Correlation?

[airdvr 210]

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[JohnMitchell 16]

Sucks. Anyone know the story?

[pchapman 279]

The 2 incidents were a few years apart.

I was last out of the Caravan when it stalled in 2009, with floaters outside on jump run. The only time I recall it happening. Pilot recovered just fine. Funny getting out last on something like a 15 way and flying horizontally across to the building formation in the distance instead of having to dive far down! (The formation didn't quite build but surprisingly we all tried.) The pilot is a good guy, flies cargo 747's now, but wasn't really experienced with big way exits at the time. I can't recall if we jumpers changed anything with exits afterwards, although it is possible we eased off a bit on how many people went aft. Nobody got really hurt. Floaters didn't hit the tail or anything. I got to the door walking, but with hands out to prevent falling over in the unsteady, reduced G's. Video credit goes to Marc Downing. Fun times.

The other pic was a few years later, in 2013 [edit, typo fixed]. A different pilot this time. After dropping a load, he got low and slow and flat on his approach to land, and was a little behind the curve so to speak, to spool the engine up and climb. As I understand it, he thought he might mush into the trees before the runway threshold, but was still over farmland, so he dumped it into the field. [Edit: instead of a nice constant angle approach to the runway over the small forest at one end, he was doing more of a step approach, descending and then levelling out to cross low over the trees and then descending again to landing. That does allow for avoiding excess height when getting to the end of the runway, but is a less stabilized approach method.]

He was bruised and a bit bloodied but basically ok. No sign of mechanical failure in the investigation. The pilot stayed with the drop zone a while but has since left. The airframe was in one piece but everything major was bent or slightly broken when one looked closer. The aircraft was scrapped as far as I know.

The dropzone, Skydive Toronto, was without a turbine for a year and we were back to 4 widebody 260 hp 182's. I was still getting 10 working jumps a day on good summer weekends but it was harder on the knees. DZO found a new Caravan for this season, brought it in all the way from Greece.

[rjblake 1]

JohnMitchell

Sucks. Anyone know the story?

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20130608-1
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/canada/archives/2013/06/20130609-165411.html

Apparently engine lost power coming in to land - pilot sustain serious injuries, no fatalities

[pchapman 279]

rjblake

Apparently engine lost power

Which seemed reasonable for the DZ to say to the media right after the accident. Some of us heard the real story later from the DZO's. If one as a pilot hits the throttle or power lever too late, one's first reaction to the accident might also be that the engine didn't respond properly, and not as one expected. So a pilot could honestly report something that later on further reflection turns out not to be the case.

(That said, I can't guarantee that the Transportation Safety Board was correct in not finding any engine problem, in whatever level of investigation it found appropriate for this accident)