Source

"A Beechcraft Bonanza crashed in a residential area on New York's Long Island Tuesday after the pilot declared an emergency, reporting a failed vacuum system. All three people on board are dead and the aircraft appears to have broken up in flight. The Bonanza departed Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, about 12:45 p.m., heading for Plainville, Connecticut, according to news reports. About 2:30 p.m., the pilot declared an emergency and reported a vacuum failure. According to audio from LiveATC.net, the pilot told New York Approach he was partial panel and "VFR over the top" and did not want prolonged flying in IMC to get below the clouds. After a few exchanges and receiving a vector, the pilot said, "we are IMC at this time." Later, he said, "I just lost a little bit more control here," then "we just lost more of our panel." Radar contact was lost moments later."

If the following is track data from that flight, it suggests that the pilot may have lost control of the plane and an in-flight breakup due to excessive speed or possibly a control input that caused the breakup.  The seventh column is groundspeed in knots and the next is in MPH.  Fifth column is the heading.

Tue 03:35:40 PM 40.6708 -73.6928 37° Northeast 177 204 7,000 ---  Level New York Center
Tue 03:36:44 PM 40.7131 -73.6514 37° Northeast 178 205 7,000 -47 Level New York Center
Tue 03:37:47 PM 40.7531 -73.6142 35° Northeast 178 205 6,900 -242 Descending New York Center
Tue 03:38:48 PM 40.7444 -73.5664 103° East         180 207 6,500 145 Descending New York Center
Tue 03:39:51 PM 40.7886 -73.5556 11° North         156 180 7,200 290 Climbing New York Center
Tue 03:40:52 PM 40.8147 -73.5044 56° Northeast 196 226 7,100 -242 Descending New York Center
Tue 03:41:55 PM 40.8375 -73.4936 20° North         233 268 6,700 -381 Descending New York Center
Tue 03:45:02 PM 40.8563 -73.4167 74° East  Level FlightAware Approximate

Yeesh.... curious to see what actually happened there.  

Almost 270 miles an hour in a Bonanza... sheesh.

Suck.  I fly a K35.

In for the final report.

No shit.  Nose down, full power, with a tailwind.

The flightaware data looks like he set the autopilot when he got to altitude, then nothing.

Spatial disorientation most likely.

Not an airplane guy, but isn't 268mph faster than the aircraft's terminal velocity if it was carefully aimed straight down?  Must have had the prop pulling it faster.

JFK, Jr. Triangle maybe?

Damn.

With a control input that exceeded the capability of the airframe, from the sound of it.

Probably a doctor or dentist flying.

Shouldn't he still have the turn and bank indicator? He could have been focused on the problem and ignored it.

The V-tailed doctor killer strikes again.



Overspeed in those can be a real bitch. And they are pretty slippery, so it happens quickly.



I wonder if the autopilot was still working ? Or did that go out with the partial-panel failure?

The V-Tail Doctor Killer strikes again (ETA: beat by us-kiwi)

Never Exceed Speed on a Beech Bonanza is right around 225 mph.
He probably ripped the wings off of it in his haste to get to the ground....which ultimately made the trip to the gound that much faster

I wouldn't get up outof the electric chair to take a flight in a Vee tailed version Bonanza.

Some articles from the local paper. It's subscription only so the link might not work.

NY police say all 3 plane crash victims are from Connecticut



SYOSSET, N.Y. - (AP) -- The three people who died in a plane crash on Long Island this week have all been identified as residents of Bristol, Connecticut.

Nassau County police say the victims are 66-year-old pilot and aircraft owner David C. Berube; 49-year-old Dana E. Parenteau; and 32-year-old Benjamin Bridges.

The single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza was flying from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to Plainville, Connecticut, when it broke apart over a residential area in Syosset on Tuesday afternoon.

The pilot radioed a distress call minutes earlier.

Debris was strewn across a one-third mile area. Police say no one on the ground was injured.


The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating. An investigator says a plane breaking apart in midflight is an uncommon occurrence.

Senior investigator Robert Gretz says there was no evidence of an explosion.

http://www.newsday.com/news/region-state/ny-police-say-all-3-plane-crash-victims-are-from-connecticut-1.11766461

With the information available I agree.

Lost orientation, banked left or right, started to lose altitude, pulled up tightening the turn, loosing more altitude and spiraled in...

NTSB: No evidence of explosion in Syosset plane crash

There is no evidence that an explosion caused a small plane to break apart over Syosset, with scattered debris on the ground suggesting instead that pieces came off “while it was in flight,” a federal investigator said Wednesday.

The pilot and two passengers were killed in the midair accident Tuesday afternoon that caused fragments of the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza to rain down on a residential neighborhood off Cold Spring Road.


