This video is a tough one to watch, especially knowing how many people died because of it.

Obviously from the sound of the engines backfiring the airplane was having engine difficulties and it looked like the pilot was trying to maybe turn away from a populated area.

My assumption is that this is what a (too slow) base turn to final might look like when operating behind the power curve. It looks pretty scary.

Comments said the aircraft suffered loss of power on take off. One engine and below VMC(?) maybe?

Wow. That definitely enforces knowing your craft's limits! That happened really quickly, and with no altitude for recovery it becomes an art of prevention...

I don't have nearly enough fixed wing time to judge, did that turn seem aggressive for conditions or was it just the camera angle? Or was it the stalling wing just generating less and less lift and getting compensated for by increased aileron (local aoa?) And rolling the airplane until it completely stalled causing the spin?

Sad for the people lost in that one.

EDIT: Would rudder have been a good control input to attempt a save from the low speed turn? Pushing the low wing forward, increasing lift and initiating an opposite roll?

Thanks for posting
Very sobering
Makes u think

VanDy wrote:Comments said the aircraft suffered loss of power on take off. One engine and below VMC(?) maybe?

Hmmm... Both engines looked and sounded like they were running.... The popping noise didn't seem to get louder as the plane got closer so my guess there is a shooting range on the field and that was the popping noise.. IMHO..

I've seen this before elsewhere--the consensus there was that this was a classic Vmc roll. Why it happened? Apparently the Queen Air was built before today's markings were required on the airspeed indicator, and it either lost an engine or it wasn't developing full power, and it was slowed too much.

Cary

The pilot allowed it to slow to much. Sorry but when I hear things like "the plane slowed" , "The plane entered ----", Parachute failed to open" removing the pilots responsibility, I try and say something. It is easier for the masses to digest that an inanimate object killed him than the truth. He will be a short lived hero for preforming his emergency procedures correctly and sweating it until its safely on the ground so he should also be responsible for his mistakes. I think it is important to not sugar coat the seriousness of aviation. We have all made mistakes flying but if your reading this you havent made the ultimate flying mistake, Ive seen great pilots F up, I may F up bad someday, So please look at what I did wrong and what you will do different than me. Call me a dumbass, I wont mind.

The only thing that I was getting at by posting the video, is that this is what a base to final may look like if doing so to slow I.e. behind the power curve. I'm very early in my flying career so I'm trying to do as much learning as I can because when I'm not flying, I'm thinking about flying, or I'm reading about flying, or more often than not watching a flying video. I do watch a lot of crash videos because like 206 said, most incidents are related to pilot error.

To date, in all the videos I've seen, I've never seen one that shows this spin take place with no altitude left to recover. That shit is scary. So many people here talk about operating behind the power curve and the dangers of that and this video illustrated EXACTLY what we have all read about being too slow in a turn and losing lift and stalling and spinning with not enough altitude left to recover.

I don't know why the plane was slow, but it was. And it crashed.

That was NOT an operating on the back side of the power curve to get into a short/rough field incident.

That was purely HUA losing an engine on takeoff in a twin, and sitting there letting the airplane tell the pilot what to do. Control your speeds, or say screw it and pull everything back and coast, or, do like this guy and just roll into a ball and die.

Mother Nature and the laws of physics really couldn't care less which choice you make.

Gump

So it lost an engine and the pilot quit flying and...

It was slow, and it did stall, and it did crash.

And it was on video

And it scares me

And I don't want that to happen to me

Used to fly a 421C. Never trusted those geared engines at all. Old timers would come up and give me good advice about what to do when one engine packed it in. There are so many options other than getting slow and rolling into turns. The last good friend of mine that ended up in a fireball was flying his new to him Duke. Lost an engine... got slow. Killed his graduate assistant, ten year old son and himself. Preventable if he had either flown straight ahead and lowered the nose... or just killed the good one and glided straight. Most higher altitude airports have lower ground somewhere ahead or nearby. Screw the airport behind you (on one engine).... head downhill.

