Plane crash in Montana

[matthew mcdonald]

FAA: 17 die in Montana plane crash
The accident involves a single-engine turboprop with children aboard

BREAKING NEWS

updated 7:15 p.m. ET March 22, 2009

BUTTE, Mont. - A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman says 17 people are dead after a plane crashed while approaching the airport in Butte.

Spokesman Mike Fergus says the single engine turboprop plane departed from Orville, Calif., at about 11 a.m. Pacific time. The pilot had filed a flight plan showing a final destination of Bozeman.

Fergus says the pilot canceled his flight plan at some point and headed for Butte. The plane crashed about 500 feet from the airport while attempting to land and caught fire.

Fergus says there are no known fatalities on the ground. He says preliminary reports indicate the dead include numerous children.

Fergus says the plane was registered to Eagle Cap Leasing Inc. in Enterprise, Oregon, but he doesn't know who was operating the plane.

Calls to local authorities were not immediately returned.

The Montana Standard reported on its Web site that the plane crashed in the Holy Cross Cemetery, just south of the airport. An eyewitness told the Standard that the plane was doing steep angle turns and then went into a nose dive.

"All of a sudden the pilot lost control and went into a nosedive," Kenny Gulick, 14, told the news organization. "He couldn't pull out in time and crashed into the trees of the cemetery," Gulick said.


The aircraft was a PC-12

[NickN]

The Montana Standard reported on its Web site that the plane crashed in the Holy Cross Cemetery, just south of the airport.

Almost unbelievable...... but yet believable on so many levels.

[Peter Agatsiotis]

Hard to imagine 17 people in a PC12 but the article did mention a few children.

Very sad.

[David Knudsen]

Hard to imagine 17 people in a PC12 but the article did mention a few children.


From what I can see online, the standard airliner config on a PC-12 has seating for 9 pax...thats a lot of children in laps.

[Stu M]

17 people in this aircraft has got to raise some eyebrows, the children were being taken on a skiing trip so they cant have been that small to all fit on laps.

[Mick F]

I'm not sure of the laws in the US (Most are very similar to the laws here in Australia though), but I can't only of any legal way that you could fit 17 people (kids or adults) into a PC-12.

Without delving into too much investigation, the aircraft is only certified for a maximum occupancy, no matter the configuration if I recall correctly.

Be interesting to follow up on this investigation, as there aren't many PC-12's in the world (around 800 or so in civilian service), and in the 15-17 years that the PC-12 has been operating, there have only been a few accidents which resulted in fatalities.

Mick

[Robert Zweck]

17 people in this aircraft has got to raise some eyebrows, the children were being taken on a skiing trip so they cant have been that small to all fit on laps.

Can't see how you would even fit 17 babies into a PC-12...

Something doesn't sound right...

[Andrew P]

Montana plane crash: ice on wings may be to blame


Speculation over what caused the crash of a single-engine plane into a Montana cemetery, killing all 14 on board, has shifted to possible ice on the wings after it became less likely that overloading was to blame.

Half the people on board were small children.

While descending on Sunday in preparation for landing at the Bert Mooney Airport in Butte, Montana, the turboprop plane passed through a layer of air at about 460 metres.

That was conducive to icing because the temperatures were below freezing and the air "had 100 per cent relative humidity or was saturated", according to AccuWeather.com, a forecasting service in State College, Pennsylvania.

Safety experts on Monday said similar icing condition existed when a Continental Airlines twin-engine turboprop crashed into a home near Buffalo Niagara International Airport last month, killing 50.

A possible aerodynamic stall in which ice causes the plane to lose lift, and the pilot's reaction to it, has been the focus of the Buffalo investigation.

"It's Buffalo all over again, or it could be," said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board. "Icing, given those conditions, is certainly going to be high on the list of things to look at for the investigators."

[NickN]

Just a question as I have no understanding of this, but don't these aircraft have anti-ice features?

I assume ice forming on the wings would have been sufficient cause for the diversion from the inital flight plan?

[Peter Agatsiotis]

Just checked a news item on:

www.pe.com/localnews

The 14 occupants included the pilot and 3 families (6 adults and 7 children all under the age of 10!)

9 of those killed were related to a prominent dentist who lost 2 daughters, 2 son-in-laws and 5 grandchildren. Poor man, imagine what he is going through.

It seems that all the adults were from the dental fraternity.

As already mentioned previously, although the a/c was overloaded (by no. of pax but maybe not by weight??) icing is the most likely cause.
The a/c was not fitted with cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder as it was not required to do so.

Very tragic.

[Mick F]

The Pilatus PC-12 is equipped with Pneumatic De-ice Boots for both the leading edges of the wings and the vertical stabiliser. It is also equipped with Propellor De-icing and the usual probe de-icing (pitot's, static vents, temperature probes, angle of attack vanes), heated windscreen's, and finally, an inertial vane seperator (a flap which when opened, diverts heavier particle's away from the engine air intake. In this case, solid pieces of ice).

What it doesn't have (and a lot of aircraft don't), are any de-icing equipment fitted to allow de-icing of the surfaces of the wings and tailplane.

So the aircraft could have been up in very cold air for a few hours, descended into moisture, and formed what is known as 'Hoar Frost', where moisture comes into contact with a very cold surface and turns to ice instantly. If the ice has formed on the aerofoil surfaces, then the only way it can be removed is by descending into warmer air, or exposing the surface to heat (ie. the sun).

Only a small amount of ice is required on the aerofoil surfaces, for it to make a huge difference to the behaviour of the aircraft.

Mick