In a distress call to air traffic control minutes before the disaster, the pilot said he was having trouble maintaining control of the 43-year-old aircraft and that more and more of his instruments were malfunctioning, according to National Transportation Safety Board senior investigator Robert Gretz.

The pilot also told the tower the plane’s vacuum pump had broken down, which Gretz said likely would cause some of the plane’s instruments — vital in Tuesday’s cloudy, wet weather — to also fail.

Gretz said investigators have so far recovered the engine and propeller, and identified “the four corners” of the plane — the wings, nose and tail. Smaller pieces must still be retrieved.


The NTSB will also review the plane’s maintenance records, weather conditions at the time of the crash and the pilot’s flight experience. An in-flight breakup is rare, but not unheard of: In 18 years with the agency, Gretz said he’s only investigated five such cases.


One crash victim’s body was found in the parking lot of a BOCES school, another slightly to the west in some woods and the third about 50 yards away in Oyster Bay Cove, Nassau police said. Authorities haven’t publicly identified the victims, pending notification of the families.

Records show the plane is owned by David C. Berube, 66, of Bristol, Connecticut, who is licensed to fly multi-engine planes and certified to navigate by instruments.

The Hartford Courant identified two of the victims as Berube and his longtime girlfriend, Dana Parenteau. The third victim was a man who worked for Berube, the newspaper said.

“She was a wonderful person,” said a man who answered the phone at the home of Parenteau’s former husband, Edward Parenteau, of Vermont. He declined further comment.



Several of Berube’s family members declined to comment and a call to his Bristol business, New England Municipal Equipment Co., was not returned.


Berube was a stock car racer who began competing in 1990 and competed on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour before retiring from the sport in 2013, according to RaceDayCT, a local site that covers racing. Fellow racers exchanged condolences on Facebook.

In a widely circulated post, Ed Flemke, a friend, said Berube was excited to resume racing again when they spoke recently.

“Just had a visit with him last week . . . The usual upbeat smiling guy he always seemed to be!” Flemke wrote.

The plane was more than 3 hours into its flight from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to Plainville, Connecticut, when the pilot made his distress call.



“This is kind of a classic accident scenario for a private pilot in instrument flight conditions,” said Robert Mann, president of R.W. Mann & Co., an aviation consulting firm based in Port Washington. The loss of the vacuum system would mean loss of primary instruments and the ability to use autopilot, if one was installed, Mann said.


Without that, the pilot “loses his horizon reference, loses his indication of aircraft orientation,” he said. “So if you then revert to . . . using sensational cues instead of instrument cues, the usual result of that is an over-control situation or a spiral, in which the aircraft quickly builds speed.”

In trying to slow the plane, the pilot might pull back on the yoke, Mann said, which could lead to an in-flight breakup “because you overstress the primary structure of either wing or the horizontal stabilizer.”

A pilot who loses his instruments “wouldn’t have a sense of right-side up or down,” said Tom Daly, dean of the Dowling College School of Aviation.

Daly said a breakup could result if “the aircraft experienced an extreme high-stress condition which could be the result of over-speed or total loss of control.”



Gretz said he suspects residents will continue to find pieces of debris and the victims’ personal effects for days to come and asked that they call police if that happens.


Out of production since 1985, the Beechcraft Bonanza’s unique feature — its V-tail — was in the late 1980s a source of controversy after it was blamed for in-flight breakups, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Since then, the FAA has issued airworthiness directives requiring tail reinforcements.

In January, a Beechcraft Bonanza crashed in Colorado after what witnesses described as a midair explosion, according to news reports. The pilot, the sole occupant, died in the crash. The NTSB is investigating the cause.

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/ntsb-no-evidence-of-explosion-in-syosset-plane-crash-1.11759383

In reality that may be very difficult for many pilots unless you practice it often.   One option is to fly to an area where he could descend in VFR (visual) conditions.  If that is not viable, and he has a wing leveler autopilot, use that to maintain wings level and slowly descend using the pitch autopilot, power, or pitch trim as suitable.

 
The issues were fixed with the leading edges.  Nothing wrong with the airplane.



Wonder if this person could have flown some where that wasn't IMC.

I'd venture to guess he was low on gas (if he didn't have tip tanks, departed SC, crash in NY) and had the super dangerous "gotta get home" mindset.

VFR on top.

Not allowed here, for a very good reason.

Isn't there a backup horizon?

IF I was to fly small aircraft today, I would spend the $$$$ to get the ipad panel app.  It isn't perfect but will keep you alive in just such an event.

+1

Usual failure mode of V-tailed Bonanza in in-flight breakup is thus -



Pilot gets dis-oriented, usually IMC. Sometimes night VFR which is virtually the same as IMC.

Gets into a dive, usually spiralling, or one wing low.



