Lancair IV Crashes Into Car on Interstate 15 in San Diego
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The Fez
Analog Millennial
What was worse were all the passing drivers trying to take pictures of the wreckage with their cell phones.
Roger Roger
I am le tired
Because they're experimentals with an assumed level of risk and by and large they're killing owner-pilots.
Yeah, a lynching of a high performance airplane speeks more to the people buying and flying it than the airplane. I'm really good friends with a guy who has formed a niche with the Corvallis (spelling). It's a fine flying airplane. But as with anything, operate it outside of its envelope, and you'll get bit
z987k
Well-Known Member
I have to assume it's the typical "Doctor Killer" scenario. Relatively low time pilot who doesn't fly but maybe 100 hours a year with no previous foundation slugging it out to form judgement and muscle memory. Put into a very high performance piston single.
Burrito
Position And Hold My Beer
Gotta get those sweet Facebook likes. THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS #lateforwork #sorrynotsorry
ChasenSFO
hen teaser
Was this near an airport, i.e. plane lost an engine at a critical phase of flight? Otherwise, if this was a dead stick landing, a parked car is an obstetrical as much as a tree or anything else. I will be very curious to ever learn the trajectory of this flight from the emergency to touching down 40 feet behind a parked car and slamming into it.
Horrible way to die. I only hope that if I take out anyone on the ground, I don't live to ever know. That said, no need for anyone else to pass. Hopefully the PIC will pull through, and hopefully we find out a forced landing on that spot was unavoidable. Good luck if it was a move of sheer panic. Would not wish that on any pilot.
Horrible way to die. I only hope that if I take out anyone on the ground, I don't live to ever know. That said, no need for anyone else to pass. Hopefully the PIC will pull through, and hopefully we find out a forced landing on that spot was unavoidable. Good luck if it was a move of sheer panic. Would not wish that on any pilot.
🦈💜
Well-Known Member
TUCKnTRUCK
That guy
Well, Like the MU-2, the Gear in the lancair causes so much excessive drag, raising, lowering, keeping them up, or even keeping them down has a 100% rate of the airplane hitting the ground sometime shortly after an engine failure....
Burrito
Position And Hold My Beer
Was this near an airport, i.e. plane lost an engine at a critical phase of flight? Otherwise, if this was a dead stick landing, a parked car is an obstetrical as much as a tree or anything else. I will be very curious to ever learn the trajectory of this flight from the emergency to touching down 40 feet behind a parked car and slamming into it.
Horrible way to die. I only hope that if I take out anyone on the ground, I don't live to ever know. That said, no need for anyone else to pass. Hopefully the PIC will pull through, and hopefully we find out a forced landing on that spot was unavoidable. Good luck if it was a move of sheer panic. Would not wish that on any pilot.
Reading that reminded of the pilot that tried to deadstick it into Concord (KCON) up here in NH in his Skylane when the engine gave out. Unfortunately, I THINK the pilot flying suffered a heart attack during emergency descent and his wife opted to take control. Couldn't make the field and settled for I-93 where it merges with I-293 in Hooksett. Think "toll road, after the toll" so there's tons of road surface. NH isn't known for traffic, either, so that's just an added bonus. They ended up clipping one of the giant 6-light highway poles in the median, if memory serves me... I still can't find the article on WMUR but I know it's out there. Pilot was a colleague of my father's in architecture so it sucked all over.
The Fez
Analog Millennial
I read the same thing. The previous owner landed the plane on I-15 further south near Rancho Bernardo. Some sort of fuel issue if I remember correctly.
The Fez
Analog Millennial
Was this near an airport, i.e. plane lost an engine at a critical phase of flight? Otherwise, if this was a dead stick landing, a parked car is an obstetrical as much as a tree or anything else. I will be very curious to ever learn the trajectory of this flight from the emergency to touching down 40 feet behind a parked car and slamming into it.
Horrible way to die. I only hope that if I take out anyone on the ground, I don't live to ever know. That said, no need for anyone else to pass. Hopefully the PIC will pull through, and hopefully we find out a forced landing on that spot was unavoidable. Good luck if it was a move of sheer panic. Would not wish that on any pilot.
If you put the coords below in Skyvector, you can get an idea of the area. Not exact, but close.
N33 20.41 W117 09.62
ChasenSFO
hen teaser
Autocorrect has spoken.
A lot of terrain around there, but also a lot of places where no one on the ground would be hurt yet it could be set down with survivable impact forces. You know, not to mention a private airstrip elevated higher than the freeway and right next to it(if it was reachable). Or, you know, the big long dirt road along side the airstrip. Or the grassy hills. Or anywhere that wasn't 40 feet behind an occupied stationary vehicle. Again,if this even was an engine out and he was high enough to glide a bit. Now it seems even more odd to me, I'll look forward to the report and hope this guy just didn't have the control or altitude to reach a better spot...
Never go full retard.
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Do Simple Jack!
More stupid!
T/O w/FSII
Well-Known Member
etflies
Keeping calm, Chiving on.
I have flown over just about every square inch of San Diego several times over including the area where this happened (and driven that stretch of freeway more times than I care to count.) The entire city offers little in the way of adequate emergency landing areas other than the freeways, the occasional par 5 hole on a golf course and the airports. I can say from years of living in and flying over the city that looking at a satellite picture on a screen doesn't show how difficult the terrain can be or how little room there actually is. Between uneven terrain, car sized boulders hidden by thick scrub brush, trees and houses being seemingly everywhere, the freeway would absolutely make an attractive option on a relatively traffic free Saturday morning, and freeways in SoCal have served as emergency strips many times without a loss of life. Further, I know zero about the glide characteristics of that airplane but I'm guessing they're not as good at it as a 172 or the like which means your options for any survivable crash landing are decreased even further.
You are a pilot, I know that you know better than to pass judgement like that without all of the facts, and certainly without having been in the cockpit with them.
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