Take a look at the area and airspace around Fullerton Airport, from where the 414 was operating. If you do, I think you’ll understand that if GA is used properly to directly service urban areas, occasionally an accident like this will happen. It’s not very often, statistically insignificant when compared with other fatal accidents around Yorba Linda, and no Euro-style public over reaction and regulatory psycho drama is likely to follow. Nobody will be talking about it in a month because there’s no rational reason to do so. There will be civil law suits, and I think that’s probably the most likely mechanism that might affect other pilots and aircraft – through evolving insurance company requirements.
When PSA Flight 182 and a Cessna did something similar and took out an urban block there were airspace changes, although no airspace access changes, but a 414 accident is by comparison a ripple in the public risk landscape. When a Navy F-18 more recently crashed into a house killing the entire family except the working father, it was reported and people thought it sad, but then they got on with their lives.
And then there is this: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-army-training-20190204-story.html
Scroll to the end for video….
don’t see a video ?!?
EuroFlyer wrote:
don’t see a video ?!?
There is one, albeit not the one I was referring to. Could also be, that videos are blocked outside the US (it frequently is the same the other way round, I often cannot play videos running on European websites). Anyway, the one I was referring to showed a succession of heavy Army helos flying low-level through the streets of downtown L.A. last night. Apparently an exercise – AFAIKT nobody batted an eyelid…
you can watch everything after installing a VPN… makes a lot of sense anyway i.e. in countries where they watch your traffic
NTSB investigators statement to press:
Qu
“The witnesses I’ve spoken with say that they saw the airplane coming out of the clouds — it was still in one piece — and then they saw the tail breaking off and then the wing breaking off and then something like smoke before the airplane impacted the ground,” said Maja Smith, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
The pilot held valid licenses (CPL/MEP/IR) and flew the route at least twice a month for many years to be with his daughter and grandchild. The daughter describes in another interview that she has flown with her father in “his plane” since she was a child, that is for a pretty long time. The license he held now was issued in 2008 (CPL) but he may have held a PPL before that. He had a third class medical with no restriction from 2017.
The registration is shwown to be “pending” which puts the question forward whether the plane was recently bought by the pilot, even though this would contradict the statements that he owned it for years. Possibly a renewal did not get processed in time due to the shutdown or it changed hands from business to private or vice versa.
If we take the withness statement above with the usual grain of salt it would actually contradict that the breakup was the immediate cause of the crash but rather the result of a loss of control.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
If we take the withness statement above with the usual grain of salt it would actually contradict that the breakup was the immediate cause of the crash but rather the result of a loss of control.
I think any pilot would guess that the breakup resulted from loss of control. The weather was fairly awful. I don’t know how investigators confirm or disprove that suspicion, but I’m guessing that if no more specific evidence becomes available, they will share the same experience based bias 
Timothy wrote:
Walking on public footpath near or on airfield (eg Fairoaks)
This is actually very distracting when on short final. You feel like you get really close, and many people walk there with unleashed dogs.
Here’s a video clearly showing the plane breaking apart before bursting in flames in mid-air.
So, likely loss of control, high speed dive, tail separates, sudden immense negative g force, wings snap, props seperate, fuel ignites…
https://abc30.com/dashcam-video-plane-bursts-into-flames-in-midair-before-oc-crash/5120450/
