Sad end for the Piper, but a lucky end for the occupants.
This plane (Piper PA28, EC-DSD) crashed in January 2009 while attempting to cross the mountain “Montaña de la Crucita” (6.761ft high) during VFR flight into IMC conditions resulting in an impact in the mountain at 5.700 feet, just 1.000 feet bellow its top.
Plane’s route
The 3 occupants were injured and were rescued by the helicopter of the Guardia Civil. There were no fatalities.
Wreckage of the EC-DSD.
The slop of the mountain.
Wreckage of the EC-DSD.
Wreckage of the EC-DSD.
The plane seems to be moved from its initial position and most of the parts are already missing.
The plane seems to be moved from its initial position
The crash site is only 1 km from the road, but the access is difficult. On the images you can see the slope of the mountain and the surroundings; I´ve attached the plane´s route as well.
You can park your car at the Mirador de la Crucita and start walking from there:
On the 22nd of march 2019 the plane was transported by a helicopter to a scrap yard, where it will be scrapped by a company Rimetal. This was her final flight after 10 years on the mountain.
Yesterday I’ve made with some friends my first flight in 2015.
On the Canary islands, sometimes we have sand laden and dusty winds blowing from Sahara, also called “calima”. The visibility decreases, the temperature increases and the air is normaly very dry.
So we were flying in these “low visibility conditions”. I was hoping to climb a little bit to get over it, so we could see at least the highest peak with it’s almost 14.000 feet.
Our final cruise level was 9.000 feet and we started to see the blue sky a bit, but I have decided do decend, because it was not clear until which altitude the calima would persist.
So actually we were not able see almost nothing during our 50 minutes long flight. Even to spot the airport before landing was a bit challenge.
A very good help was my ipad with the Airnav Pro application, and also some skills learned during my basic instrument flight module course. It was the day to practice it, but today without the instructor.
I have to admit, that a further training will be good and have ordered a hood to keep practice. You will see in the video, that actually during this flight it was not necessary to wear it 😉
In this post you can see some of the pictures taken from during todays flight.
Chasing our Shadow
Cleared to land RWY 03L at GCLP
Reaching Gran Canaria’s coast
On departure.
Line up and wait…
Over Gando.
As it is close to Christmas, we were flying with Christmas Heads on. Like the song: Santa Claus is comming to town… I’ll share with you some other pictures from this flight as well.
In this video I have tried to compress my 1 hour and 20 minutes long flight from El Berriel (GCLB) to La Gomera (GCGM).
I was happy enough to enjoy this flight, there was no wind and the ATC were kind enough to let us climb up to FL 105.
As my friend has a Gopro too, we had in total 3 gopros on board (hopefully we won’t get any problems with weight and balance, lol), and I was able to edit a video from 3 different angles.
Last saturday the weather forecast was not the best one, but we have decided to go to the North Airport (GCXO) and see if it was truth… Unfortunately yes….
Not the best flying weather
This airport is situated some at 2.000 ft and the base of the clouds in the Canaries is normaly around 2.500-3.000 feet, and the best place is over the airfield… Normaly around midday the weather improves, when there is sun and a little wind, the clouds usualy disappear.
We have used the time to prepare the aircraft, I have polished the windows and have installed the Gopro inside the cabin. Since I saw a coupple of nice videos made from the cockpit, I have decided to install it inside.
Todays place for my Gopro Hero3
The weather started to improve, so we have pushed our plane out the hangar…
Piper ready for pushback…
After the rain everything looks more colorful
The leg to El Hierro was flown by my friend Daldo and we had a passenger on board Oliver, who loves flying as well.
The crew on the way to El Hierro
The crew 😉
The flight was very smooth, almost no wind and no turbulence, so we have descended near La Gomera to see closer the rocks called “Los Organos”.
Los Organos, La Gomera
We have enjoyed a short round flight around the island El Hierro.
El Hierro in sight
El faro de Orchilla
Flying along the coast at El Hierro
Landing at El Hierro Airport (GCHI)
Arrived at El Hierro Airport
After the landing we went to Valverde for some lunch, came back, paid taxes, made the flightplan and departed direction Tenerife. On the way back, I was at controls and Oliver was able to fly for a while as well. He did a good job! With his experience from flight simulator he was flying the plane (almost) better than me ;-).
Our flight back, Oliver at controls
On the way back I have performed 2 low passes at La Gomera Airport, one at the former La Gomera’s Airport “El Revolcadero”, following the next low pass at Tenerife South Airport (GCTS).
There were plenty of clouds on the way back, but luckily Tenerife North Airport awaited us with some nice weather so we could landed without to having divert to the alternative airport.
Return flight El Hierro-La Gomera-Tenerife South-Tenerife North
When holding over Playa de las Américas we had very nice views over the zone.
Holding over Playa de las Américas
It is actually strange to see, that the people were cutting from the volcano to built their houses on this hill…
Los Cristianos from the air
Landing at Tenerife North Airport (GCXO). I was happy that my friend Daldo used his new Iphone 5S to make the video of my landing, with its 60 frames per second you do not see the propeller. I have edited the video with iMovie, sincronized both videos (Gopro and Iphone 5S) and this is the result:
After the landing at Tenerife North Airport, a nice Learjet was parked on the general aviation platform (reg. D-CGRC). I´d love to have a jet like that, but unfortunately my garage is not big enough :-).
I have been informed by a friend of my, that the Boeing 787 was due to land at Tenerife South Airport for the first time so I thought it would be better to not to miss it.
I was watching the flight on flightradar24 an was on time near the threshold of the runway 08 at the Tenerife South airport (TFS).
During the final approach the plane´s engine were very silent, it was a realy nice surprise. The weather conditions at the moment of the landing were CAVOK and wind 070/14 kts…
Thomson´s Boeing 787 Reg. G-TUID
You can see a short video of the first landing at the Tenerife South Airport.
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