Just watching this
What’s the back story does anyone know? As a former twin com owner I’ve still got an interest in the type and wanted to see what the causes were. Not much info on Google searches.
Dramatic footage.
Look at rudder – doesn’t even move. Either rudder lock was on, or he’s a little lax with his feet…. However, the lack of rudder isn’t what caused this – looks like either power or prop malfunction on the left engine. Glad it ended well.
indeed, little (if not any) rudder input when the sh1t started to hit the fan.
No aileron in the wind.
According to “ogimet”, on december 15 at 1050z (accident at 1058z), wind was from 340°, at about 15kts gusting to 25kts in the morning (accident at 1058z).
Aircraft was apparently taking off on Runway 05, so it was almost full left crosswind, which would be consistent with the direction the aicraft was thrown off.
On the beginning of the slow-motion replay, you can see the left gear bounce in the air. All tires seems to be OK.
When the aircraft starts to exit the runway, you can see both propellers effect varying at the same time with the same variations, which tends to demonstrate both engines were operating similarly, until the pilot retarded levers when leaving runway.
Usually I don’t like to speculate and prefer to wait on the report conclusions, but here, my guesses would go to a pilot mistreatment of a strong crosswind during takeoff.
This aeroplane used to be based in Ireland as EI-BPL many years ago. I know it gave a few memorable moments to the guys who owned it, but they were also well able to fly it out a 500m grass field. The Twin Com I had was one I never really got comfortable with in big crosswinds. Found it a bit skittish and those numbers would yield about a 19kt crosswind component if the gusts are factored in. It would have been a challenging take off in those conditions.
As another historical Twin Comanche operator, i was well aware at the time of the PA30’s landing and take-off idiosyncrasies. Due to the relatively long nose-leg the aircraft wing has a higher than normal angle of incidence on the ground. So on take-off there is a tendency to get airborne below Vmca unless you take steps to delay that. To stop getting airborne too early it was a balance act of slight forward pressure until around 70mph was reached so “only” 20mph below Vmca (90mph) that was gained in ground effect pretty quickly.
Of course the consequence of too much forward pressure is wheelbarrowing on take-off. A perfectly valid technique in a light wind won’t work with a strong gusting cross-wind. The friction provided by the main wheels is just not enough to counter the weather cocking effect and maybe too slow for sufficient aerodynamic control from the rudder.
This looks like what happened here as you can see the main wheels beginning to lose grip and slide. Quite likely the observations in previous posts of unorthodox cross-wind technique were factors too.
In general with a Twin Comm it seemed to be a case of finding that sweet spot of wheelbarrowing or getting airborne uncomfortably early. It wasn’t too difficult on a hard runway and small cross wind component. But with a significant cross wind you needed to get airborne sooner and accept the longer exposure (few seconds) flying below Vmca.
I mitigated the wheelbarrowing tendency to some degree by fitting an undersized nose wheel tyre which was a very common STC that did make a noticeable difference.
