Plane registered to Roy Halladay crashes in Gulf off Florida

[Air.Field]

Hope it wasn't Doc
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/sports/mlb/pl ... ailsignout

[MrWings]

It was Doc

[DanJ]

He had just taken delivery of the first "Founders Edition" Icon A5 a few weeks ago. They company put up this video in mid October.

**edited with new link for video after prior video was deleted from youtube**

https://youtu.be/CO9dIyNM_9Q

[5x5]

Sadly,the way that company has positioned and marketed that aircraft it's very unlikely to be the last accident.

[AirFrame]

I guess the weather in the Gulf of Mexico threw him a curve ball.

[geneticistx]

FAA said the plane was registered on monday of this week.

[Jim la Jungle]

Is it just me or the images shot from the air on media channels show the wreckage with his body floating beside the plane??? If so, what a disgrace.

[AirFrame]

Is it just me or the images shot from the air on media channels show the wreckage with his body floating beside the plane??? If so, what a disgrace.

I watched the 20 minute video shot from the circling helicopter, and can't convince myself that any bits floating away from the airplane are anything but debris. One boat comes right in to the body of the airplane, backs away for a while, and then speeds off at high speed. The video is low-res, but best guess would be they pulled him out, paused to attempt CPR, and then took off for shore/medical assistance. But even that is a wild guess based on grainy events in the video.

[cdnpilot77]

Is it just me or the images shot from the air on media channels show the wreckage with his body floating beside the plane??? If so, what a disgrace.

It appears that way....looks like he’s wearing a blue t-shirt

[ChrisEvans]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttf_EzEkxBk clearly no body - pilot was flying recklessly and trapped in mangled inverted cockpit.

[Brock_Landers]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttf_EzEkxBk clearly no body - pilot was flying recklessly and trapped in mangled inverted cockpit.

You can hear the guys say “there he is right there, you can see his shirt”.
The water looked like it was kinda murky still, maybe after it cleared he was more visible. Either way it’s sad.

So witnesses reported seeing him swooping down to 5ft as seen in the video also. Is it possible he was practicing landing or approaches to the water?

[Inverted2]

Looks like he was going kinda fast for touch and goes. This is what a lot of money and no experience ends up like sometimes. The news mentioned today that his father was a career pilot. Sad outcome anyway.

[DanJ]

Looks like he was going kinda fast for touch and goes. This is what a lot of money and no experience ends up like sometimes. The news mentioned today that his father was a career pilot. Sad outcome anyway.

I edited the post above with the link to the promo video Icon had put out last month after he took delivery of the plane. In it he mentioned he had always wanted to be a pilot like his dad, but baseball came first and his MLB contracts prohibited him from pursuing flying until after he retired. He retired after the 2013 season so he hasn't had a ton of time. Haven't heard how quickly he pursued his license in these 4 years or how many hours he has accumulated.

[Heliian]

Reported to have a ppl and @700hrs. Also had time on type.

No matter his skill level, he was seen to be pushing the limits of the aircraft regularly.

[AirFrame]

Straight from Icon's site... Low Flying Guidelines, for flying as low as 100' AGL.

https://www.iconaircraft.com/flight-cen ... w-altitude

[pdw]

Looks like he was going kinda fast for touch and goes.

Regarding your visual "kinda fast", .. is maybe partly because final turned in/into downwind looks like (ie: if so, then your observation is in part on account of an increased groundspeed of what could be an unplanned downwind situation), which unexpected, can create illusion of speed for the pilot .. while airspeed slowed already; with high speed it can bounce more severely or deflect in flair off the smaller wave ... to launch back up (higher) .. but then into unstable flight / poor control.

Calm water lee-side of the wreckage (can be observed in same video) seems to indicate WSW wind direction ... where the 'touch and go' appears is approx in the NE direction (same as the wx history has it at the departure airport .. as a steady NE component). North of Ben Pilot Point some of the wx-histories are agreeing with a southerly/westerly component going on there in that area at the time of this tragedy ... just an early observation

EDIT:
The April Icon5 accident report (1st one / nonfatal) includes the pilot's own reporting of a no flap approach into an unexpected windshear, setting up a fast sinkrate that wouldn't arrest in time with max power added. It underscores a professional approach to land is making proper use of the flap, a time-tested tool for lift assurance in the slower stages of flight where in one case speed can bleed off faster with greater consequence when it does. But mostly, to be as slow as possible when close to 0-AGL .. and not high speed ..either where the tiny pitchchange (down) is catastrophic .

