eye in the sky

A Chaulks Ocean Airways Grummand Mallard crashed the Monday Dec 19th, when a wing fell off on as the plane departed for to Bimini. (an island in the Bahamas)

Truly an awful accident. Frustrating to some degree because there is no amount of skill or action on the part of the crew that could have foreseen or prevented the accident, or minimized the results once the failure occurred.

Why did this happen?
The airplane was 58 years old. Now, there are plenty of airplanes flying around that are older  than that, and are in fine condition. I think that the daily use that these airplanes have been in, compounded with a salt water environment, and the pounding that a seaplane can occasionally take landing on choppy water all added up to the point where this airplane was just too old and too tired to take it any more.

The NTSB said cracks were found in the support beam of the wing that fell off the 58-year-old seaplane. (the correct term for the“support beam” is the wing spar)

Inspectors will try to determine whether fatigue cracks on the right wing support could have been found and repaired, and whether stress was a factor in the cracking that occurred. Rosenker (NTSB acting Chairman)  said that detecting such cracks would have required sophisticated testing and would not have been readily apparent.

We’ve seen wings rip off airplanes before. One at an airshow, and one fire bomber come to mind. It is believed that each of those was probably pulling some heavy g’s at the time of the failure.  The lack of witnesses and a flight data recorder means we will probably never know if there was any unusual maneuvering going on, but since it was carrying passengers, I’d say it was highly unlikely.

Did engineers in the mid 1940’s suspect that this airplane would be in daily use for 60 years?

Flight hours alone do not determine the life of an airplane, and you may see figures in future reports that will show this airplane has fewer flight hours on it than other airplanes of its age that have no problems.

Sometimes things have simply completed their useful life. I applaud Chaulks for grounding their remaining fleet pending inspections. There are newer twin engine turboprop seaplanes (Dehaviland Twin Otter for one) that could be used on these routes, the Mallard was not the only choice.