March 7, 2007: Plane barely survives 20,000 feet freefall

[Undertoad]

xoxoxoBruce finds this set with its story. You see the windshield spidered in the above shot. That happened at 27,000 feet... let's go to the text from the forwarded email:

Whether they initiated a rapid descent or lost control and ended up in a steep dive is not known, as the two pilots have little recollection of the event, both fading in and out of consciousness until shortly before landing.

They took turns, unintentionally, waking up and blacking out and fighting to regain control of the aircraft. One pilot stated "I remember thinking we're in a spin and seeing that the airspeed was pegged beyond indicated. I thought, wow, we're going too fast, reached up and pulled the power to idle, then blacked out again."

According to the radar, they lost 20,000 feet in roughly a minute and a half.

Assume they were pretty much at terminal velocity headed straight down.

At 13,000 feet, (give or take), they started fighting to pull the aircraft out of a dive, it took both of them. The stress on the airframe must have been unreal, as you will see. From that point, parts started leaving the aircraft until landing.

They lost control of pitch and they went almost vertical again. It took both pilots pushing as hard as they could to get the aircraft to start descending. They regained some control around 7,000 feet and were close to cape where they diverted. It is fortunate that they did not have a tail stall as you will see, and I have no earthly idea how they controlled pitch.

When they get out of the plane, this is what they saw... a tail almost completely destroyed.



Well that first image of the tail is taken at a strange angle, and you can't really make out how destroyed it is. Here's the left side of it, from another angle.



The covers for the bolts that hold the wing on have been blown off.



The wing itself has been bent, leaving a severe crease.



Even the fuselage has bent slightly.



From the front you can see how much of the tail is missing.

The landing was shot on videotape by an amateur, and the local news folks did a story on it, first story at this search page. A nice note: the pilots rented a car to get to their eventual destination. Yeah, good idea.

[Sheldonrs]

"Thank you for falling with us. Have a nice day! buh-bye."

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by Sheldonrs

"Thank you for falling with us. Have a nice day! buh-bye."

Coffee out my nose!

[Sheldonrs]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

Coffee out my nose!

No tea or milk?

[SquadRat1]

I wonder if these were the guys that won the Mass Millions jackpot?

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by SquadRat1

I wonder if these were the guys that won the Mass Millions jackpot?

That would be ironic, don't ya think? :p

[milkfish]

Heh heh heh, he said "tail stall."

[SquadRat1]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

That would be ironic, don't ya think? :p

Like rain? On your wedding day?

[Saraax]

Or a free ride. When you've already paid.

[xoxoxoBruce]

A friend of mine that works at Embry-Riddle flight school in Florida, told me they use a bunch of this type of plane. Rugged and reliable is their reputation.

Fortunately there were no passengers, so they didn't have to disinfect the seats.

[Elspode]

I once saw Bob Hoover do a ten minute power-management flight demo (translation: flying with the engines off) in a Rockwell AeroCommander, which I think may have been a predecessor, or at least a pretty close copy, of this aircraft. These things are *awesome* planes.

There's no way these guys won a lottery. They used up their entire lifetime supply of luck surviving this.

[Trilby]

perhaps there was a goblin on the wing? *

* most excellent Twilight Zone story ever!

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by Brianna

perhaps there was a goblin on the wing? *

* most excellent Twilight Zone story ever!

or a gremlin, one of the many most excellent bugs bunny stories ever.
:p

[rfoxx]

Those guys were incredibly lucky. If they had lost the other half of the tail, there would have been nothing they could do to make any kind of landing. As it is now, that plane is crap. I doubt you could find and fix all the structural damage to where it would be safe to fly again. The engines were probably horribly over-revved, but they might be salvageable. It doesn't say, but it wouldn't surprise me if even the avionics got barfed on. No used bargain here.

[beagle1971]

I looked up the registration (N777AJ) and found some more info on the incident:

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...3/m/8711080335

http://planenews.com/ntsb.php?ev_id=...8X00156&kkey=1

Looks like they went into an overspeed situation, given the plane's cruising speed is 292 knots, and the FlightAware.com site shows their max speed was 419 knots at one point (although that's listed as ground speed, so that might be misleading.)