C172 - Hermantown MN - 1 Oct 22

[PeterNSteinmetz]

3 fatalities

Minnesota plane crashes into home, killing 3 on board

A small aircraft crashed into the second floor of a residential building in Hermantown, Minnesota, Saturday, leaving three people dead.

www.foxnews.com

 

[Rush]

That one won’t be good for GA. Little airplanes raining down on people‘s homes.

Lots of pictures in KR. The homeowner woke up (via loud noise) to find a wheel next to his bed. The couple was asleep upstairs, seems the plane missed them but not by much. Wow.

Cessna 172S Skyhawk SP, N262TA: Fatal accident occurred October 01, 2022 in Hermantown, Saint Louis County, Minnesota

https://registry.faa.gov/N262TA Those who may have information that might be relevant to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) inv...

www.kathrynsreport.com

 

[Jim Logajan]

That one won’t be good for GA. Little airplanes raining down on people‘s homes.

Lots of pictures in KR. The homeowner woke up (via loud noise) to find a wheel next to his bed. The couple was asleep upstairs, seems the plane missed them but not by much. Wow.

Cessna 172S Skyhawk SP, N262TA: Fatal accident occurred October 01, 2022 in Hermantown, Saint Louis County, Minnesota

https://registry.faa.gov/N262TA Those who may have information that might be relevant to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) inv...

www.kathrynsreport.com

Airplanes crashing into buildings? Car drivers respond "Hold me beer.":

How many times a day do cars crash into buildings?

"...there are at least 100 American drivers veering their cars into buildings each day, or 36,500 a year, and that’s the low bound. The revised figure corresponds to 16,000 Americans injured in car-on-building crashes each year, he believes, and more than 2,500 people killed."

 

[Rush]

Airplanes crashing into buildings? Car drivers respond "Hold me beer.":

How many times a day do cars crash into buildings?

"...there are at least 100 American drivers veering their cars into buildings each day, or 36,500 a year, and that’s the low bound. The revised figure corresponds to 16,000 Americans injured in car-on-building crashes each year, he believes, and more than 2,500 people killed."

Not to mention the deliberately driving cars into crowds of people.

 

[MuseChaser]

There you folks go again, using facts and statistics to counter unreasonable fear and panic. Unacceptable...

 

[Rush]

There you folks go again, using facts and statistics to counter unreasonable fear and panic. Unacceptable...

Yep. It is actually a scientific fact (somebody researched it) that the more rare a disaster is, the bigger a threat it is in the mind of the public. This is probably related to the much greater media coverage it gets, but not entirely.

Part of it is psychological. When a threat is very common people don't worry about it, especially if it involves necessary activity. We have to drive places so we ignore the risk of a car crash. But some "rich guy" in a little airplane flying over my house is not necessary for my life, so suddenly he's a threat.

Feeling in control is also a factor. I'm in control when I drive my car but can't control someone flying over my house. So even if the odds are 1 in a billion a plane will fall on me, that's a huge threat. But though the odds of me being in a car crash are much greater, 1 in 100, I spend no time worrying about it.

Edit: correction, I believe the lifetime odds of me dying in a car crash are 1 in 100. The odds of being in one much greater.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Good comment by anonymous at KR -

"note: The registered owner, Svetfur Aviation LLC of South Carolina, may not be current due to new owner registration backlog at the FAA Records Branch. All the recent ADSB tracks are located in Minnesota and Illinois and appear based out of South St Paul (KSGS).

KDLH weather at the time of the incident, ~11:15 PM CDT was 200' overcast ceiling, fog/mist, so IFR. Surface Winds out of the east around 10-12 mph. The plane was on a flight from KDLH to KSGS (South St Paul - Richard E. Fleming Field), for what supposed to be a ~1+10 flight of about 143 miles. So night IMC conditions. The airplane was only in the air about 3 minutes or so. Got to 2,100 MSL (GPS), then initiated about 270º left turn turn that accelerated rapidly heading SW into the ground about 2 miles south of approach-end of rwy 09 at KDLH.
ATC audio recordings will reveal whether the pilot was trying to return to the field with engine problems and/or spatial disorientation. The plane (and likely same pilot) had flown into DLH about 12 hours earlier on flight at 4,700' MSL that took him through a line of light rain showers, landing on visual approach to KDLH rwy 09.

