Poor guy was just walking on the beach with his family.  Prayers for his daughter's recovery.

Plane Crash

Sucks bad for that family...my prayers are with them.

Not sure why the pilot decided to ditch on the beach and not in the water?  Maybe trying to salvage his aircraft?

Well, that sucks. Plane had fixed landing gear, not sure if that had anything to do with crash landing choice (or lack of)

I assume he took off south and then turned back north to get back to

the airport.



Not being in his shoes, but it does seem like a very poor move on his part to

land on an occupied and fairly narrow beach.

The beach is usually a good spot to do an emergency landing. But if there are people on the beach then for me it would no longer be an option.

MW...Do you still work at/near that AP?

No, I've been in Punta Gorda for 3 years now.

 

I see, just was wondering what intel you had.



 

The 9-year-old daughter passed away

 

I heard that today as well.  Terrible

The pilot may not have seen the people on the beach, or if he saw them it might have been too late.

And looking at the area, there aren't too many places that are attractive for an emergency landing. Most of the straight areas on the golf course are nearest the runway, so if he could've made those he likely could've made the airport. I think I would've attempted to land on the beach also.

The pilot released a statement today.  http://www.nbc-2.com/story/26144909/pilot-who-killed-man-daughter-releases-statement-about-accident#.U9gsPmK9KSM

Ditching a plane is never a good thing. If I had to pick location between the areas that seem to be available, I'd have picked the beach right above the water line as well. The water is terrible, worse if you have fixed gear. The sand above the waterline is terrible since it is soft. But the area that is wet, but above the waterline has just enough water to create a firm area that will help prevent the plane from flipping.

He had the option of a car park, trees, water, or the beach and not a lot of time to make a choice. Set up for best glide engine (70ish) the plane would have a pretty high AoA and not have great visibility.

Also, humans are pretty common in that when under stress we task shed things to try and stay at the core issue…. Think about it, ever turn down the radio while looking for an address? They are unconnected, but we still do it. It is why when faced with a bad guy with a gun that we often forget about things like background and discipline. Ever hear a story about a person pulling a trigger till they ran out of ammo.

So here is a guy that just took off and lost his engine. He tries to remember the first rule (Fly the plane) and sets up a glide. Maybe he has time to do all the other things like switching tanks, checking the mixture, checking the mags…. Etc. And he is trying to find a place to crash. Below him he sees a long "runway" and can't see anyone below.

A tragic accident. Barring something like fuel starvation I find it difficult to place blame.

He hit a wingtip and broke of the landing gear on the beach. I thought he was going north


but it looks like he could have been going south and spun around resting facing north.





The prop does not look like it was spinning either so he probably had no power when he landed.





He sure must have had tunnel vision when approaching as the people should have been easy


to spot.

 

People on the beach on a hot summer Sunday...who'd a thought.

Can you imagine the uproar if the plane hit and killed a nesting turtle.

Not putting blame...I certainly feel for all involved at this point.  But, according to the pilots statement he went past the dog park and then down (south) to Casperson before ditching.  The dog park is right next to one of the runways at Venice Airport which puts the airport closer to where he was than his eventual crash site, about 1 mile down the beach according an NBC story..

Most likely he didn't want to try the "Impossible turn". Lots of people have died trying to get back to the airport. Standard training is if you lose an engine on takeoff an don't KNOW that you can make the airfield to land straight ahead at low altitude, within a small arc (30-40*) forward at medium altitudes, and to try and make the airfield if you know you are high enough.

The Piper Cherokee glide ratio is about 1:10 at 70MPH. So if the engine died at around 500 feet it would be possible to make it a mile from the airport but maybe not possible to make the turn back.

Landing straight ahead will most times break the plane, but you will survive. Stalling will most likely be fatal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byBh1Qd6IgA

My 7ECA it is about 400 feet. In my old Challenger LSA I could do it from 250. I have no clue how high I need to be in my Pitts since it is new, I'd say ~1k feet, but then again I am at 1K feet in seconds.