Jump to content

Mooney Crash in Boyne MI


Recommended Posts

Most likely the accident chain will start with a case of poor decision making launching into some pretty unfavorable winter weather. High winds, snow, IFR, low-vis. Pilot was familiar with the route and probably thought he could easily make the 180NM hop regardless of the winter conditions (get-home-itis?).

 

7am launch into IMC,wind, and snow in order to make it back to work Monday morning?

 

Stay vigilant. Review your own GO/NO-GO decision making. We bet our lives on our judgement and skill in our flying machines. When placing that bet do everything you can to ensure the odds are in your favor!

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Officials say they have found two bodies at the crash site, one of them is the pilot of the plane. WDIV is reporting the victims on the crash were Todd Glen Lloyd, 51, and Christopher Neumann, 38. The two men were leaving the Boyne City airport and may have been flying downstate to Birmingham.

Lloyd was the pilot and owner of the plane registered to Chair Cover Holdings in Madison Heights. WDIV is reporting he and Neumann were skiing at Boyne Mountain over the weekend and were originally planning to leave Sunday evening but delayed their departure until this morning due to the weather."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's easy to sit on the ground in judgement of their decision making... I've made a couple of decisions that I shouldn't have made.  I'd like to attribute the fact that I'm still here to skills that exceeded bad judgement, but I honestly believe my plane loved me.

 

Friend of mine explained that he always considers what the accident report will show as part of his go/no go decision making process.

 

This accident baffles me.  I've flown into IFR in bitter cold, airframe icing is non existent at those temps.  Ovation should climb like crazy through the weather, but I don't know what the tops were.  I would lean towards pilot medical, or if he did something really silly and kept the plane in a heated hangar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting and good to know!  The heated hangar has always seemed to be the gold standard for preheating but what your saying makes since. If its snowing out and the airframe doesn't have time to acclimate stick with an engine preheater.

 

I just prefer not to fly in the snow I have a few times that I followed my GPS plot back to the airport even though I was technically legal VFR.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have had dew turn to ice on my wings during an early morning preflight, the wing temps were down close to freezing, and as the morning dew started forming it became ice on the wings, nothing I could do to prevent it. needless to I postponed the flight for a bit

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was likely snowing there.  wings above freezing temperature will melt the snow and refreeze.

 

 

This is really only an issue if warm plane plane sits stationary outside in frozen precip that melts and then refreezes.  Please shed some light on the dangers, as I had always chalked this up to an old wives tale..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is really only an issue if warm plane plane sits stationary outside in frozen precip that melts and then refreezes.  Please shed some light on the dangers, as I had always chalked this up to an old wives tale..

you got it right, if the wings are warm, pull it out of the hangar where snow hits the cold wing, melts or partially melts and then refreezes.  Not an OWT, I had that happen to me as snow blew off the top of the hangar on the wing.  I delayed my trip for almost an hour while I waited for it to remelt back inside the heated hangar, wiped it off, turned off the heat and let the wing chill to ambient.  I stopped heating the hangar after that, just the engine, with a small electric space heater inside the cockpit.

 

At homecoming one year, we had a spirited conversation about winter flying.  Someone had painted just the leading edge a dark color with the thought of ice melting faster due to the color... nice idea, except what it did was create an ice ridge right at the interface between dark and light, which destroyed lift.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is really only an issue if warm plane plane sits stationary outside in frozen precip that melts and then refreezes.  Please shed some light on the dangers, as I had always chalked this up to an old wives tale..

 

I read an AOPA report about a King Air that crashed a few years ago due to this problem.  They had pulled the plane out of a heated hangar, then spent 20 minutes inside eating breakfast while it snowed softly outside, then they had a real problem during take off role with what was now a thin layer of ice on the whole plane.  No one survived.  I see in the pictures that this ovation had tks.  I wonder what that would do once airborne if they had run it on the ground before departure, which you would think they would do if it was snowing.  I would not think the airplane would get airborn if it had too much ice.  Now mind you - I am just talking off the cuff - I don't really know anything.

 

Until I read this particular possible interpretation, I was thinking about this poor airplane all day, and I was wondering if some of the strange cold effects that we were discussing on the other threads could have been the issue.  Burst oil cooler?  Frozen fuel lines?  Except I read they departed at 10F which while chilly is not the kind of severe arctic stuff I would think of as causing the weird stuff.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.