DR400 F-GIKS crashed after takeoff from Propriano LFKO

Thanks a lot for your messages. All the people of the club are quite devasted and we could only imagine theories of whats could have happened.
I do not believe in the “return to runway” scenario. We had mostly the same training in Cannes by local FI, and there is not a single take-off in a SEP where we don’t brief the ditching and the bird strike scenario. We know how to react – but of course, living it is another story.
There is not a checkride without FI pulling the throttle at 200ft to check if we push on the stick and detect/act and speak the action to do. So I think he just tried to turn to the beach and ditched.

He didn’t refuel because local pump is out of order (as usual in Propriano), so they were mid fuel + and 4 pob, around 60 to 100kg under MTOW – still heavy but probably rear centered. 2 paxes at 60+ (so heavier?) may be on the reat seats, so more weight aft.
Of course if the failure is brutal and happens when you are at Vx, you need to be quick before stall happens, but the stall didn’t happen over the runway, crash site is farther on the city direction.

I think investigator will recover phones with SDVFR and the track will be recovered.

I knew about the seat issue, actually the front seats in DR400 are really not nice and can have false locked position, I usually check it a good time before flying. But the engine failure is more or less aquired (testimonials did hear the engine stopped), but you can never now… When you are low and slow, and a passenger tries to get something in the luggage compartment, try to grab the dinghy (they had one)… could move the CoG backside when you need it to be more on the front…

During C525 checkride, TRI usually insists on how to handle passenger to avoid a catastrophic reaction during a scenario (opening a emergency exit next to an engine that is on fire or spills fuel…). How to manage the un-manageable in such a scenario in a small DR400 while you try to ditch it. Has the right front pax tried to pull the stick when seeing the water? like the RHS pilot of AF447?
When the DA40 made it 2 years ago, it was all pilots (2 students and 1 FI) and they produced a real great article on what they did, and insisted on how it was difficult to concentrate on what to do.

How can you handle that when you are a pax and don’t know a bit of aviation? Panic for sure. What could do a panicking pax?

Jujupilote wrote:

Something else that bothers me : if he had recently taken an FI course, I think his skills were higher than 99,9% of private pilots. He had really rehearsed all the PPL manoeuvers.

For sure, and he was flying a lot:

The man from Nice had obtained his commercial pilot’s license in 2022, and had clocked up more than 700 flying hours.

700hours in roughly 4 years.

Agreed (and understood), but it didn’t happen on runway threshold nor on the runway axe. This is 400m north and a little bit back. It means they may have taken off and do a kind of low pass over the beach when the seat unlatches.