Just saw this while reading Chicago area news. One person dead. The pilot reported wing icing just prior to the crash.

The pilot reported that the wings started to ice up about 8,000 feet in the air, so he started circling while looking for a road to try an emergency landing, Herrick said. As the plane touched down, the wing clipped tree branches, causing the plane to crash into the ditch, the sheriff said.

Chicago Tribune, January 26, 2015 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-plane-crash-central-wisconsin-20150126-story.html

http://wbay.com/2015/01/26/small-plane- ... wisconsin/



The Flight Safety Foundation has more Specifics and Links:
http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=173311

It's impressive anyone walked away.

And this is why you don't F*** with Icing!

I just flew back commercial airline Airbus 320 yesterday out of Chicago, and deicing trucks were busy everywhere at O'Hare. It has been bitter cold twith cloudy, not clear skies, in this part of the country.. I love the C182, but....

I doubt there were any altitudes where temps were above freezing, and I suppose the guy did everything he could do to get the plane down immediately. I believe I read the pilot, who survived by the way, was 79 years old and not some green stick.

Wing icing....scary scary scary......

I live about 30 miles from Cadillac, MI and rent a hangar there. The fatality. age 56, was a pastor in a local church and had a 206 based in Cadillac he used for mission trips including several to Hatti. He was a passenger in the rear seat. The pilot was the pastor's son, age 27, and the word around the airport was that the other passenger, age 41, was a student pilot who had just purchased the aircraft. I knew the father, talked with him a few times each year at the airport, the weather was probably beyond his experience level. I did not know his son or the other individual nor their experience levels. A sad day for all involved. Unfortunately we have a few icing accidents every year here in the Great Lakes, lot of moisture in those clouds.

Tim

I live in MI by the big lake which brings lots of clouds and snow in the winter...I have no reason or desire it be anywhere near clouds here and subsequently don't go anywhere near them...don't fly as much in the winter, but I will be here to fly in the spring.

Denali wrote:I believe I read the pilot, who survived by the way, was 79 years old and not some green stick.

Maybe I'm outta line here, but I disagree that age alone (or flight hours) means someone is a better pilot than someone fresh out of flight school. Without reference to this poor sole, just speaking generally about the subject.
I'm not going to mention any examples of my own - but do you watch those crash investigations on Discovery? There a few of them where the ##,000 hour pilot has a record of sloppy behaviour, changing airlines, failed checks, poor performance reviews, and eventually they make their last mistake and get in the news.

The pilot was 27 years old.

Age and hours?

I know quite a few older, low time pilots you couldn't pay me enough to get in an airplane with them. And conversely, a few young low time pilots I'd pretty much ride any time, anywhere with. But as a rule older, high time guys have paid their dues with Mother Nature's school of dumb things to do, and aren't gonna kill me if they've survived to get to that point.

There are several plateaus where guys are "safe." At a couple hundred hours they stick close to the basics, and don't try too much stupid stuff, but then work up to about the 5,000 hour mark where they get real dangerous as they think they know it all. After that though, old age and experience starts to work it's magic. You don't see too many sloppy, failed checks, poor decision making kinda guys in the xx,000 hour range. Airplanes and flying are too unforgiving and expensive to allow the weak and dumb to get to tens of thousands of flight hours. There may be exceptions, but I certainly haven't met any in my travels.

Like Sully deadsticking that Airbus into the Hudson, or the flight in Iowa with no flight controls. Would you have wanted to be a pax with a 1,500 hour wonder ATP pilot and 250 hour co-pilot up front in those situations? I know I wouldn't.

Gump

Denali wrote:I believe I read the pilot, who survived by the way, was 79 years old and not some green stick.

Sorry about the age mis-information. I got that statistic re the pilot's age from an early TV Newscast, and it was obviously in error.

Regarding Gump's comment about pilots with lots of experience also making profound errors, I am thinking of an old Japanese saying:

Even monkeys fall from trees. ( さるも　き　から　おちる saru mo ki kara ochiru )

AMEN to that.

