[dwizzy22]

is it just me or the aircraft seems surprisingly intact

[emrosscar]

Originally Posted by dwizzy22 ↗

is it just me or the aircraft seems surprisingly intact

Right!?!?

[William May]

Originally Posted by dwizzy22 ↗

is it just me or the aircraft seems surprisingly intact

Yes, it almost looked to me like it could have been a fully survivable crash. I was expecting smaller pieces and stuff spread out. This looks like something where they ran off the runway and wound up in the ditch, and everyone walked away.
I wonder if the kid was screwing with the door, and it blew open on him?

[William May]

Just answered my own question, reading the NTSB report. The pilot basically lost control after the autopilot disengaged, and the aircraft oversped as it was descending, and when he pulled back on the controls, the high loads broke off both wings, the left in one place only, the right wing broke into three pieces (4 if you count the section that stayed attached to the aircraft) and the failure of the R/H wing opened up a section of the fuselage and the kid was sucked out. They didn't find his body until the next day. That must have been a very bad 5 minutes of terror for that family.

[Clubhouse]

We pilots tend to overestimate our abilities whether we know it or not, that is part of the pilot psyche, I think. From the newly minted CFI who thinks strapping into a jet fighter is no big deal to the young airline first officer who sees no difference between what he or she is doing for a living than the "old man" in the left seat. But for all of us, at some point we have to admit that the next step is "too much airplane."

I know a Pilatus PC-12 flight instructor who flew with the pilot at the controls of this airplane on the day it broke apart at altitude. He flew with the pilot a few months before the accident on a pre-buy inspection of another PC-12. He tells me this buyer was behind the airplane from the first moment they started it and never caught up. He told the pilot he should consider always flying with a qualified instructor until he gained more experience. Needless to say, that deal fell through. But the pilot eventually bought a PC-12 and ignored the advice to hire a qualified instructor. The NTSB report not only gives a description of what happened, but also a good hypothesis about why.






https://code7700.com/case_study_pc-12_n950ka.htm

[ChristySD]

I remember when this happened. I was actually up that way with my kids watching a movie at Eagle Ridge Mall. Sad shit. On that note, I will say that I've seen some dumb shit from people parachuting from the airport right off from Hwy 60, coming into Lake Wales, right at Hwy 27. More than one preventable death/major bone-breaking accident.