Pray for family members of plane crash victims

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Charles L. Cotton
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Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#1

Post by Charles L. Cotton »

This is probably an unusual prayer request, but this has been bothering me since I saw the CH.11 news report last night. Three family members were flying a small plane (Cirrus SR20) from Norman, OK to Hobby Airport in Houston. The report said all three passengers were siblings coming to Houston to visit their Uncle who is a patient at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The plane was piloted by a woman who got her pilot license in 2014, but there was no information about the number of hours she had flown. The weather was perfect and she made her first approach too high and was told by the tower to go around. (Hobby has a lot of heavy commercial traffic, including Southwest Airlines.) The tower had to vector her back for another approach and she was sandwiched between a Southwest jet and other aircraft. Again, she approached too high and was told to go around. The news report was not clear about her position in the pattern when the crash occurred, but I'm pretty sure I know where and how it happened.

Based upon the location on the ground near the airport (Telephone Rd.), I'm convinced she was close in and turning from base to a short final approach. It appears she overshot, then made the classic fatal mistake of steeping her bank, losing airspeed and stalled. Witnesses described the plane as "nosediving" into the parking lot of a hardware store. The video showed the plane was not vertical when it impacted a car in the parking lot, so it appeared to me that she was recovering from the stall but far too late to prevent a crash.

Any crash is tragic, but this one really got to me in a big way. Ch.11 played part of the tower recording between the tower and the pilot. She sounded flustered and perhaps even a little scared, but very polite and very young. (Voices can be deceiving so she may not have been as young as I believe.) Immediately before the crash, the tower controller said, "straighten up, straighten up!" I believe he was telling her to go "wings level" to avoid the stall, so she must have really been banking hard trying to make the runway. (The stall speed goes up when a plane is in a bank, as compared to straight and level flight.)

I'm a pilot and we are a fraternity. It's bad enough to hear that people died in a crash, but to here the voices of the tower controller and a scared pilot is gut-wrenching. The base-to-final turn is known as the dead-man's turn and every CFI I've known stresses the critical need to maintain airspeed in that turn. If you overshoot, go around and live, or increase your bank and die. Yesterday, we lost a fraternity member. She was a new pilot going into an unfamiliar, high-traffic airport and she had missed the approach twice on a CAVU day. All the elements of a classic crash were present and claimed the lives of thee people trying to visit the Uncle in M.D. Anderson.

I know it will sound silly, but it's hard for me to even type this post. Please pray for the family members' whose grief must seem unbearable.
Chas.
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Re: Pray for family member of plane crash victims

#2

Post by Keith B »

The accident error chain was being forged link by link as she struggled with her approaches and was forced to go around. I am sure she was nervous about the heavy metal around her as well with the extreme traffic at Hobby. Very sad to hear. Prayers for the family and friends as they deal with their deaths as well as the health of the Uncle at MD Anderson.
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Re: Pray for family member of plane crash victims

#3

Post by JALLEN »

Private, SE/ME Instrument ~1700 hours here.

It's a pity when these things happen. There isn't much that can comfort the survivors. A friend of mine who took flying lessons after I did lost his son when the son, a brand new pilot, attempted to take off over weight. He hadn't been the same since.

One news report said flat spin. The video I saw of the plane coming in, landing on the car, seems to support that view, horizontal speed close to zero.

We pilots know that flying can be very unforgiving. As one aviation quote phrased it, "Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."

A spin close to the ground is essentially unrecoverable.

I've watched the development of Cirrus since they were sold as kit planes. It's a lot of plane for a relatively new pilot. When a new pilot's wallet is fatter than his logbook, watch out. This is essentially what killed JFK, Jr.

The first plane I owned was a Grumman AA-1B, a peach to fly otherwise but well known for a nasty tendency to spin if you got too slow in a turn, like base to final.

Going into a major carrier airport like Hobby can be very intimidating and distracting, a lot going on, busy radio. The controllers are used to dealing with pros and sometimes don't pick up that a pilot isn't.

It's a shame.
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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#4

Post by philip964 »

Very tragic. Also sad for the reason they were coming to Houston.

I lost a friend to cancer last month. His sister died in a skydiving accident under similar circumstances. Planes and high performance parachutes have the same issue in high bank turns especially when near the ground.

Parents should never have to bury their children.

