Light aircraft disappears with two people on board...

[Dan_1981]

at 58% recorded level I'm leaning towards very very unconscious by that point.

[ecsrobin]

KTF said:

Interesting, so maybe people were a bit too quick to jab their pitchforks in the pilot?

I think most of the industry would still be happy to keep on stabbing. He wasn’t qualified for the task in hand and got airborne in poor conditions at night that he wasn’t qualified to do is my understanding.

It’s amazing that the cause is likely not through his poor decisions.

[eharding]

996Type said:

I don’t know how the law works exactly but ultimately the pilot is in charge of the aircraft and passengers and it could be argued that provision be made for an emergency such as working monoxide detectors.

Given that the flight was at night, it is possible that the standard orange spot detector may well have given an indication, but that the cockpit lighting meant that it wasn't immediately obvious. A powered detector should presumably have given and audible and visual warning. The neither the recent AAIB bulletin, nor the previous one, mention what style of detector was fitted to the aircraft. There is no FAA or EASA mandatory requirement for them.

[KTF]

peterperkins said:

I wonder if they can tell whether he died from drowning/crash injuries or carbon monoxide poisoning before it crashed.

If he drowned then there would be water in his lungs. No water means he wasn’t breathing when it crashed.

[sparks_190e]

KTF said:

peterperkins said:

I wonder if they can tell whether he died from drowning/crash injuries or carbon monoxide poisoning before it crashed.

If he drowned then there would be water in his lungs. No water means he wasn’t breathing when it crashed.

From what I've heard of his injuries he didn't drown.

[Evanivitch]

I'm just going to half shoe horn this in, but CO poisoning can happen easily in the household and when travelling with work. My family have been directly affected by CO poisoning and it's unnecessary given the affordability of alarms and the similarity to smoke alarms.

http://www.co-bealarmed.co.uk/

[Fatball]

Evanivitch said:

I'm just going to half shoe horn this in, but CO poisoning can happen easily in the household and when travelling with work. My family have been directly affected by CO poisoning and it's unnecessary given the affordability of alarms and the similarity to smoke alarms.

http://www.co-bealarmed.co.uk/

As above. If you’ve not got a detector, please go and get one.

[TTmonkey]

Before he signed the club sent a proper private jet to shuttle him to negotiations.

After he signed he was offered regular airline collection or some stbox Uber Mot failure of the skies driven by a part time gas fitter. (Ironic?)

Shame the club and it’s reps didn’t value the young man as much once he’d signed.

[PurpleTurtle]

TTmonkey said:

Before he signed the club sent a proper private jet to shuttle him to negotiations.

After he signed he was offered regular airline collection or some stbox Uber Mot failure of the skies driven by a part time gas fitter. (Ironic?)

Shame the club and it’s reps didn’t value the young man as much once he’d signed.

That’s rather a distortion of the truth; Cardiff’s Player Liason Officer was trying to organise a scheduled airline flight out of Paris (quite some distance from Nantes) but Willy McKay’s son choked in with an offer of a ‘private flight’ from Nantes which Sala did not question the veracity of until he was on the plane, by which time it was too late for him to back out. Sale sadly declined Cardiff’s offer.

It’s all in the texts further up the thread.

[Ayahuasca]

ecsrobin said:

Ayahuasca said:

Photos of poor Sala’s body are online. Who releases that stuff? Fair to say that it was no gentle ditching. Full speed into the water I would guess. The end would have been instantaneous.

I believe it’s a fake picture.

Given that people have been convicted of releasing it, fair to assume it was not fake.

[GT119]

speedking31 said:

Where does CO come from in a light aircraft cabin? Faulty heater?

In some light aircraft the cabin air is drawn directly over the exhaust manifolds, so any leakage from the exhaust goes straight into the cabin...

For carburetted engines there is also a mechanism for drawing hot air into the carburettor to avoid carb-icing, which in itself is a major killer due to engine failure. Carb-heat is applied manually by the pilot if they suspect the carburettor is becoming blocked or maybe as part of a routine procedure.

The secondary effect of carb-heating is to enrich the mixture, producing more CO. If the exhaust is leaking and the heater is on full blast and there are icing conditions present that require carb-heat, the risk of CO poisoning is probably at its highest.

As an aside, when carb-heat is applied because the engine starts to run rough and lose power, the first thing that happens when it is applied is the engine runs even rougher and produces even less power until the ice melts and the carb-heat removed, so it takes some faith in the process to know how and when to use it.

[skwdenyer]

GT119 said:

speedking31 said:

Where does CO come from in a light aircraft cabin? Faulty heater?

In some light aircraft the cabin air is drawn directly over the exhaust manifolds, so any leakage from the exhaust goes straight into the cabin...

For carburetted engines there is also a mechanism for drawing hot air into the carburettor to avoid carb-icing, which in itself is a major killer due to engine failure. Carb-heat is applied manually by the pilot if they suspect the carburettor is becoming blocked or maybe as part of a routine procedure.

