C54-D N3054V Fairbanks AK NTSB Preliminary Report 

Wow!!

wow awesome

@@bmw_m4255 awesome? An interesting word choice.

So it's perfectly possible that these events are all similar and so we need to determine whether the feather line was rerouted after your incident.

Do you have the year and month for it?

You kids were damn lucky!!

And the older you get, the more you appreciate that you walked away unscathed.

The fact he thought of you all in the back, instead of himself says a lot about that pilot, and the majority of Commercial aviation pilots.

I had a similar experience as a civil air patrol cadet also flying out of Homestead AFB to Washington DC on a C123, we lost the left engine over Virginia but made it safely to Andrews AFB .

Everyone alive today have basically survived until now by chance. Think about that for a while and remember those who didn't make it as far as we did.

You are correct sir, as the fire handles when pulled (as on just about every military and commercial airplane in the US) cuts off ALL fluid connections to the rest of the airplane, and some will also sever electrics as well to isolate bus power. After those loses you have no more control to feather the prop. Runaway props have downed many prop planes over the years, if the engine siezes, that prop inertia will twist the motor off the frame.

@@paulholmes672 Well, yes but on turboprops usually the E handle feathers the prop automatically.

In FE school for the DC-6, the old instructor told us there were only two situations that will kill you in the Six, a engine fire that can't be put out, or a uncontrollable propeller, everything else a properly trained crew could deal with.

Currency vs. Proficiency? Emergency procedure memory items often make the difference. As a pilot who’s learning, I find myself always acting them out. Pitch for blue line, mixture, prop, throttle, flaps, gear, identify, verify, feather, mixture, raise the dead. I’ll be driving and find myself doing it, pushing a shopping cart and doing it, and prior to takeoff running through it on my abort checklist. I started flying in ultralights and learned the hard way that you better have a plan and expect to execute that plan immediately. Flying around in a fabric kite with a snowmobile engine strapped to it is just asking for it, and I got it, luckily I was over a corn field and I acted quickly. My post incident debrief of the situation forced me to realize that the successful outcome of my off field landing weighed more towards good luck and circumstances than skill and preparation. As I have moved forward in my aspirations to become a professional pilot, I carry that experience with me on every single flight. I obsessively brief every single aspect of my flights and maintain that until power down and wheels chocked.

Was wondering if they were even able to accomplish feathering due to the damage that had occurred, I can just imagine the demand these poor souls must of dealt with and realise in vain. RIP

Yep, one of the last things the young copilot said to ATC was something like "tell my family I love them." Devastatingly sad.

they all know the final destination that we all are yet to discover but all will one day

Wow! Great point!

Thank You Juan…. I was going through the TCTO’s looking for these tanks .. lol

So you are allowed to make mistakes?

The KC-135 had bladder tanks.

​@@joereedsmith1531 As long as he doesn't make any doing his day job.

Those 830 gallon tanks look very similar to the KC-130 fuselage tanks.

Same we did wehn flying Dc3'sand C46's in south america in the 1970's. When very light load, from sea level runways, we did some Climb Power take offs too if long runway. We told the tower we were doing a low power take off, dont worrry. Very flat take offs.

Amazing, they can afford to pay for tracking hardware but not for a plane that is not a flying deathtrap.

There was a C54 lost due to #2 engine fire during the Berlin airlift. It was sister aircraft to '2469, lost in the Yukon in 1950 with 44 on board (and only recently found).

Thanks for sharing that info. I'll look up the movie as my late father was a Berlin airlift veteran.

Spidertracks works via satellite, tracking and comms, and so is very useful in very remote areas (land or sea) for flight watch and ops normal calls.

The crew should have these emergency checklists memorized where time is of the essence

@jimbates955 They usually try to, but people’s brain tend to get frazzled or scattered under sudden great stress, so checklists will always be absolutely mandatory to ensure the fewest possible mistakes are made.

@@Restorationshopyt Memory items are the mandated way to handle certain more time-critical situations. This is normal in airline ops. If you get so frazzled you can't remember them, it's time for a different career...

It only seems like a lot when you hear it for the first time. It should be second nature for a properly trained pilot.

