Cessna Twin Explosion and Crash Yesterday

[birdguy 3,943]

For a while after I lost my FAA medical about once a quarter I'd go to the local FBO and rent an airplane and an instructor.  She would sit in the right hand seat and I'd do the flying just to keep somewhat current.  She was there for security.  It would let me get up into the sky four time a year.  But then it got too expensive.

Noel

 

[z06z33 763]

From the sounds the it seems like they lost control in IMC,over G’d. Which would explain the burning wreckage coming out of the cloud deck

[JRBarrett 3,070]

2 hours ago, eslader said:

Not in the way most people think of flammability. You can drop a lit match into a bucket of regular 87 octane pump gas and the gas will just extinguish the match. Avgas is a little less flammable than that, at 100 octane. Something needs to be 250+ degrees F before gasoline will ignite by itself.

Fuel vapors can be problematic in the right circumstances (such as those in the cylinder - you have to atomize fuel in the cylinder and then hit it with a big spark before it will flash over), so if you have a poorly-insulated plug wire that's sparking to the cylinder head, *and* you have a fuel leak that's releasing vapors near the spark then you can potentially have a problem. But if the vapors are being blown away from an errant ignition source by the 100+mph apparent wind over the plane, that wouldn't be a biggie either.

 

The maintenance hangar of an FBO I worked at in the early 1990s burned to the ground because an aircraft owner had carelessly drained about 3 gallons of 100LL AVGAS into a plastic bucket on a dry winter day. The bucket was just sitting on the floor under the wing when the vapors spontaneously ignited from what was most likely a small static spark. The hangar, four aircraft, and many aircraft logbooks stored in an office were lost within minutes. No injuries thankfully.

The flashpoint of Avgas is negative 43C, which means it vaporizes readily at normal room temperature. The auto ignition temperature is close to 250 C, but it takes only a very small ignition source to set it off.

I would agree that you could drop a lit match into a bucket of Jet-A, and it would only put the match out - but if you try that with a bucket of 100 or 87 octane Avgas, (or auto gas for that matter), you will have an instant conflagration (unless you happen to be in an inert gas atmosphere, or at the North Pole in the middle of winter). 

[eslader 1,782]

Yeah, that's essentially what I said. The liquid won't burn. But the gasoline will vaporize at room temperature and the vapor above the liquid gasoline can ignite.

But as I also said, if you're constantly blowing that fuel vapor away with a >100mph wind, it gets a lot less dangerous. Not to say that it definitely didn't explode due to a fuel leak, but looking at the wreckage, I'm leaning more toward the people who suspect he ripped the wings off in a high-G pullout.

 

All that aside, an interesting new development: CNN is now reporting that the dead pilot had a fake Chicago police badge on him at the time of the crash. That's... Odd.

 

Edited February 6, 2019 by eslader

[n4gix 4,947]

14 hours ago, eslader said:

All that aside, an interesting new development: CNN is now reporting that the dead pilot had a fake Chicago police badge on him at the time of the crash. That's... Odd.

Was it fake? Or just a mistaken claim by the Orange County Sheriff's office? There are more than thirty separate jurisdictions in the Chicagoland area.

[eslader 1,782]

Great question. One of the problems with the modern media cycle is that news managers refuse to allow time for actually checking facts before rushing to air with them, and so for the first several days after any incident, bad information gets out. I suspect it'll be a few more days before we can start, sort of, relying on what we're told here.

About all I'm sure of right now is that it was an airplane. 😉

 

[n4gix 4,947]

...and ground! Let's not forget the ground...

[BlueStar 323]

There are a million things that could have caused this accident.  No one knows what caused the accident and those who think they do are just speculating.  It will take the NTSB at least a year to determine the cause and issue a report.  

Grace and Peace, 

Edited February 6, 2019 by Bluestar
typo

[Adrian123 1,015]

1 hour ago, eslader said:

One of the problems with the modern media cycle is that news managers refuse to allow time for actually checking facts before rushing to air with them, and so for the first several days after any incident, bad information gets out. I suspect it'll be a few more days before we can start, sort of, relying on what we're told here.

Just like here?

[eslader 1,782]

"Here" is just a bunch of people yakking. It's not expected that we live up to journalistic standards on internet talk forums.

 

[Adrian123 1,015]

1 minute ago, eslader said:

"Here" is just a bunch of people yakking. It's not expected that we live up to journalistic standards on internet talk forums.

 

I see no difference. All speculation.

 

[eslader 1,782]

The difference is that the news media should be living up to journalistic standards. Comparing journalism to an internet discussion forum is like comparing a doctor to a kid with a bandaid. One has much higher standards they are expected to uphold than the other.

[fppilot 4,360]

2 hours ago, eslader said:

live up to journalistic standards

What journalists even do that any more?

 

[BlueStar 323]

12 minutes ago, John_Cillis said:

without the expense of owning, annual-ling and hangaring an airplane.

Don't forget about the annual recurrent training. 🙂

Grace and Peace, 

[John_Cillis 2,406]

15 minutes ago, Bluestar said:

Don't forget about the annual recurrent training. 🙂

Grace and Peace, 

Yes, thanks much.  Just logged in and verified my Airman Certificate is still valid with no expiration, but I need to order a new copy as my old one was not laminated and you know what happens to paper over time.  I obtained the cert number just now, and the issuance date was back in 2006 when I went to an airshow and an instructor (who sadly lost his Challenger in an engine out accident--it was a two stroke but he said it was some type of electrical failure). 

His name is Jim Blumer, flew out of Lake Pleasant airport and I met him at an airshow where I was taking flight instruction, Falcon Field.  This is his profile on LinkedIn, (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-blumer-2994bb47/) great man to talk to, very easygoing pilot with no ego, just a lot to share about flying and he would give you the shirt off his back, which after all when we solo, that is what we give, lol... 

I soloed in Trikes, which if I had my wishes that is what I would own due to ease of storage, just talk a pilot with a hangar into subleasing a small piece of space, which many will do at a nominal charge, as they often have many trike pilots sharing space with their fixed wing aircraft, since a trike taken out of a hangar and assembled outside will not cause the dreaded "hangar rash".

John