C206 crash in Texas

[Boilermonkey]

A friend of mine died yesterday on an aerial survey flight.  Aside from the sadness of loosing her, I can't make sense of the flight path, airspeed, and altitude.   The last half of It seems like a controllability issue, maybe disorientation?   Then they get it together and lose it in a spin?

Nonetheless tragic for the families of the two pilots.  One retired and one building hours to go to the regionals.   Our EAA chapter had sponsored her...all of us are in disbelief.

https://www.kcentv.com/article/news/crime/small-plane-crashes-near-marlin-texas-airport/500-dd5d33f9-41b9-4eab-91e5-5aae6a106e86

 

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N858JA

 

[aviatoreb]

Is the flight paths of aerial survey as recorded on FlightAware somehow reflecting the difficulty of catching a signal of such low flying aircraft causing sporadic data acquisition leading to seemingly unusual flights that may not actually be all that sporadic in actuality?

Im so sorry to hear about this tragedy and your loss.

 

Edited April 6, 2022 by aviatoreb

[carusoam]

Prayers for the lost airmen…

-a-

[Boilermonkey]

Our EAA chapter is raising funds to bring her remains home and celebrate her life.  Any donations appreciated.

https://gofund.me/fd5cf4f5 

[Schllc]

Carbon monoxide poisoning seems likely. 
Can’t think of anything other than impairment that could induce that behavior with two pilots on board?

[Boilermonkey]

Hadn't thought of that.  That's a good theory.  I'd assume they would be able to see that in the tox-screen.

[carusoam]

4 hours ago, Boilermonkey said:

Hadn't thought of that.  That's a good theory.  I'd assume they would be able to see that in the tox-screen.

This is why we discuss CO poisoning and remedies a lot around here…

It is incredibly poisonous… and modern cars keep us from gaining experience with it in other ways…

It may easily show up in a Tox-screen… because CO wants to bind with the hemoglobin, and not let go for awhile….

Aviation 101 doesn’t cover CO poisoning at a modern level… that would take aviation 102… 

 

PP thoughts only, no tox-screen experience to rely on….

Best regards,

 -a-

[Boilermonkey]

After hearing Dan's story we carry a CO monitor on all flights.  Clipped to our seat belt so we can hear it and feel it vibrate.

If it turns out to be CO it would bolster the NTSBs request to have it required in all aircraft.   I know many of us private owners would probably not like to have another requirement, but for rental/survey and other aircraft used for hire it really should be a requirement.  Those pilots really have no way of knowing the state of the exhaust system in the same ways that an owner does.

[carusoam]

CO

Reminder to keep the spelling correct… it will help people to stay on message, and not get distracted…

Fortunately, CO₂ is pretty harmless…

-a-

[Boilermonkey]

14 minutes ago, carusoam said:

CO

Reminder to keep the spelling correct… it will help people to stay on message, and not get distracted…

Fortunately, CO₂ is pretty harmless…

-a-

Thanks, yes CO kills more quickly than CO2.  One in the cockpit and one in the environment.

[aviatoreb]

Is CO poisoning that can be discovered by the NTSB?  Will it be in the toxicology of a post mortem?

[EJETdriver]

There is NOTHING stable about survey/pipeline flying. It is inherently dangerous, and requires a type of flying that contradicts everything g you ever learned in training. I am a commercial pilot/CFI, and former contract pilot for the company they were working for, and have hundreds of hours as PIC in the accident aircraft. Pipeline survey is done at 800’-1000’ AGL, and regularly requires the use of cross control inputs to follow constantly changing terrain and buried lines that are constantly changing direction. The belly of the plane must remain parallel to the ground in order for the cameras and sensors to see the surface, so all turns are cross controlled skids at low altitude. There is no room for error with that type of flying that low to the ground. You’re at an unrecoverable altitude if you get yourself into trouble. My understanding is that one of the crew just got their commercial certificate a couple months ago, and possibly had a special issuance medical just last month. That airplane was always very solid, and the company does not skimp on maintenance/inspections. The only thing I hated about flying that airplane was the fact that the right seat had no headset/microphone jack which made crew communication nearly impossible with as loud as the 206 is. Having no comm capability between the PIC and the observer/camera operator always made me nervous in that plane. Especially when the observer’s primary duty is to communicate traffic, obstacles and other conflicts to the pilot who 99% of the flight is focused on flying a Constantly changing GPS track over buried gas and oil lines. So yes, the track/data is accurate, and not out of the ordinary for pipeline flying.

