I had a mechanic leave a large #2 Matco screw driver under the floor boards of my Caravan, it eventually locked the ailerons. Was loged in the aileron chain. I was able to "rudder" the airplane to a safe landing. Lucky....
I was thinking the same. There was a Chinook that went down on a Fire near Salmon, Idaho, copilots iPad fell and ended up jammed under the left rudder pedal.
Fueler only put fuel in the left wing but recorded they put fuel in both wings? You have to manually put fuel in each wing. Seems like it has to be something that happened since it landed.
Stoopid "aircraft" mechanics, that have no place on this business: They must use a tool storage system that always shows that all tools are retrieved from the job. Std practice.
I had student in a C172 , we were doing turns, he said the controls were getting tight, I took over and found the them very tight. I made it into Ramapo valley airport in n.y. After taking the inside of the plane apart and looking in thei tail I found a large Screw driver jammed in the cables. During a preflight and flight control checks everything appeared normal. I believe it was laying on the cables and found its way between the cables from vibration from movement. Unfortunately people do not take the aircraft apart to check inside the tail. I had a long talk with the mechanic that left it there. I told him that he almost killed us. I definitely got his attention.
I don't dispute that this is a dumb question, but are mechanics required to do an inventory of their tools before and after servicing every aircraft? I realize that this is far easier said than done, but in today's RFID-crazy world, it would probably be possible to do.
@@demef758 In in the Air Force we did... and they were super serious about it. I mean VERY serious about tool accountability. I don't know what it's like on the civilian world but I doubt it's as stringent.
I was in South Africa when a military jet went down (hydraulics failure) about 600m from a school. The pilot punched out seconds before impact. The media was all over it calling the pilot a hero etc etc, but the pilot himself said he had no idea he was near a school because he was working the problem all the time before he left the room. The most he did was using rudder only, he pointed the nose toward "brown and green".
@@jamescollier3 At just above VMC, the plane stalled and spun after the pilot left. In reality it could have ended up anywhere within a 2Km forward arc. Including on top of the school.
I saw that too where the Hawaii reporters praised them for intentionally crashing into an empty building as if they had known or if they had any choice of anything in that flight attitude.
@@Cwra1smithAha! So that's why they aimed for it. (Why didn't they aim for flat ground instead of a building?) And they obviously did a thorough preflight, investigating the actual occupation of all buildings within their intended flight envelope, taking into account the best gliding distance etc so that they would only crash into empty ones.
I understand why media reports aircraft accidents the way they do, but it would be nice if some of them understood how aircraft accidents occur. Like you said, if they were in control, they wouldn't have crashed to begin with. Anyway, another preventable incident. Thanks for doing what you do Juan. Everyone appreciates your diligent work reporting these things.
Control locks or some other control surface problem was my first thought looking at the apparent consistent increase in rate of turn straight from take off.
@@General_Ethos Yeah but there's no reason why you can't fly the plane with elevators and ailerons. Sure, you loose performance, but you don't crash uncontrollably.
@@6StringPassion.I noticed on Juan’s post yesterday the pilotin that accident had an iPad on his lap to me that would be a distraction and a possibility of falling off sad news wel have to wait for the investigation
Yes Juan , I am so glad you pointed this out, it seems every NEWS story on TV they hoist so yokal on camera up who claims "THE PILOT IS A HERO, HE TRIED TO AVOID x y z'' . LOSS of control is OUT-OF-CONTROL! the pilot had no say-so. Thanks for your great detailed work Juan.
I think that it is unfair and unprofessional to say that the pilot had nothing to do with avoiding the buildings. A " Monday morning quarterback without being at the game".?
Thanks Juan for this analysis. I spend a month every winter in Honolulu and enjoy filming and spotting at PHNL. This is such a heart breaking situation with such young pilots involved. God bless them and their families and you Juan and your family. Cheers from CYYB.
I've always wanted to spend about 4 to 6 months during the winter in Hawaii and then summer in the San Francisco Bay Area. I find Pipeline Surfing Wave on the North Shore of Oahu a fascinating Wave, especially when it's big and bumpy.
Oh no!! My brother used to fly the Caravan in the San Juan Islands. These things are absolute workhorse airplanes. Very reliable. I'm wondering if there was some kind of mechanical failure with the flight controls. Nothing else makes sense.
Juan, There was a Textron Owner Advisory: Cessna Caravan Owners shoule replac aileron trim tab pushrod assemblies. Apparently they can fracture without warning, posted by Cessna Owners Organization Feb 15 2019. I just went sniffing as the dramatic aileron roll inputs are not likely by the crew and he did get a radio call out they were out of control. Possible jamming incident? We'll know in due time. Condolences to the families of the lost pilots.
@@itjustlookslikethis They may no get annuals because they're Part 135. They probably have some approved progressive inspection. But if they do it in-house with bad mechanics it's absolutely possible. I'm in aviation claims and you'd be shocked by some of the downright criminal maintenance/repairs that get signed off as airworthy.
As usual Juan an excellent analysis and very unbiased! My condolences to all involved. If I had to provide opinion I would certainly say there might be a good chance at NTSB will not find continuity in control cables. I wonder if there’s corrosion since those planes are in that setting in Hawaii and who knows how they are maintained. We’ve seen this before with crashes in the Caribbean due to cable discontinuities.
