March 7, 2007: Plane barely survives 20,000 feet freefall
http://cellar.org/2007/kingb200-1.jpg
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:
When they get out of the plane, this is what they saw... a tail almost completely destroyed. http://cellar.org/2007/kingb200-3.jpg Well that first image of the tail is taken at a strange angle, and you can't really make out how destroyed it is. Here's the left side of it, from another angle. http://cellar.org/2007/kingb200-4.jpg The covers for the bolts that hold the wing on have been blown off. http://cellar.org/2007/kingb200-5.jpg The wing itself has been bent, leaving a severe crease. http://cellar.org/2007/kingb200-6.jpg Even the fuselage has bent slightly. http://cellar.org/2007/kingb200-7.jpg From the front you can see how much of the tail is missing. The landing was shot on videotape by an amateur, and the local news folks did a story on it, first story at this search page. A nice note: the pilots rented a car to get to their eventual destination. Yeah, good idea. |
"Thank you for falling with us. Have a nice day! buh-bye."
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
I wonder if these were the guys that won the Mass Millions jackpot?
|
Quote:
|
Heh heh heh, he said "tail stall."
|
Quote:
|
Mrs.
Or a free ride. When you've already paid.
|
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! |
Quote:
:p |
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.
|
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.) |
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 08:36 PM. |
Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.