C172 crash at Coney Island

The class B floor is 500? Sounds like a recipe for some sort of
airspace version of scud running, which in turns sounds like a great
way to have unrecoverable stalls/engine outs, controlled flight into
terrain/water.

Most unfortunate, my best wishes to the families affected.

"Ben Hallert" wrote in message
oups.com...
The class B floor is 500? Sounds like a recipe for some sort of
airspace version of scud running, which in turns sounds like a great
way to have unrecoverable stalls/engine outs, controlled flight into
terrain/water.

It's a twelve-mile-stretch of the Long Island shore, just a few miles south
of JFK. It's actually quite fun to fly there at that altitude--I've done it
several times. An engine failure wouldn't be especially bad because there's
a beach to land on (or you can ditch just offshore if the beach is too
crowded). You do, of course, need to avoid stalling (or especially
spinning).

--Gary

Ben Hallert wrote:
The class B floor is 500? Sounds like a recipe for some sort of
airspace version of scud running, which in turns sounds like a great
way to have unrecoverable stalls/engine outs, controlled flight into
terrain/water.

Actually over Coney Island the floor of Class B space is at 1500 ft
(I'm looking at my NY chart). It's hard to tell from the ground how
high the airplane is. Unfortunately it sounds like a classic
stall/spin.

You can see the tail number in the NYT photo..


Most unfortunate, my best wishes to the families affected.

Yes. Very sad

....richie

wrote in message
oups.com...
Actually over Coney Island the floor of Class B space is at 1500 ft
(I'm looking at my NY chart).

Right, but just nearby the Class B is 500'(+). If the plane came from there,
it might still have been quite low (or it might've been low anyway just to
get a better view).

--Gary

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 ! (


"Gary Drescher" wrote in message
...
wrote in message
oups.com...
Actually over Coney Island the floor of Class B space is at 1500 ft
(I'm looking at my NY chart).

Right, but just nearby the Class B is 500'(+). If the plane came from
there, it might still have been quite low (or it might've been low anyway
just to get a better view).

--Gary

"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

"Gary Drescher" wrote in message
...
"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.

Speaking about common misconceptions, yea, unfortunately a chunk of people
seem to believe that the airplane is being held in the air by the propeller
itself.
I remember I once saw a movie (a few years ago; I thought the name was
"trapped", about a girl who gets kidnapped, but I cannot find it with that
name).
In this movie there was a scene where some people were flying in a seaplane,
and for some reason they needed to turn off the engine of the plane for a
few minutes. This was a ridiculous scene because once they shutdown the
engine the airplane just started falling off the sky. There was a shot of
the altimeter and it showed a descent of about 500 ft/SECOND!!!! (the pilot
tells the passenger that they have about 2 minutes to make a phone call, but
this means that they needed to be at about 30000 ft at that descent rate).
Then when they are done, he turns on the engine about 200 ft from the ground
and the airplane immediately goes into straight and level flight. The movie
was being pretty bad, but after that, I just started laughing, concerned
though, that it'll feed common misconceptions that people have about engine
failures in airplanes.
Has anyone seen that stupid movie or remembers the name ?

Yup!

Was a float plane, he crashed it on the highway...

Wife could not undersatnd why I was laughing...

Stupid... no wonder the public thinks that way...

Dave


aOn Sun, 22 May 2005 12:32:00 -0400, "Guillermo"
wrote:

"Gary Drescher" wrote in message
...
"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.

Speaking about common misconceptions, yea, unfortunately a chunk of people
seem to believe that the airplane is being held in the air by the propeller
itself.
I remember I once saw a movie (a few years ago; I thought the name was
"trapped", about a girl who gets kidnapped, but I cannot find it with that
name).
In this movie there was a scene where some people were flying in a seaplane,
and for some reason they needed to turn off the engine of the plane for a
few minutes. This was a ridiculous scene because once they shutdown the
engine the airplane just started falling off the sky. There was a shot of
the altimeter and it showed a descent of about 500 ft/SECOND!!!! (the pilot
tells the passenger that they have about 2 minutes to make a phone call, but
this means that they needed to be at about 30000 ft at that descent rate).
Then when they are done, he turns on the engine about 200 ft from the ground
and the airplane immediately goes into straight and level flight. The movie
was being pretty bad, but after that, I just started laughing, concerned
though, that it'll feed common misconceptions that people have about engine
failures in airplanes.
Has anyone seen that stupid movie or remembers the name ?

Guillermo wrote:
Speaking about common misconceptions, yea, unfortunately a chunk of people
seem to believe that the airplane is being held in the air by the propeller
itself.
I remember I once saw a movie (a few years ago; I thought the name was
"trapped", about a girl who gets kidnapped, but I cannot find it with that
name).
Has anyone seen that stupid movie or remembers the name ?


Yes, "Trapped" it is. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280380/combined
Look at the user comments at the bottom of the page:

"The father (Stuart Townsend) drives an airplane (to a convention he can
drive to, no less) once, and then, right when he needs one to escape, he
finds one and flies it perfectly! If he's supposed to be a young father,
how could he have gone through all of medical school, settled down and
gotten married, AND gotten his pilot's license? "

Full gross. Tight turn with sightseers. I doubt a "stalled" engine
had much play in this one. You have to maintain enough airspeed
for the wing to keep flying. Very sad deal innocent people had
to die.



"Gary Drescher" wrote in message
...
"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