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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 27, 2015 9:57:24 GMT 12
Small aircraft forced to make emergency landing in AucklandPublished: 7:07AM Monday April 27, 2015 Source: ONE News Faulty landing gear forced a pilot of a small aircraft to make an emergency landing at Whenuapai airbase in Auckland last night. The Piper Chieftan landed on its belly at around 10.17pm last night after its landing gear failed to deploy. The flight from Great Barrier Island was heading for Ardmore Airport in South Auckland. There were two people on board. No-one was hurt. See film here tvnz.co.nz/national-news/small-aircraft-forced-make-emergency-landing-in-auckland-6301188
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 27, 2015 9:58:22 GMT 12
The film footage makes it look as if it landed on the hangar apron? Surely not. Must be the telephoto lens effect?
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Post by area51 on Apr 27, 2015 11:11:52 GMT 12
Poor ole Navajo ZK-NSN. Bit of a blow for Great Barrier Airlines. They were set to start scheduled operations between Auckland and Kaitaia on Wednesday replacing Eagle Air Beech 1900's. The much talked about Cessna Caravan has not yet turned up so I guess they were looking to initially utilise aircraft from within the fleet to start the ball rolling. Perhaps they will look at hiring in Air2There or similar.
I can't quite figure out the timing of the incident considering the media report it took place at 2217 with the flight originating at Great Barrier and heading for Ardmore. No runway lights at the Barrier so perhaps it was coming from somewhere else. Good call to use Whenuapai which happened to be on deck Monday evening for an arriving RNZAF C130 ex overseas.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 27, 2015 11:46:55 GMT 12
Hmm, so it's not a Chieftain then. Sorry, I don't know one Piper from the next apart from the Cub, so I followed what TVNZ reckoned it was.
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Post by baronbeeza on Apr 27, 2015 12:12:27 GMT 12
The Navajo is the first version of the PA31 family. Generally 8 seaters and with HP in the 300 to 325 range.
They were developed into the stretched, 10 seater Navajo Chieftain which had 350HP Turbocharged engines. (4 side windows).
So not much between them but NSN is a Navajo, been around for a long time now and many here would have worked on, or flown, her.
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Post by Bruce on Apr 27, 2015 12:14:46 GMT 12
Hmm, so it's not a Chieftain then. Sorry, I don't know one Piper from the next apart from the Cub, so I followed what TVNZ reckoned it was. essentially the same thing. The PA31 series are referred to as Navajos, but there is the PA31-350 which has a stretched fuselage and called a Navajo Chieftain (often just "Chieftain"). There are Turbine versions called Cheyennes and hotted up piston versions of those called Mojaves.... NSN is a long fuselage model so is a Navajo Chaieftain en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-31_Navajo |
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Post by baronbeeza on Apr 27, 2015 12:35:42 GMT 12
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Post by scrooge on Apr 27, 2015 15:32:09 GMT 12
Is it possible that the photo/still was taken well after the landing after the aircraft had been moved? (i.e. not on the runway at all) which might be the case if a C130 was still on the way.
As for the timing; they probably weren't aware of the problem until approaching for landing at Ardmore, which could have been after dark even though the departure from Great Barrier was in daylight. Depending on fuel- you'd then climb away do some basic trouble shooting, call maintenance etc, a bit more trouble shooting, then negotiate where you were going- Auckland and Whenuapai have facilities (rescue fire etc Auckland would be grumpy if you block the runway un-necessarily), you then wait for everything to get into place (esp. at Whenuapai where the base commander/duty officer might want to wait for aditional resources- local fire engines and/or rescue helicopter) before carrying out an approach to land with reference to appropriate checklists.
Magically it is now 2-4 hours later!
