This guy had lots more experience than I probably ever will have, was a test pilot, ex-military, and had his young daughter on the aircraft. It’s clear when there was a problem. Can someone help me understand why he flew a “standard” traffic pattern? I don’t recommend listening to the ATC audio.
https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/469542
eurogaguest1980 wrote:
Can someone help me understand why he flew a “standard” traffic pattern?
Yes, that’s odd. It seems he developed engine problems just as the downwind turn was complete. If he’d gone for a landing on the opposite runway he would have made it. Of course that’s easy to say in hindsight.
Sometimes too much knowledge can work aganst you. Maybe he thought he knew what the problem was and it wouldn’t stop the engine, but he was wrong?
The METARs show very weak and variable winds, so wind direction wouldn’t have been an issue.
KFUL 022153Z VRB03KT 8SM CLR 22/00 A3001 RMK AO2 SLP160 T02170000=
KFUL 022253Z 00000KT 7SM CLR 23/00 A3000 RMK AO2 SLP159 T02280000=
dublinpilot wrote:
Sometimes too much knowledge can work aganst you. Maybe he thought he knew what the problem was and it wouldn’t stop the engine, but he was wrong?
You may be right. He was descending and slowing, so he didn’t seem to have much power, but perhaps he thought he had enough. That descent rate seems to show it’s clear he was not going to make it, but as @Airborne_Again said, everything is clearer in hindsight.
A shit happens and the statistical worst moment to have engine trouble?
Looking at the data he might have had engine power loss on straight out at about 500 AGL (KFUL is about 95 ELEV). Intuition will tell you = not enough altitude for the impossible turn and who knows whether there was an abrupt failure or fading degradation. He used all the speed to start the turn and gain all possible additional altitude as in text book and as he was trained, to get best glide on downwind, but had about 100-150ft too little altitude for finishing the pattern.
I’d tend to say engine trouble at exactly the little second were this leaves no real option over dense populated area. Hard to tell, but I guess the impossible turn would not be a successful option either.
I don’t know the airport, but also roads might been not very desirable especially for a mil trained pilot – anybody an idea whether one of the two freeways would have been the better option (with the danger of hurting other people)?
MichaLSA wrote:
Looking at the data he might have had engine power loss on straight out at about 500 AGL (KFUL is about 95 ELEV).
That’s not my conclusion. Both speed and altitude continued to increase until 22:08:16 when he had just completed the turn downwind.
EDIT: Corrected the time after seeing a higher resolution image.
He clearly COULD have managed the impossible turn, because he was still at 300 feet abeam the arrival end of the runway. If you just imagine his downwind track slanted 20 degrees or so to the right, he would still have been at 500 feet over the numbers. In fact it would have taken some serious slipping to get onto the runway at all. Even if he had turned base abeam the numbers he would likely have made it. Very strange. Very sad too.
Airborne_Again wrote:
That’s not my conclusion. Both speed and altitude continued to increase until 22:00:15 when he had just completed the turn downwind.
I did not listen to the ATC, did he check in for patterns?
My speculation followed the track posted at #1:
johnh wrote:
because he was still at 300 feet abeam the arrival end of the runway.
300 ft MSL … KFUL is 96 ft ELEV … don’t know why the first data point is below ELEV, somebody knowing details of adsb-exchange?