[Jim Peace]

2 hours ago, EJETdriver said:

That airplane was always very solid, and the company does not skimp on maintenance/inspections. The only thing I hated about flying that airplane was the fact that the right seat had no headset/microphone jack which made crew communication nearly impossible with as loud as the 206 is. Having no comm capability between the PIC and the observer/camera operator always made me nervous in that plane. Especially when the observer’s primary duty is to communicate traffic, obstacles and other conflicts to the pilot who 99% of the flight is focused on flying a Constantly changing GPS track over buried gas and oil lines. So yes, the track/data is accurate, and not out of the ordinary for pipeline flying.

have to blame the pilots for that just as much as the company.  

[steingar]

I haven't the words.  Condolences to the OP, this is horrible.  Yes, what we do is dangerous.

[carusoam]

Welcome aboard EJET,

Thank you for filling in the details of the machine and type of flying…

Best regards,

-a-

[Boilermonkey]

6 hours ago, EJETdriver said:

There is NOTHING stable about survey/pipeline flying. It is inherently dangerous, and requires a type of flying that contradicts everything g you ever learned in training. I am a commercial pilot/CFI, and former contract pilot for the company they were working for, and have hundreds of hours as PIC in the accident aircraft. Pipeline survey is done at 800’-1000’ AGL, and regularly requires the use of cross control inputs to follow constantly changing terrain and buried lines that are constantly changing direction. The belly of the plane must remain parallel to the ground in order for the cameras and sensors to see the surface, so all turns are cross controlled skids at low altitude. There is no room for error with that type of flying that low to the ground. You’re at an unrecoverable altitude if you get yourself into trouble. My understanding is that one of the crew just got their commercial certificate a couple months ago, and possibly had a special issuance medical just last month. That airplane was always very solid, and the company does not skimp on maintenance/inspections. The only thing I hated about flying that airplane was the fact that the right seat had no headset/microphone jack which made crew communication nearly impossible with as loud as the 206 is. Having no comm capability between the PIC and the observer/camera operator always made me nervous in that plane. Especially when the observer’s primary duty is to communicate traffic, obstacles and other conflicts to the pilot who 99% of the flight is focused on flying a Constantly changing GPS track over buried gas and oil lines. So yes, the track/data is accurate, and not out of the ordinary for pipeline flying.

Thank you so much for the information, that really helps us understand a little bit more. So the tracks in the last half of the fight where they're essentially doing figure eights makes sense? 

[EJETdriver]

They aren’t necessarily figure 8s. It is pretty common to encounter a segment of pipeline that changes direction sharply enough where it isn’t possible to safely make the turn using the skidding technique. When that happens the usual procedure is to simply break off of the line and circle around to pickup the new segment from a safe angle rather than trying to force the plane into a 70 degree turn. It is also common to do when you run into a grid segment where there are multiple small segments coming off of one main line where it’s not possible to overfly them all in one pass. So rather than continuing to the end of the line and then flying all the way back to get the missed segments, you just loop back around, verify that everything is done, then proceed to the next segment 

[EJETdriver]

I have talked to some people who have a bit more knowledge than what has been publicly released to this point. It sounds like the accident didn’t happen during a survey run. Apparently they had completed what they were doing and were going to make a scheduled stop. Preliminary findings suggest that the plane overshot the touchdown zone on landing and couldn’t stop. It came to rest in a field across the street about 200’ from the end of the runway. I’m very familiar with the company policies and practices, and the practice with newly hired employees was that they performed the role of observer/systems operator while learning how to properly fly using unconventional techniques. The days were often long…sometimes 10-12 hrs long. It wasn’t uncommon to allow the observer to take the controls during any transitions between line segments. Sometimes it can be 100 miles between the end of one line and the start of another. That was always a good time for the PIC to take a much needed break after fighting to keep the plane on that line for hours at a time. It was also common to alternate landings. This allowed the person in training to experience the difference between an approach/landing in a 172 and a bigger, faster and more powerful 206. All that keeps coming to mind is the inability for the crew to effectively communicate in that particular plane. I hate to speculate, but there’s just SO many questions. Who was flying at the time? Did the PIC allow her to try to land? Was she high and fast on approach which is very easy to do for a pilot with minimal or no experience in a high performance plane? Was he trying to correct her and she just couldn’t hear him due to no comms? I have seen photos of the scene, and the flaps were fully extended in the landing position which would definitely indicate that they were not actually flying the line at the time of the crash. It’s really an unsettling feeling to see a plane that you’ve flown countless times end up this way, and to tragically end the lives of 2 people who were just doing what they loved to do. My condolences to those who personally knew the victims. I met Cinnamon several times when she worked at Greenwood. She always took care of us when we flew in for fuel, needed a crew car for the night etc. Her dog would always be there and would always just walk up to us and let us pet it like we’ve been friends forever. I left the company for the airlines before she started, but I was shocked and sad to see the news in the local paper this weekend. 

