Derestricting Hyosung 125 Comet

*Winces*

I really, really hope the pilot wasn't a family member.

 

<Maga-snip>

Feck me. As Platy says, like Sioux City wiv added minefields.

 

Yes. Number Two engine (the one in the tail) experienced a rotor burst,
which took out all three hydraulic systems. Unprecedented.

So, no control over *any* flying surfaces. Including the flaps. The
ground techies couldn't actually believe that a triple-redundant system
had failed.

Working in their favour, they had a highly experienced DC10 pilot
dead-heading with them, in the passenger cabin, and the pilot of the
aircraft himself had actually practiced flying a DC10 on the simulator,
with all three hydraulic systems out, just for the crack, and despite
the instructor telling him it was unnecessary, because it would never
happen. Without these two factors, the plane would have gone in, no
question.

Like the Airbus (and remember the DC10 is a wide-body, so much bigger
than an A300), they achieved some measure of control with engine power
(and only two engines) and were able to put it down at Sioux City. Very,
very hard, very very fast, and not quite in line with the runway.

I think a wingtip dug in, and it fireballed.

A lot of people died - can't be arsed to google for it, but over 100. A
similar number survived, mainly because the crew had managed to make it
to an airport with full emergency back-up and medical facilities.

 

Yup. 184 survivors, 112 dead.

http://www.airodyssey.net/articles/movie-flt232.html

http://www.airdisaster.com/eyewitness/ua232.shtml

 

There were four people in the aircraft, three (including my mother) were
pilots, and the other was a student pilot. The student was in the
right-hand front seat, and /may/ have been doing the take-off. The guy in
the P1 seat was the aircraft owner, and may have said something like "Why
don't you do this one?" - in which case he should have been double-checking
everything the other guy did. They pulled off at about the right speed for
take-off /if/ they'd had the flaps down, stalled back down hard, and headed
off across the field, full power, nose in the air, tail scraping a furrow,
at a 30deg angle to the previous course. At a guess, the two guys in the
front were knocked out by the impact. The aircraft came to the edge of the
field, went through the fence and off into the ravine, becoming airborne.
WHat seems to have happened then is that the guy in the back with my mother
unstrapped and leaned forward between the seats to try and get control of
the thing, so it was flying down the ravine towards lower ground. Then the
port wingtip picked up the side of the ravine, the aircraft 180ed in and
burned.

 

Ouch. Where was this then? "Ravines" don't seem to figure near UK
airfields.

I find it so hard to believe that someonoe can forget to put down the
bloody flaps....

 

Sounds like a James Bond/Indiana Jones sequence, except for the very
last bit.

 

<snip>

On a different note, aren't the casualty rates for light aircraft
something rather alarming - in terms of passenger miles?

I remember Team Bike racer Howard Lees was killed in one. ISTR he was
building his own at the time, as well. Anyway, he went up in a Pitts (I
think) for a feature. P1 was at the rear (tandem two-seater), and he in
front. It suffered engine failure shortly after take-off, and P1 just
pointed the nose down towards whatever ground he could find. P1
survived: Howard died.

When I was learning to fly balloons, we were told that the only aircraft
safer than a hot air balloon was a commercial jet. Balloons are
incredibly over-engineered, very simple, and if the equivalent of engine
failure occurs (ie: your burner conks out) then you just descend. Worst
case is you might hit like a hard parachute landing.

Biggest danger is, of course, high-tension cables. Most of the few
balloon fatalities have been caused by hitting them. The worst, though,
wasn't power lines, but a collision between two large tourist balloons
in Oz, some 12-13 years ago.

Balloon 1 rose sharply, and Balloon 2 was directly above it (and,
obviously, invisible to pilot of Balloon 1). The rule is that the higher
balloon is the one that must get out of the way, but here there just
wasn't time - balloons don't react fast to input.

So they collided, crown-to-basket, and it ripped out the "dump panel",
situtaed right at the crown, and which you use to release hot air. Now
on small (up to maybe 100,000 cu.ft) balloons, these are like a valve:
you pull the red line, the panel is pulled down slightly into the
envelope, hot air rushes out, and then when you release the line, air
pressure inside the balloon pops the dump back in place.

However, on really large balloons a normal hume doesn't have the
strength to operate a dump - they're just too big. So they work like a
tear strip, peeling back. This one was damaged, and wouldn't re-seat.

The balloon "roman candled" down from about 3000 feet, killing all on
board - over a dozen, IIRC. They were all found with linked arms,
clinging to each other in the basket.

 

Here:

http://www.multimap.com/map/browse....ble=&ovtype=&zm=0&scale=50000&out.x=5&out.y=9

It was a farm strip, not an airfield.

It was an Aerospatiale Tobago, which is a slightly complex type, so high
cockpit workload, plus being away from a formal environment like an
airfield, possibly a temptation to "just do it" without going through the
checklist properly.

 

Fantastic!

 

I thought Howard Lees died of cancer.

A Pitts is a bit like the old GeeBee racers: tiny airframe with a FOAD
engine. BIG changes in trim and attitude if the power goes away.

I think I'd have gotten out, got into a stable, sky-diver type of falling
position, looked for haystacks, trees, ponds or whatever.

 

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 09:47:00 +0100,

I think so - most life assurance has an exclusion worded along the
lines of "aviation except for as a paying passenger on a scheduled
service".

 

Deffo not. Air crash, as detailed.

 

Yes, I remember that when I took out a policy. I mentioned hot air
ballooning, and they said: "That's OK."

 

Yeah. Not much of that where they were - over the outback, looking at
kangaroos and things.

 

In Australia? Could be quite a glide...

 

or John Britten?

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "platypus"

That's the time when you'd be glad you wore your big flappy coat.

They could all have jumped into the air just as the basket hit the
ground.

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the

<snip>

When it absolutely, positively had to be there on time.

Impressive all the same, though.

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "platypus"

****.

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10