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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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They dont know what happened? That pilot used a crop dusting plane to do a strafing run, realized he was headed nose first into some palm trees and yanked up on the yoke. He sheered the wing straight off his plane and died for the mistake.
Sure that’s what caused the crash, but why did the wing snap? It didn’t look like the plane was in overspeed, and the airframe should be able to sustain any input maneuvers under normal flight conditions.
Let me frame it this way for you, my car's pretty reliable, but at high speeds I know that making a hard turn will end in catastrophe.
Sure, if you end up smashing into a tree. But it’s not like the wheels are going to snap off or the body buckle. If you’re on an empty airfield tarmac, it would be perfectly safe. On some cars there will be a risk of rollover, but designing cars that tip over when extreme input is applied is itself fairly controversial.
Oh God, please tell me you don't have a driver's license if you think any of this bad logic is a reasonable rebuttle.
Ok, let's forget the trees or any scenery for a moment. Let's say they don't exist, and that the plane is in an open, and empty area.
Planes are very finicky things. If the angles aren't right, it won't be able to fly. If you look at an airplane wing from the side, they are normally shaped a bit like long tear drops. After gaining it's initial momentum, the plane is kind of lifted by gliding through the air pressure. Plane wings are shaped that way to make the air move faster over the top of the wing. When the air moves faster, the pressure of that air decreases. So the pressure on the top of the wing is less than the pressure on the bottom of the wing. The difference in pressure creates a force on the wing that lifts the wing of the plane up into the air.
Airplanes are full of many things that are pretty complex. If we changed airplanes to be able to "roll over" for safety, we would lose that special system that allows the lift to happen.
Since planes are so finicky, planes with different purposes will usually be built differently. Since they still have to be able to fly, adding one thing may sometimes means removing another thing. Those particular planes were never meant to make those maneuvers, and they weren't built to handle them. It would be like upgrading a car's engine block to be turbo-powered, then keeping the same coolant system and expecting it to run fine. You have to respect the equipment and follow guidelines, as they are usually there for a good reason.
The idea was that everyone would know not to do that (via their pilot licence), and that it would be ok to have specialty planes. The plane was never meant to move that way, and the wings weren't fortified for those angles.
This is a crop duster, not a stunt plane. It's not designed for that maneuver, so if you try, wings snap off. Iow, not normal flight conditions. Unlike civil engineers, you can't slap a factor of safety of 10 on an airplane. It won't fly.
I think you’re underestimating his speed and overestimating the strength of airframes. Most planes can easily get to speeds where inputs can exceed structural limits under normal flight conditions. There is even a V speed for it, Va or maneuvering speed. A quick google suggests that Vne, or “never exceed” for the PA 25 is -35 knots and Va is 104 knots. Now I have never flown one and I haven’t completely verified them but they sound about right. At 104 knots he can over G the airframe. Assuming a standard safety factor of 1.5 and a g limit of 3.8 (basic assumptions but I can’t find actual data for the PA25) and at max weight you can expect severe structural damage with full control inputs at 127 knots. If he wasn’t carrying that much and was lighter that number comes down as well. Finally, there’s the fact that it was a crop duster in Mexico so who knows what the maintenance history and actual condition of that wing spar was. Either way, even if it was in top form hitting 130 knots on a show boating low pass isn’t that crazy.
The pilot has probably been beating on the airframe like this for years.