Thursday, June 02, 2022

Cirrus SR22 GTS G3 Turbo, N432CP: Accident occurred June 01, 2022 in Wayne, Tredyffrin Township, Pennsylvania

Federal Aviation Administration / Flight Standards District Office; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

Aircraft crashed under unknown circumstances on a golf course.


Date: 01-JUN-22
Time: 19:27:00Z
Regis#: N432CP
Aircraft Make: CIRRUS
Aircraft Model: SR22
Event Type: INCIDENT
Highest Injury: MINOR
Aircraft Missing: No
Damage: UNKNOWN
Activity: PERSONAL
Flight Phase: EN ROUTE (ENR)
Operation: 91
City: PHILADELPHIA
State: PENNSYLVANIA





WAYNE, Pennsylvania (CBS) — A husband and wife are lucky they weren’t seriously injured after their plane crash-landed on a golf course. It happened around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday afternoon at St. David’s Golf Club in Wayne.

A mechanical failure forced the pilot to make an emergency landing near a maintenance building on the course, which is located in the Wayne section of Tredyffrin Township.

We’re told about six or seven people were in the area when that plane went down. Everyone says they’re counting this ending as a blessing.

“It was miraculous, quite honestly,” a man said.

It’s being hailed as a miracle on Radnor Road after a plane landed on the golf course with little damage.

The plane reportedly suffered a mechanical failure.

“He looked for a safe place to land, he saw the golf course as he was going towards the other airport. He was able to land on the golf course. Unfortunately, when he came in it was an uphill slope, hit a little bit harder than he would have liked to,” Tredyffrin Township Police Chief Michael Beaty said.

Golfers pulled the pilot, his wife, and their two cats to safety. They were headed to Wings Field in Blue Bell from Fort Myers, Florida, with a stop for fuel in South Carolina.

“It could’ve been awful. If anybody had died on this golf course it would’ve been horrible for them and for us for sure,” Ken Jones said.

Jones is the president of the golf course. He relayed how members described the moments they noticed something was happening.

“Sally said to Bill, ‘I think that plane’s going to crash,’ and they didn’t even have time to move. Luckily, it was about 25 yards ahead of them. They said it hit the ground, bounced up, went over the tee box and into the trees,” Jones said.

The pilot found an open area on the course near the 14th hole for his emergency landing.

Many are grateful this wasn’t worse.

“It’s extremely rare. They’re very fortunate. I think the pilot did as good a job as you could given the situation. And it was nice to have the people here so close to help them out,” Beaty said.

The FAA and the NTSB are currently investigating the crash.

The couple on board was taken to Paoli Hospital where they are expected to be OK.





WAYNE, Pennsylvania (WPVI) -- Chester County emergency crews said two people were injured when a private plane crashed in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

The Cirrus SR22 went down at about 3:30 p.m. at the St. Davids Golf Club on the 800 block of Radnor Road.

Investigators said a male pilot and his wife were traveling to Wings Field in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania from Fort Myers, Florida with a stop for fuel in South Carolina.

The plane reportedly suffered a mechanical failure, and the pilot was able to locate an open area on the course near the 14th hole to make an emergency landing.

The plane reportedly suffered a mechanical failure, and the pilot was able to locate an open area on the course near the 14th hole to make an emergency landing.

Views from Chopper 6 showed the crashed plane near some trees on the course.

The pilot and passenger were able to get out of the plane with assistance from witnesses who were on the golf course, officials said.

Action News spoke with aviation expert and former Navy pilot John Gagliano. He says if there was any day to have this happen, Thursday was it.

"Actually on a day like today, where there's beautiful weather and not a lot of clouds around, there's an 85% chance you walk away from something like that," said Gagliano.

He also says when he hears the plane lost power, that means the engine failed and that could've happened from a variety of factors.

Gagliano says it takes skill when it comes to an emergency landing.

"You have to put the plane in the position to get to a clear area. So, there are a lot of things that can go wrong and everything has to go perfect and right. This pilot did that. He made every choice apparently well because he walked away," said Gagliano.

The couple was taken to Paoli Hospital as a precaution.

The FAA will begin its investigation to figure out what exactly went wrong.

No golfers were injured in the incident.


  





TREDYFFRIN, Pennsylvania - Authorities say two people were hurt when a plane made an emergency landing on a Pennsylvania golf course Wednesday afternoon.

The hard landing happened around 3:30 p.m. at St. Davis Golf Country Club in the Wayne section of Tredyffrin Township. 

Police Chief Mike Beaty told reporters that the plane was being piloted by a 70-year-old man, who had his wife and two cats aboard. 

During the flight, investigators said the plane experienced a "mechanical failure" and the unnamed pilot eyed the golf course for an emergency landing spot. 

The plane impacted a slight rise in the terrain before it came to a stop near a tree line, authorities said. 

The pilot, his wife, and their two cats were all safely removed from the plane with help from a group of witnesses. 

The passengers were taken to Paoli Hospital for treatment, according to police. 

FOX 29's Chris O'Connell reports that public records show the plane, a Cirrus SR22, is owned by a Montgomery County man.

