Looks like it was shortly after takeoff. Very sad.
A DHC-2 Turbo Beaver
Terrible.
9 perished :(
From the major Swedish daily “Dagens Nyheter” today (my translation, the “unprofessional” language is as written in the article.)
According to the flight monitoring service Flightradar24 it took about 13 seconds from take-off until the crash. The first signal from the plane transponder, radio transmitter, was received at Thursday 19.20.54 local time.
That is probably in connection with the plane becoming airborne. It was flying south at the time, says Mikael Robertsson of Flightradar.
Five seconds later the plane has lost some speed and it turning slightly to the left. Another five seconds later the plane has lost very much speed.
– It also has appeared to have turned quite strongly to the left.
At 19.21.06 the plane begins to lose altitude.
– Now the plane falls and it is a quite strong fall. It turns strongly to the left and falls steeply, Robertsson says.
According to Robertsson, the plane fell 3-4 times faster than a plane approaching to land.
He estimates that the airplane was at about 60-80 metres height when it starts falling.
– It is an incredibly quick passage of events, he says
The aircraft crashed by the side of the runway, within the airport premises. The description matches a stall, which suggests a control or CG problem. I remember that the investigation report from the jump plane accident two years ago mentioned that usually no real CG check is made on jump flights and the jumpers are typically not aware of the potential dangers of moving around in the cabin.
Dagens Nyheter also quotes a flight inspector from the Transport Agency who said that the aircraft had made 11 previous flights on the same day, apparently without any problems.
The aircraft was a DHC-2 Turbo Beaver, btw.
Not sure about the comment relating to jumpers moving around the cabin. Firstly, we are aware, but more pertinently, in every skydiving plane I’ve jumped from, there’s hardly enough room to breath let alone move. Having said that never jumped out of a beaver. Flown in one as a passenger and from what I remember it wasn’t that big inside, so eight fully rigged up skydivers wouldn’t have many options to move around in my humble opinion. Also the rules are you have to be clipped in to your rig below 1000 ft and everyone I’ve ever jumped with always clips in. I’m guessing this is precisely to avoid a rapid cog movement as it’s certainly not going to be a lot of help in a crash.
DHC Beavers tend to have more space in the aft cabin, than C of G capacity to load into it (they’re roomy). One of my approval projects was an extended engine mount for the piston powered Beaver, which moved the engine 9 3/4" forward simply to improve the loading C of G range. That is a great mod for the piston Beaver. There have been a number of cabin extension mods to beavers, though more piston than turbine. These mods tempt aft loading. I test flew a Turbo Beaver floatplane two summers ago for an MT prop installation. We loaded it very carefully for the test flying. I was very surprised at how little the plane would carry. Yes, it was carrying floats, and had long range fuel, but beyond that, two of us up front, and about 150 pounds in the main cabin, and we were at 6000 pounds, aft C of G. Jump pilots usually have a good “feel” for loading, but if a heavy load moves aft, it could be unrecoverable.
As is well known, flying at the aft limit reduces spin recovery, flying behind it may make spin recovery impossible. If an airplane is pitched up for some reason, and the “load” shifts back, lowering the nose may become difficult, and a spin recovery impossible. When I flew jumpers in the 185, I was pretty anal about stay forward in the cabin, and 185’s are a bit more difficult to load too far aft, the cabin is not big enough.
