Floatplane Incident Ottawa River Sept 28 or 29th

[Spinner]

I include this story to show how badly reporting is:

Ottawa man, grandson safe after wing snaps off float plane

A pilot says he is happy that he and his grandson are safe and after making an emergency landing on the Gatineau River in the man’s float plane. Pilot Michael Miles said the small plane clipped a tree near the edge of the river soon after takeoff. It then had to make the emergency landing about 10 kilometres north of Chelsea, Que.
Miles said he powered up the plane, which automatically makes the aircraft turn to the right and into the fog. Miles tried to counter that, but not before its right wing was knocked off by the tree, which left him in trouble out over the water.
“There wasn’t enough time (to be afraid). Things happen very fast when you’re flying an airplane like this,” said Miles.
“I’m probably the luckiest man in the world right now because if I was off the water it would be a totally different situation.”
Neither Miles nor his grandson was injured as they walked out onto the floats of the plane when it landed.

Here is the link to the article and video. The pilot says in the video that the airplane turned to the right on the takeoff roll and before he could shut it down it hit trees on the shore. There is such a HUGE piece of the wing broken off???

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ot ... -1.1872420

any ways posted a comment on their story, hopefully they will fix it.

[Heliian]

WTF, what would compel you to do that? It was so foggy that you smoked a tree while what?, step taxiing along the river?, trying to .. run? Moron, lucky he didn't kill himself and his grandson.

Tool of the week winner for sure.

[pelmet]

Another fog related floatplane accident. It appears that fog and floatplane water ops don't mix well....


C-FWOM, a privately registered float-equipped Cessna 180H, was enroute from Gun Lake, ON to
Long Lake, ON. Upon reaching Long Lake, the east end of the lake was covered in fog. The pilot
subsequently made an approach to land on the water surface of Long Lake from the west. On
short final, the aircraft momentarily entered fog and visual contact with the water surface of the
lake was lost. Upon regaining visual contact, the aircraft touched down near the north shoreline.
The left float struck the shoreline and the aircraft veered 90 degrees to the left. The aircraft
sustained substantial damage to its left float and left wing tip. There were no injuries.
The aircraft was transported to a maintenance facility for repair.



I suspect that the term 'momentarily' used in the report comes from the pilot and is different than what most of us would expect momentarily to mean.
But I have no experience in such situations, perhaps others have some experience-related advice on fog patches and float operations.

[Maynard]

Looking at the prop rotation, it would pull to the left....how would it automatically go to the right? Sounds like he shouldn't be flying, let alone with kids on baord...PDM seems to lack

[iflyforpie]

What’s bad about the reporting? They are reporting what the pilot said verbatim. That isn’t a wing tip. It’s got a fuel cap on it. It had a flight control attached to it.

If anything it’s the pilot who’s bad, not the reporter. Bad for flying into fog. Bad for not knowing how his plane flies.

Or should the reporter have said: “actually... with a right rotating prop your plane should have gone left” because that’s what they learn in the aeronautics portion of journalism school?