https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/225277
Apparently thunderstorms in vicinity of crash location.
I don’t remember seeing any bad weather forecasted for Northern Germany for Sunday. I was checking weather before my departure from LIPV (11:15 LT) and after landing (12:45 LT) and I remember build ups only from Northern Adriatic to Alps and in France. I might be wrong.
I saw this in the regional news yesterday. The pilot and the plane were from Hannover, the pilot was said to be 44 years old and very experienced, and there is also one passenger unaccounted for. Afaik the plane is from a local rental outfit called Flight Center Hannover.
There were torrential storms and a lot of connective activity over Northern Germany for the last two days or so. Radar contact was lost only six minutes after take off while the aircraft was still over the North Sea (flight was from the Island of Wangerooge to Hannover).
Wreckage and personal effects of the pilot have been recovered near the containerterminal at Wilhelmshaven according to reports. Looks like a crash, not a splash down on the shute.
Six minutes after departure he should have been high enough to pull the shute… so why not?
Six minutes after departure he should have been high enough to pull the shute… so why not?
Maybe it was deployed but ripped off?
I know this area very well, as my flight training took place there. No terrain. Lots of airfields to divert to. No airspace restrictions preventing evasions when flying VFR. Distance between the islands and the coast is short. Usually decent service from FIS Bremen Info (I know others on EuroGA disagree with that last statement, it’s just my experience).
I don’t know the pilot or the plane despite both being based at EDDV like me.
TimR wrote:
From what @Snoopy posted here (weather at the bottom) it looks like this pilot may have flown straight into the eye of a storm cell.
You could be right. Initially, the time of accident was specified as earlier, so my assumption that weather was ok, was completely wrong.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Six minutes after departure
Six minutes? So he was definitely able to see the storm just looking to sky. Why did he departed at all?
The last position according to FR24 on the western shoreline of the Jade bay is 16:26UTC which is 1 minute after that weather image was captured. German media reports wreckage being found in a port, potentially JadeWeser-Port, which is slightly further south further towards the storm.
What is interesting is that nearby military weather stations don’t appear to depict the same severity of weather.
Wittmundhafen is slightly west of the accident area.
Nordholz is slightly east of the bay.
It is obviously not smart to rely purely on METARs/TAFs (easily presented on SD and the like) but if I was in a rush to get out of there (airport closing in the next 15-20min) and had no other info; based purely on the METARs I’d probably be inclined to say I could make it.
Some further weather data:
The cloud tops / air mass radar does show a clear storm though
And the spherics radar is picking up localised strikes as well.
1 hour before the time in question
Approximately time of accident
1 hour after.
The weather was definitely moving in “closer”.
He might have chosen to stay below to fly between the showers, and got caught in a downdraft/microburst. 1200ft does not give a lot of time to do anything about it.
With that active squall line and the TS activity, take-off early and fly E-ENE, or wait it out.
[edited out the affirmative]
Sad news. Was this a VFR flight? From the reported cloud base it does indicate they would have been VMC at 1200 ft.
