It is a weather baloon ascent.
Yes the last skew-t shows a layer close to “5410m” which is about 17000ft.
RH line is temp and LH line is dewpoint.
Notes here.
The 3 deg C separation which you see around the 900mb level is roughly 2-5 octas cloud; not solid IMC (at that spot).
The real expert on this is @bookworm but I am not sure if he is still “around”.
EuroFlyer wrote:
that part of the channel is deeeeeeeep. 600m
The deepest depth of English channel is 174 m, so it’s less than 600 ft. There’s possibility that wreck can be found with side-scan sonar depending how large area of search is and how much money effort someone wants to invest.
Peter wrote:
The 24hrs prior ascent shows no solid IMC
But it does kind of tie-in with the Gramet cross-section. Mid-channel it was showing SCT FL020-100 , over southern UK it was showing FEW from FL010 upwards. 0C around FL030
I don’t think the weather for that flight was that extreme assuming day flying when you “can see the nasty spots in the air/aircraft” and play around them or just “fly on top” but at night you maybe punching trough them without noticing at all?
I don’t know much about icing but I guess you don’t need “solid imc overcast” for it to happen just FEW/SCT and at the wrong hight, place and temperature?
I agree the wx doesn’t look so bad. Especially the MSLP.
These relatively thin layers can produce a lot of ice, as I well know, if you get unlucky. But if that ascent is representative, I don’t see heavy icing… not in SCT. You can eventually pick up some ice in SCT but a PA46 would easily cope.
Several things could have accumulated. A pilot possibly unfamiliar with a PA46 (according to The Times today, not qualified to fly it, whatever that means), not instrument capable, maybe mechanical issues, pressures due to the pilot knowing the flight is important and probably not legal and these would affect Plan B decisionmaking (which in a normal case might be a rapid “quit while you are still losing” diversion).
If/when the accident report comes out it should contain radar tracks which will shed light on it. Until then, only those in ATC will know something useful, and they won’t be talking.
Apparently £170k has been raised for a private search.
I’m not terribly familiar with the area and wx there but in my own experience wx forecasts can be way off. I’ve seen some really thick IMC when the report said few and I’ve had clear skies when it was said to be BKN.
The pilot elected to fly below controlled airspace, low level at night and I’m pretty sure he accepted for some icing to be present and relied on the Malibu being FIKI to make it. Unless the altitude band that he was in was clear and a few degrees C in the plus icing seems very probable to have played a part in this!
EuroFlyer wrote:
Impossible to find. Very small, potentially in many pieces, no signal, no discernible profile on any echolot, weak magnetic signature
You may be right, but that`s not certain. There are many examples where even after 70 years airplanes have been found and recovered from the seebed
And the search area is obviously smaller than the area of the crash of AF447.
Divers in Croatia are constantly searching and finding WW2 aircraft wrecks in Adriatics at depths from 50 to 120 meters.
The AAIB will disclose the last radar return to a private search team.
That is clearly what happened with N147KA where the pilot’s wife raised £10k and amateur divers found the wreck very fast “by accident”, in the vast piece of water between Shoreham and Le Touquet. The wreck then moved (fishing boat nets, perhaps) and they could not find it again.
His body was never found. That was a weird case, with the police putting out an initial statement asking if anyone had seen the guy (he was in big trouble, as an RBS “banker”). See the links in above link. The whole thing was strange anyway because how come the wife of a " high up RBS “banker” " would have only 10k.
That plane was Shoreham based – one of the “147 group” planes which were located around the UK, with N147KB being located at EGKB – and was regularly flown on trips like that one, often by pilots who barely knew how to set the transponder code, and using an Ipad to navigate. Probably not a few parallels with this PA46 one…
Did the N147KB organised boat pickup mid channel? (just saying there are many other safe ways to disapear than pulling a CAPS mid-cannel on top of your yacht in james bond likes :) ), I did not read the report in detail but I guess he did not call mayday as he was on a spiral dive?
For the PA46 as well, I guess there will be a police search statement as you can’t yet discount that they landed/crashed on UK land (tough after one week is probably too much)
Just comparaison in a Cirrus on chute if primary radar return cuts at 2000ft around CIs, you will be going down vertically not far from last contact point while on a rogue PA46 in distress the impact is probably 75km around?
For airlines, you can get up to 300km differrence in last contact point between secondary civilian radars and military primary for various resons, for Mach 2 jets you only know they are coming fom the west, let alone know where they crahed ;)
Some ATCOs may know better but it seems you can separate traffic on one screen (but not on two screens) without needing the equipment to be very precise on absolute position? Someone can give an estimate of the serach radious from position & speed & cycles?