Thank you for your quickness in getting this online. I’m sure the media will run with speculations but you present the facts as you know it. Thank you!
I fly 208B and it’s very hard to miss the control lock as mentioned in this video starter and battery master is covered by the lock plate, and rudder lock on the older versions come up with elevator deflection and the newer version’s rudder lock automatically disengages as soon as fuel condition lever is pushed so both seem very unlikely. Curious to see what ntsb finds out
@@SSaugaCriss very distracting and first step on fire detection warning is to pull the breaker out to stop the alarm (inducing the alarm for training could only be done by pressing the detect button which should be pretty apparent)
@@RubenKelevra you sure do in a Caravan. 675 hp up front, torque and P-Factor are very real. Ever flown one?? I've got a little over 9000 hours in the Caravan, both the C208B and the EX models. My thinking is they may have severely mistrimmed the rudder, especially being a training flight. Student may have trimmed the rudder the wrong direction (to the left) and the instructor pilot did not catch it.
After watching lots of KHNL coverage yesterday afternoon, I thought of this channel. So I sent an email to Juan asking if he'd check it out. I really appreciate the fast turn to produce some great insight, like the ADS-B data that no one else has covered. My condolences to the family of the pilots and to the co-workers in the Kamaka family.
I am not a pilot, and certainly not an air crash investigator. But my best guess on this is that there absolutely was a failure of control surfaces of some type. These young pilots seem to be victims of the problem in making preflight inspections as routine as possible and perhaps overlooked something important.
Flap asymmetry on retraction?? Don’t know much about the 208 so just a guess since they were perfectly straight until 200ft. Any 208 pilots know if there is enough aileron authority to overcome one flap up/one down?
Not sure if you’d have enough aileron if one was at 20 and the other at 0. But generally there shouldn’t be any flap retraction below 400’ and then you do flaps in two stages in this particular 208B, (EX 208’s are different in the flap selection) flaps 20-10 then 10-0.
@@TylerN737s As soon as they break ground the plane starts going left even though the departure requires a left turn... seems sooner than normal flap retraction.
Caravan mechanic here. 208B flap system is pretty basic. Both left and right flaps are connected through a robust interconnect rod attached to a bellcrank in the right wing dry bay, connected to a single(primary) motor. Making asymmetry pretty hard to do if at all possible.
Got about 4K hrs. in Caravans and while we did have occasional flap motor failures I've never heard of a flap asymmetry on a Caravan. Also not likely to retract all flaps at 200'. Either way, a very puzzling crash.
I drove by about an hour after it happened. Breaks my heart as a flight student that regularly flies that departure route. It’s a miracle they didn’t hit the H1, traffic was backed up bad around then. RIP to the crew
Was just in Hawaii last month. Very lucky that they didn’t crash onto the interstate, that highway is always busy. My condolences to the pilots and their families.
I own and fly a 208B, one thing to note , is that. you cant. takeoff with a two hundred pound split in fuel or the plane will role with not enough aileron control!
The TV News anchors and reporters are mainly just teleprompter -readers who know practically nothing about aviation. And the people who write the copy too. (Even on the big networks). What would we do without Juan Brown ? I guess we would have to wait two years for NTSB reports !!
I had an elevator lock up on me - but it checked free and correct on the ground - in a Cessna 421 Maintenance had worked on the trim system, and it was calibrated incorrectly (not at all). Full nose down trim was still trimming significantly nose up. Once it had air flowing over it, we couldn't pitch down. My FO and I basically bench pressed the yoke forward all the way to landing.
From the ADSB data, the plane made a right hand turn onto the runway. You would also move all the control surfaces, everytime, before starting the engine. I don't know how quickly after getting airborne you would retract the flaps, so I don't know if a flap caused a bank angle issue. If you have an uncommanded roll, you would probably pull back on the stick to maintain positive loading on the wings. I guess we will wait for the report and see what the settings were set at and what were their actual positions. I would like to believe that any CFI would take the controls as soon as things went wrong, so I'm betting there was a mechanical failure.
I was going to post exactly that, on a few of the news sites I was reading on this, (in regards to the pilots avoiding anything- they said it themselves- they were out of control)- I think they might have been say that? Because at a couple points, we can see the yaw of the aircraft, (the tail sliding slightly to the right), that might have confused some of the witnesses to say that. That yaw? Actually seemed to make the situation worse. I'm wondering if, like you said, there was something else actually wrong with the craft, as they started off to the left so early. The yaw looked strange, like maybe the pilot was really slamming those pedals, trying to get more from them. Maybe I was seeing things, I'm going to try and find that video from earlier, that was zoomed in, and fairly clear. If I do, I'll come back and post it, if you don't mind, and would like to see it.
Juan, you do a good job. But, we need to wait for the investigation to be completed. All due respect for your efforts, knowledge of systems, and candor. I learned long ago that the media(and public) want answers “now”. It is this very human characteristic that results in speculation, and is many times inaccurate and “not what really happened”. Let the investigation(NTSB) do their job. Aviation is safe because we have an organization that thoroughly recreates incidents/accidents and ultimately tells it like it is. Too bad we don’t put this kind of effort into making the public roads and highways as safe as flying..
i dont know if cargo can move around in a caravan but flying cargo lost of control right after rotation is sometimes cargo , i dont think you can take off with the control lock in its too in the way
Thank you for your research! My first thought after watching the video was a classic departure stall, since the ATC audio said they were trying to turn right. An uncoordinated right turn at a high angle of attack would cause a left hand spin.
