'Like a missile coming down' - Nine killed in fiery Florida jet crash

notayoba said:
Using her is a better story. And it also allows some conspiracy theorist nutcases to latch onto the case for some reason.

Still trying to figure out why some loonies claim there was no plane.
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Cray said:
Because people are idjits, then there is the other bunch of nutters who claim the plane was shot down by the Mara Lago missile battery.:rolleyes:
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Where do you guys hang out?
 
Rumple4skin said:
Biggest question should be why the hell did they try to fly through/over a cell that high and not simply go around it. Unless I'm missing something then that is just stupidity. Period.
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This video by a meteorologist gives some context on the actual weather, with large anvils present, and why they may have missed the presence of a rapidly intensifying storm cell:
 
konfab said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/2117268792976056351

Unfortunately I think this post has the answer :confused:
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I highly doubt this was the case. Deviating for enroute weather in cruise actually doesn't cause much delay. We have deviated over 100 nautical miles off track for squall line embedded thunderstorms before which adds maybe 10 minutes extra to your arrival time. In this case going around that single cell would have been insignificant compared to the deviation they were already doing.

If we're talking about shooting approaches at the destination in marginal weather then yes, the ignorant fellas on X might have had a point.
 
Gordon_R said:
This video by a meteorologist gives some context on the actual weather, with large anvils present, and why they may have missed the presence of a rapidly intensifying storm cell:
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I see they were apparently at FL410 over the Gulf of Mexico and then descended to FL350 at some point. Wonder why. Staying at FL410 could have saved their lives.
 
i have to admit, this event creeps me out a bit.
as a kid my family lived in mauritius fro a few yrs - i was in boarding school in kzn
every school holiday i would fly from dbn to mauritius and back.

mauritius has a cyclone season between december to may.
so i would fly back and forth, including december school holidays and easter school holidays - cyclone season.
pilot would warn us of expected turbulence and soon enough the safety belt lights would come on.
for majority of flight i would be in the upstairs cabin (boeing 747) - i would peer out the window looking back & watching in amazement as the wings flapped up and down.

some flights were hectic (but great fun for me).
overhead storage doors would pop open, raining down their contents on passengers.
oxygen masks would drop down (but never needed).
food / drinks trollies would come loose, spewing their load everywhere.
the cabin would be a mess, some ppl upchucking into paper bags.
good times i thought.

however now, in retrospect - rather not again !
 
Rumple4skin said:
I see they were apparently at FL410 over the Gulf of Mexico and then descended to FL350 at some point. Wonder why. Staying at FL410 could have saved their lives.
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That question was raised elsewhere, but flying around is always better than flying over a storm. I suspect ATC gets very busy close to Miami, so they may have been given a lower track level (not decided on their own initiative). The NTSB will look into all of the factors, including maintenance logs, flight planning, weather, radar, etc.
 
Gordon_R said:
The ADSB data shows little evidence of a climb. Various meteorologists have suggested they flew directly over a rapidly growing thunderstorm. The NTSB will look into all this.

The onboard weather radar may not have picked this up (depending on the settings), and it is not as sophisticated as the radar on commercial jets, nor ground radar (which has a lag however). In general the rule is not to fly within 20 miles of a thunderstorm.

Supercooled water is generally not present at 35,000ft, nor when the air temperature is at -47C. An updraft in a thunderstorm can explain the rapid onset of icing, and the tailplane of a Learjet is definitely more prone to icing than the wings (electrical heating rather than bleed air).

Watch Juan Browne's video for his description of flying LA to Sydney in a B777, and dodging thunderstorms over the Equator on every flight, with no ground radar in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
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Up until this incident the gravity of how dangerous weather can make flying and how randomly it can crop up never really occurred to me. It’s amazing we don't have more plane crashes, considering all this and the huge complexity of commercial plane fabrication and maintenance it’s absolutely mind blowing how safe we have managed to make commercial passenger transport, it’s truly an incredible feat of human ingenuity.
 
Long post worth the read. I have a close friend who flies private jets. He flew Lear 60 for over 15 years and now flies a Gulfstream. This is a copy and paste of his response to me asking him if he thought Ice was the issue.

“We always fly in ridiculous cold temperatures.”

“Usually you get the bad ice when the temperatures are like 0 to negative 20. Believe it or not, there's a point where it gets too cold for ice. At negative 40, you pretty much can't get ice. Besides that, the airplane is equipped with hot wings and hot tail.”

“I flew the Lear 60 for like 15 years. It's a no joke airplane and probably the most dangerous airplane I've ever flown. It has a super critical wing. The airflow has to be perfect. When it gets into rough air and turbulence, it will easily stall. It has stalled on me at 41,000 feet just because we got into some turbulence. (On the way to Palm Beach as a matter of fact. ) we recovered and got her flying again around 30,000 ft. Scary

But here's the problem. This airplane has a terrible coffin corner. (At high altitudes) what that means is, you fly in a really narrow window where if you lose 20 knots, it stalls. And if you gain 20 knots, it goes into overspeed. The air goes supersonic over the wing and it goes into a high speed stall, or worse, a Mach tuck.

So if you stall, the normal recovery is to push the yoke forward to lower the nose and gain air speed again. At low altitude, you can push really hard and recover quickly. But in the 60... if you push hard, it will gain air speed and go into a high speed stall, it doesn't take much. It's very sensitive. The 60 has super short wings that don't make much lift. So then you high speed stall, and the computer is yelling at you... OVERSPEED! So then you pull back and enter a low speed stall. And you go back and forth trying to keep it in the air speed window.

