cscotthendry

800 feet is definitely illegal in the UK fo drones. But going by the numbers, the airliner was at 750’ at more than 5 klm from the end of the runway. Can any of the airline pilots here tell me if that's a normal approach?

Thanks for sharing, Gary! And thanks for the plug for our series👍

Hi Keith. Thanks for the invite. I'm currently near Manchester, heading next out to Wales. Eventually we're heading down South and we'll try to engineer a pass through your way. Scott.

G'day UK fliers. I'm touring in the UK and would welcome a catchup if schedules and timing permit. I'm currently in Barnsley heading for Wales and then South to eventually make our way to Reading. Any takers?

I would never attempt something like that, especially in such a busy circuit. But I do regularly communicate with other traffic, in the circuit and elsewhere.

Or a similar situation that happened to me: You key up the transmitter to make your Joining call at the same instant another plane does. Neither of you hear the other's call and you end up at the same point in the circuit. I had joined the circuit at Gympie, made a joining call and heard no other radio calls and neither did my pax who is a commercial pilot. Just as I was about to key the TX for my Base call, I heard "Gympie traffic, Jabiru xxxx turning base for 14." and a second later a Jabiru popped out about 20 feet below me and turned base!

LOL The 146 was four vaccuum cleaners flying in formation. But seriously, I always wondered at the design decision that equipped such a small aircraft with four engines.

I'll third that, call on joining and on base … but for everyone's sake, Base call WITH intentions. Also, while I'm on a rant, will people please give an ETA to circuit when doing their 10 mile inbound call! Please don't make the rest of us have to calculate if we're going to be in conflict with a trike or a RV rocket ship. It's easy enough to get your GPS or EFB to show you a circuit ETA so you don't have to do maths in your head, which BTW you SHOULD be able to do for your aircraft from when you did your Nav training.

This was investigated by RAAUS and ATSB with input from the manufacturer. I'm beginning to see from some of the posts here what the RAAUS people warned me about wild speculation about crashes.

Yes, the pilot is a very experienced pilot and also a friend of mine. He claimed that they lost longitudinal control and then pulled the chute. My contention is that once you deploy the chute you could end up on a building, in powerlines or a lake. In the pics that I have, the H.Stab was still attached to the aircraft even after a devastating impact with the ground. In spite of that we have to take the word of the people aboard the aircraft that it was uncontrollable. I'm satisfied that the pilot would not have pulled the chute if he thought the aircraft could have been safely landed. He loved that airplane and so did his wife.

As it turns out it wasn't a structural failure. A loose tailplane mounting caused loss of longitudinal control and they pulled the chute. The manufacturer's opinion (and mine after viewing the crash pics) is that the vertical fin was broken off by the parachute straps. It appears that just before touchdown, the chute snagged a large tree and yanked the plane out of the air. It looked like as the aircraft slewed round, the parachute straps raked across the tail breaking it off. 600kg of aircraft and pax on one end of the straps, a huge gum tree on the other end and the poor little tail in the middle. Something had to give! And that IMO is one of the major drawbacks of recovery chutes. Once you deploy it, you totally lose control of where you're going to end up. They could have ended up in the middle of a dam or a lake, or on top of someone's house etc.

The feedback I've had so far is that is could be related to a SB issued by the manufacturer concerning the H stabilizer mounts. But I'm a bit puzzled how that relates to the V fin breaking off the way the picture shows. I've included the pic from the newspaper article.

I'm very wary of formulaic rules like “Stall Stick Position means it's stalled, otherwise it's not.” There are too many variables in flying to make formulaic assessments like that. And I guess, that comes back to my point. Pilots are taught implicitly, that the aircraft is stalled when the nose is pointing at the heavens and the controls are back in your chest, because that's how it was in training. And the corollary to that is that if the nose isn't pointing way up in the sky and I don't have the stick back in my crotch, then the aircraft's not stalled. Which is what I think the other poster was claiming. That's almost always going to be followed by confusion and a loud BANG!