CJ-6 loss 3 Jan 09

[DB2]

To minimize the speculation here, on the Yak forum you can read a detailed post from one of the pilots who was in the formation and witnessed the entire event. As always, something can be learned. You can read the post at the following link:

http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.p ... 8aeb4e8f2a

[Taylor Stevenson]

I would take what was said in the interview with a grain of salt... we never know what happened this early and all speculation does is fuel the flame of litigation...

[RickH]

The description of this accident sounds exactly like the T-6 fatal accident that happened at the Beaumont Airshow in the early 90s.

Lead turns base , when he turns final he has a crosswind pushing him and he keeps pulling so as not to overshoot. Aircraft snaps with no room to recover.

My condolences to the families. What a terrible way to start the New Year.

[Taylor Stevenson]

Except Rick, If you are talking about the Hank Ketchum crash in OUR AT-6 at Beaumont in 1995, you are completely incorrect. All evidence, proven in court, shows that the passenger was to fault NOT THE PILOT. Hank broke for final, the passenger lifted his foot and accidently placed it between the stick attachment and the foot tray (the autopsy showed the perfect impression of a castle nut cut into the inside of the passengers shoe and a slice where the foot tray was digging into the outside of his shoe). Therefore when Hank went to right the a/c, it wouldn't due to the man’s size 13 foot. Hank tried all he could to force the plane in level (hints the man’s shattered foot), but could not. At the last second the man yanked his foot out of the shoe (during the autopsy the man had cuts all over his foot, but the shoe was fine, hints the shoe was off his foot at point of impact). A witness said at the last moment the aircraft leveled and powered up, but it was too late and, in my opinion, the world’s BEST T-6 pilot was lost.

THIS is the kind of speculation and false opinions that do NOT need to be spread. Rick, you are considered by all attorneys to be an expert in aviation because you fly these a/c. Heck attorneys would try to make an expert out of a fuel boy who once, when he was 7, touched a T-6 if his opinion of the crash was to the benefit of the client.

On this forum we are ALL CONSIDERED EXPERTS in a court of law. Don't think this forum is confidential. All things said about this and any incident can fuel litigation as it did in our T-6 crash. Us "EXPERTS" said Hank overcorrected and "Honked it in", stalled and killed all involved. In actuality, those who said that just gave the other side evidence against us, which was proven wrong.

PLEASE WATCH WHAT YOU MAY SAY. If this was you, how would you feel if your family had to fight erroneous speculation from armchair quarterbacks? Though many of you are highly respected and knowledgeable in the Warbird community we don't have to be giving ammunition to the plaintiffs’ attorneys that may be incorrect. I am passionate about this because I have seen what false speculation can do to the victims’ families. Please in any incident, refrain from making any comments until the statute of limitations or the court case is over.

Just one comment. NTSB inspected our a/c and proclaimed the rear stick was in place at the time of crash, when in reality, what they were looking at was the rear stick still contained in a broken storage receptacle. Remember, these inspectors, in many cases, have never seen a plane of this type before.

Hey we're all friends, and when someone has an accident let's act like friends and keep our mouths shut.

Rant over...

[Randy Haskin]

We were echelon left for a right break landing south. Forrest signaled 4 second break. He looked over to us smiled and broke. He may have descended a little in the break. As I rolled wings level I remember thinking he was a little tight and a little low. There was an overshooting crosswind. Lead was just off the perch as I began my landing checklist. I looked up just as his aircraft struck the ground nearly vertical. It hit very hard.

If this is what happened here (it appears to have happened here), then it will not the first time an "overshooting final turn stall" has occurred....surely not the last.

This is something that was absolutely mercilessly hammered home to me as both a T-37 and T-38 student -- overbanking or increasing back pressure to "save" an overshot final WILL result in a stall. This is a stall that occurs in a regime of flight (low to the ground, steep bank angle, high sink rate) in which it will probably be impossible to recover from OR eject from.

There have been numerous USAF training fatalities over the years attributed to final turn overshoots and the failure to simply roll out and go around. There are two sobering books the USAF publishes called "The Road To Wings" (AETC Handbook 11-209 and 11-210, if you want to find them on the internet) which detail all of the fatal training accidents for the T-37 and T-38 respectively. I haven't counted how many final turn accidents there are compared to the total, but there are sure a lot of them.

