Commander down

[Steve binnette]

I must not be seeing some of the photos.  The right prop shows minimal bending and the left Prop Is bent but not terribly,  but it was water?

If he was low on fuel,I suspect he would have the interconnect open.  The engines would not stop exactly together, but I bet it would be close.

I can’t see landing on a beach if you have power when the airport is right there?

[KenFlo]

I know there has been several water ingestion test conducted on turbofan engines.  If you recall the Southern Airways DC9 crash outside of ATL after flying through a huge thunderstorm, they thought the rain/hail might have caused the flame out of both engines.  Turns out you couldn't spray any level of water/rain in the engine to shut it down.  The Hail clogged some vent and that caused compressor stalls.  The shock waves of continued compressor stalls bent the vanes and that is why the engines failed.
  I feel very certain that moderate rain didn't fail both engines.  While in the Army, I flew in some very nasty rain outside of the US in both helicopters and fixed wing and never had a problem.

[Roy]

Nothing to do with what happened, but does LiveATC capture all related transmissions? Seems strange the Controller cleared him for ILS 36 at ~3:00 into the "1900Z link". He acknowledged but then nothing else pertaining, except possibly the ELT tones intermittently through the rest of the recording. Not even a handoff to Tower. Nothing. 

Controllers didn't notice a missing bird? No inquiries, except asking another plane (N54WF) if they're getting an ELT (in which they first said no, then yes 4 minutes later)?

And does anyone think there was there an alarm sound in the background of N840JC transmissions early on, or is that just some sort of static or background noise?

Praying for the Pilot.

Roy

[donv]

LiveATC is generally a scanner, so it flips between whatever frequencies in that area (the website will tell you which ones). In this case, I think it is ground, tower, approach, and apparently 121.5. Whichever one has something transmitting is what you'll hear, so yes, it does miss stuff.

[donv]

I just saw a picture of it on the beach (on a private website), and the gear is clearly down. No question about it.

[SKYFLYER]

Here it is out of the surf

https://abcnews4.com/news/local/plane-crashes-into-ocean-near-springmaid-pier

[donv]

That's the picture I was talking about.

[Steve binnette]

Those are much better photos. 

Tearing a gear off a Commander takes some serious force.  I would suspect it was a side load.  If the left engine was surging he might  have touchdown and put a big side load on the left gear.

How did he produce enough force to separate the cockpit from the fuselage?  If he hit the water maybe the nose went briefly under the water causing that?

Lots of clues I cannot quite put together. 

[donv]

Some of that damage may have been caused by being pounded in the surf for a few hours, or being dragged up onto the beach.

Still, remarkable that he survived!

Given that he survived, and presumably the Garmin data cards are with the NTSB, there should be an answer to what happened.

[Steve binnette]

Was it moved or did the tide just go out?

[SKYFLYER]

Pretty sure it is low tide.  The eyewitness that helped get Ken out of the wreckage said he had to swim out to it.  Which leads me to think he hit the water further out and the incoming tide pushed the wreck to shore.  But have no clue as to how the left main gear got so far up onto the beach unless someone pulled it out of the surf.

Clearly the amount of sand covering the wing and tail would not be that way had it been hauled out.

[SKYFLYER]

Discovered this on you tube sorta interesting


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UDEgkRz-sU

[Steve binnette]

What an awesome video.

It does not really shed any light on what happened but it is really well put together.

Thanks for posting

[donv]

NTSB prelim is out. Given the amount of power a -10 840 has, I'm surprised he couldn't fly out of the situation. But I wasn't there, thank god!

On November 12, 2018, about 1415 eastern standard time, a Gulfstream American (Aero Commander) 690C, N840JC, sustained substantial damage when it collided with terrain during an approach to landing at the Myrtle Beach International Airport (MYR), Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The commercial pilot was seriously injured. The airplane was privately owned and operated under the provisions of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 as a personal flight. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed, and an instrument flight rules flight plan was filed for the flight that departed Greater Cumberland Regional Airport (CBE), Cumberland, Maryland.

According to the pilot, he was following radar vectors for the downwind leg of the traffic patter to runway 36 at MYR. He turned for final approach and was inside the outer marker, when he encountered heavy turbulence. As he continued the approach, he described what he believed to be a microburst and the airplane started to descend rapidly. The pilot added full power in an attempt to climb, but the airplane continued to descend until it collided with the Atlantic Ocean 1 mile from the approach end of runway 36.

A review of pictures of the wreckage provided by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed the cockpit section of the airplane was broken away from the fuselage during the impact sequence.

At 1456, the weather recorded at MYR, included broken clouds at 6,000 ft, few clouds at 3,500 ft and wind from 010° at 8 knots. The temperature was 14°C, and the dew point was 9°C. The altimeter setting was 30.27 inches of mercury.

The airplane was retained for further examination.

https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20181112X51649&AKey=1&RType=HTML&IType=LA

[Mike Lever]

I flew Canadair CL215s in a previous life many years ago.  These pics remind me of accident pics we would see of 215s that had touched down on the water with a nose door not latched properly.   The cockpit would be severed from the airframe  (killing the pilots).    It was believed that the tremendous forces of water inrushing into the nose gear well literally amputated the front end of the airplane.   The pics looked very similar to this 840.    Aside from the normal lights, there were red spigots that protruded from the deck plates indicating that the nose doors were locked.  You can bet that we paid careful attention to the spigots before every scoop or water landing...   

Very glad that the pilot survived.