Ditching accidents, life rafts, jackets and equipment, training and related discussion

The water crash in Pilot-DARs video looks to me as if he was flying at or even below stall speed, without flaps. He didn’t have any lift left, and even came close to a spiral and was very close to dive into the water nose first. He couldn’t flare and had no energy reserve. His vertical speed was much too high which caused the injures.

My question: we know it makes a lot of sense to be as slow as possible, and as parallel as possible to the surface of the water, which means a pich of zero at the moment of the impact. Right ?

So, wouldn’t it be desirable to have:
1 enough energy left to able to flare close above the water, level attitude, but with a forward and vertical speed as low as possible,
2 flaps deployed, in order to reduce the speed as much as possible (because i.e. 55kts is preferrable to 70kts ?) and
3 flaps also because they allow us to keep the plane level much better ?
4 avoid to touch down with the tail portion of the plane first, because that would act like a hook and the plane would immediately dive into the water with the nose ?

or would we keep the flaps up and thus the bottom of the plane smooth ?

Personally, and I’ve given this a lot of thought, is land as slow as possible, under control. This means flaps out, and nose up (as in a normal flare, not an extreme nose up).

Yes, this means the tail hits the water first, and the flaps may have an effect on the nose dropping. But once you are slow, and touch the water, everything is going to dig in and you’ll be stopping rapidly anyway. Best to have a little energy as possible at that stage.

The reason I say nose high, but not extremely high, is two fold.

High because this allows you to bleed off more energy, but not too high, so that you can handle the landing like a normal one, still under control. In a normal landing you land nose high, never nose first or flat.

Lucius wrote:

Also, a TB20 ditched in the Greek Islands last year (or the year before). I was wondering, how the ditching was performed, since successful.

It was a TB200 (fixed gear) in June 2016 not at the islands but just after take off from Megara LGMG.

Reference with some links to media material: https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=188220

The roof damage is not from the ditching.

I did not learn any details, just that the engine quit right after take off, they ditched and quite quickly managed to get out relatively easy and swim to shore.

Yes but assuming you get visual before impact (which is really the only scenario worth practicing as otherwise you are stuffed and only luck will save you) […]

Actually I can think of two incidents in the last few years where aircraft have inadvertently collided with mountainous terrain at flying speeds (the incident out of Blackpool, and the Tomahawk in the Brecons) where no fatalities occurred. Both were in level flight not forced landings, admittedly, but I think it’s still better to be as level as possible until the ground becomes visible (if it does). Granted, luck will still play a part!

Accident Report from Ditching in English Channel

Here is an accident report from a ditching in the English Channel earlier this year.

Some of you will have seen it discussed elsewhere, but I thought it might be interesting for us here too.

The summary is :

The aircraft was conducting a local flight over the sea when the pilot declared he had a problem with a rough running engine and high oil temperature; he flew a track towards his base airfield. Shortly after this, the pilot reported that he was unable to maintain altitude but, despite it being within glide range of land, the aircraft continued on a direct track, over the sea, towards the airfield visual reporting point (VRP). The aircraft ditched with a strong tailwind, and subsequently became inverted and sank. The pilot and aircraft were recovered from the seabed several days later. No mechanical defect was identified within the engine, but the aircraft was operating in the flight regime where severe carburettor icing could occur at any power setting. The investigation did identify a chafed wire in the engine oil temperature indication system which could explain the pilot reports of high oil temperature.

But what makes it interesting is some of the human factors.

The pilot was low time at 98 hours, and some of their decisions probably reflect this. It’s probably the first significant emergency that they’ve seen, and I suspect there was some sense of denial that this is actually happening.

There was probably also a sense of determination to bring the syndicate aircraft home, which I’m sure any new group member, never mind a low time pilot, probably instinctually feels.

The thing about experience is that you only get it after the incident that you really needed it for, is over! I know I didn’t handle my first ‘emergency’ brilliantly, but thankfully it never developed any further.

But the most interesting part to me, is the interaction with the cause of the engine failure (carb icing) and the high oil temperature indication. For those who don’t want to read the whole report, the pilot reported that "i’ve got a eh a engine problem here eh temperatures sky high and i’ve oil pressure is falling”. But the report suggests that there was no engine problem, but a faulty indication due to a damaged instrument cable, and the actual cause of the engine failure was carb icing.

I wonder who having seen such indications, when at 2000ft over the sea, would have gone through other engine checks such as applying carb heat? It’s very easy to focus on the “obvious cause of the problem”, instead of applying other engine checks too.

Perhaps this element at least, is a learning opportunity for us all.

Presumably the engine instruments didn’t pick this exact moment to give false indications, so a better scan of the engine instruments might have picked up the false indications earlier, and prompted a return to base.

Colm

dublinpilot wrote:

Presumably the engine instruments didn’t pick this exact moment to give false indications, …

I would rather guess that the engine instruments never showed the correct indications, but he only noticed that when he looked at them due to the rough running engine. I sometimes do that when I have students in the FNPT / procedure trainer. Fail the oil pressure indicator or set a high oil temperature or something similar. They will happily fly their entire two-hour training session (two crew!) without ever noticing. But calling “Take off power set – engine readings normal – airspeed alive…” on every takeoff. Not that this hasn’t happened to myself (had my own recurrent sim training less than a week ago…).

But what really showed his lack of experience was that he continued towards the VRP (to hell with airspaces and regulations in an emergency!) instead of taking the shortest possible route.

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate………engine runs rough, or stops, Best Glide, quick checks, where am I putting it. If I can make land, much better than the sea. Or let’s go for the beach. Communicate…..Mayday. Some pilots have the proverbial helmet fire, some remain calm. Interesting that ultimately they could find nothing wrong with the engine, and the chaffed wire would seem to be a red herring. Definitely appears a survivable event, if due process was carried out.

No mechanical defect was identified within the engine, but the aircraft was operating in the flight regime where severe carburettor icing could occur at any power setting.

Hmm, now what “flight regime” would be conducive to severe carburettor icing, “at any power setting” ?