The Federal Aviation Administration said the Bombardier Challenger 600 jet had five people were aboard when the crash happened around 3:15 p.m. Friday near Naples, just north of where the interstate heads east toward Fort Lauderdale along what is known as Alligator Alley.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, with the NTSB leading the investigation. One NTSB investigator arrived at the crash site Friday afternoon, with several more expected to arrive on Saturday.
Brianna Walker saw the wing of the plane drag the car in front of hers and slam into the wall.
Well they lost both engines. Hopefully that’s what they focus on in the investigation.
The only thing I’m aware of that would take out both engines at the same time is bird strikes … especially if they were already in an approach.
Do jets like this have independent fuel tanks and fuel pumps per engine? I would imagine redundancy is king and this is obvious but I know nothing of aviation.
I’d expect redundant fuel pumps, redundant fuel lines in order for any tank (and any pump) to fuel all engines while shutting the remainder of tanks (and pumps) off. That’s been around since piston engine fighters in WWII at least.
AFAIK every jet engine plane has wing tanks with fuel pumps (to distribute the weight evenly).
But I’m not an engineer or pilot so could be wrong on that.
Yes, depending on the manufacturer they could have multiple pumps per engine, separate tanks, crossfeed from the opposite tank etc.
This plane has several tanks and several fuel pumps per engine, as well as a fuel filt bypass in the event of a filter clog. The most probably cause for this crash was either a) birds. or B) single engine failure close to the field and the pilots killed the remaining good engine by mistake and with so little altitude (the flight was nearly complete and they were only about 1000ft AGL and less than a mile from the airfield) they could not restart the plane. These are the most likely reasons for the crash. Really sad either way.
Lots of options, fuel starvation, contaminated fuel, exceeding the altitude limits of the aircraft or engines and improper restart procedures such as Pinnacle 3701 in 2004. Many many more options, the NTSB has very skilled accident investigators and almost certainly will find the cause, and then blame the pilots.
As well as the collision with terrain.
This is what really did it, in my professional opinion. They would have been just fine without any engines had they not been flying over any terrain. Unfortunately, this time they just weren’t so lucky, as they were flying over a Florida interstate, which might even be fine for a plane going slow on its wheels, but not for flying through. I suspect the NTSB and FAA will concur.
ATC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKAw1ioDcAE
Thanks for posting that.
I also found a USA Today article that states the Challenger 600 series has had 6 crash incidents, 2 of which are partially blamed on “unstable approaches”.