Authorities said the plane was heading to Wings Field in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania from Fort Myers, Florida. 

Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board will probe the crash. 

39 comments:

  1. What "went wrong" is they failed to deploy the chute. Safe assumption they were above 500', and that they would have been completely uninjured if they'd just used the feature they presumably bought they plane for in the first place. Glad they're both alive.

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    1. Flight track shows a turn, descent and slowdown near Brandywine Regional KOQN, hard to understand what was going on from that point thru to the golf course.

      https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a52acc&lat=39.958&lon=-75.604&zoom=10.4&showTrace=2022-06-01&trackLabels

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    2. METAR:
      KOQN 011915Z AUTO 14006KT 10SM CLR 29/20 A2987

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    3. Probably tried to nurse the bird to the Authorized Cirrus Service Center at Wings Field KLOM. Almost made it, only needed four minutes more to reach Wings Field. This zoomed view of his bee-line track certainly suggests that he was making for Wings Field:

      https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a52acc&lat=40.070&lon=-75.427&zoom=11.0&showTrace=2022-06-01&trackLabels

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    4. News article says Wings was the destination, FA shows filed for LOM, lots of operating out of LOM looking back through previous ADS-B. Looks like LOM was home base.

      https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N432CP

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  2. Why didn’t he deploy the aircraft parachute? It’s an SR22

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    1. Two cats on board. If Toonces and Delilah were roaming the cabin and not in tote boxes, there may have been concern that they could spaz out after the rocket blew the hatch and end up outside in all the excitement of a chute deploy.

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    2. Still not grounds for endangering people on the golf course and going against Cirrus recommendations which clearly say to pull the chute. Probably tried to save the aircraft when they saw the golf course. Didn't work.

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    3. Any owner heartless enough to allow their pets to "roam about the cabin" with no hearing protection or restraint from turbulence or being ejected if a door opens is not going to care what happens to that pet when they pull the chute.

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    4. Are earmuffs available for cats, or do people use the squeeze and insert expanding foam plugs?

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  3. Unlike the rest of you, I'm thrilled to see that a pilot in a Cirrus actually kept flying the plane and attempted an emergency landing for once, re: piloting his aircraft... instead of immediately popping the chute whenever there's a problem. He had large clear areas to pick a spot to put her down, but unfortunately came up just a few feet short and nosed into the trees. I'd say good job by the pilot! Hope they make a quick recovery. But damn, two loose cats in the cockpit? I don't trust cats even in an apartment, much less a plane.

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    1. Cats and snakes have no business being in any aircraft.
      Snakes and cats = sneaky.
      Also, air travel can be particularly dangerous for animals with "pushed in" faces (the medical term is "brachycephalic"), such as particular breeds of domestic cats, pug dogs, and bulldogs.

      Fly safe ... train often.

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    2. You can be thrilled but it doesn’t change the fact that he went against the POH and the training most of us were required to take by our insurers.

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    3. Agree on not using the parachute in this case. He was over a congested town with busy streets and a train right of way with overhead electrical wires. Had he used the parachute, he would have had no control of where it would have come down. He made a decent forced landing and no one was seriously injured.
      The report above says the airplane departed from somewhere in South Carolina which is approximately 550km. That is well within the range of an SR22, but the circumstances cause suspicion of possible fuel exhaustion.

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    4. Kinda looks like he was trying to nurse it to home base at Wings field, wouldn't be the first person to fall four minutes short of getting to a preferred destination.

      Depending on what the engine was doing, he may have delayed committing to a chute pull because power was ragged but expected to complete by just keeping on with a low,low approach that turned into the golf course divert.

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    5. The facts are you are far far more likely to kill yourself, your passengers, and innocent bystanders if you decide to satisfy your ego by playing hero pilot and attempting an off airport landing than pulling the chute while you are still in the safety envelope. Personally, I'd be thrilled to see less hero pilots if it meant less body bags, and that would also help our insurance rates and our perception by the general public who are just looking to put more blood on our hands so they can shut down our airports. But boy is that macho pilot ego such a difficult force to ignore for some people.

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    6. Uninformed opinion presumes there will always be a cow pasture chute landing in some fortuitous open space that you drift into. His golf course landing avoided the risk of a tree trunk shaft poking up through the cabin, as many will remember seeing in the photo of the Matt Lehtinen chute landing.

      The tall treed neighborhoods he was over when the chute pull would have been made are seen in the Street View example images below. He really was a hero pilot to get landed without risking an impaled cabin or becoming lodged up in the trees waiting for rescue.

      https://goo.gl/maps/xqG1dJugWutMK8Ws6
      https://goo.gl/maps/TPYGabjBpwDB41gw9
      https://goo.gl/maps/aURjGVchi6HBfRNi9

      Photo, trunk-impaled Cirrus in Matt Lehtinen's chute landing:
      https://images.dailyhive.com/20190806061330/american-pilot-crash-video.jpg

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    7. "Uninformed opinion" is backed up by informed statistics. Statistically, pulling the chute dramatically increases your chances for survival in an engine out not near an airport. If freak tree trunk impaling accidents were likely, they would have happened more often than once in over 100 parachute pulls. Chances of dying in an off airport landing are much greater (approximately 15-20%).