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 27, 2015 18:43:42 GMT 12
3 News had better footage of it landing, it was definitely on the runway.
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Post by FlyingKiwi on Apr 27, 2015 18:57:39 GMT 12
Poor ole Navajo ZK-NSN. Bit of a blow for Great Barrier Airlines. They were set to start scheduled operations between Auckland and Kaitaia on Wednesday replacing Eagle Air Beech 1900's. The much talked about Cessna Caravan has not yet turned up so I guess they were looking to initially utilise aircraft from within the fleet to start the ball rolling. Perhaps they will look at hiring in Air2There or similar. The Caravan has turned up actually, although I don't think its been put into service yet. |
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 27, 2015 19:58:08 GMT 12
It's all very well having a caravan but what is going to tow it??  |
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Post by area51 on Apr 28, 2015 11:10:23 GMT 12
To the best of my knowledge there has not been a Caravan imported as yet for the Great Barrier Airlines operation commencing tomorrow between Auckland and Kaitaia so I expect Chieftain ZK-RDT will be on the run unless they deploy the Partenavia which has been in/out of Auckland today. The Caravan mentioned on their Facebook page was N588EX, a demonstrator model, and this aircraft has departed Auckland this morning for Norfolk Island and Noumea continuing its demonstration duties.
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Post by lindstrim on Apr 28, 2015 12:07:05 GMT 12
Word on the street is that they have leased the airtothere one.
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Post by oj on May 1, 2015 22:02:17 GMT 12
I remember that CAA had a nice Chieftain, not sure of the rego but I guess ZK-CA?
We had the engines come through AESL for overhaul etc.
One day an engine came in from that aircraft where the there had been an engine fire from the turbocharger.
The fire did major damage to the rear accessories and caused the engine to quit in flight.
The fire was so intense that it burned all of the outer shielding and silicone rubber insulation off the HT ignition leads where they emanated from the magneto distributor harness plate and for a foot or so forward towards the engine. There were only the seven strands (per HT lead) of the stainless steel conductors left intact. So the engine failed because the HT leads got burned up by the fire and shorted out.
We were told the aircraft was at a reasonable altitude doing asymmetric training when the fire broke out in the live engine with the results explained above. We were also told that there was much consternation and loss of altitude before they got the good engine unfeathered and running again to make a recovery. Phew! I don't imagine the Chieftain would have much capability as a glider.
Somebody may know more about this? Probably about 1972.
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Post by delticman on May 1, 2015 23:15:06 GMT 12
The CAA machine was ZK-DCE but I cant find any similar incident recorded as an accident for 1971/72/73.
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Post by Peter Lewis on May 2, 2015 9:16:11 GMT 12
ZK-DCE was with Civil Aviation Division, Ministry of Transport from January 1970 to September 1979 after a previous life as ZK-CUF with Tasman Air Services Ltd., Auckland from 1968.
After a few other owners it is now with D W & M R Brown, Auckland (Christian Aviation) as ZK-CAM/2
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Post by area51 on May 2, 2015 17:14:32 GMT 12
ZK-CAM/2, while still registered, has been withdrawn from service and is minus engines at Ardmore. DW informed me recently that they are on the lookout for another PA31 airframe to be sourced locally. Also withdrawn from use at Ardmore is a Seneca they operated and although I did not ask I presume it to be the elusive ZK-CAO, ex ZK-KAE. And I think their airworthy PA31, ZK-CAL, was flying for Great Barrier yesterday (01 May) as ZK-RDT was in the hangar with Hawker Pacific while ZK-CAL did a run to Whangarei from Auckland.
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Post by aeromedia on May 3, 2015 10:27:52 GMT 12
It's all very well having a caravan but what is going to tow it?? A Piper Cub Dave  ? |
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Post by Peter Lewis on May 3, 2015 22:02:31 GMT 12
ZK-NSN parked up at Whenuapai today, as seen while I taxiied past. Doesn't look too bad, but you can never tell.  |
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Post by baronbeeza on May 3, 2015 22:53:37 GMT 12
Good pic Peter. I think we are all surprised at the condition given it's ordeal.
I have a feeling that airframe had 11,000 hours on it in 1987... someone may know what it has now but it would be a few, - possibly 17,000 or so at a guess. For all that it looks much better than the thing you are driving, to me at least.
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