ERAU Arrow crash preliminary report
 

As rumored, wing came off in flight, looks like metal fatigue:


https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/Re...=HTML&IType=FA

This airplane probably led a life of high-cycles, with plenty of low-altitude maneuver and cruise in air that tends to be bumpy and salty. This could be the canary for PA-28's of that generation. Wouldn't surprise me to see bulletins or AD's to follow.

Fair winds and following seas.

What a horrible, horrible way to go :(

I wonder if this could have been detected by completing SB1006.

Absolutely horrible. So sad.

You rarely see pictures in Prelim reports. My guess is the NTSB is going after an Emergency AD.

"None of the surfaces exhibited visible evidence of corrosion or other preexisting damage. The right wing also exhibited fatigue cracks in the lower spar cap at the same hole location extending up to 0.047-inch deep."

SB1006 is for corrosion behind the fuel tank mid spar.

That's scary. And yeah, not surprised if there's an (expensive) Emergency AD soon.

The plane was made in 2007, so it really isn't that old for a trainer. I hope this aircraft had a unique history to explain the fatigue.

I know. I think the unusual history was the location and use of the aircraft. If a failure was going to occur, that's exactly the kind of operational history where it would happen first. Since the other wing exhibited fatigue as well, it wasn't a defect in just the one spar. May affect other aircraft in that general production run.

I'm *assuming* not a design flaw, since piston ASEL wing spars are pretty well-defined technology. Perhaps a material defect from the mfg... that might affect other hulls. Worst case they tried to use high-tech design tools to remove weight during a design update, and went too far.

Since both wings were affected, and the plane was so new, I suspect we're going to hear more on this one. If my kid went to school there, he'd be grounded until they checked the other planes, or determined that that the accident plane was over-stressed.

It's *possible* somebody over-stressed the plane at some point in the past and didn't report it, but frankly it would be hard to crack wing spars without bending anything first... I would think an event like that that would have left visible bent sheet metal and popped rivets. I've seen over-stressed planes that made it home and they were obviously jacked up.

x2
.........

I’ll be the jerk to say it.
I hope this accident weighs heavily on every ERAU student and CFI who ever did unauthorized aerobatics in one of these airplanes.