Kingair Emergency (vid)

NJA_Capt said:
No, the best thing would have been to put on the 02 mask and not take the nap. Time of useful consciousness at that alt is >3 minutes.

I'm very glad they made it down. I will be interested to see if the dive and/or the recovery did the damage.
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Agree with you completely... was just making the point that, ok, for some reason they didnt get the masks on... so they were extremely lucky - one way or the other - that the a/c got down to a lower altitude asap...


With regard to the autopilot, alot of these types dont have autopilots even fitted... we dont know enough about this particular aircraft to assume one way or the other. If the 1900s I used to fly werent required to have them, a Kingair would also fit into that category. (2 crew that is).
 
AvWeb Article:

AvWeb Article: A little more info.....they did put the masks were on, oxygen was not working properly....

[FONT=arial,helvetica,geneva]God Really Was Troubled King Air Crew's Copilot[/FONT]


king_air_missing_tail.jpg

A King Air B200 landed Friday at Cape Giardeau, Mo., with a cracked windshield, buckled skins and much of its horizontal stabilizer gone, but the beginning of this story is just as interesting. John Taylor was acting as Flight Nurse aboard an aeromedical helicopter in the area that day transporting a specialty team when his pilot said he saw something nearby fall and hit the ground. Taylor and his pilot looked around and quickly diverted to avoid falling debris. There was a King Air almost directly above them, and it was in trouble. At 27,000 feet, the King Air crew had experienced windshield failure. Sheldon Stone, the 4,200-hour ATP-rated pilot at the controls, and copilot Adam Moore donned their oxygen masks and depressurized the aircraft to prevent the windshield from blowing out. St one twisted the valve to begin the flow of oxygen but felt it wasn't coming. And that's when things got really bad.

"We were both getting drunk really fast. I remember thinking, really slowly, 'Hey, I'm not getting any oxygen, what's wrong here?' But I was so loony already at that point I couldn't even solve the problem if it could be solved," Stone told The Southeast Missourian. The sole-occupant pilots passed out and came to with their aircraft nose down at 7,000 feet at a high rate of speed. They recovered with difficulty and declared an emergency, diverting to Cape Girardeau Airport (KCGI). Somewhere in the descent or recovery, the airframe had suffered structural damage, which was witnessed by Taylor and his pilot. "I thought I was home free," Stone told the newspaper, "but then I realized how hard it was to get the plane under con trol and I started to think, 'Wait a minute. This thing isn't over yet. I've got to find a way to land.'" The aircraft would pitch up when accelerated and down when slowed. Stone felt there was a window of control and picked a speed of 160 knots for approach. The aircraft landed at about 145 knots without further incident. Stone attributes his good fortune in part to the aircraft's heritage. The King Air was formerly owned by a Christian Assembly of God association combining that name with a holy number for its former registration, N777AG. The registration change to the current N777AJ now acknowledges "Assembly of Jesus."
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Amazing to see that these guys made it down safely. Good stuff and thank god that the pilots are ok.

Can't believe that elevator!
 
NJA_Capt said:
Wrong.
Between 1990 and 2005, 276 bird strikes were reported between 10K-20K.
13 bird strikes between 20K-30K, and 1 strike ABOVE FL300!
I personally know of a goose that was hit at approx FL220.
http://wildlife.pr.erau.edu/BASH90-05.pdf Page 21.
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This is from a lecture I gave on respiratory physiology

Common Name Migration Altitude


Andes Condor 16,615 ft (5,035 m)
Siberian Crane 20,116 ft (>6,096 m)
Mallard Duck 21,123 ft (6,401 m)
Common Crane 25,146 ft (>7,620 m)
Bar-headed Goose 29,198 ft (>8,848 m)
Ruppell’s Griffon 37,217 ft (11,278 m)
 
Toria, wow thanks for that info. It never ceases to amaze me that we can launch pretty much any question out there and a JCer is bound to know the answer.

For the flight level folks:

Now that we've learned that birds fly above 30K, is this something talked about during your initial training/type rating? I'm not talking about low level FOD, but high altitude, high speed birdstrikes.

(I realize that this event may not have been a strike, but I'm curious nevertheless...)
 
The comment about not preflighting the O2 is probably the most likely reason this happened. Arming the O2 is a before takeoff item so I wouldn't be surprised if the pilots get some fallout from this after the investigation is over. Valves in the O2 system on King Airs have been known to freeze so thats why its armed on the ground.

The picture of the tail is pretty amazing though, totally reminds me of battle damage pictures from WWII.
 
Speaking of higher flight level bird strikes, I know of a MC-130 that took a bird to the dome above FL200. The biologist at the base determined it had died in flight, frozen, and was carried aloft by updrafts associated with wx in enroute. No proof other than the id the guy made was for a bird which had never been observed that high before. Seemed plausible to me at that time; but who konws.
 
Simply amazing. Avweb said the plane at one point in its life belonged to Christian Assembly of God. These guys definately had someone looking over them that day.

I looked up the tail number, and it's a '98 model, so one could assume they got the "old time" windshield problems fixed. I also bet the thing had an autopilot.
 
Very interesting ... but I must call foul on the flight crew's story.
I think that during the time they were sitting at the airport prior to
driving home the concocted the story as it reads.
I have seen a number
of Front window failures in our C-12 (BE-200) fleet and other than the
initial scare of the loud crack no decompression ... less a rapid
decompression occurred.
I would argue that the time of useful
consciousness is closer to 2.5 - 3 mins and even if they had a rapid
decompression that time would be reduced at best by half ... leaving
plenty of reaction time, assuming proper training, to respond and put on a
mask. I would further argue that if they were incapacitated so quickly
that the airplane would have continued on its previous flight path and not
entered such a dramatic flight attitude to loose so much altitude so
rapidly. I think the flight crew over reacted to the event and put
themselves in a flight regime in which when the tried to (incorrectly)
recover they caused the damage to the aircraft and it was only luck itself
that they we able to land the stricken airplane.
I have always taught
that when face with a decompression of the airplane DO NOT IMMEDIATELY
assume that a rapid descent should be made ... You can cause more damage
to the airplane, as evidenced here, and put yourself, your crew and your
passengers in grave and perilous danger.
I've had a total loss of cabin
pressure at FL310 and it was almost anti climatic thanks to some very good
training I've been afforded. My situation wasn't an Explosive
Decompression but I would catagorize it as a Rapid Decompression requiring
immediate action and the declaration of an Emergency.
I believe a
proper investigation into this event will beg many questions I only hope
that the flight crew possess the proper integrity to honestly answer those
questions as answers are what will help others learn from the event.

Sorry if I seem a little harsh on my response ... but until I hear Paul
Harvey say " and now ... you know the rest of the story" I remain
sceptical.

Jim
 
C650CPT said:
Very interesting ... but I must call foul on the flight crew's story.
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Gotta agree with you Jim. Something doesn't add up with the story. The FAA is already quoted saying that the O2 system worked when they tested it.....Hmmmmm. I wonder if it had a CVR?
 
Wow, freaky.

We had a windshield spider like that about 6 months ago in a B200 (super Kingair.) No bird strike, I think it was just it's time. We had very loud bang, followed by a holy *&%#$@. It didn't cause any decompression, but we immediately decended and lowered differential pressure.

Kinda scary to see what could have happened.

-Dave
 
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