Attempts to recover from both modes, nose-down, and wing low, at the same time.

This puts all the load on one tail surface, stressing the leading edge, which is unsupported,

unless it has been modified.



Leading edge folds over, effectively increasing  control input, which increases load, etc.



Tail fin fails. Goodnight.



Recommended recovery is to level wings first, then recover from dive, this puts load evenly

on both ruddervators. Of course, easier to say than do, because if you have that much co-ordination

and control, and mental capacity, you would not have got there to start with.



This has happened many times. There may even be an AD covering this. There are several different

repair kits / techniques to stiffen the tail fin leading edge, from expensive to stupid expensive.



Publicity of this, many years ago, effectively killed sales of the V-tail for Beech.

Model was discontinued shortly after the fix was introduced.



Sounds like the guy wasn't too happy about partial-panel decent from VFR-on-top thru IMC for landing.

I agree, it sucks.



IIRC partial-panel decent -

head north or south - on mag compass - no precession going N or S.

get to maneuvering speed, trim for straight and level.

reduce power to maintain 500 fpm or less decent.

Let go of yoke. Maintain heading of north or south with rudder input only.

The tough part. WAIT - for VFR conditions below clouds.



Or use autopilot if it is still getting heading or attitude info.



IMHO YMMV





 

Lolwut???    Please don't try this.

Is the north/south because most mountain ranges run roughly north/south?

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

Probably been 10 years since I got sucked into working on an annual inspection on a V-tail, so my knowledge isn't current, and my memory may be fuzzy.

Airworthiness Directives have been issued for the tail, with some revisions on those ADs coming out later.  At least three 'kits' were offered to address the problem (some from sources other than the manufacturer), and at least two of those kits were later ordered removed by Airworthiness Directives.

There is still (last I heard) a mandatory periodic inspection for oil canning of the skin between the point where the tail surfaces attach, and a point that is a couple feet or so forward of that point.  If oil canning is found, the provided instructions are to call the factory engineering department and have them determine a repair procedure.


As others have stated, the sequence was probably 1) pilot disorientation 2) nose down attitude with one wingtip possibly being lower than the other 3) pilot attempting to correct and aggravating the problem 4) flight loads exceeding the design limits of the airframe.


As for the question of a backup horizon, the only Bonanza that I have ever been in and saw enough space on the panel to be able to add a backup horizon, was one that had been upgraded to a completely glass panel (was really, really odd, to see that much open space on a Beechcraft panel).

Just what I was taught as part of my IFR ticket.



And it works. Go try it - under the hood, with a safety pilot.





 

As I stated above, - no mag compass precession when heading North or South.
 

When you make a turn with a magnetic compass, the compass tends to not read correctly during the turn (can have a delay before it even indicates that you are turning), then settles down to a correct reading after you stop turning.  If you are depending on the compass to tell you that you have started turning, it may not tell you this information as quickly as you need it.  That's why aircraft have other instruments that are more accurate at telling you if you are turning.

Doesn't do it as bad, if you are flying directly north or directly south.

Please describe your procedure for a partial-panel, or no-panel descent in IMC.



The old-fashioned way, before instruments -

Toss it into a spin, hold cross-controls until you fall out the bottom of the clouds?





 

Try doing a complete control rig on a V-tail Bonanza, and having to convince the pilot that is doing your test flights (test flights are required for the last adjustments) that he needs to keep his hands in his lap for part of the test flight, so that he won't be unconsciously giving aileron inputs, while he is checking to see if the yaw is out of trim.

Took three damn flights before I could get that one simple concept through his head.  And each of those flights resulted in completely useless feedback from him, because he was putting pressure on the yoke to correct for the problem that he was supposed to be correcting with only the rudder pedals.

Foreflight with the stratus with ahrs seems to give a pretty good backup panel.  I have only used it a little, but it would be better than nothing in a vacuum failure.

"Failed vacuum system" means what, exactly?

There's been more small plane crashes on long island in the last year or so, then the entire decade before. At least it seems that way recently.

 
Many aircraft instruments are drive by vacuum.  The engine runs a vacuum pump.  


Failure would takeout many of the instruments needed for flying through clouds.

Basically sucks air to spin Gyros that power up the "useful" thingys that keep the shiny side up and oily side down.

One of my preflight walkaround checks is to put my hand on the fuselage skin near the Tails and feel for any non-rivet bumps, rises, wrinkles, and or cracks from rivet to rivet in the skin from a foot or so in front of the leading edge to the tailcap light.  My K35 has the Beech kit btw.

These airplanes aren't as bad as folks make them out to be.  I went from a 172 in school to a 1956 182 straight tail Businessliner to the Beech.  Mine is a good airplane but you have to know your limits and the airframes limits.  I'm VFR only so if I can't see I don't go or turn back.  

