly) rising terrain during the go-around.

Looks like the aircraft has come to a stand still just as it passed through the gate which is on the left hand side of the road that pass just west of threshold rwy 06, so he landed rwy 24 and simply overran the runway? As already mentioned the aircraft looks fairly intact but at a picture published by Augsburger Allgemeine(I do not want to post it) you see the left hand side of the aircraft which is not so nice. Looks like the propeller and the lower left side of the cowling has hit people and also the wing strut. Really tragic accident.

EDIT: I also now that there are structural damage on the right wing, more so than on the left.

Does that airfield require a familiarisation flight and instruction? It appears not to be too straightforward. Can one fly there without a MOU rating? If so, does that make sense? Similar airfields in France require training. Why not this one?

One question is why is there an unguarded public road right next to the runway end? Spectators don’t belong there, never ever. Any overrun, which can happen very easily, would put them in jeopardy. This accident is horrible and will most probably cause huge restrictions to airfield operation throughout Germany (if not Europe if EASA gets involved).

A C172 with 4 grown men going to a mountain airfield in itself is questionable. We don’t know the weight and balance details, but they certainly were near MTOW. Even if that landing had succeeded, could (or rather should) they have taken off there? In my experience, a C172 is a 2 Adults 2 kids plane, 4 full grown adults immediately rises huge question marks.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

One question is why is there an unguarded public road right next to the runway end? Spectators don’t belong there, never ever. Any overrun, which can happen very easily, would put them in jeopardy.

From pictures it appears likely that the pilot used asphalt runway 24. According to Google Maps there are no threshold markings at the runway end, but the public road is about 100 m from the opposite runway numbers. It seems to me that the threshold should have been displaced even if that doesn’t have a bearing on this accident.

I don’t think it is practicable to protect against overruns. If the surface is even, the aircraft can roll a considerable distance behind the runway end or even fly in ground effect.