From: dbriggs@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Daniel Briggs)
Subject: Re: Twin Beechcraft crashed in Hinckley, IL
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 23:04:20 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.150335.5783@eecs.nwu.edu>
  phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
>Bad news from the midwest.  A Twin Beechcraft (B-18?) went down
>just north of the Hinckley airport yesterday (Labor day) afternoon
>shortly after takeoff.  The plane had a full load of skydivers.
>12 people on board, no survivors.

I've seen other news reports identifying it as a B-18.

>The meterologist for one of our TV stations is himself a pilot, so I
>paid extra careful attention to what he had to say.  When I first heard
>about the accident, it sounded to me like an overloaded plane.  But
>what this pilot/meterologist said made me change my mind.  This is
>what they know:
>
>	That particular plane has made many successful jump flights
>	with 12 people on board.  This was a flight very similar to
>	many many other flights that the skydiving club had made.
>
>	They currently believe that the plane was not over the gross
>	weight limit (they said nothing about balance and CG, however).

Our skydiving club uses a Beech C-18 to haul jumpers.  The engines are
hotter than stock, but not dramatically so.  We routinely take pilot plus
12 jumpers, and the airport is 5200 feet MSL.  As far as balance and CG is
concerned, jumpers normally sit on the floor facing backwards.  Typically
two jumpers will stand during takeoff, crowding in as far forward as
possible.  We don't tend to be a body modest crowd, and we know that CG
constraints are important, so we pack in pretty tight.  With 13 people in
the plane, there is no one sitting even parallel with the door, much less
behind it.

Most jump planes do not have seatbelts for everyone, and skydivers probably
wouldn't use them if there were.  Machismo aside, there is a reason for
this -- you can't pack in as many jumpers wearing belts, and you can't get
as far forward with the jumpers that you can carry.  I'm not arguing this
pro or con, (with the recent accidents, this may well change), but it is
how things are done at the moment.  The point is, that a violent maneuver
could knock the jumpers out of place, changing the CG quickly and
dramatically.

>Another depressing note, this crash has gotten *extensive* local media
>coverage.  Why I don't know, other than it is "sensational".  One
>TV station spent the first TWENTY minutes of their 10 pm broadcast
>on it.  Others spent 10 and 15 minutes.  The whole time I was watching
>this rather exaggerated coverage, I kept asking myself "how many people
>died in automobile accidents around here this holiday weekend, and why
>don't they report that stuff as well?  And what about all those protestors
>in South Africa?"

Well, this has been a bad year for skydiving.  The mean time between
accidents of this magnitude (say 10-20 deaths) is about 5 years or a little
less.  We can expect a couple of these sorts of accidents per decade.
Well, this is the second one this year.  Sad to say, it's news.  (And your
point about automobile accidents is well taken.)

>And the skydivers are defending their avocation with statements like
>"this was a plane crash---not a skydiving accident."  But I guess I
>can't blame them, given the bloodthirsty media.  :-(

Well, not every skydiver agrees with this policy.  The USPA keeps
statistics of skydiving fatalities, and plane crashes are not included in
the statistics.  I think this is a bit of a cop out, myself.  When asking
the question of "how dangerous is skydiving?" you *have* to include the
ride up.  Of course, fatalities due to plane crashes tend to occur in
clumps, which would mess up short term (yearly) statistics.  So perhaps
plane crash deaths do need a separate category, but we need to acknowledge
that these are indeed skydiving deaths.  (And GA deaths, too, since one of
the uses of GA is hauling skydivers.)

-- 
| Daniel Briggs  (dbriggs@nrao.edu)                      |        USPA B-14993
| New Mexico Tech / National Radio Astronomy Observatory |            DoD #387
| P.O. Box O / Socorro, NM 87801   (505) 835-7391        |
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