Yesterday a FedEx MD-11 crashed at Japan’s Narita international airport, killing both crew members on-board. The plane bounced during landing, then burst into flames. It has been reported that there were heavy winds while the aircraft attempted to land, but it is not clear whether that is the primary reason it crashed. The crash was caught on tape, you can view it below. Also, below is Crash #2 of yesterday.
17 died in a plane crash in Montana. The aircraft was a Pilatus PC-12 turboprop. Sounds like this is what happend; One eyewitness, Kenny Gulick, aged 14, who lives near the airport, told the Montana Standard that the plane had been making sharp turns. “All of a sudden the pilot lost control and went into a nose dive,” said Gulick. “He couldn’t pull out in time, and crashed into the trees of the cemetery.” It is unclear as to what the official reason of the crash is.
Re: the Pilatus crash, thus far it seems the 17 fatalities were passengers and no one on the ground. Insofar as the Pilatus PC-12 is normally configured for 6-9 passengers (and occasionally provisions for 3 additional) was the crash primarily precipitated by excess weight, unstable shifting loads, or some combination of the two?
Although this aircraft is quite sophisticated and high-performance, I still can’t fathom why 17 occupants were aboard this relatively compact fuselage.
Excellent point. I don’t know if the pilots figured that since “children” were aboard they counted them differently (?). It’s very possible that this aircraft was overweight. Pilatus is well known for reliability; the aircraft is less than 10 years old too.
I am baffled by the number of passengers vs. seats on the Montana crash. It seems common sense to me especially in today’s day and age that there shouldn’t be more passengers than seats. They are also saying because there was no flight data recorder that investigators may never know the cause of the flight. Is it too expensive or not worth putting recorder boxes in each plane that carries passengers?
There will be NTSB investigators looking into the crash, however it makes their job much more difficult without a flight data recorder box. Unfortunately it would probably be too expensive to put it on every plane. I’m not too familiar with what the exact requirements are as to what aircraft are required to have them. Certainly 17 people cramming into a plane built for 6-9 is insane; sadly, it reflects poor decisions made by the pilots.
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