Fatal crash today in Argentina, a plane couldn't stop and crashed to badly placed houses close to an airport, hoping to se a report on this chanel soon, thank you!
I always scoff at the media saying the pilot was a hero for swerving at the last second to miss a crowded highway, school, or housing development. Most of the time there is no choice in the matter and shear chance where the plane lands. Hate how they make up this stuff to make the story sound better.
That’s just one reason I don’t watch the mainstream media anymore, even the local affiliate stations. Have you ever seen the weather reporters exaggerating during an out in the field report? It’s just easier to tell the truth and that’s why I watch Juan and value his reporting and commentary.
Yes, there are very few news reporters that arrive on scene with any knowledge of the subject they are there to report on. In our case, the reporting of aviation accidents by the media is little more than telling a story which entertains rather than informs.
I've got about 9000 hours in the Caravan... my first thought, especially being a training flight, is it could have been a severely mistrimmed rudder. Second thought would be an asymmetric flap situation. The Caravan is not a hard airplane to fly, but it will eat your lunch if you just allow the aircraft to do whatever it wants to do. You have to fly it.
We never know if it’s our time when we get up in the morning. Sad time of the year to lose your loved ones. I’ve lost family during the holidays and it always makes it worse.
local news (here in honolulu) is reporting that the plane had been hopping around all day. it just returned from a few loops around lanai airport that same morning with the same pilots.
This one really hit home for me. My son is a new pilot (21yo) and just applied and interviewed with Kamaka Air and is waiting to hear back from them. He does have a good friend that is a captain there (not one of the deceased fortunately) but the whole Kamaka "family" is really tight. They are all devastated. My son is only a year younger than one of the pilots so its really tough for me to get my head around...all my love and sincerest condolences to their families.
PHNL has some of the best flying and maintaining conditions in the world. I have flown in and out upwards of 200 trips and have met numerous mechanics and pilots and wouldn't categorize any of them as 'rough'. Rough would be like Christmas Island, out in the weeds, where you have no facilities and no direct access to support.
We do not know if control surface locks were involved in this incident but having worked on the flightline for twenty four years I learned that the hardest part of flight operations is the checklist. To perform them consistently and completely every time is hard for humans to do. Perhaps the hardest part of Aviation.
This reminds me so much of Juan's video where this experienced but retired fighter pilot **edit** --nick-- named "Snodgrass" died in a small plane when he forgot the control lock. Tragic and shocking.
Hate to speculate, too early. Seat tracks? I believe Cessna has had issues with this in the past. Curious to know the pilot seat position in the post-crash environment. Rotate, seat slides back, and common nature is to pull (to get your seat back into position). Add a bank and we could have an accelerated stall. Again, very early and I’m confident the NTSB will look at everything.
I have flown an Extra 300 off of 4L a few times. I have also flown off of 4R many times in Cessna’s. The heavy’s use the big runway including the F22 Raptors although not always. Sometimes they use 4L or 4R although its typically for GA aircraft. ATC always makes me circle and wait for a while to land. You must always plan for their landing hold with your fuel quantity before takeoff.
I watched a video of a UA-camr this morning of him flying out of the Honolulu Airport Dec 17th around the time of the accident. He stated in his video that the new flight he was on was having very long delays for some reason. I wonder if the accident may have had a part in the Airports delays. His first Delta flight had a problem so he got a flight on an Alaskan airline instead. *His channel is "Adam The Woo".* I tried to figure out what time Adam left the Airport. Either 3:15pm or 5pm but I'm not positive.
I looked at the previous flight in Google Earth and it appears they double-bounced the landing. Is it possible this damaged the control surfaces of the aircraft in some way unknown to the pilots?
The news was saying that one of the pilot's "was working on getting his license". Not sure what that means, but it was a training flight. Was Kamaka running a flight school? Or was the news mistaken and this was just New Hire training?
This one is hard to guess. Possibly an aileron hinge failure, locking the aileron or preventing it from going the way it needed to. Maybe an autopilot engaged that they couldn't override. Control lock being installed is possible. But that is a hard one to miss if it's installed. And it would mean no preflight or control check before takeoff. Not likely. A rudder hinge failure is also possible. I suspect the NTSB will solve the cause. We'll just have to wait a while to get the word.
Almost certainly not a cargo shift causing it because lateral weight maldistribution can always be mitigated by ailerons. Longitudinal weight distribution is quite different.
Obviously too early to really tell, but I’m curious what flap setting they used if any. My money is on Asymmetric flap failure. It could lead to this kind of a loss of control, and it’s not unheard of in 208s. And the turn seems to start right where you would start retracting flaps. When I fly 208s I would generally use full flap for takeoff unless I was going into hard IMC on a larger runway. Start retracting through about 90 kts.
Decreasing radius turns are a problem on the ground too, everywhere. If I recall from motorcycle school, On a motorcycle, that kind of tightening turn is one of the leading cyclist only crashes.
Could it be an asymmetric takeoff flap retraction? Had that happen on a Piper Comanche years ago, inducing a roll input that overpowered roll control as the airplane accelerated.