[EDowning]

Randy Haskin wrote:

If this is what happened here (it appears to have happened here), then it will not the first time an "overshooting final turn stall" has occurred....surely not the last.

This is something that was absolutely mercilessly hammered home to me as both a T-37 and T-38 student -- overbanking or increasing back pressure to "save" an overshot final WILL result in a stall. This is a stall that occurs in a regime of flight (low to the ground, steep bank angle, high sink rate) in which it will probably be impossible to recover from OR eject from.

There have been numerous USAF training fatalities over the years attributed to final turn overshoots and the failure to simply roll out and go around. There are two sobering books the USAF publishes called "The Road To Wings" (AETC Handbook 11-209 and 11-210, if you want to find them on the internet) which detail all of the fatal training accidents for the T-37 and T-38 respectively. I haven't counted how many final turn accidents there are compared to the total, but there are sure a lot of them.

Have you ever noticed that almost all of stall training (they don't do actual spin training anymore) done in GA is initiated from a straight and level, canned setup. Very little higher bank angle, deeper stall practice.

The Yak 52/CJ-6 series is a very easy to underestimate, class of airplane. This type of accident can clearly happen in virtually any airframe, but the varied flight regimes (formation, airshows, aerobatics, giving rides) that the "warbird pilot" places themselves in can certainly magnify any undue dangers that may allowed to creep into the specific flight.

[warbird1]

There have been numerous USAF training fatalities over the years attributed to final turn overshoots and the failure to simply roll out and go around. There are two sobering books the USAF publishes called "The Road To Wings" (AETC Handbook 11-209 and 11-210, if you want to find them on the internet) which detail all of the fatal training accidents for the T-37 and T-38 respectively. I haven't counted how many final turn accidents there are compared to the total, but there are sure a lot of them.

The T-38 especially had a reputation as being a "final turn killer" with several accidents in that regime during the 60's and 70's. The issue became so problematic that the training was revamped to specifically address stall training in the final turn. Also, because of the increased number of fatal accidents in the final turn during this period, is the reason that the AOA gauge was added. The T-38 was initially delivered without an AOA sensor.

Lesson to be learned for everyone - watch your airspeed, bank angle and sink rate in the final turn. This applies to all airplanes. Remember, it is much better to just roll wings level and go-around, even on parallel runways. The chances of you hitting another plane in the pattern for such a maneuver is negligible compared to the risk you take accepting an accelerated stall / spin entry.

My condolences to the families and friends involved.

[CAPFlyer]

Have you ever noticed that almost all of stall training (they don't do actual spin training anymore) done in GA is initiated from a straight and level, canned setup. Very little higher bank angle, deeper stall practice.

Eric, sadly a lot of this is due to aircraft limitations. Most of the Cessnas and Pipers used in flight training now are not spin certified, so the insurance companies are very explicit that spins are not to be done in the aircraft. I didn't get my first "stall/spin" training until I took my initial checkout and mountain checkout in a Diamond Katana. All my other training had been in Cessna 172s and Piper Warriors, both of which had insurance prohibitions against spin training.

I've hoped that more 141 schools would impliment unusual attitude and spin training into their private pilot cirriculum but it seems to many of them don't want to find or spend the money on an aerobatic-capable aircraft, or forge an alliance with an orginization that does have such aircraft to give pilots even just a couple of hours in such situations. I know my limited UA and Spin training has been a confidence builder for me personally because it proved that once shown how to identify and act, I can succesfully, safely, and relatively uneventfully recover an airplane from such situations.

To me, what's worse is that a sizeable portion of the GA accidents in recent years have been a stall/spin in the pattern, which would point to such training being a valuable part of initial pilot training, but it seems that neither the NTSB nor FAA have identified it as I've not seen any reccomendations from the NTSB to re-establish spin training as part of the Private Pilot cirriculum.

[RickH]

Taylor, I was not aware that was your T6. There was NO malicious intent in my comments. I simply related what I and others thought they saw that day.

I won't argue your point. I don't know anything about the final legal findings. I'm sure what you said contributed a great deal to crash. When the aircraft snapped Hank did a great job in straightening the aircraft out, unfortunately, he just didn't have any altitude left.

But a well respected high time fighter type happened to be sitting under the wing of his fighter and watched the sequence as it happened. The aircraft impacted less than 50 yards from him. His comment to me, " I've never seen an aircraft pulled so hard ". There was a crosswind that day. He was leading the formation. A lot of eery similarities.

