Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Cessna 182RG 4X-CHZ down near Samos

Reports are coming in that a possibly Israeli C182 has crashed short of Samos. Apparently it was on a flight directly from Israel to Samos.

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/267667

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Night/darkness? Yikes…

always learning
LO__, Austria

Subject aircraft
C182 4X-CHZ

Pay attention to the UTC times from the FR24 screenshots.

.
.
C182 Performance.

Timeline:
10:48z south of Haifa.
16:34z south of Kos LGKO Top of Descent at FL120.
Kos to Samos is 20~30 minutes flight
Last FR24 data is on 16:57z at ~5.400 ft just few miles south of Samos LGSM destination
That is a full 7 hours flight considering the Haifa indicated in FR24 is not destination to full stop land but a Flight Planning requirement for Israel.
(Correct me if I’m wrong.)
If the Aircraft stopped over in Haifa than its a short of 7 hours flight, something like 6:30 but there was some (small) headwind.

The En route wind for the flight was (forgot to save the screesnshot, cant retrieve it now) :
Israel to ~Rhodes LGRP a headwind (say from 300/10 kts) and from there onwards to Samos a left crosswind of 270~290 at 5~10 Kts.
That was for FL120.
The choice of the pilot for higher level was wise, I guess to cut headwind.

At lower levels below 8~7.000 ft. the wind from Kos LGKO to Samos was roughly 290~300/25 Kts and lower towards airport vicinity the wind was ~15kts

Samos LGSM is known for abrupt wind gusts anywhere south of the airport with the rotors produced by the high terrain north of the airport.

The aircraft ditched at sea just south of the coast at night and SAR boats and helicopter have been searching all night.
Eventually SAR found the 2 deceased occupants late in the evening. ( search area seen in Protothema newspaper linked at https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/267667 )

SUNSET in Samos area ~16:20z / Night ~16:50z

Rhodes LGRP sun & moon times on Sept. 13th.
Sunrise: 3:48z
Sunset: 16:19z
Moonrise: 10:50z
Moon at its 1st Quarter that evening.
Moonset: 20:37z

Last Edited by petakas at 14 Sep 06:20
LGMG Megara, Greece

Eventually SAR found the 2 deceased occupants late in the evening.

Drowned wearing vests?

always learning
LO__, Austria

petakas wrote:

Pay attention to the UTC times from the FR24 screenshots.

I always shy away considering the most obvious – here: lack of fuel. The typical pilot is not stupid. So maybe he had some long range option, who knows. Would be very very sad if he really ran out of fuel, in the night, over sea, because it was avoidable so easily.

RIP. And maybe we can learn something out of it sometime.

Germany

At some point they might have considered using Carson speed? The 182RG is quite long legged and at Carson speed, probably around 120KTAS at FL120 (100KIAS), it would be sipping around 7.5 USGPH, or over nine hours endurance to dry tanks. It does have a Lycoming which uses a carburettor, so no LOP devotees.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

Israel to Samos is only 500-600nm. Just had a look. I wonder if he had a fuel totaliser?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Snoopy wrote:

Drowned wearing vests?

No such information was published on the newspapers. Just that they were found deceased late at night.
.
One thing is known for sure and I will post this because I got it from reliable source on site.
Flight departed LLHZ for LLHA to then exit Israel towards Greece (Samos LGSM).
The pilot was seen at LLHA using a ladder before departure to clean a considerable OIL quantity running from top of the engine cowling all the way to the left back of the aircraft. The whole left part of the aircraft was in oil. I saw it with my eyes popped out. Its just criminal negligence as it looks. Maybe after the oil cleaning no proper troubleshooting was done as to the cause.
I have agreed not share the visual evidence due to an investigation in progress off course.

There are reports from Local engineer in Samos (not related to aviation) that the aircraft on approach to Samos was “on fire” making “loud bang’s”.
The explosions is what made them look towards the approach seeing visible flames from the aircraft.
This could be oil related or fuel related …

LGMG Megara, Greece

Yes around 560nm on autorouter and only four hours in a 182RG. Hopefully the investigation can determine a cause.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

Edit due to new information by @petakas

petakas wrote:

Flight departed LLHZ for LLHA to then exit Israel towards Greece (Samos LGSM).
The pilot was seen at LLHA using a ladder before departure to clean a considerable OIL quantity running from top of the engine cowling all the way to the left back of the aircraft. The whole left part of the aircraft was in oil.

Ok, so we know that the plane landed at Haifa. What the story about the oil is, will we ever know. What if he left the oil filler open in TLV and closed it properly? Still this can cause some oil spill in the engine, but it does not mean he ran out of oil. It would have usually meant to clean the engine first though.

From Haifa to it’s first datapoint is roughly 80 NM. The GS there is given with about 100-120 kts, so quite slow. So take off at Haifa could have been anywhere between 12:20 to 12:40 I’d say.

The last datapoint is at 16:57. So the airplane has been in the air for roughly 4.5 hours. That also would correspond to a normal flight planning using 120 kts roughly.

FR Groundspeed is quite erratic over the last part of the flight, if they ran this high, then they were at high power, but I doubt this.

All in all I would not be surprised if they indeed ran out of fuel one way or the other. However, if they were short of fuel, why not land in Kos? Or even earlier Rhodes to fuel up? Afraid of high charges? Probably not as Samos is also not cheap.

petakas wrote:

There are reports from Local engineer in Samos (not related to aviation) that the aircraft on approach to Samos was “on fire” making “loud bang’s”.
The explosions is what made them look towards the approach seeing visible flames from the aircraft.
This could be oil related or fuel related …

They actually saw him? So he must have been closer than the last FR return.

It will be very hard to find out what happened here. The crew are dead and the airplane lost in the sea.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 14 Sep 10:52
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland
28 Posts
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top