If they had control locks applied the problem would have started to exhibit itself during takeoff roll. I'm wondering if they didn't lose some sort of a control mechanism to the right aileron. That's the only thing I can think of off hand. I had a little bit of a thought about a runaway trim but that plane I believe still has manual trim but I'm not certain of that. I have seen incidences slightly similar to this with Cessna High Wings when somebody has too much flaps applied during takeoff
Thank you for your informative video on this crash . We really appreciate the facts that you Relay to us at the time . Otherwise , all we may hear is the same blah , blah , stuff which is Actually nearly completely worthless . First news can & should be important info - The public Understands that this is not the final investigation of the accident . Thanks Captain Juan .
The VFR conditions would appear to rule out any kind of spatial disorientation so then we are left with a mechanical failure of some kind. With that apparently unintended steep left bank you would have to assume the pilot flying would have cranked in full opposite aileron and opposite rudder. Hopefully there is enough resolution in the videos of the mishap to determine the position of the ailerons and rudder while it was in that steep bank. They had enough airspeed to recover if the control surfaces were operating normally. That in itself suggests they weren’t. Did something break or jam during the takeoff roll?
@@AlbertHess-xy7ky It's the focus on profit. A founder may worry about safety and its effect on employees and company reputation whereas a private equity group would consider a crash as just part of the profit equation. One could even imagine that for private equity guys there might be a certain level of acceptable loss as long as the company is still making a decent profit.
I had a mechanic leave a large #2 Matco screw driver under the floor boards of my Caravan, it eventually locked the ailerons. Was loged in the aileron chain. I was able to "rudder" the airplane to a safe landing. Lucky....
Had a buddy have something similar happen in a Super Decathlon. A flashlight jammed the elevator.
Seems like the fact that something (????? ) may have jammed or broke and caused there loss of control...
I was thinking the same. There was a Chinook that went down on a Fire near Salmon, Idaho, copilots iPad fell and ended up jammed under the left rudder pedal.
Fueler only put fuel in the left wing but recorded they put fuel in both wings? You have to manually put fuel in each wing. Seems like it has to be something that happened since it landed.
Stoopid "aircraft" mechanics, that have no place on this business: They must use a tool storage system that always shows that all tools are retrieved from the job. Std practice.
I had student in a C172 , we were doing turns, he said the controls were getting tight, I took over and found the them very tight. I made it into Ramapo valley airport in n.y. After taking the inside of the plane apart and looking in thei tail I found a large Screw driver jammed in the cables. During a preflight and flight control checks everything appeared normal. I believe it was laying on the cables and found its way between the cables from vibration from movement. Unfortunately people do not take the aircraft apart to check inside the tail. I had a long talk with the mechanic that left it there. I told him that he almost killed us. I definitely got his attention.
I don't dispute that this is a dumb question, but are mechanics required to do an inventory of their tools before and after servicing every aircraft? I realize that this is far easier said than done, but in today's RFID-crazy world, it would probably be possible to do.
@@demef758 In in the Air Force we did... and they were super serious about it. I mean VERY serious about tool accountability. I don't know what it's like on the civilian world but I doubt it's as stringent.
@@demef758 No, IMO, it would be impractical to do so and would not prevent most mechanical mistakes.
@@tootallsvlog103 While I agree with this, rules are written in blood. If this actually happens IRL, you better believe this will become enforced.
I was in South Africa when a military jet went down (hydraulics failure) about 600m from a school. The pilot punched out seconds before impact. The media was all over it calling the pilot a hero etc etc, but the pilot himself said he had no idea he was near a school because he was working the problem all the time before he left the room. The most he did was using rudder only, he pointed the nose toward "brown and green".
the media gets 11% correct
@@jamescollier3 I think that's a little bit generous
@@jamescollier3 At just above VMC, the plane stalled and spun after the pilot left. In reality it could have ended up anywhere within a 2Km forward arc. Including on top of the school.
Mover and Gonky made a similar point recently
Gonky Kong?
I saw that too where the Hawaii reporters praised them for intentionally crashing into an empty building as if they had known or if they had any choice of anything in that flight attitude.
if the media said the sky was blue, I'd look up
They did have a huge - FOR LEASE - sign on the roof of that building.
The sky is blue in Hawaii and so is the brains of the left media
@@Cwra1smithAha! So that's why they aimed for it. (Why didn't they aim for flat ground instead of a building?) And they obviously did a thorough preflight, investigating the actual occupation of all buildings within their intended flight envelope, taking into account the best gliding distance etc so that they would only crash into empty ones.
I heard a local businessman was just about to sign for it when these two “crashed” the deal. /s
I understand why media reports aircraft accidents the way they do, but it would be nice if some of them understood how aircraft accidents occur. Like you said, if they were in control, they wouldn't have crashed to begin with.
Anyway, another preventable incident. Thanks for doing what you do Juan. Everyone appreciates your diligent work reporting these things.
Media = Shock, Hate, Outrage, Fear. Poor source of objective info..
Not since Hal Fischman! And that was long...long ago.
Cause & effect scientific analysis. The best I’ve ever heard.
Juan is a true professional, as to be expected of a commercial airline pilot.
Control locks or some other control surface problem was my first thought looking at the apparent consistent increase in rate of turn straight from take off.
That is what came to mind. The left turn looks like a torque roll.
