Tough Bird

[Ludwig]

A friend of mine sent me the link to the article about the mid-air between the Cirrus and the Sa-226 which I bet you have all seen by now. He said that this was previously an old Berry Aviation bird and previous to that was an old Martinaire bird. I flew every 226/227 that we had back then... close to 20 of them and had 4,000+ hours in the type. I loved the airplane because it always brought me home including deadstick into Dallas Love field. The funny thing that first struck me when I saw the picture was he got him right in the cargo door which was something of an engineering feat for the day to have a door that large on a plane that small. The infamous "click-clack" latching mechanism enabled to the door to become part of the structure of the aircraft. Secondly, this airframe has a "bending moment" which must be computed when loading the aircraft and determining the CG and MAC.  I can SEE the bending moment in this picture.  It will be interesting to learn more about this because the pilot reported that he had lost the right engine and was continuing on to land. I guess he was low enough without any cabin pressure that he didn't notice the change and the damn thing is so loud you probably would not hear the air noise... but I bet the sunshine coming in through the roof was a shocker....

Great airplane that a lot of pilots said a ton of @#$ comments about and how much they hated it and couldn't wait to get on the MD-80 for Delta.  I flew them both and the only reason the MD-80 was better liked was the paycheck. Turboprops are WAY safer than jets in a lot of areas. Good ol airplane, I don't think they can patch this one back together but you never know. I will say this... good thing the primary control cables are under the deck......

 

 

[Lipfert]

Unreal that stayed together.

[Klaiber]

Wow, that's crazy.  So glad there were no injuries.

[IRFC Hawkeye]

Great post, thanks! 

[Kliegmann]

When the Cirrus hit him, he reported that he thought he had an right engine failure.  Didn't know he'd been involved in a midair until after he was on the ground.  The Cirrus deployed the chute and landed safely.  The pics of the cirrus appear as the impact had broken the tail of the aircraft.

[Vonrd]

Unless it's a really old Cirrus it would have a Garmin with TCAS and I'm pretty sure that the Metro would have TCAS as well. Why did neither of them see the other acft. on the fish finder? Also, I would think that they were both under ATC control. Pretty sure that some heads might roll. Just goes to show that even with all the "modern" gizmos shit still happens. 

I'm amazed and impressed that the Metro held together but I still don't want to work on one...  

[Ludwig]

3 hours ago, Vonrd said:

Unless it's a really old Cirrus it would have a Garmin with TCAS and I'm pretty sure that the Metro would have TCAS as well. Why did neither of them see the other acft. on the fish finder? Also, I would think that they were both under ATC control. Pretty sure that some heads might roll. Just goes to show that even with all the "modern" gizmos shit still happens. 

I'm amazed and impressed that the Metro held together but I still don't want to work on one...  

TCAS and TCAS 2 are inhibited below 1000 AGL and typically in parallel runway ops which this was. Otherwise you would have that thing squawking the whole time you were in the pattern.  From what I saw initially the Cirrus was cleared to land on the right and the Sa-226 on the left and the Cirrus lost SA and blew through the centerline of 18R striking the Sa-226 on the right side causing the plane to lurch to the right giving the pilot the indication that the right engine had failed. Once it stabilized in a few seconds he may have realized what was going on, but if the drag from the hole was significant enough he may have still felt that it was caused by asymmetrical thrust.  I bet when he finally turned around and saw daylight that was a difficult thing to understand. 

If you look at the pic...  notice the chunk taken out of the vertical stab...  1/1000th of a second later and the left wing hit the vertical stab enough to remove it. NO more happy ending. 

[Britchot]

The Sr-22 deployed it's chute, though, from 1,000', how effective would that have been?

[Vonrd]

"The official minimum deployment height for Cirrus parachutes is 400 feet agl in level flight or 920 feet in a spin, but factors such as speed affect the altitude required"

[Ludwig]

You can deploy the parachute at lower altitudes but the results are not as good.  

[Vonrd]

I was always terrified of accidentally deploying at ground level inside the hangar  

[Ludwig]

We had that happen at Reese AFB when I was a T-38 instructor there. The tech was working in the cockpit and the seat was armed and it went off and put him through the ceiling of the hangar. It really freaked out a lot of young guys. 

[Britchot]

That freaked me out, now.

[Vonrd]

I used to work on an L-39 with hot seats (Russian). I had to go through training by the main guy who imported them into the US. It was relatively simple to remove the seats but still stressful. I was more freaked about the canopy blow system which is essentially 4 rods (daggers  ) in the canopy rails with explosive charges below them to drive them up and thus force the canopy up and off. They can't be removed easily and you have to make damn sure that the safety pin is in. Always had thoughts of it going off while I'm leaning in to the cockpit with my chest resting on the canopy rail. Of course, it never happened since I am able to type this.