[A64Pilot]

On 4/9/2022 at 11:12 AM, aviatoreb said:

Is CO poisoning that can be discovered by the NTSB?  Will it be in the toxicology of a post mortem?

CO level is easily checked for, and often shows if a person survived the crash, but not the post accident fire

Edited April 12, 2022 by A64Pilot

[carusoam]

Dan Gryder- Professional conjecture…  stall spin on a go around…

-a-

 

[EJETdriver]

Highly unlikely. This guy doesn’t seem to have a clue what he’s talking about. I can promise you that she was not in the left seat. Company and insurance requirements require at least 500 hrs minimum for PIC. It’s possible that she could have been trying to land from the right seat, but if they had just come off of a pipeline run there is zero chance that she was in the left seat. All of the observer equipment and camera controls are on the right side. 

[A64Pilot]

it is all conjecture, but the 205,6,7 and 210 are all very heavy on pitch and therefore you get used to flying them with the trim, trimmed for a landing with little backpressure required they can be hard to hold the nose down on a go-around.

Perhaps whoever was flying was caught off guard by the rapid pitch up, and very high control pressures required to push it back down, especially if they hadn’t experienced a go-around in one before

I’ll throw in another speculation, if the PIC was the non flying person and part of the mission was the second in command to get experience, possibly the PIC initiated the go-around for training and the SIC with little experience with the big single engine Cessna’s was caught off guard by the control pressure required.

Not meant to be disrespectful or to disparage anyones capabilities, but the big Cessna’s control pressure can catch anyone who’s not expecting it, the lighter they are loaded the greater pressure required and I assume this airplane was probably lightly loaded, if they are heavy they don’t pitch up as much.

The invention of Social media and Youtube has spawned all kinds of “experts” out for their 30 min of fame, and many make money from it.

I’ve been astonished by all of the expert advice that’s completely opposite of what the POH and the manufacturer of the product recommends.

Just more speculation with no disrespect intended, without experience the rapid pitch up and the big push to hold it down could catch any of us, myself included.

[EJETdriver]

Again…not a likely scenario. I have about 700 hrs in that particular airplane, and can tell you that it did not require any trim to maintain level or nose high flight. This was due to the fact that it wasn’t configured like your typical 206. All of the rear seats were removed to accommodate hundreds of pounds of cameras, sensors, hard drives and other equipment used for survey flying. With all of that added weight in the back it essentially eliminated the need for excess aft trim on approach and landing.

[Boilermonkey]

It's easier to point the finger at the lower time pilot, but I'd be surprised if she was in the left seat.  Either way, we will likely never know who was flying.   From everything we've seen so far it look like stall/spin on GA.  Both should have been able to avoid that type of event, but didn't.   The rest of us can learn.

I'd also take away from this that if the right seat had no comms, they should not have been flying.  Maybe for normal ops that would be ok, but not for flights where PIC responsibility would be shared.

[EJETdriver]

If you guys haven’t seen it, the preliminary NTSB report came out today. It was not a botched GA, nor a stall spin. According to the report, the male occupant called Waco Apch Control, so he definitely would have been in the left seat as I originally suggested he would have been. It sounds like whoever was trying to land came in high and fast, bounced it and came down in the grass off the right side of the runway, bounced again and hit a light before going back across the runway and off the left side where it appears the prop and nose gear impacted. Porpoising most likely from the excess speed and rate of descent on landing. The prop separated from the hub and was embedded a foot into the ground. I hate to speculate again, but he was likely letting her take the landing, and it is a very common error that I’ve seen with people going from trainers into something like the 206. They simply don’t fly the same, and the sight picture takes a long time to get used to from the right seat if you’re experiencing it for the first time.