Yeah, mine too. Or possibly something fell down and got stuck down on the floor between the floor and foot controls
@@General_Ethos iPad? It's been known to happen...🤔
@@General_Ethos Yeah but there's no reason why you can't fly the plane with elevators and ailerons. Sure, you loose performance, but you don't crash uncontrollably.
@@6StringPassion.I noticed on Juan’s post yesterday the pilotin that accident had an iPad on his lap to me that would be a distraction and a possibility of falling off sad news wel have to wait for the investigation
Excellent discussion of the pilot "avoiding the buildings." Telling it like it is!
Exactly. The pilots are always "brave" and "heroic" until their incompetence is brought to light.
Yeah, doubt that it has ever happened.Its in the journalist standard procedure manual
@@RobertRobert-d2r And you know this how? The mighty keyboard pilot. Here's an idea, let the investigators figure out what happened.
Yes Juan , I am so glad you pointed this out, it seems every NEWS story on TV they hoist so yokal on camera up who claims "THE PILOT IS A HERO, HE TRIED TO AVOID x y z'' . LOSS of control is OUT-OF-CONTROL! the pilot had no say-so. Thanks for your great detailed work Juan.
I think that it is unfair and unprofessional to say that the pilot had nothing to do with avoiding the buildings. A " Monday morning quarterback without being at the game".?
Thanks Juan for this analysis. I spend a month every winter in Honolulu and enjoy filming and spotting at PHNL. This is such a heart breaking situation with such young pilots involved. God bless them and their families and you Juan and your family. Cheers from CYYB.
I've always wanted to spend about 4 to 6 months during the winter in Hawaii and then summer in the San Francisco Bay Area. I find Pipeline Surfing Wave on the North Shore of Oahu a fascinating Wave, especially when it's big and bumpy.
Oh no!! My brother used to fly the Caravan in the San Juan Islands. These things are absolute workhorse airplanes. Very reliable. I'm wondering if there was some kind of mechanical failure with the flight controls. Nothing else makes sense.
Heard the audio of the ATC last night. Very calm comms from a man who knows he's seconds from the end. RIP.
Juan, There was a Textron Owner Advisory: Cessna Caravan Owners shoule replac aileron trim tab pushrod assemblies. Apparently they can fracture without warning, posted by Cessna Owners Organization Feb 15 2019. I just went sniffing as the dramatic aileron roll inputs are not likely by the crew and he did get a radio call out they were out of control. Possible jamming incident? We'll know in due time. Condolences to the families of the lost pilots.
So how did this get past 5 annual inspections?
@@itjustlookslikethisOmitted or sloppy inspection.
Thought I was having a stroke trying to read this….
@@itjustlookslikethis They may no get annuals because they're Part 135. They probably have some approved progressive inspection. But if they do it in-house with bad mechanics it's absolutely possible. I'm in aviation claims and you'd be shocked by some of the downright criminal maintenance/repairs that get signed off as airworthy.
@@Fomites Really? I don't allow "sloppy inspections" on my Cessna 172. I'm always right there.
As usual Juan an excellent analysis and very unbiased! My condolences to all involved. If I had to provide opinion I would certainly say there might be a good chance at NTSB will not find continuity in control cables. I wonder if there’s corrosion since those planes are in that setting in Hawaii and who knows how they are maintained. We’ve seen this before with crashes in the Caribbean due to cable discontinuities.
Thank you for your quickness in getting this online. I’m sure the media will run with speculations but you present the facts as you know it. Thank you!
Juan, thank you for everything you do.
I fly 208B and it’s very hard to miss the control lock as mentioned in this video starter and battery master is covered by the lock plate, and rudder lock on the older versions come up with elevator deflection and the newer version’s rudder lock automatically disengages as soon as fuel condition lever is pushed so both seem very unlikely. Curious to see what ntsb finds out
Okay, but you don't need the rudder to fly the airplane. Won't be pretty, but you don't crash so uncontrollably.
how distracting is a fire light in the van? (given apparent training sortie)
@@SSaugaCrissquite distracting & very loud. You’d hear it in radio tx.
@@SSaugaCriss very distracting and first step on fire detection warning is to pull the breaker out to stop the alarm (inducing the alarm for training could only be done by pressing the detect button which should be pretty apparent)
@@RubenKelevra you sure do in a Caravan. 675 hp up front, torque and P-Factor are very real. Ever flown one?? I've got a little over 9000 hours in the Caravan, both the C208B and the EX models. My thinking is they may have severely mistrimmed the rudder, especially being a training flight. Student may have trimmed the rudder the wrong direction (to the left) and the instructor pilot did not catch it.
I live in Hawaii and appreciate your coverage of this incident that occurred just yesterday.
Blancolirio is the go-to source for all things aviation. He is good, thorough, and respectful. RIP to the 2 young pilots.
@@Matt.Thompson.1976 thanks. iagree.
@@jjpac2011 Welcome.
After watching lots of KHNL coverage yesterday afternoon, I thought of this channel. So I sent an email to Juan asking if he'd check it out. I really appreciate the fast turn to produce some great insight, like the ADS-B data that no one else has covered. My condolences to the family of the pilots and to the co-workers in the Kamaka family.
Thank you Juan for another excellent video.
Thanks for all the aviation info. I hope you have a safe and happy holiday season.
