Any word on this plane Haas?? Hopefully the weather clears soon for SAR.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/26/4- ... n-wyoming/

http://www.startribune.com/local/105797 ... nchO7DiUsr

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N201HF

Wow, I've spent a lot of time flying near where they went missing.
Prayers to the family.

No word as of 1 hour ago,, but
It is a sad and typical story.

Husband and wife and six kids come to Jackson for a vacation. Not sure of the details but the guys Mooney was here through Monday, obviously it only holds four people so the arriving situation was probably both GA and commmercial. Supposable the family was booked out Mon morn on Delta because of the bad weather here. Wife and three kids boarded the jet to get home, husband decided not to join them and fly the Mooney back with the other three kids. Took off in heavy snow, flew to KICNE intersection then turned east.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N201 ... R/tracklog

Just guessing at this point but.....

Looks like ice is a real possibility and just as he approached Gannett Peak, 13,808 ATC suggested he climb to 15,000. Winds that day were giving him a good tailwind but his ground speed sure doesn't reflect that. Maybe iced up and he was mushing along trying to stay in the air. Looks like he got a strong up draft just as he reached the summit, then on the downwind side of the mountain the rotors finished him off. I did look at is close on google earth using the cooradinates from flightaware and my guess he is in that high alpine lake 3 miles east of Gannett peak. Sad day here in Jackson for sure.

Ben.

Wow, the ATC flight track is sobering. Please people, take a good look at your kids before you load them into your light piston single and depart into mountainous terrain in snow. Damn.

It absolutely breaks your heart.. pray for a miracle.

Damn straight Z, nuthin wrong with being on the ground waiting for awhile....i've left my 182 a lot of places around the country when the wx is toast if i've gotta be somewhere. amex is a good stress reliever when ya gotta get gone...
to me, its one thing to screw yourself into the ground, but dont let others take that trip w/you when there is a choice...

Words are hard to come by........

Very sad story. What a terrible place to go down.

What an awful thing to happen. God help them and the folks looking for them.

All of the best decisions I've ever made as a pilot have been not to fly - even of it means coming back in a few weeks to pick up the airplane...

Anything new?

How is the weather forcast for the search.

Sad story for sure.

Weather cleared on Tues afternoon and has been good for searching since. Temps at the base camp where the land crews are have been below 0 f at night so those guys and gals deserve a huge round of applause. The incident commander over in Fremont County Wy finally called in the Civil Air Patrol on Thurs morning to help in the search. I did ask a few people that are in the loop if I could fly over the area and it was "suggested" they had it under control. My Zenith 801 in the next best thing to a heli but that point was lost on them. The fact that the area the plane went down in is probably the most hostile terrain anywhere in the U.S. is making the search challenging at best and the potential for additional accidents to the search crews are high. Next storm is due mid day tomorrow..



Ben.

58Skylane....

...we all need to learn from this and remember. My thoughts have been with you ever since you started the thread about commuting across mountains, where terrain and icing will be a factor.

Casual sport/fun flying, when one doesn't need to get there leaves us with many good options. When a business person needs to go or a family must travel.....number 1 choice is the airlines. Number 2 is a professionally flown, multi-engine, all weather airplane with an experienced pilot. Last of all....a personal, single engine, fair weather aircraft flown by the everyday private owner. As a father of 5 who has flown members of his family for hundreds of hours, in single engine aircraft.....this tragedy comes home to my heart. A reminder for me that we "never" have to get there. My life may be my own....but my loved ones depend on me not to put them at risk.

Nearly 30 years ago, after my first marriage ended and my children were 257 miles away.....I considered buying a C-172 to avoid the 2,000 mile per month drive....which I did for 18 years, in order to have my kids with me every other week end. In the final analysis I concluded that a single engine, airplane just wasn't safe enough to put my family in on a regular, all weather and IFR basis. And....I only had to fly across eastern Missouri, Southern Illinois and S/W Indiana.....mostly flat farm land....not a mountain in sight. Over the decades I've had two friends killed flying single engine IFR: on engine failure, one fuel exhaustion. When one comes gliding out of the clouds and the ceiling is 100ft and vis 1/8 mile....damned little chance of "selecting" a landing spot, even over friendly terrian. Although I owned an airplane from 1984 on... I wore out two automobiles driving 380,000 miles, over an 18 year period, bringing my kids home, with an occassional VFR flight under good weather conditions.

May God bring comfort to this family.

Bob

Really hard news. God be with all involved.

http://www.twincities.com/news/ci_16467 ... ck_check=1

z3skybolt wrote:58Skylane....

...we all need to learn from this and remember. My thoughts have been with you ever since you started the thread about commuting across mountains, where terrain and icing will be a factor.

