A Gippsland GA8 Airvan with 9 people on board crashed vertically on the island of Storsandskär, near Umeå in Sweden. All on board perished in the crash.
The airplane was owned by a operator of parashuting flights.
It appears to have gone into a spin:
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/3Jojme/vittne-vrakdelar-foll-fran-himlen
It’s clearly spinning, but I am am not convinced it’s “in a spin”. From some of the rotations it looks like half of one wing is missing.
Some aerodynamic surfaces of the aircraft have broken off in flight, but from photos it is not immediately obvious what they are. (At least if you’re unfamiliar with the aircraft type.) So far there have been differing reports about the wing.
The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority has been very quiet so far but has stated that both wings are attached to the wreckage and that there was a running engine. From the pictures of other debris which were not found on the crash site at least one of them has the characteristics of an elevator. The videos taken of the last segment of the crash are from long distances and are blurry but it might seem that the plane is missing both elevator and rudder as it comes down in a vertical nose down attitude. From that you could argue that the aft part of the flying surfaces have separated in flight.
Also, from the radar track on Flightradar24 it stops at 13 000 ft just over the island where the aircraft went down. The track indicates that it was approaching the dropzone and according to witnesses the pilot announced on the radio “ready to drop” which was acknowledged by another pilot flying a sightseeing tour in the area.
From the number of casualties (9) it can also be argued that the airplane must have been flown very close to MTOW. The specs for the Airvan says 1 pilot and 7 passengers but there might be some exemption from this regarding skydiving that I’m not aware of. With full fuel and nine persons onboard the average weight of each person can only be 64 kg.
Although it is early and all facts are not known yet I think it is a reasonable assumption that something happened as the jumpers were getting ready to exit the airplane and that the the rear empennage suffered some form of catastrophical failure at some stage in the following events.
This accident in Australia has som chilling similarities.
Axe wrote:
With full fuel and nine persons onboard the average weight of each person can only be 64 kg.
Planes used for hauling jumpers are stripped of seats etc. There is also CG limits to take into the equation, easier to adjust with an (self) adjustable cargo than with fixed seats.
Axe wrote:
With full fuel
….and with 6 hours endurance, it would be unusual to fill this to the brim for a parachuting day – it would just unnecessarily increase the time needed to climb to the drop altitude.
How much would you say that basic empty weight can be reduced by stripping seats etc? Is there an STC or something to increase the maximum number of persons onboard or is there a skydiving version available as an option?
Cobalt wrote:
it would be unusual to fill this to the brim for a parachuting day
Of course. But I also guess that you don’t wan’t to fill up between every lift either. Given the time to climb to 13 000 ft and the fuel consumption there would have to be at least a little something in the fuel tanks.
All I’m saying is that it will be interesting to see in the final report if W&B played any role in this.