I am not a pilot, and certainly not an air crash investigator. But my best guess on this is that there absolutely was a failure of control surfaces of some type. These young pilots seem to be victims of the problem in making preflight inspections as routine as possible and perhaps overlooked something important.
Flap asymmetry on retraction?? Don’t know much about the 208 so just a guess since they were perfectly straight until 200ft. Any 208 pilots know if there is enough aileron authority to overcome one flap up/one down?
As a former Caravan pilot I think your guess is the most logical
Not sure if you’d have enough aileron if one was at 20 and the other at 0. But generally there shouldn’t be any flap retraction below 400’ and then you do flaps in two stages in this particular 208B, (EX 208’s are different in the flap selection) flaps 20-10 then 10-0.
@@TylerN737s As soon as they break ground the plane starts going left even though the departure requires a left turn... seems sooner than normal flap retraction.
Caravan mechanic here. 208B flap system is pretty basic. Both left and right flaps are connected through a robust interconnect rod attached to a bellcrank in the right wing dry bay, connected to a single(primary) motor. Making asymmetry pretty hard to do if at all possible.
Got about 4K hrs. in Caravans and while we did have occasional flap motor failures I've never heard of a flap asymmetry on a Caravan.
Also not likely to retract all flaps at 200'. Either way, a very puzzling crash.
So sad,condolences to their families,thanks Juan,safe flights mate,🙏🙏👍🎄🇦🇺
Thanks Juan
I drove by about an hour after it happened. Breaks my heart as a flight student that regularly flies that departure route. It’s a miracle they didn’t hit the H1, traffic was backed up bad around then. RIP to the crew
Was just in Hawaii last month. Very lucky that they didn’t crash onto the interstate, that highway is always busy. My condolences to the pilots and their families.
I went for the first time back in July. Agreed, the interstate is very busy, reminded me of CA at times.
There are no interstate roads in HI. The necessary bridge has been held up in the study phase for a while now.
@@mytech6779 Ok, I’m from Illinois,and that’s what we call it. I guess expressway would be the proper term and I stand corrected.
@@ronmoore5827 I think the catch all term is limited-access highway. But expressway or freeway seem sufficiently accurate.
@@mytech6779massive highways .....either way, much was evaded whether one gives any credit to the young pilot or not, I do.
It always breaks my heart when I see an accident like this.
Thank you very much!
Amazing investigation on this horrible crash. The break down of what happened is very educational for us non-pilots. Thank you...
I own and fly a 208B, one thing to note , is that. you cant. takeoff with a two hundred pound split in fuel or the plane will role with not enough aileron control!
Actually, you can take off with more than a 200 lb split in fuel. Ask me how I know..... But the manual forbids it for good reason.
Was going to comment that the Caravan can get a large fuel imbalance if parked on a bit of a slope with both fuel selectors selected on.
Sad news.
Definitely seems like a strange one to so immediately veer off course opposite of ATCs direction...
The TV News anchors and reporters are mainly just teleprompter -readers who know practically nothing about aviation. And the people who write the copy too. (Even on the big networks). What would we do without Juan Brown ? I guess we would have to wait two years for NTSB reports !!
Very close to those fuel tanks, prayers to their friends.and families
I had an elevator lock up on me - but it checked free and correct on the ground - in a Cessna 421
Maintenance had worked on the trim system, and it was calibrated incorrectly (not at all). Full nose down trim was still trimming significantly nose up.
Once it had air flowing over it, we couldn't pitch down. My FO and I basically bench pressed the yoke forward all the way to landing.
From the ADSB data, the plane made a right hand turn onto the runway. You would also move all the control surfaces, everytime, before starting the engine. I don't know how quickly after getting airborne you would retract the flaps, so I don't know if a flap caused a bank angle issue. If you have an uncommanded roll, you would probably pull back on the stick to maintain positive loading on the wings. I guess we will wait for the report and see what the settings were set at and what were their actual positions. I would like to believe that any CFI would take the controls as soon as things went wrong, so I'm betting there was a mechanical failure.
Excellent engineering on the locks -- impressive !
As with most such accidents, my hope is that we learn something new instead of finding the same old mistakes. I want the industry to improve.
The industry per se is rarely the issue: the person(s) flying it more typically is.
Thank you for your hard work, sir!
Thanks Juan, as always...greetings from VT.
I was going to post exactly that, on a few of the news sites I was reading on this, (in regards to the pilots avoiding anything- they said it themselves- they were out of control)-
I think they might have been say that? Because at a couple points, we can see the yaw of the aircraft, (the tail sliding slightly to the right), that might have confused some of the witnesses to say that.
That yaw? Actually seemed to make the situation worse. I'm wondering if, like you said, there was something else actually wrong with the craft, as they started off to the left so early. The yaw looked strange, like maybe the pilot was really slamming those pedals, trying to get more from them.
Maybe I was seeing things, I'm going to try and find that video from earlier, that was zoomed in, and fairly clear. If I do, I'll come back and post it, if you don't mind, and would like to see it.
