KingAir Accident

I'm not Skip Stewart or Art Scholl, but that looks like a half inside snap to me.

Almost no time in type. Mostly piston twin. That final pull and power application was because he was below the runway...he over shot the turn and descent.

I'd imagine there was an emergency declares first since sirens go off a second after. Anyone else notice that the EMS. Ehicles seems to change his mind about going to the accident

By 'round here' do you mean 'in aviation'?

I don't think people are trying to make excuses for him at all. I pointed out several things that I did not like in regards to the handling of the plane and that a single engine out should not have been a big deal in this incident as have others, and that he could have just snapped rolled it and how. While the vast majority of reports are in Portuguese which I cannot read, I have found a couple of snippets discussing the power line issue. No one is dismissing pilot error at all, in fact there seems to be several handling errors visible just from the one video, that are pretty blatant. But as we all know accidents are often not just that simple to immediately diagnose and there are often several contributing factors which come into play and we don't always have that information up front. In one video that I have seen of the plane on it's back on the ground for example, one of the mains appears to be missing. (looks missing, hard to tell for sure from the still photo in the video, may be collapsed) I don't think anyone here is trying to be pissy about this incident, just posting their observations, asking questions and trying to understand the whys and what ifs. No one likes to see something like this happen, there is always something to be learned, and more info to be discovered.

Last time I checked hitting power lines was considered pilot error as well... So I really don't see what you're getting at...

Although, now I'm pretty sure that departure wasn't a result of anything outside the aircraft.

It's rather difficult to find all the videos because all the titles are in Portuguese, but I had found this one, this morning from a Brazilian news channel:



There is also this one....just gruesome and sad

We need a dang translator. There are so many reports of this incident from there, but I can't read any of them. I even tried crappy google translator and it was saying thing like "unit" for something and other terms that I know are not right. So I bagged on that. One of them, was saying something about the pilot not being typed in this King Air at all and was just doing a test flight after it's repairs and something about two people supposedly being filed as being on the plane but only one person was actually in the plane and flying and that what he had filed was false and done to save some sort of issues with him flying the plane, etc. But I was piecing this together with the crappy translator, so there are certainly some issues at play here.....I think.

That's part of the problem to be honest. Not that I'm one of those silly "SNAPS" (that'd be a bad thing right...can't remember what the flavor of the day is) but "shut up and die like an aviator" isn't an effective way to learn. On the other side, a snap "that guy screwed up - poor airmanship, and now he's dead" with the implied association of "what a bad pilot, I'd never do that" even if it is not explicitly said is part of the reason why GA has as many accidents as it does. A complete lack of self-awareness in aviation, with a focus on external criticism instead of on introspection makes guys particularly aware of others mistakes but oblivious to their own. In no where do you see this more is a group of pilots hangar-flying the latest accident. In the airplane, everyone says, don't make snap decisions, there's no non-pilot induced emergency that kills you rapidly in light aircraft - and I'd venture to guess that its the same in a lot of transport category machines too. I guess what I'm getting at is that the rush to judgment isn't productive - even in this situation where at first glance it looks like the guy snap rolled the King Air (which is exactly what it looks like to me too).

My guess would be that yes - this is an example of screwing the pooch when it comes to slow speed, high wingloading handling. But...like always...I wasn't there, don't know the guys, and my Portuguese is...shall we say...ineffective.

SNAP means "Sensitive New-Age Pilot", and the application to this would be someone whose reaction to this thread would be,

"Guys! Stop speculating about the cause of the accident! Can't you see that some people just died! Where's your concern about their families?!"

In my opinion, as aviators, the best thing we can do when faced with an accident is do our best to learn what happened and figure out how to prevent it from happening to us. That goal is far more important than any other social protocols that might be breached during such discussion.

Yeah, this!
The fire truck siren went off a second after the crash. I know we love our CFR people, but they're not that fast! Unless, of course, they are already standing by for a declared, in-flight emergency.

Sad deal all teh way around...............

And you can figure out what happened based on all of your KA experience in Brazil?
JK - I hear ya.
Pretty sure he pushed too hard on the right rudder, but that is a guess.

Been tossing around a theory that, with very little KA training and time, this pilot might have done something that brought the RH prop out of feather. Maybe he assumed that all was good if autofeather activated and he didn't have to still physically pull the prop control back to feather....

You may be right. The thing I perceived and maybe incorrectly was that he overshot to the left and was yawing right. In other words Occam's razor. I generally agree not to speculate, but man when you have video it seems pretty simple, if it walks like a duck...

No, I thought he overshot the final, too, but maybe not now that i think about it. If the prop started to come out of feather when he reduced power (deactivating autofeather), with the prop still windmilling (4bl one do that), that increase in drag on the RH side would incrase the rate of descent and yaw into the drag source. I could see the inexperience with the 90 contributing to this, but I'd figure he'd be able to get it on the centerline. Seems like if he was feeling overwhelmed with the emergency, he'd fixate on the runway, maybe at the expense of the airspeed and altitude. Then again, my initial thought was that he overshot the centerline with that speed.

Yes, this pure conjecture, but I feel it is plausible when combined with other factors : improper certification (doing something he wasn't authorized to and now this happens), lack of experience and training in the systems and operations of this aircraft, lack of training in emergency procedures. Now add the stress of 1E ops and having to shoot from the hip.

There's lots a lot of places where right yaw could have been coming from.... You have the thrust from the left engine, drag from the right, p-factor, adverse yaw from left aileron to roll wings level. He could be skidding the turn with right rudder or just not applying enough left rudder when he went to add power to arrest the sink rate, we just don't know from the video. We don't even know where the rudder trim was set. Yaw is yaw, it doesn't matter where it comes from. One thing is for sure, the most effective way to control yaw is with the rudder. I really don't think he got slow, he just pulled too hard and the yaw wasn't controlled properly.

He could have slammed in full power when he realized he was too low and the surge as it came on could have caught him off guard... Who knows?

If it was a flight after maintenance, I would assume it was only pilot, or pilot and a mechanic. And if the engine failed, you would think that a single engine King Air with 2 people in it would probably fly on one motor. And with those assumptions - you would think that you could fly a really nice, stabilized approach - not overshooting and being low. Which leads me to wonder what other problems MAY have existed on this flight. Sure seemed like he was in a hurry to get on the ground - just a hunch - but why would you fly an approach like that if you have ample flying ability on a single engine (and I believe a King Air does)? Maybe there was some kind of other issue - fire in the cockpit or something - not sure. Strange wreck.