A tough airframe, luck and good pilotage skills got these guys through this life threatening event.

Basically, a King Air 200 was on route to Virginia from Arkansas when, at 27,000 feet, the left windshield shattered causing an immediate and rapid decompression.  Given your useful consciousness at this altitude is measured in seconds, both pilots blacked out.  (Fortunately, there were no passengers on board).

Whether they initiated a rapid descent or lost control and ended up in a steep dive is not known as the two pilots have little recollection of the event both fading in and out of consciousness until shortly before landing.

They took turns, unintentionally, of waking up and blacking out and fighting to regain control of the aircraft. One pilot stated “I remember thinking we’re in a spin and seeing that the airspeed was pegged beyond indicated.  I thought, wow, we’re going too fast, reached up and pulled the power to idle, then blacked out again”.

Assume they were pretty much at terminal velocity headed straight down.

At 13,000 feet, (give or take), they started fighting to pull the aircraft out of a dive.  It took both of them.  The stress on the airframe must have been unreal, as you will see.

 From that point, parts started leaving the aircraft until landing and they lost control of pitch.  They went almost vertical again and it took both pilots pushing as hard as they could to get the aircraft to start descending.

They regained some control around 7,000 feet and were close to cape where they diverted.

 It is fortunate that they did not have a tail stall as you will see, and I have no earthly idea how they controlled pitch.

There is a God and sometimes he gets your attention to remind you how close we could all be to standing before him.  There is no way this aircraft could have been flown and landed to a relatively uneventful landing and they walk away.  I cannot explain it and I think you will see what I mean especially after viewing the empennage.

 According to the radar, they lost 20,000 feet in roughly a minute and a half. 

 The aircraft is totaled, but again, they taxied to the ramp.  Waited a few hours, and got a car and drove home.

 Fortunately, the windscreen did not come in completely, but still should have most likely been fatal at that altitude.

 

 This is all that is left of the horizontal stab.  Notice that on the left, none of the stabilizer remains, (torn off in the pull up), and only about 1/3 to ¼ of the elevator.  On the right, a little of the stab and the elevator is useless.

 

 View from the right side.  No elevator and the stab is severely damaged.  I do not know how it remained attached.

 Another view of all that remained to affect pitch control.  Simply amazing.  It’s about as big as a trim tab.

 A view from underneath showing the fragile condition of the remaining control surface.

This is all they had to fly on.

 

 The flex forces on the wings were so heavy in the pull out from the dive that the panels that cover the wing attach bolts were blown completely off.

Incredible that the wings did not follow.

 

As you can see from the following two pictures, the wings and main spar were bent.

So hard were the forces that not only were they bent, but they creased the wings.

 

Although I don’t feel this photo shows adequately the force on the fuselage, even the tail section is creased from the stress of the pull out.

I simply cannot imagine an airframe surviving this much load.

 

Here you can see the creases on the same panel shown above. 

The Dzus fasteners here are similar to the ones which were blown off of the aircraft over the wing attach points

 

From the front, she doesn’t look half bad, just don’t look at the tail. (what’s left of it), the wings, the windscreen, the fuselage or the expressions on the crew’s face.

 

Makes one think hard about one pilot always being on O2 (like you should) as you probably won’t have time to don your mask at that altitude in this scenario.

 The crew says by the time they were in and out of consciousness, they already had lost control and thus didn’t get to the masks but tried to stop the ensuing plummet.

 Thank the Lord that they walked away completely unscathed.  One can always find a new airplane in Trade-A-Plane 

 

And a Video of this landing   GVB