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Piper Archer I-PIDR "lands" on a mountain slope in Italy

Another stellar Netflix truth original perhaps.

Pig
If only I’d known that….
EGSH. Norwich. , United Kingdom

By the looks of it the report will come in the form of an article in Vanity Fair Italy, in combination with a home story.

always learning
LO__, Austria

I think those among us who are realists have pretty much signed the report off already.

Pig
If only I’d known that….
EGSH. Norwich. , United Kingdom

I guess in 2 years time we can read the report Or perhaps it will only be in Italian?

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

UdoR wrote:

Ok now this sounds more like real engine trouble, because with wrongly set mixture power doesn’t drop sharply, it’s simply decreasing over time.

If you had cruise power and then set full power it could happen – although with my experience with Cherokees that shouldn’t happen with full rich mixture even at FL100. Of course at that altitude you would not get maximum possible power with full rich.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Perhaps it’s a similar story to a student at my local club. This student – actually, they had already passed their licence, but hadn’t flown in more than a year – wanted to go flying with an instructor. So off they went, pulled the Archer III out of the hangar, saw around 10 gallons in both tanks but as they were intending to fly for a couple of hours, they filled the left hand tank.

They carried out the air work and after an hour and 15 minutes, they returned back to the airfield to start circuit bashing, landing without flaps etc. About 5 miles out, at 2000ft MSL – 1800ft AGL – the engine died. The instructor heroically called “my machine” and proceeded to perform an emergency landing into a cornfield. Once down, they were collected and brought back to the club, whereby everyone was congratulating him on his heroic deeds, buying him drinks.

Meanwhile, the recovery of the aircraft was being organised. In order to transport it back to base, the aircraft’s wings needed to be removed. What a surprise when they noted that the right hand tank was pretty much empty, the left hand tank was brimmed to the top and the fuel selector was – yes, you guessed it, on the right hand tank.

Attempting to run an engine on air alone is never a good thing. After that, there was a legal dispute about who should pay for the insurance excess (2k) – the student claimed that the instructor should be liable as he was first overseeing the actions of the PIC and had also taken over the plane without allowing any fault finding; the instructor claimed that the pilot was asked to change the tank – a comment the student disputed….

So, it could be sods law that at the point she needed power, the fuel in that tank ran out….

Last Edited by Steve6443 at 05 Jan 20:12
EDL*, Germany

Dan wrote:

“When the engine loses power the plane starts to fall”

UdoR wrote:

this sounds more like real engine trouble, because with wrongly set mixture power doesn’t drop sharply,

Correct. And if I look at the propeller in those pics, I would be V E R Y surprised if it turns out that it was turning at the time of impact. Blades which contact the ground while turning don’t look like this.

Why the engine has stopped, nobody can say at this moment. Neither do we know the position she was when it happened, nor altitude. These few factors make one heck of a difference on how this accident needs to be rated.

The most important thing is that she apparently did not panic, not try to turn away in a steep turn or something like that but put the airplane down in such a way that nobody got hurt too much.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

I have always wondered if it would be possible to crash land a plane like that if there are no other options left. I guess that question is now answered.

EDQH, Germany

Dan wrote:

When the engine loses power the plane starts to fall

Ok now this sounds more like real engine trouble, because with wrongly set mixture power doesn’t drop sharply, it’s simply decreasing over time. Not so easy to spot that in a typical charter PA28 without any good instrument if you don’t have an idea of what is happening with regards to combustion processes. Or could the wrongly set mixture produce such an amount of deposits in short time that it could be the cause for the engine trouble?

However in case of an engine failure reaction is needed really quickly. In the end, any decision taken that leads to a survival has been the right decision in retrospect.

I wonder whether this chapter might turn out to be part of a movie. Quite interesting plot.

Last Edited by UdoR at 05 Jan 17:41
Germany

I do speak/understand some Italian, but will not indulge into a direct translation of the edifying interview given by the pilot in
Video

But I now took the time to read the detailed story, as published by different newspaper and resumed by the Gazetta
This account pretty much reflects what she told during the video interview.

Below the direct translation, though I had to correct a couple of mistakes made by the free version of Deepl, here goes:

Who is Silvia, the girl who made the emergency landing in the Dolomites

The 22-year-old holds an Italian and a US licence: when she grows up, she would like to become an airline pilot and has now demonstrated that she has all the necessary skills.

Silvia De Bon is only 22 years old, and in addition to an Italian and an American pilot’s licence, she can now also boast of an emergency landing that saved the lives of two people as well as herself. The young Italian, who has been in the news for the past few hours for her emergency landing in the Dolomites, is doing well and has told the media about her story. In two interviews, one with Corriere della Sera and one with La Stampa, the young pilot told her version of the events, claiming all her piloting choices.

THE DYNAMICS OF THE ACCIDENT
The accident occurred on 28 December, at an altitude of 2,100 metres, on the Lagorai mountain range in the Dolomites of Trentino. On board the Piper PA-28, a tourist plane owned by the Autoclub Belluno, were her, her brother, Mattia De Bon, and his girlfriend Giorgia Qualizza. According to initial information, the emergency landing was necessary due to a drop in engine power. The National Flight Safety Association and the Trento public prosecutor’s office have opened an investigation into the accident, also because the media initially spoke of some engine failures during the climb phase. If they are alive, it is thanks to Silvia, who, thanks to her experience, made an assessment that went against manuals and theories, landing her plane on its belly on mountain slopes. In her view, had she not made that choice, the consequences would have been much more serious.

SILVIA’S NARRATION
“Normally,” the girl told the Corriere, "that movement is wrong, because the more you pull, the more the speed decreases and the plane falls. Knowing I was going against the mountain, I did everything to level the plane against the slope, landing on the belly. If I had crashed straight on, I would have destroyed the nose and the consequences would have been worse. So too if I had tried to turn back: I would have hit the ridge and destroyed the whole side of the Piper. At that moment that was probably the right thing to do. “When the engine loses power the plane starts to fall” she recounts. “As it was happening I thought s..t, now I’m going to crash” Then I just tried to flatten the plane onto the slope…. I was lucky." At that moment, in fact, the girl relates that she had “a blank”. Then when she woke up, she had the left side of her face full of blood, having hit her head against the glass. At that moment, however, she realized that her emergency maneuver had worked, and with the two boys they called the 112 emergency number and managed to get help to reach them.

LOVE FOR FLIGHT
The girl said she was in love with flying. Only last November, according the Corriere, she had returned from the United States where she had obtained her American licence. “To get the commercial licence” she recounts, “you need to accumulate hours of experience, which we call ‘filling’. I went there, flew as much as I needed and came back to Italy”. Her determination is the same that drove her to ‘contradict’ her father, who has always suggested she stops flying precisely because of the dangers she runs.

THE DREAM: TO BECOME AN AIRLINE PILOT
“I’m sorry, but my father, I don’t listen to him” she says. “I always tell him: If all the people who get into car accidents stopped driving, no one would drive any more”. “It is true that when you are in the air things are not the same, but the concept is similar. If I have an accident I don’t get scared, I have the determination, I want to be an airline pilot, like the Ryanair ones. It could have happened to anyone and also on other occasions: if I was on the road, coming home, or if I was heading to the airport”.

Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland
87 Posts
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