Juan, you do a good job. But, we need to wait for the investigation to be completed. All due respect for your efforts, knowledge of systems, and candor. I learned long ago that the media(and public) want answers “now”. It is this very human characteristic that results in speculation, and is many times inaccurate and “not what really happened”. Let the investigation(NTSB) do their job. Aviation is safe because we have an organization that thoroughly recreates incidents/accidents and ultimately tells it like it is. Too bad we don’t put this kind of effort into making the public roads and highways as safe as flying..
i dont know if cargo can move around in a caravan but flying cargo lost of control right after rotation is sometimes cargo , i dont think you can take off with the control lock in its too in the way
Thank you for your research! My first thought after watching the video was a classic departure stall, since the ATC audio said they were trying to turn right. An uncoordinated right turn at a high angle of attack would cause a left hand spin.
Fatal crash today in Argentina, a plane couldn't stop and crashed to badly placed houses close to an airport, hoping to se a report on this chanel soon, thank you!
I always scoff at the media saying the pilot was a hero for swerving at the last second to miss a crowded highway, school, or housing development. Most of the time there is no choice in the matter and shear chance where the plane lands. Hate how they make up this stuff to make the story sound better.
That’s just one reason I don’t watch the mainstream media anymore, even the local affiliate stations. Have you ever seen the weather reporters exaggerating during an out in the field report? It’s just easier to tell the truth and that’s why I watch Juan and value his reporting and commentary.
Yes, there are very few news reporters that arrive on scene with any knowledge of the subject they are there to report on. In our case, the reporting of aviation accidents by the media is little more than telling a story which entertains rather than informs.
I've got about 9000 hours in the Caravan... my first thought, especially being a training flight, is it could have been a severely mistrimmed rudder. Second thought would be an asymmetric flap situation.
The Caravan is not a hard airplane to fly, but it will eat your lunch if you just allow the aircraft to do whatever it wants to do. You have to fly it.
Thank you Juan.
We never know if it’s our time when we get up in the morning. Sad time of the year to lose your loved ones. I’ve lost family during the holidays and it always makes it worse.
Yes, just heartbreaking. I pray they knew the Lord Christ!!
Rest in peace to the airmen and condolences to their families.
local news (here in honolulu) is reporting that the plane had been hopping around all day. it just returned from a few loops around lanai airport that same morning with the same pilots.
This one really hit home for me. My son is a new pilot (21yo) and just applied and interviewed with Kamaka Air and is waiting to hear back from them. He does have a good friend that is a captain there (not one of the deceased fortunately) but the whole Kamaka "family" is really tight. They are all devastated. My son is only a year younger than one of the pilots so its really tough for me to get my head around...all my love and sincerest condolences to their families.
Asymmetrical flap retraction?
Knowing a tiny bit about the C208 this was my thought as well
Yep, that could do it.
As soon as they break ground the plane starts going left even though the departure requires a left turn... seems sooner than normal flap retraction.
Maintenance has always been rough out here. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a mechanical issue.
Anybody catch that they had been sold to Private Equity?
PHNL has some of the best flying and maintaining conditions in the world. I have flown in and out upwards of 200 trips and have met numerous mechanics and pilots and wouldn't categorize any of them as 'rough'. Rough would be like Christmas Island, out in the weeds, where you have no facilities and no direct access to support.
@@hopefloats7573 I noticed that. Scary.
We do not know if control surface locks were involved in this incident but having worked on the flightline for twenty four years I learned that the hardest part of flight operations is the checklist. To perform them consistently and completely every time is hard for humans to do. Perhaps the hardest part of Aviation.
This reminds me so much of Juan's video where this experienced but retired fighter pilot **edit** --nick-- named "Snodgrass" died in a small plane when he forgot the control lock. Tragic and shocking.
Snodgrass is his real name, not a nickname.
@Kevin_747 ok then it was "Snort" Snodgrass, sorry I mixed that up.
Snort had more hours in the Tomcat than anyone else.
@@freds5619and now he’s gone because of complacency. All he had to do was use his checklist
"Call sign"...not "nickname."
You're the best Juan. Always very informative and interesting. Godspeed to these pilots and family
Thank you Juan. It's sad news again.
The 1979 Cessna 421 I flew had the same rudder gust lock system.
Such a strange accident sequence. RIP boys. Fair winds and clear sky’s from here on.
the rudder lock theory makes sense.
Hate to speculate, too early. Seat tracks? I believe Cessna has had issues with this in the past. Curious to know the pilot seat position in the post-crash environment. Rotate, seat slides back, and common nature is to pull (to get your seat back into position). Add a bank and we could have an accelerated stall. Again, very early and I’m confident the NTSB will look at everything.
Gust locks? Prayers for the family!
Assymetric flap retraction? There have been flap-track failures. John NZ🇳🇿
I have flown an Extra 300 off of 4L a few times. I have also flown off of 4R many times in Cessna’s. The heavy’s use the big runway including the F22 Raptors although not always. Sometimes they use 4L or 4R although its typically for GA aircraft. ATC always makes me circle and wait for a while to land. You must always plan for their landing hold with your fuel quantity before takeoff.
Thanks!
I watched a video of a UA-camr this morning of him flying out of the Honolulu Airport Dec 17th around the time of the accident.
He stated in his video that the new flight he was on was having very long delays for some reason. I wonder if the accident may have had a part in the Airports delays.
His first Delta flight had a problem so he got a flight on an Alaskan airline instead.
*His channel is "Adam The Woo".*
I tried to figure out what time Adam left the Airport.