​@@jimbates955 There's nothing at this point to indicate that they didn't perform the memory items.

Seems to be that the airlines are agreeing, but reply with the question “do you have anything else that can do this?” And seeing as they don’t, these old birds are sticking around. There is a large gap in equipment between a twin otter which can carry several hundred gallons, albeit fairly briefly, and an Electra, that can haul plenty of fuel, a good ways, but is absolutely gigantic, requires a whole mess of room, and is phenomenally expensive.

I grew up in Fairbanks and my old man was a flight engineer on the DC6 with Evert's. We lived on the top of a bluff off the end of the runway and they would buzz the house every time he flew out. My heart goes out to the families of the crew.

Yea, only two Swingtails were converted. NAC had them both and cracked on of them up at Alpine and the other one eventually ended up at Buffalo but Joe isn’t flying it

Correct. I was at NAC at the time and had extensive time wrenching on both swingtails.

Thanks! Allergies and low fever.

All of these legacy aircraft are a treasure and should be kept flying, but as there are few bush strip cargo alternatives they are being worked hard, possibly harder than when they were on active duty. All the airliners of that era were, and still are, majestic.

Indeed. - And a really good catch from Juan to dig this other Accident out and to compare it with what happened here. This was really enlightening.

It said they were unable to determine the cause. Not that they didn't bother.

If this is 'a thing that happens to C54s', then there are enough millions of C54 hours over the last umpty decades for there to be a trail of exploding C54s with engines falling off the wing to prompt investigations. Then we have one company who has made modifications to the fuel system of its own handful of C54 aircraft, & we have two of them with explosions that blew the engine off the wing... I'm going to say that this isn't a generic C54 fault at all, it's a fuel system modification design, implementation or maintenance issue at that specific company or with that specific mod. There are probably only a couple of aircraft need grounding, & maybe somebody should do the work to see if they can work out how unburnt fuel vapour could build up behind the engine firewall in the outboard nacelle when the fuel tanks are brim full... maybe that happens all the time, & the vapour never explodes unless there's a fire?

@@fat_biker Most accurate take on it I've read here, I thought Juan was going there with the aux tank design of different fuel configurations. Especially considered all the ones this has happened to seem to be modified for freight use, fuel or cargo.

@@davidkavanagh189 It's about stopping rules. All investigations stop, it's a matter of when and it has an element of cost benefit as returns diminish.

He gets then out almost immediately. Within 2-3 days of most incidents.

I watch these guys fly over my house near FAI. Very sad. A tough loss for their families, the aviation community, and everyone in the communities they served. Thanks for the straight story as always Juan.

Also New Zealand

Used all over. I am in Europe and we use it on our aircraft.

YES - i was going to mention that too. (My house is up there). No choice on whether to turn over the dead engine.

@@user-yz4gr8hx6l I just hope they were able to pray before impact ... they had to know it was not going to be survivable. I pray for their families. Juan has done a great job coviering this incident.

@@michaeldavidheit No, i didnt pray when i did 3 approaches and landings full feathered. No time for that. Praying will distract you and kill you. God is not a pilot. I had 11 emergencies. 6 on take off. No pray, no accidents..

Dan Gryder put down the pilots. He said they should not turn to the runway and land on the forest instead. There were mountains on right side. That is why they turned left. With a fire on a wing, hit trees? Really? He is anti turning even if you get into IFR by mistake, says to keep going forward into the IFR and climb "to get over the clouds". Really? No 180 and keep going? You will die within one minute if not IFR airplane and or pilot.. GEE ! I say; Practice the 180 often. Turn or die if IFR or fire.

Thanks Mikey!

Wow. Can you imagine what the passengers on that side of the isle were thinking?

@@malcolm20091000 Fortunately, the plane was empty, it was being taxied from the maintenance area back over to the gates for passenger loading, never made it from the maintenance hanger area.

Yes.

They recently replaced the #1 engine. A man I know who had worked on that plane said that it probably only had about 6 hours since overhaul.

Correct

@@blancolirio I have 2,000 hours as a Nav in a KC-135A.

get out of here