And lol, yeah about the cluttered panel.  The Cessna feels like it's missing instruments when I get back in it, lol.

Standard philosophy has been to have a mix of electrically driven gyro instruments, and pneumatically driven (either vacuum or pressure) gyro instruments.  That way, if you have an electrical system failure, you only lose some of the instruments, and if you lose the pneumatic pump, you only lose some of the instruments.

There are STC'd kits to add a standby vacuum pump to Bonanzas and a standby generator to Bonanzas.  The standby generators are driven off one of the mounting pads on the accessory case (the one not being used for the vacuum pump).  The standby vacuum pump is either driven off the accessory case (which means you don't have space to install the standby generator) through a clutch (so it doesn't wear itself out when it's not being used), or is mounted on the firewall and driven by an electric motor (so an electrical system failure also takes out the standby vacuum pump).  There is also a kit to allow using the vacuum from the intake manifold as an emergency vacuum source for the instruments.

It can get pretty crowded under a Bonanza engine cowling, once the owner decides to start adding gadgets.


Glass cockpits are starting to reduce the need for a vacuum system, but they require a dedicated battery backup system to run the instruments, if the electrical system fails.

My initial VFR flight instructor was a WW2 .mil instrument instructor.

I thought that old dude was fucking crazy, the 'not by the book' stuff he taught me.



But as I got more hours, I found that I was using more and more of the 'stuff' he taught me,

and some of it saved my ass. Some of his scud-running tricks in the mountains of VT .....

And as he got to trust my judgement skills, the more he taught me.

Hours and hours under the hood, in a Cessna 140, HI and turn-and-slip, mag compass only.

and he would fail one of those frequently.....



Lots of flying rudder only. It works.



He was a real stick-and-rudder kinda guy.



 

Would not surprise me, if there are a few Bonanzas out there with oil canning in the tail, that the owners have had the last five annuals done by a guy that comes to their T-hangar and offers a discount if the owner opens the panels and closes them, completes the annual inspection in a couple hours, and follows the minimum checklist provided in the regs (instead of Beechcraft's inspection checklist).

It's usually not the well-maintained aircraft that have incidents that were caused by a problem with the aircraft.

Are you at least working on your instrument ticket?       'Cause that's just the sort of thing which causes incidents like this.      

Dead calm day.  Went out and practiced turns in a C150, then did some slow flight.  Dropped 10 degrees of flaps, then gradually pulled back power and adjusted trim in small increments, until you get to the point of "yeah, no way this thing's going to keep flying if it slows down any more", then put in a little nose down trim and adjust power to maintain altitude.  Didn't touch the yoke (or trim) again, until short final.


Part of the problem is that there are now a lot of pilots (and owners) that have never flown a properly rigged airplane.  A mix of "it was fine when it left the factory" and "they'll never want to pay for all that labor to make it right, when they've been flying it like this for a few years", has resulted in a lot of planes that are visibly out of rig during a walkaround inspection on the ramp.  

Had a C150 owner tell me that all 150s have weak nosewheel steering (he started flying sometime around 2005), when I told him that his rudder cables were too stretched to allow his nosewheel steering to function.  Had another C150 owner that couldn't believe how easy it was to taxi his 150 (no longer needed brakes to steer), after his rudder cables were replaced.  Had a Saratoga owner that I had to warn that his plane was going to fly differently, after the control cables were discovered to be so loose that they were laying on the belly skin, which led to the plane getting a complete control rig.  After the next flight, he thanked me for the warning and said it was a completely different airplane.

A properly rigged plane will fly itself just fine.  An out of rig plane, not so much.

Yes, I will be getting IFR in the near future, even though I don't have much use for it.

Grandfather had an electrical malfunction swapping fuel tanks at too low an altitude and lost power to the engine in his, put it down on its belly between a brick wall and a canal in Phoenix with no injuries. He was a great pilot but the FAA got him for that one. Locals were happy he didnt end up on one of their houses.

Single engine IMC not something I wish to do!

Poor judgment is the root cause of most accidents.  99% odds that applies here as well.

I wonder were the instruments really failing, or was he spatially disoriented and the instruments were telling the truth, but his body was lying to him?

Reportedly he was VFR over clouds when the vacuum pump failed.  That should have been fine if true.

You might be surprised as to how much you wind up using it.



Also, the skillz and knowledge acquired might just save your ass one day.

My I I told me that its the only .gov certification on any topic that is actually useful.

All the others are just paperwork / taxation. Now I agree.



Just being able to file in-flight to get thru a undercast legally, or thru a controlled area,

or into an airport that just went IFR at 3000 /3 while you are VFR at 2000 /3.



etc, etc, etc.