What I liked about young, especially military and ag, students was mental as well as physical flexibility. With age an hours come finely tuned judgement, the ability to carry a heavier load, and sometimes complacency. There needs to be a different kind of judgement however, between those who carry people and those who carry ordinance or chemicals. Going to the Hudson and the like is good judgement, however, even if against correct procedure. My hat is off to you guys.

contactflying wrote:Going to the Hudson and the like is good judgement, however, even if against correct procedure. My hat is off to you guys.

Double engine failure at low altitude over Manhattan, everyone walks away unhurt and no damage to people or property on the ground? Call me old-fashioned, but it doesn't matter what anything in between the failure and the rescue looked like, it was the RIGHT and PERFECT procedure!

It wasn't a great landing, but it was a good one...

Excellent comment Gump!

When I posted the ages of all involved, which by the way came from a news article, my intent was not to imply that the pilot's age of 27 was an indicator of lack of judgement, skill, or experience but rather to correct an accidentally posted incorrect age of the pilot. I new Marty, the father and do believe he was 56. I have probably meant his son who was the pilot and think that 27 is probably accurate. I don't know anything about the other passenger/student pilot/aircraft owner and just take the news article at face value.

On a separate note, this young man, the pilot is going to carry the burden of this for the rest of his life. The responsibility for what happened is his but without doubt the others involved had input in the decision to go or maybe not to go.

Tim

Sorry if my comments seemed snarky about the pilot in this accident, because they were absolutely in no way directed at him.

I was responding to the comment about older, 10,000+ hour pilots being in the same skill set as young, low time, fresh out of a flight program pilots, because they certainly are not. And other than a very small number of exceptions, they are your safest folk to ride with.

Gump

Being a relatively young, low time pilot myself, I might take a bit of exception to the high time pilot = better pilot concept. Air France 447 being case in point. Between the three pilots, they had in the range of 20,000 hours. The number of mistakes that were made by these three pilots given pitot/air data failure were pretty remarkable. At the forefront of their mistakes are the fundamental skills of instrument flight: cross check, instrument interpretation and aircraft control.

An article that I read discussing the Air France disaster made a great point about the quality of their flight hours. Accelerate, rotate, autopilot on, land, repeat for 10,000 hours.

Nothing against the airline pilots that are on here because, by your presence on BCP, probably demonstrates that you obviously have a burning desire for aviation and to practice your trade outside of the work cockpit.

The number of hours and quality of hours is probably vastly different. The 20,000 Alaska bush pilot or ag pilot is probably not equal to the 20,000 hour Airbus captain. In a emergency situation, I would probably prefer the former any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

True, and the reason why a lot of folks are concerned about automation killing basic pilot skills.

Air France 447 would have never happened in a Boeing and a 20,000 hour Boeing crew.

Gump

I did see a separate piece with Sully walking through the issue that the Air France pilots experienced in a simulator and he addressed something which I don't remember because it was fairly technical. But, it did have something to do with the actions of the computer in the Airbus when the system failed that is apparently not an issue in a Boeing.

Interesting learning experience. Made me pay a bit closer attention to the instrument interpretation skills on my last instrument training flight, which just happened to be instrument failure. Fitting!

The human brain when working calmly and normally, even with the extra adrenaline of combat or emergency, is much more effective than a computer. A computer represents a programmer who is not there, does not have the extra adrenaline, and is way outside the OODA loop.

Gump, I didn't take your comment as snarky and would be the first to say that experience is invaluable. The point I was trying to make was that any of the three could have stopped this flight and this accident from happening. I think as pilots were all owe it to the pilots we fly with to step up and say something if we believe they are doing something dangerous, putting themselves or others at risk. I know this is difficult to do, but I would rather have a pissed off ex-friend than a dead friend.

CapnMike wrote:

It wasn't a great landing, but it was a good one...

Hey, if you can pick up your lunch date and fly away, that's a great landing!

As far as icing a 182, it's pretty easy to do. They probably got bit with lower ceilings than forecast. The go/no go decision might have been a little risky for flying in any kind of weather, but we do get ceilings and icing levels for a reason. Sadly, most vfr pilots weren't taught the significance of M01/M02 in a Metar and that's more important to them than us ifr type. I hope the kid can press on.