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Thread: Sadly, Cirrus Accident Friday

  1. #41

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    Re: sheriff, last radar fix was descending 800 fpm, , 1600. No mayday call, so we dont know have much clue. A dark night, dont think any moon and they are over rocky ground, no safe landing place, the 4 land freeway was 10 miles south. So Control or not, unlikley to survive, except for the parachute. Im dont like some things in Cirrus like no center stick, spin problems, but the chute is like a lifeboat on the Titanic, its life 2nd chance to live, and has been proven many times. And in paragliders, ultralights, chutes have also saved people.
    Last edited by Bill Greenwood; 09-27-2017 at 06:46 PM.

  2. #42
    rwanttaja's Avatar
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    BTW, Cirrus' list of CAPS activations:

    https://www.cirruspilots.org/copa/sa...s-history.aspx

    Ron Wanttaja

  3. #43

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    The Cirrus site is members on;y. but I have been able to get enough info for an educated guess. There is an NTSB prelim report. Pilot about 150 hour private pilot, not ifr rated. 2007 SR 22 with 10-550N. A vfr flight plan was filed and using flight following. The track was over Kremling airport and vor RLG, so far so good, then past Eagle airport and over the 4 lane freeway. All fine except a litlle low at 11,000 ff,. Then for some reason he left the highway and turned northwest, back over higher terrain, and went to 12,000 ft., for 12 miles then turned SW and descended. A guess is that he was trying to get under clouds, May have gotten in a narrow area surrounded by terrian and impact before he had time to pull chute handle. The chute was found intact outside the debis and had not been fired. So it looks like in trying to dodge imic and stay vfr he got too low in high terrain 14,500 would have skimed over that area, 16.000 would have cleared easily. The option would have been to land at Eagle, spend the night or even look at the WSI weather computer there and see if an hour delay might have given clear skies. Somtimes it is just hard to stop when you are on a vacation trip and looking forward to getting somewhere. They were less than an hour to Moab.
    P S A credit card if a vital safety item, whenever not safe to continue, use it for a hotel, if the hotel has a pool kids are happy and SAFE.
    Last edited by Bill Greenwood; 09-28-2017 at 02:46 PM.

  4. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Greenwood View Post
    Im dont like some things in Cirrus like no center stick...
    I flew a Cirrus for an hour from the left seat with a Cirrus sales rep in the right. Being left handed and use to holding a standard control yoke with my left hand, I found the left side situated controller very comfortable and easier to transition to than I thought it would take. With right hand on the throttle I was perfectly at home.

  5. #45

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    Yeah, the wx was bad....200 & 1/2. And it was night. Not a good recipe for success. What makes me sad is the passengers trusted their lives to the pilot with the expectation he would make good decisions regarding their well being. That did not happen.

  6. #46

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    the expert that helped me find the report asked to be considerate of the pilot.. A relative could read this and that family has suffered as much as one can and more than anyone should. Maybe the decisions he made because he was a new pilot and didnt have all the info. We dont know what weather briefing he had, maybe a full one from FSS since he filed a flight plan. We dont know if he had any weather display map or instrument in the cockpit, or if he got any updates to weather enroute, or pireps.. its said he'd taken the Colo Ass mt flying course, and was working on instrument rating, As for 200 and 1/2, where is that figure from, there is no weather report at the accident site I dont think, nearest one he passed was Eagle and I dont think it was that bad, but there had been rain and thunderstorms at Rifle.
    Last edited by Bill Greenwood; 09-29-2017 at 10:04 AM.

  7. #47

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    Biil, the NTSB website, which is public access, list both a preliminary report and synopsis. I did not have any trouble finding it.

    Observation at Sunrise, CO, 16 miles SW was reported 24011G23 1/2FG OVC 002 02/01 3024. In addition, report states Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident, and visual flight rules (VFR) flight plan had been filed

  8. #48

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    I"ve never heard of Sunrise, there is Sunlight ski area which is a small mountain about 5 miles southwest of Glenwood Springs summit about 10,000. That report, if it came from the top of ski area could have been low, also could have been a local ts. The report that Ive been able to find was at Eagle at 10 pm ceiling 5500 bkn, vis 10 miles. The accident site was north of interstate 70 over high terrain, and if you add Ege elevation of 6500 to 5500 you get cloud base of 12.000 which was about where he went. It could have been 200 if the site was at 11,800. And yes, I agree he filed the flight plan, as I said in my post. I read the same NTSB report, ididnt have any trouble finding it either, but is was pointed out to me by an investigator when it came out.
    Last edited by Bill Greenwood; 09-29-2017 at 11:48 AM.

  9. #49

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    It is Sunlight that was reporting 200 & 1/2. Sunrise was me mistyping

  10. #50
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    Sunlight is an AWOS, part of the Colorado mountain AWOS system operated by the Colorado DOT. Its tower is at 10,697’ MSL.

    Good guess that the pilot took much of his training in the Cirrus, as the news has reported that he’d had the airplane for about 1 1/2 years but only had his certificate for 6 months. In any event, he was a neophyte pilot. Being nice, it’s easy to say that because of his inexperience, he didn’t know what he didn’t know. Most of us at 150 hours were pretty ignorant, too. Yet it’s awfully hard to ignore that he attended the Colorado Pilots mountain flying course, where he had to have heard multiple times, “don’t fly in the mountains at night.” So why?

    Another guess: perhaps the plan had been to get going earlier, so that snaking through the rocks and dodging any clouds would have been possible. But as often happens, getting a family moving doesn’t always happen as planned. Neophyte pilots seldom have a Plan B other than “don’t go”. So it’s unlikely that he even considered a safer night route, which would be via Laramie, Medicine Bow, Cherokee, direct Moab, a route that at worst would have taken 45-50 minutes longer at Cirrus speeds.

    It is sad. Their funerals were yesterday. It didn’t have to happen.

    Cary
    "I have slipped the surly bonds of earth...,
    put out my hand and touched the face of God." J.G. Magee

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