Wtfugawi

Negative, he was runoff from Mesa before he got to or was in systems class, think he went to GoJet and no idea from there. Met him once, absolute bottom of the barrel to put it lightly.

JamesNoBrakes

Hmm, right away it doesn't strike me as much damage for an engine that was supposed to come apart in flight. Maybe we aren't seeing everything, but usually catastrophic failures of the turbine blades causes a lot more damage, both shooting through the engine and parts flying out the exhaust. Although there is usually a ring around the engine to "catch" the blades as they are ejected during a catastrophic failure, at full power and spinning, the damage is usually much more massive when it fails at full power/RPM. The ring that is suppose to "catch" everything bears little resemblance in that condition to what it started out looking like and the damage is generally on a fairly massive scale. In practice, it attenuates the energy enough that anything that does escape doesn't pose a further danger, but it's usually torn to shreds.

You should watch some of the chicken-shooting videos where they test jet engines. It's amazing how much they flex and move around when subjected to a shock. They are not the rigid structures they seem to be. This is why when there is an accident, even if it had nothing to do with the engine, the engine will often tear itself apart on some scale, just not the scale that would indicate a catastrophic internal failure. Remember that these are very carefully balanced engines that spin at tens of thousands of RPM, which means when something internally does "go", it tears itself apart in sometimes less than a revolution. That's a massive amount of energy. I don't really see those energy signatures in these pictures, but again, we aren't seeing everything.

Again, as I said via PM, we can't look at the fatigue cracks (if present) on a microscopic scale, which is what the labs do to determine fatigue failure vs. overload failure. Overload means the entire thing was subject to far more stress than it was designed to handle, like running it up way past 100%, and in that case there should be additional heat signatures to show it was operating above what it should. Turbine engines are pretty sensitive to temps and over-temp operations leave some pretty good signatures. Much more common in almost every failure is a flaw of some kind or locally under-designed area, which causes a crack that propagates with each cycle until the structure can no longer hold itself together, and then it catastrophically fails. Things just don't fail unless they are either subjected to more load than they are designed to handle, or they fail below that level, but if that's the case, it doesn't happen at once. It happens over time. This is sometimes visible to the trained eye without excessive magnification, but it also sometimes takes extreme magnification, beyond what scanning electron microscopes can do (into the area of transmission electron microscopes). This is why labs are used extensively to test and determine fatigue failures. This is where I'd be looking carefully to eliminate a catastrophic failure of the turbine disc/blades. If the disc was recovered, the signature of a fatigue crack would be there.

kepi89

That could be but I don't know for sure. I sent this 30 year old's immature email to his parents yesterday. My son's girlfriend at the time, also sent an email to his Mom telling her how he has been harassing women on her Facebook for female pilots. His dad is an American Airlines pilot. They must have said something to him because he sent me another emal this morning. Mission accomplished


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kepi89

Thanks for your input. I do have all of the pictures taken by the investigator including both turbine wheels and microscopic pictures. I can't seem to upload them on this website but if you message me your email, I can send them.

kepi89

JNB, Thanks for your input! I do have all of the pictures taken by the investigator including both turbine wheels and microscopic pictures. I can't seem to upload them on this website but if you message me your email, I can send them.

rickair7777

Glad to see facebitter is out of aviation, hopefully he stays that way.

Not a turbine engine expert, but do have some engineering background relevant to turbines in general (big industrial units as well as aircraft). Like JNB, my gut feel is that I would actually expect to see significantly more hot section damage if the power turbine came apart at TO power. At that kind of rpm, the imbalance should cause the entire turbine assembly to rip itself out of the hot section and disintegrate. But like I said, not an expert on PT-6's by any means.

kepi89

Here is a you tube of a slide show I made of the power turbine wheel damage.

https://youtu.be/HVOd3F6Qt1c

sailingfun

If the aircraft had a 696 onboard it should be very easy to determine if there was a engine failure. In addition if the engine was making power at ground impact the type of propeller blade damage is quite different than a impact on a windmilling prop. Between the type of prop damage, 696 data and ground radar if available it should be a simple determination. This may help or hinder your lawsuit.

sailingfun

Edit: I feel for your loss and reviewed the original thread and the NTSB report. The 696 while technically a handheld device is far better then most panel mount GPS's. It's a full 12 channel with WAAS. Unless someone talked garmin who more the likely read out the data into a complete fabrication of the data the aircraft was under power until impact. The propeller blade damage also shows a prop under power not windmilling. If there had been a power loss in a climb at 600 to 700 FPM the deceleration rate on a prop aircraft is dramatic even if you push the nose over. It would never have accelerated in that situation even with the nose 2 degrees nose down. In addition the stall speed of the caravan is around 61knots. Pilots are taught from the start of training to get as slow as possible in the event of a off airport landing. Pilots are taught often and early to not try and return to the takeoff airport in the event of a low altitude engine failure. It's often referred to as the impossible turn. The course of action drilled into pilots in that situation is to establish best glide speed. Look ahead for the most suitable area to crash and then decelerate to slightly above stall for impact.
My question if I were in your place would be why a company put a pilot with such limited experience into a night solo IFR situation at a black hole airport when he had less then 50 hours in type. It was a recipe for disaster and if there is fault by the company that is where I would be looking. You could easily make a case that the company should have required more time in type before allowing this operation. In fact I consider it almost criminal when companies do this to save money. They simply don't want to pay for the second pilot.

USMCFLYR

The pilot was trained and qualified to handle the environment that night.
It seems to me a mistake was made.
50 hrs or 500 hrs in type and these types of mistakes are still made.
I certainly disagree with the "criminal" comment of the company's actions.