Another twin engine aircraft into the water?
The pilot of a light aircraft in northern Australia was forced to make an emergency landing in water after suffering engine trouble on take-off.
In a small-scale version of the dramatic landing of an airliner in New York’s Hudson River, pilot Steve Bolle guided his plane into Darwin’s harbour.
He landed the Piper Chieftain plane in shallow waters after realising he would not make it back to the airport.
Mr Bolle and his five passengers were able to wade safely to shore.
CSG managing director Denis Mackenzie said the pilot reported problems soon after take off.
“He said on take-off they experienced some loss of power in one of the engines and he followed all the procedures and shut the engine down and wasn’t able to return to the field so he had to put down on the beach,” Mr Mackenzie told the Sydney Morning Herald.
It’s a fairly popular notion that two engines on light twin civils adds a safety margin over piston singles – a notion fiercely debated in some aviation circles. There is redundancy in up and away flight, but the first classmate of mine to die in flight training stepped on the wrong rudder when his instructor pilot pulled power on him in the base turn to final. The training rules were changed shortly afterward; barn door, horse.
If a light twin is heavily loaded – crew, five pax and their cargo is getting close to max for a Piper Chieftain – a loss of thrust on one side could mean only having the option to select your crash site rather than have fate dictate it to you. Especially if the pilot allows airspeed to decay below Vmc while sorting through his issues.
It can be a real beach.
Didn’t Burt Rutan design an asymmetrical twin turbo w. one mounted center-line in nose, and one in a staggered offset wing to preclude engine-out handling problems on T.O. & Landings? I can’t find it on the net, but saw it on cover of Aviation Week a few years back. Anybody?
VX,
Yup:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_Boomerang
Photo here:
http://www.aviastar.org/air/usa/rutan_boomerang.php
Don’t remember the turbo but he did design and build a one-off piston twin with twin booms ala P-38 but one boom was larger and included the cockpit while the other was just continuation of the nacellle. Wings were diffferent lengths outboard the booms to compensate. Strange looking thing but flew alright I suppose…
Not sure how that would deal with the asymetric thrust issue if at all.
Two things:
My retired big iron bud suggested modern airliner design automagically provides two to 4 huge speed brakes as your first point of contact with the liquid below. Makes for all too interesting landing with the blade discs perpendicular to the line of movement.
Having the engine nacelles on the wing make for less excitement in such moments, as prop powered airliners (and so many others) did. He’d like a DC-9/727 to get wet in instead of an Airbus.
Second: Top Ten Scariest Airports.
Lex,
Did that accident occur at VT-31 around 1985?
Wrong rudder-engine out in a multi is a bad, bad place at low altitude unless you’re flying an O-2 (MixMaster?). Almost all recip multis are going down anyway with one engine but the folks that staunchly support them talk to speed and payload and somewhat sustained flight that offers a few more options. As a practical matter, most don’t practice engine out and it’s especially hazardous in IMC. That’s one of the reasons for growth of the SR-22 crowd and the popular, sometime maligned ballastic recovery system.
Turbines are nice-way more reliable-but a single engine jet has the glide ratio of a manhole cover. ..and that’s why there’s a handy rocket powered seat which is also nice if it wasn’t currently deactivated. Sigh. Another reason a Decathlon seems like a good idea.
What’s the old saying? The second engine gives you just enough power to get to the accident site.
Pulling an engine can be exciting, even lethal. Vmc demos too.
http://tailspinstales.blogspot.com/2007/12/vmc-demo-gone-wrong.html
The point of the second engine is to ensure that the IFE stays on during the crash.
When Richard Collins was still writing for Flying magazine, he would go over accident stats occasionally. What I noted was the difference from the 70s to recently. In the 70s the twins were safer. Recently, the single engine AC were. I think it probably relates to the training in airline pilots then as compared to now.
Airline pilots then had to get the ratings and build time as instructors, or doing other work. Now, it’s common to go the ab initio route as the military does it. Go some place like Flight Safety and emerge with less than 1000 hours into the right seat. As a result, not as much GA time in twins anymore, and what is flown isn’t flown so much by aspiring professionals.
Peter Lert wrote an article for Air Progress (one of the last issues) about Rutan’s assymetric twin nearly 10 years ago. Neat idea, that. the loss of the engine in front of the cabin caused a shift of the center of thrust of about 5%, as I recall. It is very unlikely the thing will be built commercially, and that’s a shame.
Back in 1996 (may have been 95), the Queen Air, loaded with jumpers climbed out of West Point, VA. One engine seized about 1000 ft, and the analysis showed the pilot then feathered the good engine, resulting in a yaw that allowed the airflow right in the left rear cabin door (removed for jump operations), pitching him over and pointing him straight down. I recall, a few months later, looking at the crash site from the climb out pattern, and the black mark was dead on a small house, leaving the two, very closely built ones, intact. Took out a preacher who was sitting on his porch reading his Bible, as was his custom that time of day.
Several students and instructors perished, too. Bad day for the sport.