Hitting trees, houses, powerlines at blue line is still better than stuffing it into the ground in a spin. Blue line, Blue line, Blue line, Shit here comes the trees, Chop it back throw in the rest of the flaps, Tell your pax to Brace Brace Brace! , Keep flying until your unconscious. If someone has a correction, better order or something to add let me know and Ill add it to my list. I had an engine failure in a Cessna 182. Broke out at 700ft over the desert , saw a wash I could land the plane in but had to pull in the turn back to it. I was pulling , pulling and thought "how long has that stall warning horn been going off?" The words "Stall spin crash burn" went through my head. I leveled the wings and saw where my 182 would be wrecked but felt confident that I would walk away. Touched down and typical nose gear strut failure, over on its back. Not a scratch on me or my wife. A couple other single engine airplanes crashed that holiday weekend and I think almost all fatalities.

Had a couple hundred feet of potential energy left to cash in to get his kinetic energy back up as well. Remember, no matter what your hours, experience, age or any other qualifier, you can never and should never try to quit learning.

Cranium of Jugness

Lots of crashes could be prevented by 2 words in my opinion. Quit pulling. It's human nature tho. U don't wanna go down so you pull back. Very sad.

One I learned later was "thumbs outside the yoke" No sense in stumbling around with a concussion and 2 broke thumbs.

For crzyivan's edification--let's be clear--this was NOT the base to final stall/spin that you've been warned about. This has all the earmarks of a Vmc roll, as I said before. What a Vmc roll is, is that a twin running on one engine, or without much power on the other engine, tends to turn toward the dead engine. This turning tendency is countered with a lot of opposite rudder and a little opposite aileron. As speed is bled off, there comes a point where opposite rudder and aileron won't stop it from turning--that's called Vmc, or minimum controllable airspeed. If an engine quits well below Vmc, the airplane will do exactly what the video shows. Most Vmc rolls occur on take off when an engine quits before Vmc is reached, or during an attempted go around on one engine where airspeed has already decayed to below Vmc, or on final with the airspeed too slow and too much power on the good engine.

"Blue line" is a marking on the airspeed indicator which shows lowest safe single engine speed, or Vsse--Vmc is something below that typically, although how much varies according to weight, aircraft configuration, etc. Queen Airs were built before the blue line marking was required for certification, so far as I've learned, but any experienced pilot in that type should still know what the Vsse is, and not fly slower than that.

And yeah, it is a pilot-induced situation. Either the pilot allowed the airspeed to decay too low, or the pilot failed to take proper corrective action (like chopping the power of the good engine before it overpowered the rudder), or what have you--it doesn't happen on its own, other than the actual loss of the engine can happen on its own.

Cary

Cary,
I know that it was not due to a base to final turn. All I was saying was that IF you were to slow on a base to final turn that is what it might look like.

Now, that being said, I did learn something after your first post about the Vmc roll in a twin. I knew there was a significant yaw factor with only one engine and I actually have previously talked about it with another pilot who had some time in a Seneca? (I think) which has opposite rotation of the engines and make the yaw more manageable, I guess.

But, we never talked about the Vmc roll, just the fact that the airplane would be much more difficult to control. The blue line marking is something else I didn't know about.

I did learn something! Thanks

Crzyivan13 wrote:Now, that being said, I did learn something after your first post about the Vmc roll in a twin. I knew there was a significant yaw factor with only one engine and I actually have previously talked about it with another pilot who had some time in a Seneca? (I think) which has opposite rotation of the engines and make the yaw more manageable, I guess.

Agreed. The loss of life is terrible but I've done a TON of research into Vmc roll, Vsse, critical engines and P-factor since this was posted.

I've learned a bunch since this thread was started, thanks for posting it and all your experiences, crew!

CamTom12 wrote:

Crzyivan13 wrote:Now, that being said, I did learn something after your first post about the Vmc roll in a twin. I knew there was a significant yaw factor with only one engine and I actually have previously talked about it with another pilot who had some time in a Seneca? (I think) which has opposite rotation of the engines and make the yaw more manageable, I guess.

Agreed. The loss of life is terrible but I've done a TON of research into Vmc roll, Vsse, critical engines and P-factor since this was posted.

I've learned a bunch since this thread was started, thanks for posting it and all your experiences, crew!

This is one of the great things about this forum. It provokes thought. I would've never researched Vmc roll in a twin and probably would've never even known about the blue line marking unless I was studying for a multi-rating. Boom! post a video that you watched on you tube and get a free education! haha

And don't believe everything you hear.....

You would have to work very hard to F-up that bad with a single engine aircraft.