how is it possible to have happened? :-(
It is a sad time in Portugal. An unspeakable act was commited by a flight instructor pilot, who after the engine died midflight, took the decison to try and land the aircraft in one of the busiest and crowded beachhead here, Costa da Caparica, killing a man and an 8 year old kid. You can see the news here.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/02/sunbathers-killed-plane-forced-make-emergency-landing-portuguese/amp/
I really need to talk about this... Get it off my system. How is it possible? Who takes this decision? What decrepit creature choses his life over an unpredictable number of innocents?
Im a father. I am thinking of this father. I am still in shock. I cannot understand
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/02/sunbathers-killed-plane-forced-make-emergency-landing-portuguese/amp/
I really need to talk about this... Get it off my system. How is it possible? Who takes this decision? What decrepit creature choses his life over an unpredictable number of innocents?
Im a father. I am thinking of this father. I am still in shock. I cannot understand
http://www.luislima.science/arcade = The Arcade Club for enthusiasts :)
Comments
Yeah, if the plane had crashed it would have potentially caused more deaths, and a beach would be a better place than say, a busy motorway, to do an emergency landing. It would have been a very tough decision for the pilot, and he wasn't necessarily thinking about saving his own skin, but rather minimising the loss of life.
Very sad news indeed, whatever the case.
My games for the Spectrum: Dingo, The Speccies, The Speccies 2, Vallation, SQIJ.
Twitter: Sokurah
A crowded beach in summer is however not somewhere that a pilot should attempt to carry out any kind of landing on. Far too big a risk of killing people.
It's not possible to know how far the plane could have travelled after the engine failed, or know where it was and at what height. Or what the options were. But aircraft can glide a surprising distance in the hands of a competent pilot. Normally a pilot would listen to air traffic control (who should have maps and details of operational and emergency runways) and select the best one in the particular circumstances that he or she faced.
But sometimes, the nearest runway is too far to glide to.
Mark
Repair Guides. Spanish Hardware site.
WoS - can't download? Info here...
former Meulie Spectrum Archive but no longer available :-(
Spectranet: the TNFS directory thread
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
bit confused as to why when I saw it on sky news website yesterday some of the pics clearly showed the plane in the water. I assumed it mustve hit the 2 people as they were swimming/paddling... looking now I cant find any photos of it in the water.
Furthermore, on the part of actually chosing the beachhead instead of water due to necessity, not true. See here a quick reference:
The TO is the takeoff site near Estoril / Oeiras (Tires), he was going for Evora on the right side and X is where he landed... he has a S***Load of water to land in.
Now as stated:
You're absolutely right, but not on the "knew better"; he knew if he went to the water they were most likely both dead already due to the Cessna 152 impact (although the plane had emergency floater jackets for the two crewmen); he simply chose to save his ass at the expense of whoever was at the beach, that's the point, he cannot defend himself with probabilities, it's a crowded beachhead on the peak of Summer, he literally ran over a man who was lying in the sand! It's not a legally defensible position anywhere in the world, it's not a justifiable action.
Did he panic and tried to save himself and the student? Yes. Did he had better chances at the beach than in the water? Goes without saying, it's obvious. Is it justifiable to put other people's lives in danger to save your own (and even the student next to you)?
No, it isn't. It's a criminal negligent act, and I sincerely hope the Judge has the b*lls to lock them down for 10 years at least (which unfortunately it's the TOP MOST they will get if fully charged; if not, they go free).
He was told to put it in the sea and that's what he should have done of his own volition anyway. He put it down on a beach and killed two people. He had a choice of open water or a beach full of people and he chose the latter to save his own skin. You don't just throw some random bystander's life away to protect your own without there being consequences.
The beach appears to have a pool that fills at high tide and drains back into the sea, which may be what you're seeing in some pictures. He might have been aiming for that, but there were still kids paddling in it as they should be safer there than in the sea. But all the press pictures clearly show the downed plane standing on the sand.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
people on the ground in portugal not having much luck with planes this year
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4418196/Plane-crashes-Lidl-supermarket-Portugal.html
Light aircraft can glide a long way without power, and he'd clearly had time to line up a descent parallel to the surf.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
It's a huge, paralyzing and freezing feeling the one you get when you face your death. Had you ever got in the aim of a fire gun? Got in a car accident where you could had died? Got a medical condition and gone into cirurgy without knowing if you ever will be awake again? Been there, done that (I have an interesting life, uh?)
