Swiss pilot emergency landing at ENVA (and flying after a big prop strike)

Has anyone looked further back in FR24, as Mooney_Driver did?

The flight from Germany to Umeå was on Saturday, then from Umeå north (Hammerfest, possibly? though I guess he could have doubled back to Tromsø) on Sunday, then the subject flight on Monday, so the whole business about “They should land at Umeå, but diverted west to Norway” is clearly in error (and anyway, it would have needed substantial ferry tanks to have gone from Germany to Umeå, then Lofotens, then back to Trondheim. So if that bit is wrong, how much of the rest of the story is garbled?

Peter wrote:

However if you don’t land and get out you may never realise props have been damaged.

That is exactly what I think happened. Otherwise, it is totally inexplicable why he continued to fly. If the damage is symmetrical, all blades the same, maybe the vibrations were not as bad as we might assume here.

He did this even after ATC told him to land

Something doesn’t add up here. At no time, ever, ATC will tell you to land.

Well, they can in the military and I know someone who disobeyed such an order in the RAF (had only 2 greens) and flew off somewhere to have a few more goes at it, eventually landing uneventfully (still with 2 greens) and got ejected out of the RAF with a “mental health” discharge to protect his pension. It then took him 20 years to get a CAA Class 2.

In flying one always has to keep decisionmaking in the cockpit. Too many pilots forgot that and paid for it, sometimes with their lives.

In this case the ATC conversations would be interesting but I doubt they will ever appear since nothing much basically happened.

It is entirely possible there would be no extra vibration at all, and on a twin you feel it even less.

It is also possible this pilot is really stupid – GA is full of those types too… well, not actually thick but it is full of types with very odd attitudes to risk But I don’t think we have enough info to work out this puzzle.

Peter wrote:

…and on a twin you feel it even less.

Why would that be? I once had a failure of a heater element on a Cessna 421 propeller. There are two of them on every propeller blade. As soon as we entered icing conditions during climb the engine started to shake so wildly that I had to reduce it to idle in order to be able to read the instruments. And all that due to some millimeters of ice on half of a propeller blade – a few dozen grams at most. We had to divert to the closest airfield that day because I was really worried that the engine might rip itself out of the wing… Nobody tells me that a prop like the one on this “666” aeroplane does not vibrate like crazy.

LeSving wrote:

Exactly what happened before Leknes isn’t all that interesting. What I do know is that he did not follow the instructions given by ATC. He then tried to land at Leknes, forgot to extend the landing gear, pulled up when the propeller carved the tarmac, and continued for two hours before landing again. He did this even after ATC told him to land. Obviously he was aware that he had forgot to extend the landing gear the first time, or he wouldn’t have pulled up again. He declared an emergency at some point also.

Somehow the timeframes are garbled too. I take it that you got it as a fact that the damage occurred at Leknes? The radar track out of Tromsoe points in the general direction of Lekenes but there is a huge time gap between the take off at Tromsoe and the time the accident happened almost 4 hours later. So was it a garbled go around or what was it?

Leknes does not have an audio archive and I am not sure what to look for for his alleged coms with radar.

I pulled the audio archive fro Trondheim App/Twr. From what I could hear on that, RT was completely routine, apart from one call where approach asked him if his landing gear was ok. He was obviously VFR and initially at 7000 ft when he contacted the sector.

At 1637 initial call was made with Trondheim Approach. He was given the QNH and runway 9 X in use.
At 1641 he was told that he can leave 7000 ft whenever convenient.
At 1651 approach asked him if he is ok, if his landing gear is ok. The answer is not readable but approach asked “ok, thank you”. Up to this point, the pilot was not audible on the recording.
At 1652, approach asked if he would mind descending to below 3500 ft, to which he replied that he would. He replied that he was descending to 1500 ft.
At 1653 the initial tower call happened, normal standard RT from what I can hear. He was cleared to proceed to long final 09.
At 1657 he reported his position (could not dechiper the name) at 1500 ft and was told to proceed to left base 09.
At 1700 he was cleared to land, with normal read back.

From the few calls I could actually hear, the pilot sounded completely calm and not concerned at all. I strongly doubt that he knew he had damaged his plane at this point. There is no mention of any emergency while he was on the Trondheim sector either.

From what we have, we know next to nothing about all this unless we get FACTS. Right now, all we have is a horribly researched newsie article and some tidbits which may or may not be correct.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

I strongly doubt that he knew he had damaged his plane at this point.

So why did he not land in Leknes then as his original intention was? At very low altitude he went around because obviously he realised his gear was not down. No problem, fly one pattern, put the gear down this time and land normally. Instead he calls it a day and flies two more hours to Trondheim. Makes exactly zero sense to me with the one exception that he knew he hit his props on the tarmac and didn’t want to get stranded in the backcountry.

what_next wrote:

Nobody tells me that a prop like the one on this “666” aeroplane does not vibrate like crazy.

It will vibrate if there is significant inbalance. If all 3 tips are similarily damaged, inbalance may well not be too bad. Looking at the track, he flew with normal cruise speed and normal cruise height. VERY unlikely that he would have done this if he had vibrations which did not allow him to read the instruments…..

Peter wrote:

Something doesn’t add up here. At no time, ever, ATC will tell you to land.

They of course can tell him to land if e.g. he has busted airspaces or something like that. They can recommend to him to land if they have significant reasons. Otherwise, order him? I don’t see that either. And in an emergency more than not it is the PIC who calls the shots.

Peter wrote:

In this case the ATC conversations would be interesting but I doubt they will ever appear since nothing much basically happened.

I found the Trondheim coms, see above. They were entirely routine but for a query by approach whether he was ok and his gear was ok. The reply is inaudible but approach replied to that “ok, thank you” and nothing else was mentioned thereafter,so I assume he answered that everything was ok.

I’ll try to find the relevant coms but it is difficult if you don’t know in which sector the critical coms happened.

If the paper got it right that there is an investigation, we will in due course hear what was going on. Actually, I hope we will.

If all 3 tips are similarily damaged, inbalance may well not be too bad.

Maybe, who knows. But I personally don’t believe it. And I am pretty sure that one can see the bent blades even when the propellers are turning:
One sees a white circle drawn by the painted blade tips when looking at a turning propeller – they are there for that purpose, otherwise the propeller would be invisible and an even greater danger. They are not visible from the pilots seat normally. Now don’t tell that he didn’t notice that suddenly his propeller has got a white ring around it – because the backward bent tips can now be seen from the pilot’s seat (look at the pictures above!)

Peter is right. Those of us who have witnessed the bending of a Seneca prop know that it’s hard to tell until you stop and look.

Incidentally, there may be a forum for speculating, pontificating, pre-judging, criticising and generally behaving like a holier-than-thou lynch mob when some poor sod has a fender-bender, but surely not here?