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Mooney down in Tampa Bay. No injuries


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What I don't get on this one is that the news reports say he took off from Lakeland on the way to Gainesville, was having engine trouble so went all the way to Tampa (his home base?)? There were a lot of places to land in between and figure it out.

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I remember flying 20+ years ago from Georgia back to Texas with a friend, and the engine stumbled a little. He was a mechanic and I said, "What do you think?". He said. "I think I see an airport, that's what I think." It was good we landed. We landed at Peachtree DeKalb, spent the night and figured it out the next day. One mag failed. The lesson I took away that day is that I would rather be wrong and make a precautionary landing than be wrong when I continued on.

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Isn’t there a big old engine shop at Zephyrillis ? 
 
If … if this is the decision it is beyond dumb in terms of ADM. 
 
Glad nobody got killed. 

He didn’t have a problem till well past Zephyrhills, and when he was descending he had plenty of speed (2x best glide), FWIW.
Looks like he was heading to one of the other Tampa airports, the flight north was probably just waiting for class Bravo clearance.
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20 minutes ago, ArtVandelay said:


He didn’t have a problem till well past Zephyrhills, and when he was descending he had plenty of speed (2x best glide), FWIW.
Looks like he was heading to one of the other Tampa airports, the flight north was probably just waiting for class Bravo clearance.

Thanks Art -  of course all conjecture at this point.  The reason I jumped on that was that there was an apparent diversion from the ori destination Gainesville, reported for “engine problems” and the aircraft appears to have  passed by at least a couple of options.

That “Land as soon as practicable” quote in the POH…

A lot of these engines are going to be rife with mechanical issues after periods of relative under utilization during all the lockdowns.  My plane with a blown up lifter is a good cautionary example.  

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9 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:


He didn’t have a problem till well past Zephyrhills, and when he was descending he had plenty of speed (2x best glide), FWIW.
Looks like he was heading to one of the other Tampa airports, the flight north was probably just waiting for class Bravo clearance.

I frequently would fly between TPF and LAL. Generally I go up to 3500ft off of LAL and then have a gradual cruise descent to get under the bravo. A lot of pilots have complained about the 1200ft ceiling covering tampa bay for the lack of safety. The good news is that the tampa controllers almost always will give you bravo clearance. 

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14 hours ago, LANCECASPER said:

Great job Ms. Genesah Duffy!   And its nice to see the Icon A5 get some positive press - I thought that was a super cool and innovatively safe design that almost got tanked by the company selling to the reckless idiot market.  

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57 minutes ago, DXB said:

Great job Ms. Genesah Duffy!   And its nice to see the Icon A5 get some positive press - I thought that was a super cool and innovatively safe design that almost got tanked by the company selling to the reckless idiot market.  

Fortunately, for businesses that sell all sorts of things, the world is full of reckless idiots ! :D

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  • 5 weeks later...

Here's an AOPA "There I was..." podcast interview with the pilot, Lynn McNorton, and Ganesha Duffy that gives the first person story. Some good lessons (re)learned and a great story of keeping your cool and executing in a stress environment. It's Episode #42.

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/podcasts/podcasts/there-i-was?utm_source=epilot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=asi+products

Cheers,
Rick

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