It takes a huge load of training in order to overcome the most powerful instinct known to the living being: the fear of the death (I had wrote "surviving" before editing, but then I remember what people and animals can do to protect their kids).
So the guy had 90 seconds to make a call. He had to find from where the wind was blowing and how strong it was, in order to know if he could make a turn without risking stalling and falling like a stone on the heads of people down there (perhaps on a building), or to know in which direction he could glide for more time. His student could had panicked and he got to calm him down in order to prevent some stupid action that could make things worse.
It had to decide *WHO* he is gonna kill, because at that point it's clear that he's gonna kill someone. He could had to decide if he could live with the dead of his student (it's easier to cope with guilty for killing an unknown, random guy, that someone you know).
Or none of that.
He can be a coward? Yes he can and perhaps this is the reason he did that. But this is not the only (neither the best) explanation at this moment.
As you might expect, I am in utter disagreement with you, but let me reply to your arguments in turn, as believe you may actually be Portuguese and / or you are one who are on the side of the pilot:
How is that relevant to form an opinion? You do not need to be a private pilot to understand the situation the pilot was put into, a very clear life and death one; and since there are such things and ethics and moral, and honor, you can judge a person's actions if you have enough data. And we do. But let's proceed.
Again, that argument is not relevant. The situations you have described most people do not train to. This was an experienced flight instructor with hundreds of hours in the aircraft we was flying, and was trained to know how to deal with in emergency situations. The point of discussion here is his decision on an emergency situation where he disregarded consciously possible innocent life loss to save his and his student's (I even grant him that) while at the command of an aircraft; we cannot condone his decision as much as we cannot codone the actions taken by the Costa Concordia's captain.
Correct, training a flight instructor absolutely needs to have; he is not a normal civilian who can just panic at will, he his one of the highest ranked officers in a private aircraft industry, a flight instructor. Thank you for making my point.
Let me point out the obvious: he was NOT flying blind without help. He had the instruments with him, and a Control Tower he had the time to report engine failure and which had told him the better option: direct to Cova do Vapor (a beachhead much less crowded) and send it into the water (something that, if you click on my links, you will see another pilot, a proper one, did exactly that 2 years ago with the same aircraft type and both got out of the water without harm). Also, he knew where the wind was blowing because not only he is an instructor with a routine flight path, the wind blows regularly in the same direction and the control tower has ways of telling him that during flght. He was flying over water, so he wouldn't hit people on a stall, he would hit the water. Remember he turned the aircraft INTO the beachhead, he was not ALREADY in a path into the beachhead (Cessnas are not allowed to pass regularly over cities, they are normaly used as pub banner displayers a few hundred yards out from the beachhead hitself, over water); and this guy was going to Evora on the East, he crossed a BUNCH of water in the way there. On the student: during this type of lessons, the student have NOT CONTROL on aircraft systems, they are only taking notes during the flight to take later on a lesson where tehy actually control the craft, it was not the case here.
Thank you again for making my point. it was NOT clear he was going to kill somebody; 2 years ago (as I said already) a water landing was successful with the same aircraft type he was flying; on the same place, no less, the Control Tower actually ordered him to go, and which he chose not follow. I'm not commenting on the easier to kill unknown than a friend, because it makes my point, if he cannot live with hard decisions (which is part of his training) then cease being a pilot.
I hope this sheds some light on the subject, as we have enough data to make an assessment without the technical investigation (which will find out the engine stopped, we know that) and we know he had full gliding control on the aircraft as his landing path on the beachhead was precise to the yard on landing it exactly at the closest distance posible to the water, where the best sand for the landing was. Which demonstrated, to his future unluck on court, he is a great pilot dealing with a crippled aircraft on a glide.
Of course... nevermind the meatbags below, who cares right?
I have no problem in you being in disagreement with me. But this doesn't makes me less right (or you less wrong). It's still too soon to pinpoint fingers to the pilot.
I'm not portuguese, but I took some private pilot lessons. Never got the money to do the flight lessons, then I got accepted into a University, then I got a job, then I became specialized in flight simulators. :-)
But I'm still in touch with people that made into it, some of them became commercial pilots.