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    8. Cirrus Aircraft is notorious for post-crash fires. I hope the couple in this Cirrus crash realizes how lucky they are.

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    9. Got a chuckle that someone thinks a pilot should ignore the risk of dropping into the very tall trees that were thickly distributed below, plainly visible in his home area by looking out the window. He was well aware of the golf course being an option and made good use of it.

      The only statistical insight relevant to his decision would have to be taken from the subset of chute landings in trees of comparable height and density, which makes all of the open space chute landings irrelevant in the statistical total. Matt Lehtinen's chute landing may be the only example that occurred in trees representative of what is seen in the street view images of the terrain N432CP would have dropped into.

      Uninformed opinion isn't backed up or improved at all by pretending that unrelated open space chute landing events that make up the bulk of the deployments are applicable to this pilot's decision.

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    10. He was about 20 feet from impaling his aircraft horizontally into a tree trunk and becoming a crispy fireball. 2 knots off and he'd be dead. Chute would have been a much better choice. Parachuting into a thick forest of trees provides plenty of branches to slow the descent. Hitting a thick trunk head on? Not so much.

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    11. Tree branches at 20mph (chute) or tree trunks at 70mph really doesn't seem like a gray area. Which is why Cirrus tells you to pull the chute.

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  4. Someone on another website regarding a different Cirrus accident stated that his Cirrus insurance policy was null and void if he failed to use the CAPS. I'm curious if that's typical.

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  5. Going to have to throw the BS flag on that "null and void" comment. That's nonsense.

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  6. There are major highways and wooded areas in this locale. An open fairway was a better option than being at the mercy of a chute and the wind.

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  7. Can one of you people who claim the cats were just free roaming around in the aircraft when pulled out by bystander assistance please detail where you read that they were not in crates and were instead just free roaming in the cabin? I'm all ears. Because I know of ZERO cat owners, myself included, who don't even drive a CAR with a cat in it without being in a crate. I'm asking because I have cats and have been around a few automobile accidents with dogs free roaming inside. When that door, and you will NOT stop that animal from getting the hell out and running away from the traumatic experience.

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  8. My read, apparent 'mechanical issues' hit @ 40.047,-75.422, 2050ft / 130kts on ADS-B track of 53 deg toward KLOM 10 mi ahead @ 065.° On the ground 2 minutes later. Passed up KOQN 3 minutes earlier.

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  9. What is with all the engine issues on Cirrus 22's... Are the IO 550's having similar failure rates on other aircraft? ie. Modified Bonanzas...

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  10. Never, never, never allow dogs, cats, or other pets to free roam in an aircraft. What is wrong with some people?

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  11. Hey, SR22 lovers. How's that IO-550 working out for ya? There are obvious engine defects with that engine ... SR 22 accidents due to engine failures are all too common. SUP????

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    1. your same take on the Baron and Bonanza use of Continental’s IO-550-C/B? http://www.continental.aero/news-events/news/2022/Beechcraft_Updates_Legendary_Bonanza_and_Baron_Aircraft/

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    2. Other than the cylinder issues from earlier times, there's not much to suggest IO-550 engine failures are trending currently. Plenty of incorrect boost pump switch mistakes and fuel exhaustion from Cirrus pilot error shows up in reports. We are obviously going to need to recruit a lot more people who wear a ball cap backwards, hold their britches up with one hand (because no belt) and greet everyone with a nod while saying "sup" to sort this question out.

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    3. still sorting out $50K engine questions !!

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  12. Fortunately there was no post crash fire. Oh wait you need fuel for that

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  13. It is reasonable if can see a big field to dead-stick the plane. Don't look at "statistics" in this individual decision. I'd also rather fly into a nice golf course than take chances with high tension power lines, highway, or spikes / roofs etc under the chute.

    If in the woods or at night, immediate chute pull. But it is reasonable to try the course, which this guy did, successfully.

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    1. And he didn't just happen to see that golf course. Flight history shows the aircraft operating out of Wings Field as the home base. With a lot of golf course landings already in the books, keeping in mind how the courses near your home field are laid out can come in handy, and it did.

      https://www.golfchannel.com/video/golf-courses-often-used-emergency-landings

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  14. From the wiki page:
    As of 21 September 2021, CAPS had been activated 126 times, 107 of which saw successful parachute deployment. In those successful deployments, there were 220 survivors and 1 fatality. No fatalities had occurred when the parachute was deployed within the certified speed and altitude parameters, and two anomalous unsuccessful deployments had occurred within those parameters. Some additional accidental deployments were reported, as caused by ground impact or post-impact fires.[22] As of 24 October 2019, 21 of the aircraft involved in CAPS deployments had been repaired and put back into service.[23]

    Post 2011, the year of the SR-series' highest fatality rate to date, Cirrus has experienced an increase in CAPS deployments coinciding with a steady decrease in fatal accidents, giving them one of the best safety records in the industry. This was attributed to a new approach to training, particularly in when and how to deploy the parachute system.

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