"Ernest C. Evans" wrote in message
...
I'm not a pilot but I was wondering why this plane went down "nose first"
??? I'm thinkin', don't these things have some gliding ability ???

i guess the pilot must've been too low to recover ..... Having an engine
quit on you is bad enough luck ..... but having it happened when you just
happen to be at a low altitude is even worse luck ! (

Actually, having an engine quit would *not* cause a plane to fall. As you
say, it would just glide instead.

What does cause a plane to fall--whether the engine is running or not--is
pulling back too far on the control wheel, which causes the plane to slow
down too much (at least, that's the simplified explanation). When that
happens, witnesses who are not familiar with aerodynamic principles often
perceive the incident as an engine failure, which is then how the press
reports it initially.

You're right too that when a plane stops flying (the technical term is
"stalling", but that's confusing because it has nothing to do with the
*engine* stalling), you can recover if you have enough altitude, but being
lower makes recovery harder. Stall recovery shouldn't take much more than
100 feet, but there's a particularly bad type of stall--called a spin--that
can take more than 1000 feet to recover from.

--Gary