Canadian fatal wingwalk stunt.

[Fielder 3,673]

He practiced for months, so should have known about how far out on the wing was ok to go.

"However, as Jon got further out onto the wing of the plane, it caused the small Cessna to go into a downward spiral..."

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-rapper-dies-after-falling-off-airplane-wing-in-failed-stunt

Edited October 24, 2018 by Fielder

[scianoir 610]

A stunt sadly gone wrong and RIP to the individual involved. The article however doesn’t give any indication of the exact type of aircraft involved and I cannot think of any sort of ‘small Cessna’ that would allow anyone to easily climb out onto a wing, other than the 188 Agwagon and as far as I know that is a single seater. Does anyone have any further information on this?

Bill

[Chock 17,769]

4 hours ago, scianoir said:

A stunt sadly gone wrong and RIP to the individual involved. The article however doesn’t give any indication of the exact type of aircraft involved and I cannot think of any sort of ‘small Cessna’ that would allow anyone to easily climb out onto a wing, other than the 188 Agwagon and as far as I know that is a single seater. Does anyone have any further information on this?

Bill

Just a guess, but it could be a Cessna 152 flying inverted with the doors off. Some 152s were stressed for aerobatics to +6/-3 G and had removable skydiver doors (A152 and FA152 Aerobat models). You can usually tell one of these from its chequered paint job. If you flew one of those inverted (which it is cleared to do), you you certainly walk on its wing and use the strut for a grip.

[scianoir 610]

15 minutes ago, Chock said:

Just a guess, but it could be a Cessna 152 flying inverted with the doors off. Some 152s were stressed for aerobatics to +6/-3 G and had removable skydiver doors (A152 and FA152 Aerobat models). You can usually tell one of these from its chequered paint job. If you flew one of those inverted (which it is cleared to do), you you certainly walk on its wing and use the strut for a grip.

Many years ago in my real world flying days I did a little aerobatic training in the Aerobat but I have to say I never even contemplated the idea of the FA152 being used inverted for wing walking!!! I guess with an aircraft as light as a 152 the weight of someone on the wing could cause a wing to drop and the ailerons may not be powerful enough to overcome that which would explain the fact that the aircraft entered a spiral dive. Unfortunately my attempts at aerobatic training did not last very long due to a tendency to feeling motion sickness particularly when the instructor was doing the flying although it was not too bad when I was flying the manoeuvers myself, I guess because I was better able to anticipate the forces and sensations.

Bill

[Chock 17,769]

Yup, not saying it's a good idea, but if I was going to suggest a suitable Cessna in which to try that kind of thing, the A152 would be the one I'd select out of the lot of them, since it is small, relatively light and easy to get out of a spin. It probably wouldn't be too out of balance with someone near the door, although really, the facility to wear a 'chute in the A152, where you can remove the seat cushions to do so, was I think more about being able to bail out if something went awry when doing aeros as opposed to turning it into some kind of super stunt aeroplane. After all, the fact that it was cleared for aeros was about the G loads it is certified for, and doesn't suddenly turn it into a Spitfire in terms of control or power.

This is of course all speculation because we don't even know if it was an A152 they were using; you know what news places are like, they're inclined to identify every small GA aeroplane as a 'Cessna'. Presumably there is video footage of the incident, since as far as I'm aware, the stunt was supposedly intended for some kind of rap music video although these days, why you couldn't CGI it instead is beyond me. I mean, did this guy really think all those movie stars actually do all those mad on-screen stunts for real?

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I was being flown by a friend in a 182 once, and had a friend along with me, when the pilot "friend" suddenly says "here we go" and did a barrel roll over the city of Napa.  Being used to roller coasters I was not phased but my other friend was not amused by the stunt, it made him very sick and we put down at Schellville before the short hop back to Napa.  A dangerous and illegal stunt in a 182, we never flew with him again.  I am sure he pulled it off well, but a young pilot showing off that way is not a good one, and he did not own the plane, he was doing a check on it after performing some work for his client.

John

[Paraffin 2,197]

Over on pprune someone is saying it was a Cessna 180 where he was planning to parachute after holding onto the strut, and got too far out on the strut or was grabbing the actual wing edge? Plane lost enough altitude after being thrown out of balance that he didn't have time to open his chute after letting go. And then maybe someone in the media got carried away with the "wing walking" description.

Makes more sense than an inverted stunt anyway.

[MarkW 1,491]

Deleted - I posted something really awful....but also funny.  On second thoughts I have deleted it.

Edited October 24, 2018 by MarkW

[Chock 17,769]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

Over on pprune someone is saying it was a Cessna 180 where he was planning to parachute after holding onto the strut, and got too far out on the strut or was grabbing the actual wing edge? Plane lost enough altitude after being thrown out of balance that he didn't have time to open his chute after letting go. And then maybe someone in the media got carried away with the "wing walking" description.

Makes more sense than an inverted stunt anyway.

