On the same day, the Swiss airforce made another step to their continued disarmament: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/search-underway_swiss-army-plane-missing/43512684
About the time when Peter landed in Cannes, a DA42 departed to Cosica and crashed, 4 French adults and a dog killed: https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=199614
That DA42 really fell on its belly ! Almost no surrounding crops were touched. Djeez…
That is a rather unusual “pancake” accident, where the plane comes straight down
Another one was the Val d’Anniviers airplane crash (all on google) and that one was very weird because it was during sightseeing i.e. “enroute”.
Peter wrote:
That is a rather unusual “pancake” accident, where the plane comes straight down
It is a chance to be a Diamond(aerodynamics) characteristic.
I remember stalling a DA40 never drop a wing for 3000ft of loss. Stick full back.
I remember stalling a DA40 never drop a wing for 3000ft of loss
I don’t understand that statement.
Peter wrote:
I don’t understand that statement.
The DA40 does the falling leaf really well when you keep the stick fully aft and maintain it coordinated. If you keep that up all the way to the ground, it will pretty much pancake with very little forward speed and a VS of -600 fpm.
Aviathor wrote:
If you keep that up all the way to the ground, it will pretty much pancake with very little forward speed and a VS of -600 fpm.
But if it had done that, the occupants would have survived the crash (as I did some autolands on airliners (as passenger…) which must have had a similar rate of descend). In the link above it says: Stalled during a go-around. Maybe he was just about to recover from a nose-drop when the ground came towards him too soon.
The DA42 is the aerodynamically most benign aircraft I have ever flown. It is completely free from any surprising or demanding behavior. Control surface authority is very good in slow flight and engine power is sufficient.
Most likely the pilot got caught in a gust in flare and when going around he increased pitch before having gained enough speed.
achimha wrote:
On the same day, the Swiss airforce made another step to their continued disarmament
If you wanna be cynical that is ok but remember there was a pilot in that airplane who leaves behind a family and loved ones. Apart, a PC7 trainer is not really a weapon…
The PC7 accident is really weird as those planes can fly IFR and much higher. Apparently the pilot tried to get to Locarno in VFR, which was very unlikely that day.
The Mooney accident the same day appears to have quite a lot of questions.
The Mooney departed Donaueschingen at 1830 LT with the destination of Albenga (LIMG) in it’s flight plan. However, that airport closes at 1830 LT… They crashed at around 1900 after issuing an emergency call of some sorts near a mountain restaurant at roughly 1900 m altitude. A webcam pic available shows the area VMC at the time however with a ceiling above. According to some reports, the last radar return was at around 7500 ft, which is significantly higher than the crash site.
The airplane came to rest right in front of the terrace of this restaurant, like the pics in this news report show:
The airplane is totally destroyed. Somehow it does not look like a CFIT but like it’s come down vertically.