RIP
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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#5

Post by Charles L. Cotton »

Here's a TV news report from Oklahoma. http://kfor.com/2016/06/09/theyre-prett ... ane-crash/

Chas.

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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

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Post by twomillenium »

Prayers sent to all families.
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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#7

Post by parabelum »

Prayers sent for all families involved.
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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#8

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The NTSB lead investigator, in an interview aired about 30 minutes ago, also called it a flat spin, and the staggering video capture from the Ace Hardware store supports that. The shadow of the plane is seen first, with spin but almost no lateral movement as it falls on the car in the parking lot. Thank goodness the media had the decency not to show any of the actual impact...though I suspect it will appear on the internet somewhere soon.

Prayers for the deceased, the family members, and the town in Oklahoma where they were evidently very active in the community.
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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

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Prayers sent
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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#10

Post by Scott B. »

Skiprr wrote:The NTSB lead investigator, in an interview aired about 30 minutes ago, also called it a flat spin, and the staggering video capture from the Ace Hardware store supports that. The shadow of the plane is seen first, with spin but almost no lateral movement as it falls on the car in the parking lot. Thank goodness the media had the decency not to show any of the actual impact...though I suspect it will appear on the internet somewhere soon.

Prayers for the deceased, the family members, and the town in Oklahoma where they were evidently very active in the community.
The Chronicle, for whatever reason, did not make the same editorial choice.
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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#11

Post by Keith B »

Scott B. wrote:
Skiprr wrote:The NTSB lead investigator, in an interview aired about 30 minutes ago, also called it a flat spin, and the staggering video capture from the Ace Hardware store supports that. The shadow of the plane is seen first, with spin but almost no lateral movement as it falls on the car in the parking lot. Thank goodness the media had the decency not to show any of the actual impact...though I suspect it will appear on the internet somewhere soon.

Prayers for the deceased, the family members, and the town in Oklahoma where they were evidently very active in the community.
The Chronicle, for whatever reason, did not make the same editorial choice.
And KTRK has still images in sequence from the security camera video in their story here http://abc13.com/news/video-deadly-plan ... t/1380393/

They also said there was no evidence of fuel at the site, so she may have been very low or out of fuel as well.
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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#12

Post by Keith B »

And now KHOU has the raw video.

While hard to watch, as Charles stated in his original post, you can pretty well see that the plane had to have stalled and fell out of the sky vertically.
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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#13

Post by Charles L. Cotton »

Keith B wrote:And now KHOU has the raw video.

While hard to watch, as Charles stated in his original post, you can pretty well see that the plane had to have stalled and fell out of the sky vertically.
The FBO at the departure airport in Norman, OK said the plane was topped-off giving it a five hour range. The flight to Houston was three hours, so I wonder if she forgot to switch tanks. I'm not familiar with the Cirrus SR20, so I have no idea how it's fuel system is managed. Either way it was clearly a stall/spin accident.

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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#14

Post by Keith B »

Charles L. Cotton wrote:
Keith B wrote:And now KHOU has the raw video.

While hard to watch, as Charles stated in his original post, you can pretty well see that the plane had to have stalled and fell out of the sky vertically.
The FBO at the departure airport in Norman, OK said the plane was topped-off giving it a five hour range. The flight to Houston was three hours, so I wonder if she forgot to switch tanks. I'm not familiar with the Cirrus SR20, so I have no idea how it's fuel system is managed. Either way it was clearly a stall/spin accident.

Chas.
Good question. Here's the SR20 checklist http://www.inflightpilottraining.com/wp ... -23-14.pdf
Fuel selector switch is all that is indicated other than a note that states:
The Fuel Pump must be used for switching from one tank to another to avoid engine restart delays should engine quit due to fuel starvation.
Not sure about head/tailwinds either. If she flew with a tailwind the three hours in might be right on the ragged edge consumption. With her being focused on the missed approaches, heavy traffic, etc, it is possible she exhausted one tank about the time she was trying to land. I also think I remember one article stating witnesses said the plane sounded like the model airplanes that 'spit and sputter' before the crash. If she lost power in a bank, then that could have contributed to her panicking and going into a stall. All speculation but it is one of the fairly common causes of accidents when pilots start down the error chain.
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Re: Pray for family members of plane crash victims

#15

Post by FCH »

So tragic. I will pray for all involved.
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