Well if that's the case then it would seem to be a very badly planned escapade. Any sort of fancy stuff I've ever done in an aeroplane had me running the H.A.S.S.L.E. check prior to doing them, (Height, Airframe, Straps, Security, Lookout, Eventualities). Two of these - Height and Eventualities - would have prevented this from ending the way it did, i.e. have enough height to do what you plan to do and consider what eventualities might occur that need to be planned for.

It's sad that someone has died, but frankly - and we say this all the time at work - you can't be blasé around aeroplanes, they are just waiting to bite you in the @ss if you aren't vigilant. Unfortunately it seems this is what has occurred.

[DavidP 1,410]

Sounds like a candidate for a Darwin Award.

[Chock 17,769]

11 hours ago, DavidP said:

Sounds like a candidate for a Darwin Award.

Have to say, that thought occurred to me too.

[FDEdev 955]

21 hours ago, Chock said:

...it could be a Cessna 152 flying inverted with the doors off. If you flew one of those inverted (which it is cleared to do), you you certainly walk on its wing and use the strut for a grip.

Neither the 150 nor the 152 are cleared for inverted flight since they don't have an inverted fuel and/or oil system.

Furthermore with the NACA 2412 a  150/152 wouldn't be capable of inverted level flight, let alone with someone on top of the inverted wing!

Edited October 25, 2018 by J35OE

[Chock 17,769]

On 10/25/2018 at 12:38 PM, J35OE said:

Neither the 150 nor the 152 are cleared for inverted flight since they don't have an inverted fuel and/or oil system.

Furthermore with the NACA 2412 a  150/152 wouldn't be capable of inverted level flight, let alone with someone on top of the inverted wing!

True of the standard 150 and 152, and I'm certainly not suggesting that it would be a good idea either, but I said the Cessna A152 Aerobat, not the standard 150/150. The A152 is indeed cleared for inverted flight since it has to be because it is cleared for several aerobatic maneuvers including various rolls, cuban eights, vertical reversements and immelmann turns, all of which have the aircraft being inverted during the maneuver, although in fairness, these maneuvers are either only inverted for very short periods, or will tend to keep 1G positive on for much of the time, at least they will if you do them right lol!

Pretty much any aerofoil will fly inverted providing you have the power to keep it at a suitable angle of attack to give it a temporary airflow profile suitable for generating lift whilst inverted. After all, even the crew of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 (an MD83 with a DSMA-433A aerofoil) had a go at trying to fly their crippled airliner upside down when the tailplane screw jack failed forcing its elevator into a down position, and that's hardly an aerofoil designed for doing economical inverted flight, but they would have known it at least could fly upside down. Sadly, the broken tailplane was too much of an issue for that flight to recover successfully.

But power would of course be the problem with an A152, not the aerofoil; most of them only differ from a standard 150/152 in terms of the airframe, not the engine, which is essentially the same as on a standard 150/152, i.e. the A152 has stronger wing spars, bigger and stronger wing struts and a bigger and stronger tailplane spar, but it's no more powerful than a standard Cessna. You could swap out the engine for a 130hp IO-240-A, which has a TCM fuel injector instead of the carburetor of the standard engine, but 130 horses is still not going to make it a powerhouse and you'd probably have to sort out the oil system too. Anyone who has ever flown some aeros in an A152 (which is good fun incidentally, lots of energy management required) will know that they tend to chuck oil out all over the inside of the cowling if you put any significant neg G on them, so it is true that the oil system on a standard one isn't designed for sustained neg G without modifications, but that said, there is even a Cessna Trophy competition class offered by the British Aerobatics Association, although admittedly there have been a few years where it wasn't even contested, which is hardly surprising when a Pitts S2 is cheaper to buy than a 152.

Anyway, this is all rather a moot point, since it apparently wasn't a 152 in the incident.

[FDEdev 955]

20 minutes ago, Chock said:

True of the standard 150 and 152, and I'm certainly not suggesting that it would be a good idea either, but I said the Cessna A152 Aerobat, not the standard 150/150. The A152 is indeed cleared for inverted flight since it has to be because it is cleared for several aerobatic maneuvers...

Again, no it's not. It looks you don't know what inverted flight actually means in this context. Every airplane has a positive and a negative g-limit, Aerobatic or not, but that's a different story.

Every Cessna 150/152 Aerobat version has the same text in e.g. the type certificate (and usually a placard in the cockpit):  INVERTED FLIGHT IS PROHIBITED.

 

Edited October 26, 2018 by J35OE

[tttocs 301]

I've actually had the pleasure of flying the 152 Aerobat (it's what I did my spin training in) and can confirm what J35OE is saying.  Aerobatic certification is very specific in terms of what maneuvers are and are not permitted.  In the case of the 150 and 152 Aerobat, NO negative G maneuvers are allowed (which of course includes inverted flight) due to the aforementioned lack of inverted fuel and oil systems.

It's a fun little plane capable of some cool stuff, but ya can't fly it inverted.  And, BTW, it's a hoot to do fully developed spins in and is very easy to recover.

Scott

Edited October 26, 2018 by tttocs