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xoxoxoBruce finds this set with its story. You see the windshield spidered in the above shot. That happened at 27,000 feet... let's go to the text from the forwarded email:

Quote:

Whether they initiated a rapid descent or lost control and ended up in a steep dive is not known, as the two pilots have little recollection of the event, both fading in and out of consciousness until shortly before landing.

They took turns, unintentionally, waking up and blacking out and fighting to regain control of the aircraft. One pilot stated "I remember thinking we're in a spin and seeing that the airspeed was pegged beyond indicated. I thought, wow, we're going too fast, reached up and pulled the power to idle, then blacked out again."

According to the radar, they lost 20,000 feet in roughly a minute and a half.

Assume they were pretty much at terminal velocity headed straight down.

At 13,000 feet, (give or take), they started fighting to pull the aircraft out of a dive, it took both of them. The stress on the airframe must have been unreal, as you will see. From that point, parts started leaving the aircraft until landing.

They lost control of pitch and they went almost vertical again. It took both pilots pushing as hard as they could to get the aircraft to start descending. They regained some control around 7,000 feet and were close to cape where they diverted. It is fortunate that they did not have a tail stall as you will see, and I have no earthly idea how they controlled pitch.

A friend of mine that works at Embry-Riddle flight school in Florida, told me they use a bunch of this type of plane. Rugged and reliable is their reputation.

Fortunately there were no passengers, so they didn't have to disinfect the seats.

I once saw Bob Hoover do a ten minute power-management flight demo (translation: flying with the engines off) in a Rockwell AeroCommander, which I think may have been a predecessor, or at least a pretty close copy, of this aircraft. These things are *awesome* planes.

There's no way these guys won a lottery. They used up their entire lifetime supply of luck surviving this.

perhaps there was a goblin on the wing? *

* most excellent Twilight Zone story ever!

Those guys were incredibly lucky. If they had lost the other half of the tail, there would have been nothing they could do to make any kind of landing. As it is now, that plane is crap. I doubt you could find and fix all the structural damage to where it would be safe to fly again. The engines were probably horribly over-revved, but they might be salvageable. It doesn't say, but it wouldn't surprise me if even the avionics got barfed on. No used bargain here.

Well i would think to be glad they didn't have autopilot on. If they would have, the plane would have never fallen fast enough for them to regain consciousness. They would have just kept flying till they ran out of fuel. Course, they would have frozen to death first, so the crash wouldn't of been so terrifying. I think I remember hearing a story like this happening. The FFA found the plane flying off course and had it intercepted when they realized that the pilots and passengers were dead. They just left the plane to fly till it ran out of fuel, then let it crash in a field. How would you like to get that call about a loved one?
Damn lucky pilots. Really glad to hear a happy ending!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elspode

Welcome to the Cellar, Beagle, and thanks for the research!

The best known plane, a small jet, that flew on autopilot until crashing after decompression was the one carrying golfer Payne Stewart. There was apparently a similar incident in 2005 that involved a Boeing 737 in Greece that killed 121. Apparently they call them "ghost flights."

Quote:

Originally Posted by beagle1971

I looked up the registration (N777AJ) and found some more info on the incident:

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...3/m/8711080335

http://planenews.com/ntsb.php?ev_id=...8X00156&kkey=1

Looks like they went into an overspeed situation, given the plane's cruising speed is 292 knots, and the FlightAware.com site shows their max speed was 419 knots at one point (although that's listed as ground speed, so that might be misleading.)

Well, ground speed isn't equal to air speed, but I don't know what the conversion of the two would be, accounting for air density and such, so what I posted earlier is misleading concerning rated speed and ground speed listed at the tracking site. I just theorized that the plane went over its rated speed, which is what caused the structural damage, most notably to the tail, but also the wing buckling.