This Week In Plane Crashes: 12/11/22
Flying deer, wardens held near, lightning strikes, and near-mutineers
It’s been a real week in plane crashes, which is bad for airplanes but great for my content generation. Not that I’m cheering for disaster… but I’d probably lend them a couple bucks if they asked.
Here’s what went wrong for aircraft this week:
A Brussels Airlines A320 out of Brussels (BRU) was struck by lightning (REAL LIGHTNING!) while descending into Tenerife (TFS) curséd island airport, its elevation high enough that clouds regularly roll in and obscure the runways. It must have shook the pilots up pretty good, because they didn’t even try to land at TFS again, immediately diverting for a landing at Las Palmas (LPA), on another island about about 30 minutes away. This was, as the passengers would later discover, not an ideal choice. A small hole was discovered in the aircraft on landing, but Airbus and the airline made the decision it could tolerate one more flight. And that flight would clearly be back to Brussels with the passengers, where the airplane could be repaired, because that’s what the airline wanted. The passengers, on the other hand, were only 30 minutes away from their ultimate destination and were now being told they would now take another 4.5-hour flight back to Brussels just to fly back to TFS tomorrow. And they were rankled. The passengers probably would have mutinied, except they argued with airline personnel for so long that the flight crew timed out. This forced everyone off the airplane, which now lacked a legal captain. It must have been the single most passive aggressive deplaning in Belgian aviation history. The airline, which apparently doesn’t service LPA, arranged neither hotels or continuing flights for the passengers, who now found themselves utterly stranded and completely on their own. At least flights to TFS are only like €25. Seventeen hours later, the occurrence aircraft was positioned back to BRU—fucking empty. What’s cooler than being cool, again? Cause: hiring Thor as the VP of Logistics and Passenger Satisfaction.
A B-2 Spirit (Spirit of New York) encountered an in-flight malfunction that forced it to make an emergency landing at Whiteman AFB (SZL), sixty miles outside Kansas City, Mo., resulting in a runway fire that damaged both airplane and runway. No personnel injuries have been reported. This B-2 is one of only 20 in existence: here’s hoping they can find the parts. Cause: they wouldn’t say: you try asking the military why their heavily classified stealth bomber crashed.
A Cessna A185F Skywagon crashed in Tsavo National Park in southern Kenya, killing the pilot and passenger, a father-son pair of game wardens on patrol for poachers. The pilot, Mark Jenkins, was a well-known and popular warden in Kenya, even earning Prince William as a friend. I have a feeling they will sincerely missed. Cause: the rumor mill provocatively suggests the aircraft was shot at (a distinct possibility—poachers are assholes), but bush piloting is a dangerous business even without small-arms fire.
A Utah Division of Wildlife Resources Hughes 500D (as pictured below) crashed into the precipitous La Sal Mountains in eastern Utah. The three occupants, including two passengers that had been trapping mountain goats and fitting them with GPS collars for an upcoming study, were recovered uninjured by SAR teams at 3:15 p.m. local time, approximately four hours after the crash was reported to the San Juan County Sheriff’s office by a citizen who had watched the helo go down in the mountains. The witness reported the aircraft impacting near a mountain’s peak, which, if correct, would put their altitude somewhere around 11 and 13,000 feet, high enough to start thinking about supplemental oxygen but well inside the helicopter’s performance ceiling. No smoke or fire was reported, but that doesn’t mean much: flames are far from the only way a helicopter can become a disastercopter. Cause: the erstwhile longing of all rotary aircraft to return to the earth; the unpredictable aerodynamic properties of mountains.
Another DRW helicopter like the one lost in the crash. This one’s towing three deer! Can you believe they just throw them in sacks and hang them off the bottom? [Steve Griffin, Deseret News | Source] A Rockwell Commander 112’s front landing gear collapsed on its second attempt at an emergency landing at Rostraver Airport (KFWQ) in western Pennsylvania. After touching down and balancing on its rear gear for some time, the plane tipped forward onto the front gear… then kept going. It ended up sliding down the runway face first, throwing a shower of sparks as metal and paint as the aircraft ground along the tarmac like an aluminum crayon. In a wise maneuver, the pilot cut his engine before putting weight on the uncertain front gear, likely saving himself a bundle in engine repairs. Maybe now he’ll just have to max out one credit card. Cause: firestartah, twisted firestartah.
An ERCO 415-C Ercoupe crashed on takeoff from Corning Municipal Airport (KCRZ) in southwest Iowa. The plane struck power lines before coming to rest about 100 feet from the end of the runway, killing the pilot and sole occupant. Iowa State Patrol and FAA are investigating. Cause: power lines continuing to be hung above ground, in frank defiance of all practical and aesthetic sense.
A Beechcraft F33A Bonanza crashed shortly after takeoff from Clarence E. Page-Cimarron Municipal Airport (KRCE), 15 miles outside Oklahoma City, Okla. The airplane caught fire after impacting the ground within airport property. Oklahoma City Fire Department firefighters responding said they found the bodies of the three occupants but were searching the area with drones with infrared scanning devices to confirm there were no other victims. When did fire departments start having drones? NTSB and FAA investigating. KRCE reported clear weather at the time of the crash. Cause: crashes like this often come down to misconfiguration or loss of control.
Airlines are foolishly lobbying aviation standards bodies to rewrite the rules that ban single pilot flights, hoping to drive down labor costs and alleviate the pilot shortage that’s been plaguing the industry for years. The second pilot is crucial for a number of reasons, not the least of which are sharing the insane workload pilots manage and spotting errors before they become lists of the dead. And if the pilot just straight up dies, which you’ll remember happened just a few weeks ago, no computer system we’ve built thus far is going to save you.
And finally, for a new rotating feature—a cool picture I found!
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2400,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8477084-d200-4c9a-ab83-62df1996ae2e_3872x2592.jpeg)