This whole thing is pretty scary. And you should recover basically by using your finger tips using super small corrections. You can't over do it. If you try to muscle the recovery, she gets mad and will become unrecoverable. If she enters a mach tuck. You're done.”

“I taught the Lear 60 to other pilots and mentored them. I told them... this airplane has a soul and it's trying to kill you. Do not ever try to top the weather. Don't go over a thunderstorm. Go around it. If it means a half hour longer, then do it. Going over the thunderstorm will go into turbulence that you might not recover from.

These pilots went right over a thunderstorm. I think it stalled which caused them to drop down into the thunderstorm and ended up in mach tuck. They picked up so much speed that it ripped off the horizontal stabilizer. At that point... chuck Yeager can't fix it.

These same pilots did something similar a couple months ago. ATC got mad at them. They poked the bear one too many times.

This is not a beginner airplane. The Gulfstream would never do this. It has HUGE margins of error and won't stall like that. But then again... it's got HUGE wings. It's a pussy cat.

The Gulfstream is like driving a 4 wheeler. The Lear 60 is like riding a uni cycle.”

https://twitter.com/x/status/2117705518089388152

Grok, Can you describe the terms he uses "coffin corner" and "mach tuck"? Those are unfamiliar to me.

Coffin corner (also called Q corner or the aerodynamic ceiling) is the high-altitude region where an aircraft’s low-speed stall limit and high-speed Mach limit get very close together—or even meet.⁠ (Skybrary)

At high altitudes the air is thin. To generate enough lift, the wing needs a higher true airspeed, so the indicated stall speed rises. At the same time, the aircraft is already flying close to the speed of sound (its critical Mach number), so the maximum allowable speed is limited. The gap between “too slow” (stall) and “too fast” (Mach effects) shrinks dramatically. In extreme cases it can be only a few knots. Turbulence, a turn, or a small speed change can push the plane into a stall on the low side or into Mach buffet/tuck on the high side.⁠ (Aerocorner)

In the pilot’s account of the Learjet 60, that margin was described as roughly 20 knots: lose 20 knots and you stall; gain 20 knots and you risk overspeed and Mach tuck.

Mach tuck is the nose-down pitching moment that appears as an aircraft accelerates toward or past its critical Mach number.⁠ (Wikipedia)

Air flowing over the wing can reach local supersonic speeds and form shock waves even while the airplane itself is still subsonic. As speed increases, those shock waves move aft, shifting the wing’s center of pressure rearward. This creates a strong nose-down (tucking) tendency. If it progresses, the aircraft can enter a steep dive, and elevator authority can decrease, making recovery harder.⁠ (Skybrary)

In short: coffin corner is the narrow high-altitude speed band where you’re simultaneously close to stalling and to the Mach limit; Mach tuck is the nose-down pitch that can occur on the fast side of that band. The Learjet pilot was highlighting how little margin exists in that regime and how turbulence can quickly push an aircraft outside it.
 
Watched a analysis earlier and couple things mentioned.

The lady was first officer hence why handling radio comms. Her comms also give a clear indication of what happened and when. That's important as in the analysis it was disclosed that this particular aircraft has a cockpit voice recorder but not a black box telemetry recorder. Even if the recorder survived and is found, we would only get voices over data.

She gave good readings and information under the most extreme stress imaginable. It helps fille the sad picture of the tragedy and hopefully the learnings thereof once a report is released.

The one question the analysis asks is why did they fly into the storm cloud. Quoting the analysis ATSB says they are supposed to divert 20 nautical miles around such so why did they fly through the heart of it.

I've been in a small aircraft ( king air 280 I think) and been able to observe the flight crew and screens and I recall once we were flying back from Welkom to Upington, and clearly on the cockpit radar screens you could see information around weather and turbulence ( was a dark red and we skirted around it that day ).
 
The NTSB has confirmed that pieces of the elevator were found miles from the scene of the impact, as widely speculated:
National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said most of the left elevator — part of the tail that controls the plane’s pitch — was found in three pieces between 1.3 miles (2 kilometers) and 3.8 miles (6.1 kilometers) from Greenacres, near West Palm Beach, where the jet went down Sunday afternoon.
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Learjet 60 crashes near West Palm Beach, Florida - flightradar24​

Investigative updates

2 November — The NTSB held its first on scene media briefing on 2 November, providing updates on the status of the investigation and some early observations.
  • There is a team of 20 investigators arriving on scene.
  • The aircraft was at one point equipped with a cockpit voice recorder, but the NTSB is working to determine if that was still onboard, and if so, locate it.
  • There is some evidence of in-flight break up of the aircraft, according to NTSB Board Member Tom Chapman, and the agency is still search for all aircraft components.
3 November — The NTSB held its second and final on scene media briefing on 3 November. The agency says that it continues to work with state and local authorities to gain access to the impact crater to recover any wreckage.
  • The NTSB says it has recovered the aircraft’s left elevator in three (3) pieces between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the crash site.
 
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The NTSB reports that most of the Learjet's left elevator, the moving part of the tail that controls pitch, was found in three pieces between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the impact site. At least one piece was found by a civilian, who reported it to the NTSB, and they picked it up.
 
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