Small plane crash caught on video from inside cockpit
 

The video does content graphic material.

pilots an idiot for driving on these conditions..

holy shit that one dude got fucked up while the other dude looked like he only got a couple scratches

Top Comment: (already 10 likes)

"No screaming of profanity. What a bunch of gentlemen."

:lol

^
I would have been screaming profanities for sure LOL

Should've rejected takeoff and or turned around when he noticed he couldn't climb.

"clear, 80-degree day" - you're right, terrible driving(??) conditions. :fulloffuck:

Hot, high density altitude, overloaded and an underpowered aircraft are pretty terrible conditions.

Nothing to do with the weather conditions. That plane couldn't handle its task. Perhaps conditions were wrong choice of words, but yeah, taking off in that plane was a bad fucking idea, and the pilot should have known that.

Did not know we had so many Ex- RAF fighter pilots here.


That or you just read the youtube comments and became an expert on flying.

wow that was scary
one dude got pretty f'd up

I think that was the point the article was making with that bit - noting that weather wasn't a factor. My statement was in relation to Verdasco calling this "terrible conditions" - come on, 80F degrees isn't even that hot (just under 27C).

Edit: come to think of it though, I guess "driving" IS the right word - he certainly wasn't flying anywhere.

Bruce Meadows airport is at an elevation of 6,370 feet above sea level. Simple calculations that take temperature and barometric pressure into account yield a density altitude of roughly 3,000 feet higher than the field's actual elevation. The airplane was effectively taking off from a height of 9,300 feet.

Density altitude is significant for aircraft performance because thinner air means 1. less air for the engine to produce power; 2. less air for the propeller to produce thrust; and 3. less air for the wings to produce lift.
The higher your density altitude, the lower your airplane's performance. It will climb slower and accelerate slower.
Aircraft performance statistics, unless otherwise noted, are usually taken to be figures for an ideal day at sea level.

The Stinson 108-3 (very neat plane) is quoted to have a maximum rate of climb of 850 feet per minute (at sea level) and has a service ceiling of 16,500 feet. The service ceiling is defined as the density altitude at which an aircraft is unable to sustain a climb exceeding a rate of 100 feet per minute. With what we know, it seems as if the airplane reached that point well below its service ceiling.

There are lots of other factors in play here including the takeoff weight, the weight and balance configuration (center of gravity location), wind, and the airplane's mechanical state. The engine may very well have not been producing maximum power thus making the climb impossible in the given conditions.

Had I been in the pilot's seat, I'd have put the airplane right back down on the ground when I didn't get the performance I would expect to get in the conditions. Definitely at the one-minute mark in the video.

I'm no crash investigator, but I'm pretty damn confident in saying that this was poor pilot decision making. You can blame the airplane and you can blame the weather, but at the end of the day it was the pilot who continued with the flight and crashed instead of ending it when it was safe.

NTSB preliminary report, if anyone is interested. http://dms.ntsb.gov/aviation/Acciden...2012120000.pdf