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5xad0w OP t1_ja6f4w3 wrote

The flight was in the air for about 14 minutes and had reached an altitude of just over 19,000 when radar noticed the plane was in a descending right turn at a high rate of descent, Landsberg said.

Obviously no idea what happened, but sounds like they went into a dive that exceeded the airframes survivable speed.

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AnonymousShmuck t1_ja8b2pd wrote

Weren't there reports of extreme turbulence in the area?? I know there's a certain YouTuber out there talking about spatial disorientation but I think this is leaning more to the plane just falling out of the sky due to something failing mechanically. They found the tail horizontal stabilizer about 3/4 of a mile from the airplane along with part of the right wing.

Edit*

If you look at the flight data, he was flying straight and climbing before the right hand turn into the dive. It seemed to me that a mechanical issue might have caused loss of control which then caused additional breakage aka that right wing tip. There is a weird right turn left. Turn correction but at that point he starts climbing for quite a distance before the issue seems to happen. Therefore, leading me to believe that it wasn't necessarily spatial disorientation but mechanical failure. I'm no way educated to make this guess.

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MalabaristaEnFuego t1_ja900i4 wrote

Likely a mid air collision with an object, strong likelihood it was a large bird. I worked for a different medical aviation company and they had a similar type of wreck with a bird collision. Bird crashed through a windshield on the pilot's side killing the pilot or disabling him, and the whole thing crashed. There may be a news article somewhere to dig up. I can't remember exactly where it happened though, somewhere in the northern midwest of the US.

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galspanic t1_ja9mezl wrote

Likely? At 19,000 feet you’re not running many birds and during a winter storm you’ll see even fewer.

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AnonymousShmuck t1_ja9dwe4 wrote

It's possible a bird might have struck the tail horizontal stabilizer. That piece along with the tip of the right wing was missing from the wreckage (by 1/2-3/4 mile) implying that it came off prior to the aircraft hitting the ground.

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[deleted] t1_ja6g69y wrote

[deleted]

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5xad0w OP t1_ja6ieqe wrote

I'm hoping (relatively speaking) that it was catastrophic failure and not suicide.

The fact that radar showed it in a turn kind of makes me think it was mechanical. I'd assume with suicide you would just point the nose straight down or fly into a mountain.

Don't know what, if anything, was said over the radio but the turn may have even been started as an attempt to turn back when they realized something was wrong.

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Affectionate-Park-15 t1_ja6lchl wrote

Could have been icing on the wing. Pilot tried to correct unsuccessful. I used to fly as a medical crew in the PC12 and it’s a tough aircraft, but icing was always a concern.

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EmotionalSuportPenis t1_ja6zxck wrote

Icing should be pretty easily detectable in the PC-12, though, and I'm not sure Pilatus even sells any of them without ice control systems. Not to say it couldn't be a factor, but the pilots are trained and the planes are built to deal with it, and they tend to fly in icing conditions a lot.

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ilikemrrogers t1_jaee4gq wrote

I’m a former aviation meteorologist, and icing was my first thought. It would cause a nose-up AOA and eventual stall. Looking at the obs, there was a ceiling at 060 with light snow. Temps at the surface hovering around freezing. You can get a fast accumulation of clear ice in those conditions. You can also get induction freezing in the engines when they are revved up for climbing.

Combine a frozen engine, clear ice, and a sudden stall and spin, and it wouldn’t take much for something to break off.

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michal_hanu_la t1_ja6hqua wrote

Blancolirio has a hypothesis about going off autopilot (for which there are many possible reasons) and spatial disorientation (which happens a lot when one is hand-flying in extreme IMC).

Of course we're all waiting for the actual investigation.

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GeekFurious t1_ja74iw8 wrote

Interestingly enough, Mentour Pilot JUST had a video about an incident where the pilots thought they were on autopilot until they reached about 28,000 feet when the plane started to bank too much and the captain overreacted and forced the plane into an unrecoverable dive.

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WannaGetHighh t1_ja861vb wrote

That specific pilot had let his kid sit in the cockpit and play with the controls and then didn’t realize the auto pilot got turned off. Bit more ignorance than mistake imo

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GeekFurious t1_ja86ujg wrote

Different incident.

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WannaGetHighh t1_ja870ih wrote

Damn that’s a rough mistake to make

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GeekFurious t1_ja87jgo wrote

Yeah. But if you watch the whole video, this captain had a lot of issues with following the rules and handling incidents well.

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BeKind_BeTheChange t1_jaamuu2 wrote

How sad. If he would have just let the auto pilot take over they would have pulled out of it.

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GeekFurious t1_jabouil wrote

A lot of accidents in the past few decades happened because the captain skirted the rules and seemingly didn't think they needed to follow basic checklists.

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Juhuja t1_ja6w9r8 wrote

Blancolirio on youtube has a video about this. He'll also give timely updates as soon as new information surfaces.

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Beard_o_Bees t1_ja8dos9 wrote

Yup. When it comes to aircraft accidents, he's a great resource on getting factual information and analysis.

I've learned a lot about general aviation from watching his channel.

Edit: For those that aren't familiar with 'Blancolirio' (Juan Browne): https://www.youtube.com/@blancolirio

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rTpure t1_ja8ooyi wrote

A news article about a plane crash that doesn't even state the type of aircraft that crashed...

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1NightWolf t1_jac3gg4 wrote

Would the passengers have time to realize what happened? I can’t imagine being in a plane that breaks apart. Would they have been conscious the whole time?

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