Wilko/
Tech Note: That’s O-2 Cessna Super Sky-Master. At least you got the “Master” bit right. I put a little bit of time in one in Vietnam, nice a/c. Don’t quite know why they quit makin’ em as is a versatile little thing for sure, and, being center-line thrust a lot safer handling characteristics than standard twins, that’s for sure. Probably stopped because not fast enough with enough payload and ceiling for commercial and too expensive a jump for what you get for the 172 crowd–you know, the typical dilemma of the “tweener” whether in athletics or aircraft.
VX,
Interesting. I have always liked the O-2 but have only seen it in a museum. They pop up in Barnstormers or TAP occasionally. Saw a Cessna 337 with STOL kit at one of my usual grass strip haunts, nNow that looked like FUN. So you liked the O-2? Were you a FAC?
GEO6
VX- I put in that bit about “Mixmaster” specifically for you, our resident Zoomie. One of my fellow fliers actually owns a *Skymaster* and I always thought it unique, what with the twin boom and all, plus it’s military heritage. Got a lot of respect for the FAC’s. There’s also an OV-10 pilot in our circle of hanger fliers.
Attended a fly-in lunch seminar yesterday with around 40 other pilots and a couple ATC types. Man-what a great bunch of stories and a lot of “I learned about flying from that”. The next best thing to flying is talking about, blogging about or reading about it.
So Virgil, can you spill any history flying the O-2?– -Back in the day when low and slow was especially hazardous?
Wilko/geo6:
Actually, the introduction of O-2s was viewed as a mixed blessing. Had greater loiter time and speed to get on station and more radios, etc, but the viz wasn’t as good as the O-1 and it couldn’t operate from every short, dirt strip that the O-1 could, either. The O-2 kinda likes hard strips. And with full flaps and max power you could practically make the O-1 “hover” if you really wanted to look at something in a relatively begin environment. Nice to have two engines tho…Could also hang on more Willy Pete’s which was also helpful.
SOP/ROE said keep everything above 1500′ AGL to avoid small arms gnd fire. Obviously “someguys” occasionally bent the minimums–especially with TIC and low ceilings which was often. Wx was often so dicey–especially in the mountains in the rainy season (Monsoons came in winter in DaNang area) that you ended up talking guys down to release on tgt in a TIC sit. almost as soon as they broke out, putting a premium on WP placement. Best tactic in WP placement was circular, rather than st. approach, letting sling as the nose came around–messed up the bad guys’ tgt solution a bit.
They also issued us Pentax 35mm slrs–took a lot of hand held photo recce. In fact George Brown, CG 7thAF after Momeyer left, is on record as saying that the vast majority of actionable photo intel taken in-country was the hand-held stuff by FACs–except that AF gnd support was so lousy that every FAC in I-Corps ended up flying film back to DaNang to be developed by the ARMY (believe it or not) at their 1st MIBARS (Mil Intel) facility where we sucked hind tit behind Army priorities–then flew photos BACK up to Quang Tri or down to Quang Ngai City or whereever. Helluva way to run a railroad. Forward sites were a law unto themselves where things were more “relaxed” shall we say. We had one guy down at Thua Tien in Quang Tin province, an intel enlisted guy whose uniform of the day was bermuda shorts, tennis shoes and a powder blue T-shirt (powder blue sweatshirt in winter) with giant silver AF wings stenciled on front and back. LOL. Frontier days…We usually flew with Shorty M-16, lots of ammo, side arm of choice and a bag of grenades.
(Could toss em out of window of an O-1) Two flack vests–one to sit on and one to wear. Biggest stuff we faced while I was over their was 14.75mm in a very few places–nasty enough–but they had quad 23mm zsu-23s up in Ashau Valley–pucker factor rather higher there….
I found your post while surfing and really appreciate it. I was 1st MIBARS photo officer in 1967. We got into the business of riding back seat with FACs out of DaNang Main (and later Marble Mountain) when one of your guys (20th TASS?) brought us a potential target in an area that seemed highly populated with civilians. We rode out and photographed it. The film revealed tunnel entrances near a hamlet, so the USMC went out with a ground force and cleaned things up gently so as to minimize the impact on the civilian population. After that, we just decided ourselves to expand our mission. Our eventual photo lab for processing 35-mm film was essentially a field expedient, since our mission did not encompass hand-held photography and our only piece of issue equipment was a truck-mounted van for processing rolls of air recon imagery. So, we asked the SeaBees to come down from Red Beach and build us a darkroom, and our CO sprung for a commercial 35-mm photo enlarger from the Freedom Hill PX. All else was scrounged, although we were not able to turn up an AC unit. About the time I DEROS’ed out, we were getting occasional requests to process film from some staff offices and field units. It’s interesting to know that we were offering some degree of support services to the USAF also. Can you tell me when you were in-country, what unit you were with, and if you have any other recollections about 1st MIBARS and its photo facility (good or bad)? I’m assuming that you were a FAC.
VX-stories like yours and others in this group are a big reason I’m a frequent reader (LORC status notwithstanding.) Thx
VX- If we ever meet in person I’m buying.
As for dropping grenades from a Birddog, best pull the pin ON THE OUTSIDE of the cockpit otherwise you could have the mother of all AWWW-$#!T! moments. Same with doing it on 70 tons of steel and sex appeal. Not a good idea. But the things we do when we are young….
geo6
When we were young…..so true, so true.