Courchevel LFLJ PA46 F-HYGA crash

denopa wrote:

and that it’s not another “hey let me take my new to me 350hp 2t sleek airplane to an airport I’ve only landed at with much lighter aircraft”.

Lets see but I fear that will be close. Unfortunately it is super complicated to get training for the PA46 at Courchevel. It took me multiple years and attemps. In the end the only one able to do it was Alexandre Combs who by the way is a great instructor.

let me take my new to me 350hp 2t sleek airplane to an airport I’ve only landed at with much lighter aircraft

Whatever the runway slope, landing length required is a function of the square of ground speed (GS) at touchdown. Aircraft mass is irrelevant except to the extent that it affects GS for a given airplane.

I hesitate to criticise the unfortunate pilot. A pilot without a full mountain rating who obtained his LFLJ site authorisation with a nice tail wind or cross wind could easily misjudge an approach into a headwind.

It’s impossible to train for coucheval on anything other than Jodel or Cub, however, at some number of hours on type you can pretty much take own aircraft there with barely a Cub checkout, but it’s not the right place to go 2nd day after buying a shinny toy or getting a shinny rating !

It’s best to ask what the pilot could have done before heading solo in PA46? my guess not much aside from a site checkout and land the sh***t out of his aircraft on first 500m of many forgiving places out there before heading to courcheval

It’s best to ask what the pilot could have done before heading solo in PA46?

Go with an instructor who has done this before. Landing with the taildragger felt like driving the autobahn at 100 km/h and then landing the PA46 felt like flat out on the same autobahn. I did explore all options to get qualified like doing a mountain rating in Italy etc. and most resulted in a situation where you had to eventually go for it alone and I am so happy I did no go down such a route. I think my chance would have been max 50/50 to get that first PA46 landing right on my own.

It’s impossible to train for coucheval on anything other than Jodel or Cub

I trained for the MOU rating in a Cessna and a Maule.

PA 46 has a stall IAS of around 60 kts (?) so in principle can land at Courchevel with very little braking (conservation of energy calculation gives tyre friction coefficient required = 0.07 with touchdown GS = 86 kts).

But Sebastian is right. As easy as it is if flown correctly, LFLJ is perhaps not the most forgiving place to practice and screw up with an new/unfamiliar airplane.

Jacko wrote:

Whatever the runway slope, landing length required (*) is a function of the square of ground speed (GS) at touchdown

You unfortunately forgot the most important words in your statement. To make it correct you need to ad a “with perfect landing technique” at the place I marked with (*) in the quote.

The main challenge with fast and heavy planes like the Malibu is not, that “landing length” (I read it as “landing ground roll”) is high. The main challenge is that deviations from perfect landing technique (which we always do) have a much higher impact than in slower/lighter aircrafts.

If the crash was down to a strong headwind is that not a simple case of not calculating the necessary increase in approach speed that we all learnt how to do during PPL training.
And if that is the case then this accident could well have happened at any airfield where one needs to put down at the threshold when it is basically on the first few metres of runway.
The difference with Courcheval from many other runways is that it is wide and has an distinct upslope which can lead to optical illusions such as that of being too low and too fast.

Not really. Here we are taught in our PPL training to calculate KVe and add it to the approach speed. (I hope I remember this correctly as I use a different calculation now and I did my PPL training many years ago) Vw -10 divided by 2.
Eg if the headwind is 40kts you minus 10 =30 and divide by 2 = 15. So you add 15kts to your normal approach speed which helps you not to dip short of the threshold at airfields like Courcheval.
If the wind is gusting eg 15G30 you will get 15-10 =5/2 = for ease say 3kts to which you add the gust factor in this case 30 minus 15 =15kts.
Total 18kts to be added to your IAS approach. Most would add 20 knots.
The KVe factor came in really handy when landing at Ouessant last year.

I have never heard of adding to the approach speed because of a headwind. I add a little for gusty conditions, but I landed 45 mins ago in a steady 15 knot headwind with the normal book value of 73 KIAS over the hedge. I don’t see what bearing the ground speed has on things, assuming sufficient runway.