Piper PA28 D-EMGE crashes in Spa

Pi-hu-tse … f*cked up go around of the worst kind – hope the report will give some light.

You can always go around…

boscomantico wrote:

You can always go around…

When doing the drivers license many years ago the classic question was: You see a ball coming out in between parked cars. What do you do? 1) Full throttle to get away before the child can follow. 2) Brake

Now in aviation we always teach option 1… From a safe altitude with some speed left a go around is usually a good option but half way down a challenging runway low on speed in a low power plane it is not alway the best plan after all. Common flight training does not seem to teach this at all.

Sebastian_G wrote:

but half way down a challenging runway low on speed in a low power plane

But this plane is supposed to take off that runway later on… and piston engine will respond immediately to full power and such plane has also a low inertia… or it wasn’t supposed to be at that place at that time…

Yes, if the crash was past the runway, it’s very likely the go-around was initiated after a bounce, or at least while floating at very low speed (<1.2Vs), far in the second regime. Maybe even after touchdown, because of poor direction or roll control (e.g. from a strong wind).
It’s puzzling since there were only 2 people in the aircraft (far from MTOW, so accelerating and climbing should be no problem).

If it’s the case (stuck in 2nd regime), the problem comes from before the go-around : greased or floating flare landing on a short runway ? (instead of assertive landing to shorten the distance) => especially on short runways, in my training you’re not aiming for 0ft/min at touchdown, more like 160ft/min. You’re cutting your descent rate, but never going to zero.
Or maybe the decision was too late following a hesitation ?

Other possibilities include bad pilot input with engine not producing takeoff power (bad mixture, prop settings), or simply a technical problem.

This field can be a bit challenging due to turbulence on short final just coming over the fence due to thick forest on either side and it’s a 800m runway. I was there 2 weeks and a half ago, landed 05 and also departed 05. So I landed over this road and fence that these two hit on the go around from the opposite direction.

I mean it isn’t exactly an easy field and they actually don’t allow t&gs training flights without two familiarization flights with an instructor that have to be carried out within 6 weeks but still, if you aim well with good technique there is no reason to need more than half of the runway for landing.

But if you get surprised by the turbulence and then fumble to land the end of the runway will come up on you quite fast and then you panic, forget carb heat or one notch flaps immediately and then this is what can happen. Tragic but other than a mechanical failure this is very likely pilot error.

maxbc wrote:

Yes, if the crash was past the runway,

Yes it was. Indeed seems likely an attempted go-around. And it’s certainly a field where you at least have to pay some attention (although I don’t have a lot to compare with).

I couldn’t help noticing that if he hadn’t flown into the fence and the car, he would have flown straight into the trees next to the road. You can see it clearly in the pictures on aviation safety net. As the crash happened about 100m north of the runway, I was wondering how he got there, and with strong wind from the south, i assumed somehow he must have been blown to the north.

But now that I’m thinking about it, as PPL I was tought to veer to the right (or left, for right hand circuits) while doing go-around. I don’t know whether this is a universal procedure, or being tought in Germany, but veering to the left or right is something you can’t do at EBSP as there are woods on climbout of runway 23. In the runway extension, the woods are cleared, but it’s only about 100 m wide, so if you veer to the right, you’ll fly straight into the trees or stall trying to climb over them.

Maybe the guys at the tower have seen what happened, and I hope the final report will shed some clarity on the event.

The guys at the tower have a clear view there at this end of the runway. The 05 threshold and this road are basically parallel to the tower which is slightly up the hill. If they were looking they saw what happened, I have no doubt about that.

sugarcube wrote:

I couldn’t help noticing that if he hadn’t flown into the fence and the car, he would have flown straight into the trees next to the road.

Thought the same. He shouldn’t have been there, there was no way out.

Was that an instructional flight so with an FI? The aircraft was from a training center.