Tuesday, 13 April 2010

Incidents & Accidents: Crashed off the Atlantic coast of Panama

How ironic that I have to post this "Incidents and Accidents" but this is how it happened and I am looking for answers.

MPMG-MPBO-2010-apr-13-008 I am using FSX and for this flight I was using the default Beechcraft King Air 350 with the Ambulance livery. My flight (VIP048) was from MPMG (Marcos A. Gelabert) to MPBO (Bocas del Toro) in Panama. In my virtual mission I was going to (supposedly) pick up an MPMG-MPBO-2010-apr-13-023 injured tourist. I loaded 215 gallons of fuel, enough for a roundtrip and more. According to the FS estimate it would use up 61 gallons one way. I chose to fly at 10000' ironically because I thought "if I lose engines I can glide longer".

MPMG-MPBO-2010-apr-13-025 I departed shortly before 6AM and though it was cloudy I climbed to FL100. All was well and I had a blanket of clouds below me at cruise altitude. I engaged the autopilot to go "outside" and take some shots. I heard a couple of warning bells and (didn't know the default a/c had such thing) so after the 2nd I went inside the virtual cockpit. To my surprise the aircraft had lost altitude, was at 6000' and the Master Warning was lit. Oh oh, the ambulance flight will have to declare an emergency (and I was flying online). I was almost midway, flying some 10nm off the atlantic coast.

I scanned the instruments and noticed the LEFT OIL LO & RIGHT OIL LO lamps were lit, Both oil pressure indicators were at zero! The fuel flow indicators where also at zero!!! I was loosing altitude fast and too far off the coast to glide and crash on the dense tropical forest.

MPMG-MPBO-2010-apr-13-021 The problem with the default a/c is that even under this condition the engine sound was still the same as if engines were running. There was no engine sound of that when the engines are shut down. The propellers were turning because of the air flow. This was VERY WEIRD. The image here was some minutes before things turned sour.

I attempted engine start, checked all my switches but no luck. Even though it was not in my flight plan I deviated to attempt reaching the coast at the same time I tried to fix the problem. Unfortunately the a/c had lost too much air speed and altitude and I (virtually) crashed into the caribbean sea, too far off to "swim" (in real life I can't even swim) so I guess if this virtual pilot survived this crash into the ocean it was then eaten by the sharks. Rest In Peace.

So the question of this post is... What went wrong??? I had failures disabled, Generators were on, Engine start was on, Battery and all else on. I went through the checklist and found nothing wrong. In a desperate attempt I tried CTRL-E instead of the regular checklist but no luck. I thought it was then the mixture but that was also ok. The only thing I can think off is that I ran out of fuel and therefore the engine start failed, I never saw that fuel flow come off the zero again. But that is also very weird because as I said I loaded more than enough for a round trip and I was barely halfway when radar lost contact with VIP048.  I had no reply nor other ACARS thing to review the flight.

Last words of the pilot was "Holy Mary mother of God! I’m going to die alone in the sea!” No trace was found of this virtual air ambulance, the pilot or the medic on board... As a result I could not file my flight on the virtual airline and I will have to do the flight all over again :(

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