Q:
Are we being shown here that it's partly the tempation not to use flap for these faster maneuvrings at low alt (which keeps coming up in these videos) that is propagating risk for this type of crashes (ie Which of the three crashes was using flap when approaching so near the surface ? Any ?)

[Inverted2]

Well the plane is “kinda wrecked” and after watching all the videos of him hot dogging barely above the water there’s no chance he was just practicing touch and goes and flipped over on landing.

PS. What the heck is with all the ads on this site now? They take up more space than the posts do.

[AirFrame]

PS. What the heck is with all the ads on this site now? They take up more space than the posts do.

Install an ad blocker. I see no ads on the site.

[pdw]

... there’s no chance he was just practicing touch and goes and flipped over on landing.

Is this suggesting .. there's no chance it was just a flipover while practising touch and go landings ?

[Inverted2]

I've seen lots of sea planes that have flipped over on landing. Damaged yes but this one was completely destroyed. I doubt a factory built airplane would break up that badly on a landing mishap. Looks more like hitting water at high speed.

[Cliff Jumper]

I've seen lots of sea planes that have flipped over on landing. Damaged yes but this one was completely destroyed. I doubt a factory built airplane would break up that badly on a landing mishap. Looks more like hitting water at high speed.

I have no idea what he was doing, but I disagree with this statement, especially regarding flying boats.

I seem to remember an account recently on this site about a flying boat landing mishap that ended quite badly.

[pdw]

In thinking about what Cliff is saying there ... (and about "hitting the water at high speed") ..

The bulk of the drag of the fuselage area (its drag being a fair ways below the engine assembly) will naturally add some downturn-force when power added, and probably more pronounced when gotten S L O W (or relatively lower airspeed for a landing procedure). Seeing that the engine is centered heightwise about the middle of this wing means flaps-on drag (highest drag the wing itself can make) is produced approximately even with the engine centre thrust, ie: flaps thirty is the most drag up there so naturally counters some of the thrust the engine makes when full power is commanded. The downturn effect of more-sudden increase of thrust there at winglevel would be from power levered in the slowed approach to land (or inadvertantly S L O W E D at lowalt in low flight) where serious lowalt power-up requirement stems from unexpected IAS-bleedoff on account of NO FLAP DEPLOYMENT (ie April1/NTSB); seems to me such sudden power addition then frees exta thrust that adds downturn/downpitch on account of the resulting zero flaps-drag (the missing drag of mistaken flaps-up) ... ie: the full power/no flap in reduced drag up high happens while the slipstream-drag of the bulky boat-fuselage is still going on down low as usual.

EDIT (FOR GRAMMAR):
That better ?

['97 Tercel]

Jeez, I feel dumb reading your posts...

[TeePeeCreeper]

Jeez, I feel dumb reading your posts...

Thank god. I was just confused!

[pdw]

Jeez, I feel dumb reading your posts...

Thank god. I was just confused!

Mainthing that's becoming clearer is being sure of upwind to land and with flap (and also if already so near the watersurface in just overflying) for a slower touch/touchdown, ie 30degflap stallspeed is established as "39kts" /NTSB report May8. Then hopefully won't see more "66kt" no-flap impacts in a downwind from a "lowalt" (seeing wx-records actually support inadvertant "downwind" entry for both past accidents) esp if production finds a suitable win win verbage for the subject of safety at the sales level.

How the aerodynamics behaved exactly when getting into the S L O W -flight-regimen/April1/NTSB with"no flap" and seeing there: then while recovering from said "too slow" and "close" went to "full power" input but to no avail .. which was IMO not really described 100% there either.

Now we can watch for the report of the "Nov 7" tragedy to have actual speed, impact angle and how it sets up. Judging by the previous NTSB work and the data supposedly retrievable from this aircraft's avionics, that information should all become available upon release.