On June 9th a Cirrus SR20 N4252G crashed at William P Hobby Airport (KHOU), Texas, killing the female pilot and two passengers.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/emergency-crews-respond-to-incident-near-hobby-airport
The ATC recording is surreal knowing how it ended :-(
There was a lot of pressure from ATC requesting to pilot to “Tighten it up”, “you’re followed by a 737 on final”, etc.
Also interesting why ATC offered her runway 31 while the wind was 09013G18KT
Whatever you do, DO NOT watch the security camera footage of the impact of the aircraft. The video shows clearly the fact that she became slow whilst climbing out and turning tight, causing a stall and subsequent spin which lead to the crash. She had made 2 attempts into 35 and went around because she was high on final, which was likely the impact of the tail wind. CAT was landing on 04 – don’t ask me why they weren’t using 12L or 12R to land with the wind coming in from the direction you indicated – noise abatement, perhaps?
Not the first time noise abatement requirements have caused air crashes……
However on the positive side, an SR22T crashed in Germany after an engine failure in the air and came down under it’s chute, all 3 occupants survived…..
I don’t see you can blame this on noise abatement etc. The pilot simply was not flying the plane.
A similar thing happened years ago at Southend EGMC where a solo student crashed when asked to do an arbit. I would imagine his instructor might have been asked to produce his training record….
But this pilot had a PPL and some flying experience. Is an SR20 so easy to get into a stall and a spin, or into a deep stall? I would not think so. The video here shows it coming straight down but seemingly almost level. I have not seen any video of pre-impact flight.
This is indeed surreal, by the sound of it at least. Without the ATC, she would most probably had landed on 04 or 12, and had a much better chance.
The SR-2x is supposed to be spin resistant. That of course doesn’t mean spin-proof but it should at least mean it’s hard to get into an unintentional spin.
There will be an NTSB factual report reasonably soon with all the pertinent information. Of interest will be whether the engine was running and whether there was fuel – there should have been enough fuel, a rough back of the envelope calculation shows the aircraft carries 5 hours of fuel at typical cruise power settings and at least 4.15 hours even if flown at high power, low down, and the flight was shorter than that – and supposedly it was filled to the gunnels before it left.
If ’t were for me to do, ATC staff would have some stiff questions to answer.
A flyingmag article by Peter Garrison
https://www.flyingmag.com/aftermath-cirrus-crash-june-2016
And a you tube with ATC
And the NTSB report
The simple takeaway, other than if you are being overwhelmed by ATC leave and re group, there probably is a need for go around training especially from late in the flare with full flaps.
RobertL18C wrote:
And the NTSB report
This looks like a fact summary, not a report — there is no analysis and no probable cause. As far as I can see, the NTSB hasn’t published a report yet.
The fact summary does say that she had taken medication that “may impair mental and/or physical ability required for the performance of potentially hazardous tasks, such as driving, flying, and operating heavy machinery.”
From the above report:
As the controller was speaking, the Cirrus began a climbing turn to the left. Suddenly, a wing dropped
That is reportedly identical to what happened here i.e. slow flight, a reason to perform a tight turn, and a sudden wing drop.
I had a quick forum look to see if this June 2016 Cirrus USA fatal has been discussed – can’t see it has.
Seems a good explanation of all that went on and the one final error that led to the disaster.
There’s something about this accident that I find particularly sad, notwithstanding that all accidents are vey sad.
Think all has been said in this article / report, but wondered if anybody had anything to add ?