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A private aircraft crashed at Coeur d’Alene’s Atlas Elementary School on Friday, August 29, 2008. The crash will likely be investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board. The investigation may take weeks or months, but already speculators are talking about what caused it. |
If it had been a major crash, the NTSB would have sent a full Go-Team. Go-Team procedures are spelled out in its Aviation Investigation Manual and Appendices.
For readers who would like a bit more information about the physics of aircraft crashes and their investigations, read Beyond the Black Box: The Forensics of Airplane Crashes by George Bibel. It is available through the Kootenai-Shoshone Area Library System.
Until the investigation has been completed, the data analyzed, and the causes of the crash determined, the speculators will speculate. The rest of us will wait for the results.
(Note: The photo at the top of this post shows a flight data recorder required for commercial aircraft. Rarely do small private aircraft like the one that crashed Friday have either a flight data recorder or a cockpit voice recorder. Someday, but not yet.)
Good point Bill. Eyewitnesses can be notoriously wrong in what they “see.” It is really irresponsible for a reporter to ask an unknown entity a question that requires specific knowledge for an intelligent answer, and then print that response as “news.” The hysterical nonsense in the CDA Press blog about this is typical of what happens when a reporter plants an idea in the paper. In this case the notion that the pilot was doing aerobatics over a populated area. A practice specifically prohibited by the FAA and not engaged in by pilots with an IQ above room temperature. We have become, largely due to the media trying to scoop their competition, a scoiety that thinks we need instant answers to complex questions. Like you, I’ll await the results of the NTSB inquiry. In the meantime, God bless him and his family.
Comment by Will Penny — August 31, 2008 @ 4:47 am
Will Penny,
Your comment about becoming a society that thinks we need instant answers to complex questions was right on the mark.
One of my duties when assigned to the Los Angeles Field Office involved working closely with the local public safety bomb squads. Most of their calls that involved actual devices were of technical interest to me, but there was no direct connection to our agency’s jurisdictions. I always dreaded it a little when a local bomb squad supervisor would call and tell me his or her techs were headed out on a call that we might have some jurisdictional interest in. My discomfort came from knowing that the instant I told our protective intelligence squad supervisor about the call, he was going to want answers “right now,” almost before the bomb squad arrived on scene. I did my best not to harass the local techs who had their hands full doing their job safely, particularly if there was a detonation and they had to conduct a post-blast investigation. I knew they would call if they found anything at all that made it inevitable that another federal agency (us) would get involved. Unfortunately, we too had some people who demanded answers before they even knew what questions they should ask.
Comment by Bill — August 31, 2008 @ 7:02 am
I went out there right after it happened and it appeared to me that the plane hit the field first,then rolled a few hundred feet towards the School.It stopped right by the wall of the school and I didn’t really see any damage to the wall itself.The plane was rolled up into
a mangled mess of a ball.From what I seen,no way could the pilot have survived that crash.
Two things struck me as I took in the scene from the plane crash.(1)I don’t think the pilot was doing acrobatics in that area,he most likely was trying to get control of the supposed ‘experimental’plane.(2)
I think he may have purposely rolled the plane,to try and avoid hitting the wall of the school,knowing if he hit it head-on he would be killed.
Yet,he died anyway.
And why did he wait so long to try and land the aircraft,after it just barely cleared the Panhandle Health Center? He had an big field to try and land in.Was it inexperience?
Comment by kageman — August 31, 2008 @ 11:56 am
kageman,
I too went there. I believe you are right. I love flying. I am no expert but I believe he was trying to avoid buildings and people. The wind was out of the southwest. The landing patern would have been to his left. If he had a problem and turned left back to the north he naturally would have lost lift. IMHO, had he turned right he might have made it to one of the nearby fields. Either way, I think people had looked up to see the final dramatic turn toward the ground and assumed he was doing acrobatics. Again, I am no expert. This is just my take on it for what it is worth.
Comment by concerned citizen — August 31, 2008 @ 4:47 pm