Twice in one month! This time the left engine failed, it's N814JE.

Article with video:

https://www.kshb.com/news/loca...e-470-in-lees-summit

VIDEO: Bystander catches video of plane landing on I-470

Posted at 2:15 PM, May 19, 2020 and last updated 5:13 PM, May 19, 2020

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — UPDATE, 3:50 p.m. | Motorist Nate Frazier caught video of the plane landing on I-470 this afternoon.

A plane has landed on an interstate in Lee’s Summit, the Missouri Department of Transportation said Tuesday.

MoDOT tweeted a picture of the plane in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 470 just past Douglas Street around 2 p.m.

MoDOT asked drivers to find an alternate route, saying the interstate would likely remain closed for two to three hours. It reopened around 3:15 p.m. after the plane was towed away.

Only the pilot was on board, according to Lee’s Summit police. He was not hurt.

Police said the plane is a twin-engine Bonanza based at Lee’s Summit Municipal Airport.

A MoDOT spokesperson said the plane’s left engine failed.

Lee's Summit Police Department Sgt. Chris Depue said the plane struck a few signs while landing.

He said aircraft would be towed back to the Lee's Summit airport.


Article that's locked (I've expended my free reads):

https://www.kansascity.com/new...rticle242848461.html

Plane is based at Lees Summit:

https://www.airnav.com/airport/KLXT

Please, let's not have a pissing contest about how dark it was!!!

Mid 1960s, Bob Hope was awarded an honorary PhD at Monmouth College, in NJ.

Another pilot and I picked him up in a Twin Bonanza at JFK (can't remember, it might have still been called Idlewild at the time), and brought him to NJ for the award ceremony.

He was a very gracious gentleman.

---

Edit: I just looked it up. The name change was Christmas Eve, 1963, just one month and a couple of days after JFK was assassinated.

Do they literally "tow" it back the airport, or put it up on a trailer?

How do you get something this wide safely off the highway?


Q: if one of these engines fail, how far will the other one take us?
A: All the way to the scene of the crash.




Link to original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH-LmkLFJg0

He didn't signal

quote:

Originally posted by fwbulldog:


Q: if one of these engines fail, how far will the other one take us?
A: All the way to the scene of the crash.

That's actually not far removed from the truth, for most light twin engine airplanes. They drift down on one engine, but many have such low single-engine service ceilings, and such dismal single-engine performance, that the second engine extends glide range, but not a lot more. That includes the TwinBo, which was a larger, heavier airplane (and older airplane) so far as light twins go.

Light twins have lower success rates for off-field forced landings; they're heavier, land faster, are wider, and suffer more damage, as a rule. In addition, if a propeller doesn't feather (reduce drag), that glide to the site of the forced landing may be fairly short.

When a twin loses an engine, it loses not 50% of it's available thrust, but about 80%, given that the remaining engine is accounting for overcoming increased drag; excess thrust accounts for climb performance, and it takes two engines in many light twins to have that; one doens't meet the need. The light twin pilot is also faced with a minimum control speed issue, as well.

Any landing one can walk away from...

Does "planefax" include these in the history report? I'd sure want to know if I was in the market for this model aircraft!

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:

Does "planefax" include these in the history report? I'd sure want to know if I was in the market for this model aircraft!

All legitimate repair work is documented, per FAR requirements.

We have a few members who hold A&P (Airframe and Powerplant maintenance) certificates; they can probably provide details. I am not a maintenance tech, but as a pilot for a while, I have reviewed maintenance logbooks and other FAA paperwork. There is a wealth of information buried there, that can be unearthed by somebody who knows the language.

There's no national database of repairs, but there are logbooks. When I review logbooks, I'm as interested in what's not in them, as what is.

If I inspect an aircraft and find a repair, but no reference to the repair in the logbooks, this tells me a lot.

Everything that gets done to the aircraft requires a logbook entry, including preventative maintenance. When an inspection is performed, the person signing that inspection off takes responsibility for everything that's been done to the aircraft up to that point.

The level of of duty or liability is much higher with an aircraft than with a car, as are the requirements for the person working on the aircraft, as well as the pedigree and certification of the parts, and the specificity of the work done. It's got to be done a specific way, often with specific tools, using specific materials, and all with documentation.

That said, there may be no record of an off-field landing or even a gear-up landing, in that the record won't say that's what happened, and there wont' be a record of towing the aircraft back to the airfield (done that). Sometimes the details of repairs that have been done will infer the reason, but the reason for the repairs is seldom documented. If, for example, the Twin Bo had landed gear up on that road, or a runway, then a maintenance log entry describing replacing both propellers and engines, inspecting the gear, and replacing the belly skin, it would would paint the picture.

Maybe I’m not interpreting the picture right (and I couldn’t see the left prop in the video on this small screen), but it looks like the left engine is not feathered. Single engine best rate of climb is based on the airplane cleaned up, feathered, and flown at the bank angle for zero sideslip (Yaw string straight for glider pilots). Any deviation from that reduces what was already not going to be great performance. I suspect that the book single engine rate of climb in a T-bone is better than the Cessna T-50’s negative 50 fpm, but I doubt it is great. I do know that on many light twins failing to raise the gear or flaps or failing to feather the propellor on the engine not making power can turn the single engine rate of climb from a small positive number to a negative number.

Aviation layman’s likely ignorant question follows...

If a light twin cannot maintain level flight on a single engine, then why would you want one? Aren’t you statistically doubling your chance of a forced landing due to EF with two engines?

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
Aviation layman’s likely ignorant question follows...

