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Cessna Crashes After Take-Off From Biggin Hill

Keebler said:
sad. hopefully no one was in the home or homes when the plane hit :(
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Seems that the house that got levelled was empty at the time – the family are on holiday, due to return home today. That's some good luck right there.

Latest reports are that there's only been a handful of hospital admissions, asthma-attacks, etc.

Considering that within a 500m radius of the crash site there's a school, playing fields, our main hospital and a bunch of other NHS buildings, it's amazing that it's not turned out worse. Still, pretty awful for the families of those on-board the plane. Not a snow-ball's chance in hell that anyone got out of that crash, sadly.
 
Glad nobody on the ground was hurt. I wonder what happened, and what kind of Citation it was.
 
Watching about it on Sky News at the moment.

So sad that it would appear 5 are dead from the plane. Amazing nobody on the ground died.
 
Early reports say it was a Citation 501. Dunno if that's accurate or not, but it would make it easier for me to believe that an engine problem after takeoff could take the plane down.
 
dmr727 said:
Glad nobody on the ground was hurt. I wonder what happened, and what kind of Citation it was.
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Citation-1 twin-jet, according to Biggin Hill airport. Pilot radioed in a mayday for extreme engine vibration. No wonder I heard the explosion from my house - the jet was fully-laden with fuel.

edit: the '501' would make it a single-pilot Citation I/SP, according to Wikipedia

Just listening to the pilot that landed his plane just before the accident. Sounds understandably upset as he re-tells what he heard over the radio from the Cessna pilot. A friend of mine has flown me out of Biggin Hill a couple of times. I was sat in the back listening to the tower comms on my headset. I imagine there were several people around who were able to overhear that conversation...
 
Yep. Dunno the rules in the UK, but in the US the 501 is one of the few Citations that can be flown single pilot with nothing more than the CE-500 type rating itself. Prudent operators crew the plane with two anyway, so this plane might have had two up front regardless.

Heh - and now I'm off to strap into a Citation (not a 501) myself. Perhaps when I get back this afternoon there'll be a few more details.
 
...and now that I'm back, another detail did emerge - it appears that there were indeed two pilots aboard. I mention this only because an engine failure is much easier to manage with two instead of one (assuming the other pilot is properly qualified).
 
That would be true, only if a catastropic engine failure were not involved.

Sounds like this one might have lunched itself, and taken the aerodynamic qualities of the plane with it.. :(
 
Could be - it'd certainly be unprecedented for Cessna. They've never had an uncontained engine failure on a Citation before.

Although we don't even know if the engines were indeed the problem. It'll be interesting to see what they find. Supposedly the pilots maneuvered the airplane in its final moments, but eye witnesses are notoriously bad at remembering events.
 
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