With the rapidly increasing ground speed prior to impact, regardless of the reason for the 270º descending turn, it looks like spatial Disorientation. The tower/ATC was obviously communicating with the pilot because they knew immediately the aircraft crashed and alerted off airport emergency first responders.

Note: there is a Caution in the Airport Chart Suppl of bird hazard 1 Sep through 31 Oct. Just noting that. I would be surprised if birds at late night."

Video from local news station at

Link to ATC recording at https://archive.liveatc.net/kdlh/KDLH1-Oct-02-2022-0400Z.mp3

Transcript by anonymous at KR -

- 262TA comms with tower pretty normal-routine through T/O. (0412:00)
- After T/O, the pilot immediately acknowledges tower instruction to contact departure. (0413:28 UTC)
- 1minute 9 seconds goes by: nothing heard
- Departure calls 262TA: "Cessna 262TA, departure here" (0414:37 UTC)
- 11 seconds later, Departure makes 2nd attempt: "Cessna 2TA, contact departure"
(0414:49 UTC)

- At 0414:49, ADSB data shows alt as 2,300' MSL, but a previous ~+ 500'/min to +700'/min climb is now turning to roughly a -300'/min descent.

- 262TA acknowledges Departure immediately,(speaking fast): "262TA, Hold on 1 second." (0414:52 UTC)
- (20 seconds later) Departure: "Cessna 262TA, I'm showing you,you descending out of 19-hundred. Verify you're climbing." (0415:12 UTC)

- A clear, distinct ATC voice: "For 2TA, Duluth" (0415:50 UTC)
- ATC: "2TA, Duluth" (0415:55 UTC)
- ATC: "2TA, Duluth Approach, How do you hear?" (0416:00)
//No further air-to-air comms//

Aircraft hit 2nd floor of house at 5154 W Arrowhead Rd, Hermantown, MN, with mangled wreckage seen in photo above in front of detached garage, here:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.com

So nothing from pilot to ATC about trouble or an emergency. Spatial Disorientation maybe flight into IMC is likely here. The JFK, Jr. scenario redux.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Comments by another anonymous there which reinforces the idea of spatial disorientation, unknown cause.

I have had SD when first passing into clouds and it took a lot of will power to keep saying "trust the instruments"

The transcript posted here glosses over several elements in the part labeled “normal-routine:”

"2TA was filed and cleared direct SGS at 6000.

The tower was reporting 1/2 mile visibility, but the runway 9 RVR was 6000’ (both far less than the 4SM reported by the METAR for that timeframe).

The tower set the lighting intensity on step 4 (of 5). Runway 9 has a full compliment of touchdown zone (TDZ) and Centerline (CL) lights in addition to the high-intensity runway lights (HIRL).

A King Air that had previously departed reported based as 250’ AGL, tops unknown (during climb at 12,000’). This was relayed to 2TA by the tower with an advisory that they’d likely be in IMC for a while.

Tower cleared them for takeoff with a right turn direct on course. Generally, in the absence of any other departure procedure or ATC instruction, you start turns no less than 400’ above the airport elevation following an IFR takeoff.

The spiraling flight path almost certainly indicates spatial disorientation. We won’t know the “why” for a long time - it could be proficiency/competency, instrument failure, or other dealing with something else in the cockpit (for example, a dropped pen, bad trim settings, a spurious annunciation) that resulted in disorientation. The “hold on” communication from 2TA that happened late, without any specifics, suggests that it wasn’t major mechanical (no urgency or detail), just a pilot way behind the plane, trying to unscrew the situation.

But one thing that strikes me, and the reason I bring up the glossed-over part of the transcript, is that they went from an environment with fairly bright lights into a very low overcast with a right turn on-course, nominally within a few seconds after entering said low overcast. Make no mistake: the transition from the visual environment to instruments is one of the most challenging aspects of IFR flying, even during the day, even for an instrument-rated pilot (see Kobe). Doing so at night - going from a bright visual immediately into dark IMC and an almost-immediate climbing turn is a heck of a setup for somatogravic and somatogyric illusions. I’m not saying these were definitely contributing factors, and the investigation may bear more detail, but it can be a cautionary lesson now for anyone trying to go up in similar conditions."