If a light twin cannot maintain level flight on a single engine, then why would you want one? Aren’t you statistically doubling your chance of a forced landing due to EF with two engines?

What are the chances of a forced landing in a single-engine airplane, with an engine failure? 100%.

You are limited to the aerodynamic gliding range with a single engine airplane, when the engine quits.

You're also limited by other factors. Speed. Climb performance. Service ceiling. Range. Seating capacity. Cabin size. System redundancy (number of generators, hydraulic pumps, fuel sources, vacuum sources, pressurization, etc).

A twin is faster, flies higher, goes farther, seats more, etc...in some (but not all) cases. A twin may have redundancy in electrical sources, hudraulic sources, fuel pumps, fuel tanks, and instrumentation. Excess thrust equals climb performance; light twins with both engines have more excess thrust available than singles, as a rule.

A light twin has something remaining after an engine failure that a single doesn't have: thrust.

A single that loses a generator has no additional source of electrical power, in most cases, save the battery. Many light twins have a generator on each engine. Many have dual vacuum systems for instrumentation, etc.

The light twin will go a lot further on one engine than the single will on zero.

As for coming down without feathering; props don't always stop when feathered. Many don't. The engine may not have stopped either. It may also be that the engine failure occurred in flight, a feathering attempt was made or was done, a re-start attempt made, and the engine driven out of feather or partially so, leaving it unable to feather again, or driven partially out of feather; it could be a failed or flat prop accumulator, if installed, or simply a prop that didn't stop windmilling. It happens with some frequency.

The Twin Bonanza in the picture had the appearance of an airplane that was already slow, probably at or below minimum control speed for single engine operation, and that was put down firmly while trying to fit in between traffic on the highway. It appeared to be a rough touchdown.

Hello AAA?

The poh on this doesn’t suggest he couldn’t climb on one engine. So not sure why we have this event?

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
Aviation layman’s likely ignorant question follows...

If a light twin cannot maintain level flight on a single engine, then why would you want one? Aren’t you statistically doubling your chance of a forced landing due to EF with two engines?

At least by the book, most light twins can not only maintain level flight, but eke out some small rate of climb on one engine at maximum gross weight up to the single engine service ceiling IFF (if, and only if) the airplane is otherwise working as expected (rigged correctly, making rated power on the “good” engine) and the pilot does everything right.

In the case of this T-bone, it does not appear that the pilot feathered the engine (or as guppy points out maybe the pilot attempted a restart, failed and was stuck with an unfeathered propellor and too low an engine RPM to feather. I don’t have experience with a T-bone, but on the Travel Air that I often fly (the first twin built on a straight Bonanza fuselage and the predecessor to the Baron), failing to feather the dead engine turns your rate of climb from a few hundred feet positive to a few hundred feet negative.

Another consideration is that light airplanes are often flown below gross weight. The lighter the airplane is, the better it will perform on one engine.

If a pilot stays sharp, that second engine adds a safety cushion. Even if your best single engine rate of climb is minus 50 fpm, that gives you a lot more time, range, and options than the 1000 to 1500 fpm sink rate you would likely see gliding in that same airplane.

If the pilot doesn’t stay sharp, he’s a whole lot better off in a single engine that has become a glider. It is a lot simple to manage and the only question is what field can you glide to successfully? There have been a whole lot of people killed in twins after engine failure because the pilot tried to make the airplane fly further than it can, got too slow (below minimum controllable airspeed) and the airplane rolled into the dead engine and hit the ground inverted. That rarely ends well. Bellying an aircraft in right side up under control beats going in inverted all day everyday.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
As for coming down without feathering; props don't always stop when feathered. Many don't. The engine may not have stopped either. It may also be that the engine failure occurred in flight, a feathering attempt was made or was done, a re-start attempt made, and the engine driven out of feather or partially so, leaving it unable to feather again, or driven partially out of feather; it could be a failed or flat prop accumulator, if installed, or simply a prop that didn't stop windmilling. It happens with some frequency.

If you’re responding to my comment, I was referring to the angle of the blades of the left prop in the picture V-Tail posted in the third post. I couldn’t tell anything from the video shot from behind. Maybe I couldn’t see the prop because it was feathered. Maybe I couldn’t see the prop because it was turning. Maybe I couldn’t see the prop because my screen and/or my eyes suck. I did look at the video several times, I just couldn’t tell anything about the left prop from it, hence the reference to the picture that V-Tail posted.

Just general comments.

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:
The poh on this doesn’t suggest he couldn’t climb on one engine. So not sure why we have this event?

There could be a lot of reasons to put a light twin down off field; he may have been low on fuel, had smoke in the cockpit, a rough engine following a recent fueling (when's the other one going to quit?), a partial power situation, a power loss with an inability to feather, a control issue, a medical issue, or any number of other concerns.

The pilot reported that he was landing and experienced an engine failure. With few details given, if configured to land with flaps and gear extended, the minimal climb performance available would likely have been a negative number, and he may have elected to go for the landing space ahead, rather than attempt to go around.

In most light twins, you're usually better off landing on a taxiway, in the grass, or almost anywhere else, than attempting a go-around on one engine. There's no guaranteed climb gradient, and one finds one's self low, slow, with minimal or no climb performance, and attempting to reconfigure. The pilot appears to have elected to continue to the bird in the hand, rather than attempt to seek one out in the bush.

I live near where this happened.

Where he landed is about 3 miles south of the airport. The runway runs north - south. That spot on the highway runs east - west. I would think another pass would have been less effort on the pilots part.