Lazy Eight's

"Morgans" wrote in message
...

wrote

It would be interesting for someone to run a simulation for that
airplane and track, to gain a sense of how much time the pilot and CFI
would have had from the time the problem was obvious, and what they
might have done about it. It might give some insight as to if they
had the airspeed to climb fast enough. Did they have 2 seconds to
react, or 15?

I remember seeing some radar tracks, and although I do not remember what
the
speed was, I thought that they were going way faster than needed, and that
excess speed could have been partially responsible (among other factors,
such as the wind, just naming one) for not being able to turn in a tight
enough radius.

If that is the case, and there was a speed reserve, they would have been
able to do a zoom climb, and avoid the building. As to when they should
have recognized the problem, I would guesstimate that they should have
realized there was a problem, say, 2/3rds or 3/4ths of the way around the
turn. How many seconds would it take to execute a 180? 30 or 40 seconds?
If that is the case, then 3/4ths of the way around would be at worst 7.5
seconds. & seconds would have been enough time, to climb (or change the
bank angle and fly past it) and avoid crashing.

This all hinges on realizing that there was a severe problem, which it
seems
obvious they did not.

All in all, it was a tragic incident, and it really does not matter to
them
what the mistake was. They are dead, and that is the end as far as they
are
concerned.
--
Jim in NC


All that I recall seeing was a simulation made by/for one of the news
agencies.

In the simulation, they began the left turn from approximately the center of
the river--although I don't know the source of that presumption and have
serious doubts. However, in the event that it was factual, the two
reasonable actions would have been to 1) move over to the edge of the
corridor before beginning the turnaround, or 2) continue straight ahead,
contact ATC, and say the "E" word.

As you point out, they are dead and clearly did not realize they had an
emergency untill very late in the chain of events. Regrettably, all that
the rest of us can really learn from their demise is to reinforce what we
already knew: Situational awareness is important.

Peter