Either 3:15pm or 5pm but I'm not positive.
I'm glad you commented on the false hero reporting. That drives me up the wall.
mainstream media probably reported it as a Boeing 737
@@johnstreet797heard it was an A380 actually. CNN told me that.
I looked at the previous flight in Google Earth and it appears they double-bounced the landing. Is it possible this damaged the control surfaces of the aircraft in some way unknown to the pilots?
I think that you’re right about control locks Juan. Either that or an aileron control cable jumped a cam follower or snapped. 4:33
Was there cargo and did the cargo shift rearward?
The news was saying that one of the pilot's "was working on getting his license". Not sure what that means, but it was a training flight. Was Kamaka running a flight school? Or was the news mistaken and this was just New Hire training?
Probably the latter.
This one is hard to guess. Possibly an aileron hinge failure, locking the aileron or preventing it from going the way it needed to. Maybe an autopilot engaged that they couldn't override. Control lock being installed is possible. But that is a hard one to miss if it's installed. And it would mean no preflight or control check before takeoff. Not likely. A rudder hinge failure is also possible. I suspect the NTSB will solve the cause. We'll just have to wait a while to get the word.
The 'Ruder Gust'? That'll be the boiled eggs, boys.
Failure to remove a gust lock? Snoddgrass issue?
Feels mechanical in nature.
Tool forgotten by MX?
Did a rusty control cable break?
Interesting.....
A friend of mine was killed when this happened on a very old Cessna, as it caused the rudder to deflect fully.
RIP those two pilots...
It's all conjecture as to the cause at this point. We'll wait for the official report.
Thx Juan
Could a large cargo shift to the left cause this, or is aileron control always sufficient to compensate?
Almost certainly not a cargo shift causing it because lateral weight maldistribution can always be mitigated by ailerons. Longitudinal weight distribution is quite different.
Obviously too early to really tell, but I’m curious what flap setting they used if any.
My money is on Asymmetric flap failure. It could lead to this kind of a loss of control, and it’s not unheard of in 208s. And the turn seems to start right where you would start retracting flaps.
When I fly 208s I would generally use full flap for takeoff unless I was going into hard IMC on a larger runway. Start retracting through about 90 kts.
Juan, perhaps a crrew conflict. Need to know more about the most dangerous part of an airplane, the NUT(s) holding the control yoke?
Decreasing radius turns are a problem on the ground too, everywhere. If I recall from motorcycle school, On a motorcycle, that kind of tightening turn is one of the leading cyclist only crashes.
I was waiting for you to spot this story today. The ATC tape said they were supposed to turn right on departure?
Right turn, standard departure from the #4 runways.
Juan, would you please let us have a vid on the Challenger -300 in Argentina?
Could it be an asymmetric takeoff flap retraction? Had that happen on a Piper Comanche years ago, inducing a roll input that overpowered roll control as the airplane accelerated.
Flaps are NOT required for TO. A C208 is nothing more than a large C172. Very easy amd forgiving airplane to fly!!
If they had control locks applied the problem would have started to exhibit itself during takeoff roll. I'm wondering if they didn't lose some sort of a control mechanism to the right aileron. That's the only thing I can think of off hand. I had a little bit of a thought about a runaway trim but that plane I believe still has manual trim but I'm not certain of that.
I have seen incidences slightly similar to this with Cessna High Wings when somebody has too much flaps applied during takeoff
Possible incorrectly set rudder trim???
Rudder jammed?
AP on too early and / or out of trim?
Could it have been that the right flap did not retract with the left?
Thank you for your informative video on this crash . We really appreciate the facts that you
Relay to us at the time . Otherwise , all we may hear is the same blah , blah , stuff which is
Actually nearly completely worthless . First news can & should be important info - The public
Understands that this is not the final investigation of the accident . Thanks Captain Juan .
Were there control locks left on...
The VFR conditions would appear to rule out any kind of spatial disorientation so then we are left with a mechanical failure of some kind. With that apparently unintended steep left bank you would have to assume the pilot flying would have cranked in full opposite aileron and opposite rudder. Hopefully there is enough resolution in the videos of the mishap to determine the position of the ailerons and rudder while it was in that steep bank.
They had enough airspeed to recover if the control surfaces were operating normally. That in itself suggests they weren’t.
Did something break or jam during the takeoff roll?
Asymmetrical flap retraction? Runaway trim?
No
Fuel selector?
Two very young pilots. How young were they?
Load shift?
Mechanical issues?
Bad things always happen when private equity takes over a company
Everything should be owned by the government.
@@AlbertHess-xy7ky It's the focus on profit. A founder may worry about safety and its effect on employees and company reputation whereas a private equity group would consider a crash as just part of the profit equation. One could even imagine that for private equity guys there might be a certain level of acceptable loss as long as the company is still making a decent profit.
Yes, when the main goal of any business is profit and not the safety.
Was the aircraft supposed to be refueled before take off and was it loaded properly?
Man, seems like we have had a recent surge of accidents in the last several months. Be diligent out there…
how long have you been watching ? feels the opposite for me, i been watching 4 + years
Man, it seems like we have had a surge of if bleeds it leads on the internet the last several months.
Look at the change of accident rates in the last few months, then get back to me.
Or maybe it’s because we have instant worldwide news now.
load factor? load shift fore and aft?
Training flight.