Thoughts on this crash from a year ago. Help please.
Posted by No-Motor-8732@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 7 comments
Hi, about a year ago this plane crash happened at SkyDive Cross Keys in New Jersey. All passengers aboard survived. Some had some serious injuries though. I was hoping to get the insights of anyone who knows how to pilot or aviation, what could have been the outcomes of this crash? Or any other thoughts on how it could have been better/worse handled by the pilot(s), crew, passengers etc.
*reason I am asking, is I know some of the people on board and they are having a hard time accepting the decisions that were made. I do not know anything about flying but I feel like the fact that everyone survived, is a miracle even though some of the injuries have been life altering.
I’m hoping, if the comments are positive, it will help the person cope. And if the comments are negative, I’ll stop encouraging the wrong belief. I’m not necessarily looking for positive or negative, just true thoughts on it. Thank you in advance. Aviation preliminary report in link.
Aerobaticdoc@reddit
We like to say that any landing that you can walk away from is a good landing.
The retrospectoscope for these is always 20/20 and you can always go back and say “could’ve circled a bit more” or “could have judged the altitude better” or “this mechanic could have looked at this part earlier” and that’s why the NTSB will do all they can to figure out what to learn from it.
But the truth of the matter is that the headline could have EASILY said that everyone on board was killed because he tried to bleed off too much speed and stalled on final. The pilot did the best he could given the circumstances he was in (which were brutal, a hot day on a heavy plane at low altitude) and got people on the ground without any deaths.
rotardy@reddit
There’s no basis for a law suit. Just a tragic accident.
No-Motor-8732@reddit (OP)
Oh no, I’m sorry if my post came off that way. That’s not what I was intending at all. But yes I do agree, a tragic accident. Life changing and just trying to help someone mentally move ahead of it.
Obvious_Parsley3238@reddit
You can see the flight path here - it cuts out before the attempted landing unfortunately. It's clear that they were far too high for a landing, circled to bleed altitude, but misjudged and remained too high, leading to a runway excursion.
The plane lost power at 3000 feet, which gave them very little margin, and it was only about 2 minutes between engine failure and landing. Such an error is understandable under the circumstances.
No-Motor-8732@reddit (OP)
Thank you!!! I haven’t seen the flight path before. I appreciate the insight. And thank you for the last sentence. It is very helpful :)
Low-Tomatillo6262@reddit
It looks like the engine failed at an altitude that’s plenty high to glide back to the airport but probably too low to jump from. The pilots misjudged their glide and landed too fast and too far down the runway to stop, and the plane went off the end of the runway. That’s just what the preliminary report points to, I could be wrong.
No-Motor-8732@reddit (OP)
Thank you so much for commenting, I appreciate it a lot. I know it’s a lot of hypotheticals but do you think the outcome could have been better had they not misjudged the glide? Is that something that could have been corrected during the engine failure?