Yes, it's relevant. If you don't know how a plane fly, you don't know the options the pilot had in the heat of the situation. You would be astounded by how many little things can go wrong on a flight, and all the training you had to had in order to keep the calm and try to overcome them.
Do you know what a tailwind can do to your lift? No? I'm not surprised.
We don't know if the plane was climbing when the engine died. We don't know squat about the aircraft attitude when the engine died.
We need more information before condemning the pilot for everything.
yes, it is. The pilot was not alone in the cockpit. He had to deal with the student. Had the student panicked?
The point of discussion is that a bunch of people that don't understand how airplanes fly is making uneducated guesses about the options that the pilot had at hand while handling the emergency. Playing the Costa Concordia card on an airplane crash appears to corroborate my thesis.
And, by the way, a lot of trained people freak out in the middle of the heat. People are not machines - sometimes, some personal issues or some other unrelated emotional situation weakens his/her mental strength and things goes out of control. It happens.
I would suggest you to hear the cockpit recordings of aircraft crashes, but I'm unsure you can handle the feeling. Or worst, understand the feeling.
Being that exact reason that lead me to think that, PERHAPS, the guy know what he was doing and, PERHAPS, that was the lesser evil of many evil choices he had to take.
Only your lack of knowledge corroborates your point at this time. (you *can* be right on the long run, but there's *nothing* that logically leads to this conclusion at the present time).
I will take a breath before answering the rest of your post. I don't wanna go rude on you.
What you can infer from the aircraft attitude?
Here, an excellent picture of the damaged wing after the landing.
What you can tell from that picture?
This happened in Amazon (required disclosure: I used to live there, where I learnt about small airplane crashes - it happens a lot there). The aircraft had an electrical failure, and the pilot had to ditch the aircraft on water. Most of the time, pilots avoid water as they can - rapid deceleration kills more than moderate impact. However, there's no such a thing called moderated impact on trees.
The pilot survived the ditching, but drown hours later on rescue (things need to be a lot better on Brazil). The passenger survived the crash and the rescue.
Video here.
Translated transcription:
00:05 : Pilot : I'm over the Capimaia River, I'll will throw it (sic) on it.
00:18 : Passenger: We are falling down now, here...
00:32 : Pilot: "I will turn it off, ok?" (Pilot turns engine off, as it appears. There's less noise after 00:36.)
00:46 : Pilot: "Ok" (answering someone on radio, perhaps)
00:53: Pilot: "Ok... Ok..." (again)
Note: it's rare to have strong wings on the florest when it's not raining. Weather on shore are very different. We have winds, however, on the Amazonas River margins - this river is so wide that you you can't see the margins when navigating on its middle in the widest part (literally acting as a small sea, cooling down the water over it on day and heating it at night).
Please note that, besides the electrical failure, the pilot keeps the engine running the most he can while maneuvering. He made a somewhat tight turn, probably to make the ditching against the wind - it's not good to ditch the plane with the wind in your tail, as this makes the plane to get a faster 'ground speed', and the water became harder as the speed is greater on touch, as you can see here.
Here, another possible outcome for water crashing. This guy lost the control of the plane by some reason: he fell down as a rock.
You and some other people seem to be pissed because we who point the finger are disregarding the pilot human factor. Yes we are. We dont care. We assume it. And so does the law. He cannot invoke it to escape saying I panicked. His job assumes he doesnt and if he has to chose between killing the crew of the aircraft or innocent bystanders, he must protect innocents. Even at the expense of his own life. And that is why he is facing 8 to 16 years if the technical investigation states the only thing which failed was the engine, not rudder control (and that WILL happen, because stiring an aircraft into a perfect surf in a beachhead PROVES he had control and millions of times more difficult than chosing an IMMENSE body of water).
There are two trenches. Those who think we should excuse the pilot due to human feelings, stress and whatnot, no matter what the proof show (already) And then those who think of the 8 year old kid who died because of the poor streessed panic little old pilot who just wanted to save his life.
This conversation is over
None of us are above making a mistake and, but for the grace of god, it could just as easily be you. It's always worth bearing that in mind.
And if i did, i would receive the penalty of law. Im ready to even accept he made a wrong decision, because he chose others lives instead of his. Never said the opposite. My point is that he made a decision, consciously. A fatal one. And he has to pay. What i will not accept is attempts to justify the decision itself with technical problems that forced him to do so. Because thats not true. All im saying.