Dan's Landing » Accidents

Cirrus crash near Buttonville, Ontario (CYKZ)

Danny — Wed, 26 May 2010 03:11:00 +0000

A sad event transpired today: an airplane crashed in Markham after taking off from Buttonville Municipal Airport (CYKZ).

Here are some news reports about the crash:

Here is the aftermath

My condolences go out to the families of the victims.

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Tragic video of the midair collision in New York city

Danny — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:29:43 +0000

By now you have probably heard of the tragic crash between a helicopter and a Piper Saratoga over the Hudson river which killed nine people. There were some images released at first:

Now a video has surfaced on and I’ve included it below. Note that it also contains a commentary by the anchor and a guest.

Note: It is a disturbing video of the last moments of the airplane and the helicopter. Hopefully we can learn what happened and how to avoid this kind of tragedy in the future.

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Video: Go Around! Go Around!

Danny — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Some of you may have seen this video but if you haven’t:

crash SBH from Mo Po on Vimeo.

I think this is a perfect example of when to abort the landing and go around. St. Bart’s is definitely the place where if you don’t touch on the numbers, you need to go around.

View Larger Map

I believe the pilot was able to walk away, luckily there was sand at the end of the runway.

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Video of a water bomber crashing in the lake in BC

Danny — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:33:24 +0000

British Columbia is experiencing its share of forest fires this summer which are blamed, in part, on the torrid temperatures the province has experienced.

As always, fire fighters are working diligently to put out the blaze with machinery on the ground and in the air. A few days ago, a water bomber crashed into Lake Okanagan while attempting to land and refill its water tanks. Here’s a (poor quality) video of the crash:

The pilot was able to extricate himself and survived the crash. The airplane was an Airtractor Amphibious plane like the one pictured below:

Here is an image from the site of the accident:

All in all it was a lucky day for the pilot and it could have ended much worse. Speculators on the cause of the accident point to the landing gear being down when the airplane touched the water.

[All media via AvCanada forum]

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Investigation of Colgan Air 3407 crash

Danny — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:52:00 +0000

The US NTSB concluded its public hearing into the February crash of Colgan Air 3407 just outside Buffalo. There are a lot of answers but, as with any accident like this, each answer brings up new questions.

There are many lessons to be taken away from this tragedy and Max Trescott has a great article on it. His conclusions, as drawn from the NTSB investigation and his own experience:

Experience on type counts
Fatigue kills
Distraction kills
Airspeed is life

Here’s a simulation from the NTSB of the last few minutes of the flight, based on data recovered from the flight recorder.

For other points of view, including some from pilots who have flown a Q400 series aircraft check out the following links:

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FedEx plane crash in Tokyo

Danny — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:15:48 +0000

As reported by Max Trescott (and I’m sure, news outlets as well) a FedEx MD-11 cargo jet crashed at Tokyo’s Narita airport yesterday. Both the pilot and co-pilot were killed during the fiery crash and it was all caught on video. Watch the video below for the dramatic last moments of the plane:

It seems the winds were high at the time though it is not yet known if they were a factor in this disaster. The main problem seems to be a hard bounce on the first touchdown after which the pilots attempted to recover and land again rather than go around. You can see the nose go down and touch the runway first before the fire engulfs it.

Being a student of the art of flying, I am all too familiar with bouncing on landing. Many times after issuing a clearance for landing and seeing me touch down, the CYHM controllers would hear me say “TDS is in the overshoot” (also known as “Going around”). A bounce happens when the rate of descent is high and the plane hits the ground hard enough to … well bounce and start gaining height while the airspeed is decreasing which can lead to a stall, loss of control and subsequent crash.

To recover from a bounce (with enough runway remaining) I was taught to add 200 – 300 RPM, keep parallel to the runway, let the airspeed increase then reduce power and return to landing configuration and land. Of course if there isn’t enough runway remaining, full power, flaps up to 10°, wait for best rate (V_y = 75 kts in a PA28-140), flaps up and climb. Basically take off.

On a normal, “good” landing I was able to slow down and safely turn off the runway in approximately 600 ft., the Cherokee doesn’t need that much runway. With Hamilton’s 6,000’ and 10,000’ long runways I had more than enough room to recover and attempt another landing. I rarely did though. This may be attributed to my being “green” but if it didn’t feel right, I wasn’t going to try it again. Granted, recovering from a botched approach/landing is a skill I needed to work on but (obviously) I had enough trouble with landings as it was. I’d say that 1 out of 4 of my solo landings resulted in an overshoot.

Obviously my experience cannot be applied to the late pilots of the MD-11 above, who had thousands of hours under their belt. Yet I can’t help but wonder if a go around was initiated. We’ll have to wait and see what the investigation finds.

UPDATE: An image of the runway after the crash via Flight Image of the Day

UPDATE 2: Another, longer video of the crash from multiple angles. You can see the plane bank left after the nose gear touches down. Via A. Kabir’s Journal. Truly a horrific crash.

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Hudson landing animation

Danny — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 09:00:25 +0000

Here’s an animation of the Hudson river landing back in January.

Via Cockpit Conversation

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US Airways 1549 transcript and voice recording

Danny — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:55:50 +0000

The transcript and voice recording from the January 15th crash of US Airways 1549 have been released by the FAA.

Check out the transcript here and the voice recording here. Probably the best thing to do is read along as you listen to the recording.

[Via Unusual Attitude]

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Gone Airbus fishing

Danny — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:00:05 +0000

Another video relating to the US Airways flight 1549 crash in the Hudson river. This time it’s a time lapse of its removal from the icy river:

With this video I will no longer post just media related to this accident.
[Found via The Flying Penguin]

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Video of US Airways 1549 crash

Danny — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:43:01 +0000

Through the power of YouTube! here is a short, annotated clip showing the crash of US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson river on January 15th.

Still amazing that there were no fatalities. Hats off to the pilot!