Piper PA-28RT-201 Arrow IV down in the Simplon Pass

[TheGreenGoblin]

Not a great weekend for GA or light aviation.

A Piper PA-28RT-201 Arrow IV crashed into the Simplon Mountain, Valais, Switzerland, at approx 6100 feet. The aircraft took off around 9:00 from Lausanne-La Blécherette Airport (QLS/LSGL),Vaud for a flight to Italy, but it crashed an hour and a half later in the vicinity of the Simplon Pass at around 2000 meters of altitude.
All three occupants onboard, including a baby, were fatally injured and the aircraft was destroyed.

https://cdn.aviation-safety.net/wikibase/228502

[Slasher]

A very nasty prang.

[OFSO]

Had a friend who went down there. Rotating winds off the top were the cause. Amazingly the aircraft was only lightly damaged, that was until they put cables round the wings and dragged it up a slope. He was unhurt.

The moral to this is you have to leave a lot of clearance over mountain tops in a light aircraft.

[CharlieOneSix]

Looks like the valley route got narrower and narrower - maybe trying to turn back....
.

[TheGreenGoblin]

I have flown that route once VFR in light tin in summer and the ambient temperature was about 04 degrees Celsius at that altitude on that trip. On the 25th August 2019 the temp soared to 24 degrees at @ 6,578 ft, feet well beyond the means of a clapped out PA28 to do with three passengers (OK one was a bairn) and enough fuel to make Italy yesterday. I know the Arrow should make 15,000 feet but still... a smoking hole moment with a baby.. not worth the tragedy...

[Capetonian]

Very sad. This is who they were :

An award-winning composer, his musician wife and their baby daughter have been killed when the private plane he was flying crashed in the Alps on their family holiday.

Investigators are searching the wreckage to determine the cause of the crash in which Jonathan and Hannah Goldstein and their seven-month-old daughter Saskia died.

Mr Goldstein, 50, an experienced amateur pilot, was flying the single-engine Piper Arrow IV when it crashed in the Simplon Pass in Switzerland 90 minutes after take off.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/0 ... ide-child/

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The slope of the evergreen/rock-covered mountain saddle there goes into a near vertical cliff just before the top. There is a cleared farm on the top of the saddle, which would likely have appeared quite bright looking in that direction at that time of day, whereas the evergreen/rock- covered slope would have been in shadow.
I think a possible cause is featureless terrain illusion, most commonly experienced as black hole effect in night landings. He would likely not have noticed being too low until the last few seconds.
The Simplon pass is under 7,000 ft max altitude, so I don't think there's a problem with his general routing or choice of aircraft.

Have a look at it from this aspect
https://www.google.ca/maps/@46.3132585, ... a=!3m1!1e3

The Sun would have been in his 10 o'clock.

I would guess that the photo of the crash site was taken from the cleared farm. I think that may be a helicopter dropping a load of water onto the smoking wreckage to prevent fire, which would likely be an hour+ after the accident?? Some of the slope is still in shadow.

[TheGreenGoblin]

The featureless terrain illusion hypothesis is an interesting one and may have been a factor, amongst the many others that have to be taken into account when flying in the mountains. Factors like the Foehn effect, cloud cover and altitude, visibility, wind strength, wind direction, downdrafts and density altitude etc. etc.

For the terrain illusion to have been a primary factor in this crash means that the pilot was essentially committed to visually contour creeping and had forgotten about his altimeter or had failed to set the altimeter correctly or had become uncertain of his position reference the terrain below or had become confused between reference heights on his GAFOR and VFR charts and the altitude that was needed to safely traverse at these points or was ignorant of the height of the terrain below, or at the very least had elected to ignore the principle of safety altitude. If any of this was true it would have implied a most risky initial strategy for traversing the Simplon pass which the GAFOR route guide describes as a difficult crossing due to the switchback, narrow nature of the pass and the possibility of flying up the wrong valley (albeit on the Italy/Switzerland route), even in the best of weather.

Looking at the route, noted in C16's post, I would imagine that the pilot was following the GAFOR Route (42 to 45) Guide and, if so, he would have know that he should be aiming to traverse a point on the ground at an elevation of 6578 feet thus, optimally, implying a safety altitude of between 9500 and 10000 feet given the temperature, barometric pressure etc. at the time of the attempted crossing. The fact that the aircraft impacted the ground some 478 feet below that ground reference point implies, crudely, that the topography overtook the ability of his aircraft to out climb it, that the aircraft was well below the required 'safety' (safe being a relative concept in the mountains I know) altitude with tragic results.

The PA28, even the Arrow, has a relatively anemic climb rate of +- 900 feet under ISA conditions and a service ceiling of over 14,000 feet but given the relatively high temperature on the day all of this would have been reduced. I am not saying that the aircraft could not have made it over the pass safely, it could have, but not with a crossing strategy that relied on closely visually hugging the valley on a very warm day.

All of this is conjecture at this stage of course. This poor chap may have had other difficulties but whatever the case one can only feel for the despair of a man flying, with a beloved wife and child, boxed into a situation with the dawning realization that he was running out of options to avoid the terrain in front of him.

[larsssnowpharter]

This is so sad, especially with a kid involved.

I note the press reports describe the pilot as 'an experienced amateur pilot'. I would be interested to know how much experience he had in mountain flying. It's a different world in terms of the problems it throws at you.

I flew through the Simplon S to N many, many years ago in something with a bit more power. It's a tight, unforgiving route.

One suspects that this flight might have been one of those where that little angel sitting on our shoulder might have been whispering in our ear, "Listen, mate. Not today not in this and not with the wife and kid aboard."