Came across this terrific story when researching some pistol optics.

Radio transmissions and radar tracking HERE (yootoob link).

Posted about two weeks ago.

Enjoy!

First question that comes to my mind: Was this the first flight for this airplane after coming out of maintenance? Why did the nosegear assembly drop off? Could have been mechanical failure, but my suspicious mind questions incomplete installation during maintenance.

This is a fixed (non-retratacable) gear airplane and there is no linkage for nose wheel steering, so it's pretty simple and should be almost as reliable as an anvil.

I wa not able to find a preliminary accident report on the FAA website.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
First question that comes to my mind: Was this the first flight for this airplane after coming out of maintenance? Why did the nosegear assembly drop off? Could have been mechanical failure, but my suspicious mind questions incomplete installation during maintenance.

This is a fixed (non-retratacable) gear airplane and there is no linkage for nose wheel steering, so it's pretty simple and should be almost as reliable as an anvil.

I wa not able to find a preliminary accident report on the FAA website.

Cotter pin? We don’t need no steenkin Cotter pin. Oops…

I saw the video of this. An experienced instructor helped talk her down (but to be fair she did a great job).

This is why preflight is so important. I remember a time preflighting an A4 Skyhawk for flight that had just come out of depot maintenance. During preflight I found the pins holding the right aileron on had no bolts or cotter keys. Odds are that under any maneuvering the pins would have come out allowing the aileron to fall off. (If your familiar with the A4 you know that the aileron comprises a good portion of the diminutive wing.) We had long discussions about whether an A4 would still be able to fly with one aileron.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
First question that comes to my mind: Was this the first flight for this airplane after coming out of maintenance? Why did the nosegear assembly drop off? Could have been mechanical failure, but my suspicious mind questions incomplete installation during maintenance.

The mechanic should be required to go on a test flight after any significant work!

I had an engine failure in a T-41 (aka C172) on the first flight after a new engine was installed. The mixture control was incorrectly rigged too rich, resulting in flooding the engine out at 9500 ft when carb heat was applied. We glided down to the terrain which was at about 6000 ft, trying to restart. Long story short, we abandoned attempts to restart at about 100 ft agl and went into shutdown mode. Open the doors, remove contents of shirt pockets, mixture to idle cutoff ... and the engine fired up! By carefully adjusting the mixture just above cutoff the engine would run. We landed at a nearby airport.

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:

Cotter pin? We don’t need no steenkin Cotter pin. Oops…

So there I was, at 8,000' over the Atlantic, couple hundred miles east of the Florida shoreline, deadheading home in a client's Bonanza after dropping him and his wife at Stella Maris (Bahamas), when I discovered that I had no way to control the fuel mixture. Discovered, after landing, that there was (was not?) a missing Cotter pin in the mixture control linkage.

The outbound trip was the first flight after maintenance replaced the mixture control cable. It took the outbound flight and half of the return trip for the castle nut without a cotter pin to work itself loose and allow the bolt that secured the end of the cable to drop out.

quote:

Originally posted by mojojojo:

This is why preflight is so important.

Agree on the importance of a good pre-flight inspection. In this instance, I doubt that even a very thorough inspection would have revealed an improperly secured assembly; General Aviation pilots do not usually remove inspection panels prior to flight.

I dunno anything about the diamonds. Do they have wheel pants? From the radio traffic it sounds like the wheel fell off, rather than the whole nose gear assembly (hence the Cotter pin comment).

E.T.A a funny story: A friend who was an A&P as well as a pilot went to a provider in Arizona that did multi engine training in a Travel Air to add ME to his commercial certificate. When the instructor said let’s go, he said, “Nope, there’s cord showing on the left main tire.” The school’s mechanic replaced the tire and pronounced airplane good to go. My buddy took a quick look and asked, “Are you going to put a Cotter pin on to secure that castle nut?” Needless to say, he wasn’t terribly impressed with their idea of airworthiness.

Here is a follow up story on both pilots.



This video shows a blurry still that appears to show the nose gear strut in place but the wheel assembly is missing. It also shows the landing and you can see the nose start to settle then the aircraft takes a fairly violent nose up bounce before settling in again. I'll guess that was the strut hitting the run way and departing the aircraft.


The aircraft appears to have been a Diamond DV20 Katana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_DA20_Katana

General characteristics

Crew: one
Capacity: one passenger[30]
Length: 7.16 m (23 ft 6 in)
Wingspan: 10.87 m (35 ft 8 in)
Height: 2.18 m (7 ft 2 in)
Empty weight: 528 kg (1,164 lb)
Gross weight: 800 kg (1,764 lb)
Fuel capacity: 24 U.S. gallons (91 L; 20 imp gal)
Powerplant: 1 × Continental IO-240-B3B four cylinder horizontally opposed piston aircraft engine, 93 kW (125 hp)
Propellers: 2-bladed Sensenich Propeller fixed pitch

Performance

Cruise speed: 256 km/h (159 mph, 138 kn)
Stall speed: 83 km/h (52 mph, 45 kn)
Range: 1,013 km (629 mi, 547 nmi) with 30 minute reserve
Service ceiling: 4,000 m (13,120 ft)
Rate of climb: 5.1 m/s (1,000 ft/min)

Avionics

Garmin GNC 420W GPS/COM
Garmin GTX 327 transponder with blind altitude encoder
PS Engineering PM 1000 Intercom