The secondary effect of carb-heating is to enrich the mixture, producing more CO. If the exhaust is leaking and the heater is on full blast and there are icing conditions present that require carb-heat, the risk of CO poisoning is probably at its highest.

As an aside, when carb-heat is applied because the engine starts to run rough and lose power, the first thing that happens when it is applied is the engine runs even rougher and produces even less power until the ice melts and the carb-heat removed, so it takes some faith in the process to know how and when to use it.

All the above is frankly somewhat staggering, in that it is "state of the ark" as it were. It is almost as if thermostats, bimetals, etc. had never been invented

[2xChevrons]

skwdenyer said:

GT119 said:

speedking31 said:

Where does CO come from in a light aircraft cabin? Faulty heater?

In some light aircraft the cabin air is drawn directly over the exhaust manifolds, so any leakage from the exhaust goes straight into the cabin...

For carburetted engines there is also a mechanism for drawing hot air into the carburettor to avoid carb-icing, which in itself is a major killer due to engine failure. Carb-heat is applied manually by the pilot if they suspect the carburettor is becoming blocked or maybe as part of a routine procedure.

The secondary effect of carb-heating is to enrich the mixture, producing more CO. If the exhaust is leaking and the heater is on full blast and there are icing conditions present that require carb-heat, the risk of CO poisoning is probably at its highest.

As an aside, when carb-heat is applied because the engine starts to run rough and lose power, the first thing that happens when it is applied is the engine runs even rougher and produces even less power until the ice melts and the carb-heat removed, so it takes some faith in the process to know how and when to use it.

All the above is frankly somewhat staggering, in that it is "state of the ark" as it were. It is almost as if thermostats, bimetals, etc. had never been invented

Almost everything in light aircraft engineering is 'state of the ark' compared to - well, many things, but particularly car technology. The most common light aero-engines date back to the 1940s in design - magneto ignition, carburettors (or all-mechanical constant-flow fuel 'injection' - more of a fancy fuel sprayer, really), manual fuel mixture, separate 'neat' primer pumps for cold starts, and acceptable oil consumption figures of one quart per four hours of running time. All for an engine that turns at no more than 2500rpm and puts out under 30 horsepower per litre.

But they're proven, reliable (or at least dependable - there is a subtle difference) and outright mechanical failures on properly maintained engines are almost unheard of. It's usually the ancillary parts that give trouble or some external problem like fuel contamination. Which is why they still use carburettors with carb temperature controlled by the pilot pulling a lever to move a bit of bent wire to tug a flap in the intake tract from one position to another. You could have a bimetallic strip do it or a thermostat that senses inlet air temperature with a compensating linkage so it only operates with the throttle closed below a certain position, but it's all introducing potential failure points.

And it's not like a car, which is aimed at ordinary people with zero mechanical knowledge or training to use while they go about their daily life. For those people electronic fuel injection getting rid of the choke made perfect sense (not accounting for all the other reasons that EFI was introduced to cars that don't apply to aircraft...) but pilots are specifically trained and can be expected to follow printed procedures every time. Flipping the carb heat on every time you pull the power off or if it's a lukewarm but humid day (which they will know it is because they've been trained to get a weather briefing) is expected of them in a way that it's not of a car driver. And if that thermostat or bimetallic strip fails (which it is more likely to do than the manual system, and when it does fail it will not be obvious that it has until the engine conks out - the manual mechanical system can be - and always is - checked before takeoff) then the pilot is in a world of trouble because they can't just pull over to the side of the road and wait for the AA to turn up.

[jbswagger]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-49...

Emiliano Sala post-mortem CCTV footage pair jailed

[rallycross]

jbswagger said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-49...

Emiliano Sala post-mortem CCTV footage pair jailed

seems like a very harsh sentence for this.

[Stigproducts]

If you google it you can find the picture in seconds. Imagine if that was your child, and that picture was all over the internet. I would start to think that sentence was pretty generous.

[Gareth79]

rallycross said:

jbswagger said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-49...

Emiliano Sala post-mortem CCTV footage pair jailed

seems like a very harsh sentence for this.

I think it was because the services provided by the company were highly senstive and in a position of trust, she was a director if the company. The sharing was not a one-off incident, and it seems the viewing of the recordings was very common.

[vaud]

rallycross said:

seems like a very harsh sentence for this.

Seems light to me. Massive breach of trust.

[peterperkins]

Another total scumbag offence harshly punished and rightly so.

Same as the copper who bought porn on a bereaved families internet while he was supposedly guarding the scene.

Sadly a few total turds spoil it for the 99.99% of people/officers/employees who wouldn't dream of doing anything like these reprobates.

[Cantaloupe]

Meanwhile your local serial thieves, burglars , shoplifters, drunk drivers and muggers with offence sheets as long as your arm escape custodial sentences.

Sentencing, It's an utter farce, are these people remotely a danger to the public ?