We were all shocked and saddened by the turn of events. The authorities herded all of us on the ramp into the terminal and locked us down for a while. In the meantime a TV newscrew climbed on top of a building outside the perimeter fence and shot video of the scene. Most of us were not amused.

I personally called Channel 2 in Houston the next morning and talked to a producer about their piece on the story. There were several inaccurate statements contained in their characterization of events. As one who was there I didn't feel that it was right to stand by and let them put the wrong word out.

[gilt]

CAPFlyer-

Suggest you look more closely at the Cessna 172 and Piper Cherokee series operating limitations, many PA-28 series (fixed gear) are approved for spins when flown as two place aircraft in Utility Category within CG limits, the same applies to 172s. As a former flight school operator I will state that I have never seen an insurance limitation against spinning an aircraft, it is more likely that the operator is concerned about gyro damage, a concern that Bill Kershner (the spin meister) has found to be without basis.

While I think spin training is valuable slow flight and stall training is far more important for the average relatively straight and level pilot. For most pilots being comfortable while flying at slow speeds will allow them to maintain awareness and avoid an inadvertent stall, or recover immediately. Spin training is no longer required because the training accident rate approached or exceeded the non-training spin accident rate, because modern aircraft are more spin resistant than most of the classics, and because the industry wanted to make training more approachable to expand the base. I have occasionally had primary students who were so fearful of spins that slow flight/stall training was impossible in which case I had to talk them into seeing that the dreaded spin was in fact a non-event but don't feel spin training has much value to the average pilot who needs more emphasis on stall avoidance. Conversely I've always given spin training to advanced students, pilots who were going to use the aircraft aggressively, pilots who getting checked out in legacy aircraft with interesting stall/spin characteristics.

The FAA required spin training for CFIs is essentially meaningless and gives them no preparation to give spin training. As a result most spin training is accomplished from a 1G straight ahead stall at 5500", and in an aircraft with benign stall characteristics. The killer spin is at low altitude, either the turn from base to final, or a pull-up from a buzz job that ran out of energy and ideas all at once........................ To be valuable spin training must include spins from top/bottom rudder stalls, and accelerated stalls from all attitudes and configurations, and as others noted it must simulate realistic accidental spin entry situations.

Tom-

Last edited by gilt on Tue Jan 06, 2009 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Taylor Stevenson]

Not attacking you Rick, just proving even the best as yourself and those who 'witnessed' it can have false info. If you can imagine a size 13 wide foot between the stick attachment and the foottray of a T-6, then I would assume it would have been a heck of a bank angle.

Yeah it was our first T-6. Hank had sold/was selling his (I believe to buy a SAAF bird) and we let him use it to go to the show, seeing as Dad nor Ray couldn't make it. Great pilot and guy, don't think anyone thought poorly of him.

[gilt]

Interesting to read Rick's description of the aircraft snapping and Taylor's recounting of the legal resolution, we will never know if the shoe blocked the stick before it "snapped" or after will we?

Tom-

[Matt Gunsch]

Interesting to read Rick's description of the aircraft snapping and Taylor's recounting of the legal resolution, we will never know if the shoe blocked the stick before it "snapped" or after will we?

Tom-

Tom,
Taylor is correct, and the autospy showed it. I don't know if you have ever flown in the back of a 6, but it is very easy to get your foot trapped between the stick socket and the footrails if you are not careful. In this case, it was someone who was not familure to the T-6, or formation for all I know. He might have been trying to turn in the seat to watch the planes following them and stuck his foot where it should not have been. The rest is very easy to see happening.
After this accident, I made it a part of my passenger briefing to point out the stick socket and tell them to keep thier feet clear of it les they want their foot broken.

[gilt]

Matt-

Not sure how the autopsy could show when the foot got caught in the stick only that it was caught in the stick. I am familiar with the T-6 stick/floorboards. Not questioning the autopsy.

Tom-

[Matt Gunsch]

Matt-

Not sure how the autopsy could show when the foot got caught in the stick only that it was caught in the stick. I am familiar with the T-6 stick/floorboards. Not questioning the autopsy.

Tom-

I think the events show when the foot got caught, it was after the break, he could not move the stick to bring the wings level. Sorry, the events and autospy show what happened, the only way it could be any clearer is if there was video showing the foot falling into the gap.