Bob

I know your thoughts very well, Bob! And thanks for thinking of people like me. I've been following this thread closely and looking at the track of the plane and seeing where it ended.......my heart about dropped!! If I'm ever lucky enough to get a commuter plane like I had mentioned in another thread, I'll never put myself and others at great risk like this fella. I especially would never take off when it's snowing on the ground and fly into a snow storm knowing ice may be a great factor (especially around hostile terrain). Dieing in a plane is not the way I want to go and I'm going to do every thing in my power to prevent myself from making bad decisions. When I plan trips with passengers, I also give them a far warning that the trip may be postponed or canceled because of weather or other unforeseen issues. A hotel room, car rental or airline fare is way cheaper than paying for medical expenses, bent plane or worse yet, funeral expenses!

I don't mean to get side tracked here on this thread. But, If this deal goes through someday and I would be lucky enough to get a commuter plane, I may not even get my IFR. Time will tell. But I don't really like the idea of flying IFR in a single engine plane. Especially the route I would be using 99% of the time. However, IFR would be great for those Inversion days in the Boise area and the Marine Layer days in the OC/LA basin (Not too worried about Victorville, CA). I just would NOT like to do any hard IFR at all, let alone for up to 3-4 hours. The heck with that. Another note that I had mentioned in the other thread is that my schedule would more than likely be very flexible. I would have a place to stay in SoCal and Idaho and If I'm in Idaho and the weather is bad, I would either drive (800 miles) or hop on an airline to Ontario or LAX if I really had to be there for work.

Thoughts go out to the families and friends involved. And yes, a big round of applause to the search and rescue crew!!

58Skylane wrote:Thoughts go out to the families and friends involved. And yes, a big round of applause to the search and rescue crew!!

You said it Pat..Big "ups" for the Search and Rescue folks. I'm sure they are dealing with a lot of stress and braving the elements themselves. God bless them.

I just read "Crazy for the Storm" about the young boy who walked off a high mountain ridge in a snow storm- Southern California in 1978 after a plane crash. It can happen.

I still have some hope for them.

From the link that Scout posted:

A specially equipped search plane flew over the area numerous times Thursday and found a weak emergency transponder signal but it was unable to pinpoint the exact location of the transmission

Having a 406mHZ, GPS-enabled ELT is not just about getting rescued faster - its also about ending the SAR effort quickly, putting rescue personnel in less danger and saving a lot of taxpayer money.

N131CP wrote:From the link that Scout posted:

A specially equipped search plane flew over the area numerous times Thursday and found a weak emergency transponder signal but it was unable to pinpoint the exact location of the transmission

Having a 406mHZ, GPS-enabled ELT is not just about getting rescued faster - its also about ending the SAR effort quickly, putting rescue personnel in less danger and saving a lot of taxpayer money.

Would be nice if the upgrade was subsidized

Scolopax wrote:

N131CP wrote:From the link that Scout posted:

A specially equipped search plane flew over the area numerous times Thursday and found a weak emergency transponder signal but it was unable to pinpoint the exact location of the transmission

Having a 406mHZ, GPS-enabled ELT is not just about getting rescued faster - its also about ending the SAR effort quickly, putting rescue personnel in less danger and saving a lot of taxpayer money.

Would be nice if the upgrade was subsidized

Depends on your definition of subsidized. Pretty sure it would have been a real bargain for one Mooney owner.

seems a lot of folks these days are under a large amount of duress to be somewhere,see someone, or etc. i think this duress causes quite a few of these accidents for sure. a few of my freight pilot bros do departures in the snow and etc, the difference being that they LIVE in those birds, and no one knows that bird better. they know what they can and can't get away with...and always seem to have an out in their back-pocket. for a low time gomer like myself to launch in the slop with nothing more than a good autopilot and etc, is a damn goofy thing to do.as far as being dangerous in a single, these guys will tell you that it is MUCH safer in a single, than an old clapped-out piston twin...should u have to put it down gracefully or stuff it into the trees...yuck!

i've missed a fair amount of meetings,etc...and waited at some deserted airport, in the desert on some old 4x4 road, or in the frank at one of my favorite places, to sit out the wx...the damn meetings and people on the other end can accept it or not, but we all have to draw the line someplace as to our own and our pax safety, first. funny how each time i've had to be late or stay wherever, it always seems to work out for the best...met some of the best people this way...

Just to point out something kinda strange. This flightaware track is a snapshot taken with one minute intervals. Look close at the heading track and the altitude readouts.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N201 ... R/tracklog

I am not sure if the autopilot was functioning, or he was handflying it or what but....... My guess it was turbulant as hell as that poor family was on the E ticket ride to destiny.. A very bad way to spend the last few minutes of life.

Looks like the searchers have a few more hours of decent weather and then another storm. Once the wreckage gets buried by a few more feet of snow finding them will probably not happen till next summer, if that. Sad sad sad..

I might launch at first light and try to get a pic or two of the area, and be listening VERY closely to 121.5 too.



Ben