Thursday, 3 September 2015

ZK-RTE's excitement at NZCH

Henry has sent in the following link to the incident involving the Piper PA-28 Arrow ZK-RTE.

There is not much dialogue until about .55 seconds into the  clip !

Published on Aug 30, 2015
5 miles off the coast there was a huge bang and then the engine began running very rough. Declared mayday with Christchurch Control then immediately changed to Christchurch Tower and declared again. We started limping to the coast. Could only maintain 110 mph (best glide in the PA-28R-200 is 105 mph). Had to limp up the Waimakariri river, down to 400' into special VFR poor weather at Christchurch. Got very low and 1/4 mile from the runway as we started over the ALS lights, the engine really began banging and developing even less power, down to 200' and not looking good. Tower warned up we did not have landing gear extended, but we knew that. Watch the yellow gear in transit light high on the instrument, as, we had to extend the gear literally just before landing. The yellow light goes out as the gear is locked down. If we'd put the gear out an earlier, we wouldn't have made the runway. Neither Craig nor I stopped the engine, it did that all by itself! The tower controller was fantastic, many thanks to Airways staff at Christchurch and the fire turn out that thank god we didn't actually need. I was right hand seat and did 75% or the radio, gear and flaps and assisted Craig who was flying pilot in command. Well bloody done Craig!


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RTE was parked outside on the western grass tie downs yesterday afternoon, below.

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