Fatal - Magni M24 near Butzbach, Germany

Would concur with that.

The photo of the crash with a fire engine on the road in between the trees makes me wonder if this was a failed attempt to land on that road due to a possible engine failure/ lack of climb after TO due WAT exceedence?

Even though the rotor would have contacted the tree canopy in the attempt, in a densely wooded area it may have offered the best chance of survival, and certainly the possibility of access for help after ground contact. Which sadly in this case this was not survived by the occupants.

If this was the result as suggested by Tyger then possibly dropping it vertically into the canopy beside the road hoping to lodge it in a tree could be a possible strategy?
 
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Aviation accidents often are accompanied by fire in all types of aircraft.

So much so that often if there is no fire fuel exhaustion is suspected.

It appears to me that gyroplanes because of the generally lower speed impacts do somewhat better than fixed wing aircraft as far as fire goes.

I feel some manufactures could do better with fire safety.
 
Six Magni fatals this year (twice the previous worst year on record for that marque)

2 in France
1 in South Africa
1 in Australia
[countries with relatively poor safety records]

1 in Italy
1 in Germany
[countries with relatively good safety records]

Five burned on impact, uncertain about the sixth...
 
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I suspect Bill mentioned me because of my experience running a streamlined motorcycle at Bonneville so I will share what little I know and then try to relate that to flying gyroplanes.

My fuel tank was aluminum without a bladder securely mounted.

Technical inspection would check for things that were likely to pierce the fuel tank in an accident.

All my fuel lines had fire sleeves.

I wore a five layer fire suit with a Nomex balaclava under my helmet and Nomex socks and fire resistant boots. I had fire resistant gloves.

My helmet had a Nomex liner instead of the more common nylon and had a different air inlet.

I had a switch that would disconnect the battery at its ground.

There was information written outside about how to get me out.

A fire wall with effective seals was required.

I had too separate five pound Halon fire bottles. They could be manually fired or had valves that would go off at a specific temperature. They had nozzles in the driver’s compartment and in the engine bay. Breathing Halon is not good for you and it would not work well in most gyroplanes because it needs to be contained to be effective.

Most of these measures would not help much with gyroplanes.

I had a full body, a roll age a six point harness with arm restraints.

When I had my more dramatic accident (out of four) they had to cut me out of it.

A five layer fires suit made me look like the Michelin and was not comfortable in the high temperatures at Bonneville.

When I fly I wear a single layer Nomex flight suit with cotton undergarments and wool socks. Nomex is not fire proof, only fire resistant.

Nylon will burn and melt to your skin.

I feel having a master switch with a relay to the battery has value.

I have found this allows the larger wires to be well away from the fuel tank.

I feel fire sleeves on the fuel lines have value.

I feel a firewall has value.

Part of my gyroplane emergency procedures preflight briefing includes rapid egress in case of fire.

I prefer metal fuel tanks.

On preflight inspection of enclosed gyroplanes I have found several with the vent incorrectly done creating a potential fire hazard.
Yes, exactly. Your experience in your past life, dealt precisely with safety concerns on a level we can hardly imagine. Why not borrow form other industries to help resolve our problems. As your reply has indicated you can tell us much how to improve our safety. We listen.
 
To my knowledge (as a CAD guy myself) programs like SolidWorks are good at FEA (Finite Element Analysis) where structural loads and integrity can be determined. I am unfamiliar with what engineering method for modeling & analyzing a fuel tank rupture would be. Crumple zoning and subsequent clash detection could be useful for designing a roll cage around it, but I have no idea how a designer could predict the trajectories of fragments and broken bits whirling near it in a crash.

I, too, am interested in learning more about aviation fuel tank safety and the engineering that goes into them.
i lived my life as a photographer. 49 years behind the lens. One day maybe I’ll get a real job. Sufficient to say, I know little about CAD programs and what they can and can’t do but surely there must be some way of testing without the expense of physically testing to destruction.

I have confidence , as an industry, little changes can be incorporated to improve the safety record specifically in regards to crash related fires.
 
From the one photo, I am guessing the rotor hit trees well above ground level.
If that's the case, I doubt it was the fire that killed them.

The initial accident description report when translated states that the occupants crawled out but then caught fire and one (not both) succumbed to injuries and burns later. One is still alive supposedly with partial burns.
 
The most recent report that I read said two men were killed, and the prosecutor took possession of the wreckage and both bodies... presumably at the scene.
Perhaps the initial report was wrong? Often they are.
I guess more will be revealed in due course.
 
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I am super thrilled you have responded. Input from experts such as yourself is what we need. What are the obstacles to crash risk you have seen which are shared in the various designs and configurations? Typically what crash testing is done to identify problem areas. I expect Solid Works and other CAD platforms have features which can virtually test crash factors without destroying an operational machine with high speed cameras whirring. Seriously I find this fascinating and a challenge. Somethings, I expect can be resolved with in a design and others not without starting over.

SolidWorks is good for designing parts but its a piece of junk software otherwise. It does not even take advantage of hyperthreading or multithreading in rendering. Its engine was designed in the 90's. So using hyperthreaded CPUs or multi-CPU servers does absolutely nothing for SolidWorks performance. We use it but that's because it costs $10 - 15k and not $65k like Katia.

FEA all sounds cool but just for instance FAA won't accept a FEA report for certification without tested shown documented basis for deflection under load for each given structure to validate each FEA setup.
So a real test is needed and real structures or field data should be used to come up with construction methods. Plenty of this field data is available for many different aircraft crashes to see what works.
ASTM asks for minimum standards. The new philosophy in certification standards is to not be prescriptive but require certain requirements are met and let the designer and engineers figure out how they want to meet these standards to claim compliance. For instance, for a firewall, the airplane standards say if you use a certain thickness or mild steel or stainless steel, you need to do nothing else but if you use another method like fiberglass with some heat blanket you need to show that it can stand this fire at this flame temp for this long and so on. So its up to you to keep your workload simple and use what's been proven in the field or do some super duper high tech composite firewall and do and document all the testing to make sure you can show compliance.
In a crash, all mass concentrated objects experience shock loads that are much higher than simple ground loads. This includes batteries, fuel tanks and other such fitted items. Usually if these items are mounted on rigid structure in a way where they have certain amount of give, it allows them to handle short spikes in shock loading beyond inertia ultimate loads with grace. MTO Sport for instance munts its fuel tanks with a type of straps which allows the tank to move slightly in a crash. We mount the fuel tanks with Aluminum brackets mounted to frame and straps. This allows those brackets to deform and give before main tank takes a shock loading beating. Just have to have the right concept of construction method. Trike ASTM standards for this very reason ask that all fuel tanks have a rubber mounting or similar. What they are looking for there is to handle certain movement in a shock loading for the fuel tank instead of complete rigid mounting.
 
The most recent report that I read said two men were killed, and the prosecutor took possession of the wreckage and both bodies... presumably at the scene.
Perhaps the initial report was wrong? Often they are.
I guess more will be revealed in due course.

I think like TyroGyro said I am confusing a M16 recent fatal in France with the German accident. My apologies. My hair is turning blond instead of grey.
 
Aviation accidents often are accompanied by fire in all types of aircraft.

So much so that often if there is no fire fuel exhaustion is suspected.

It appears to me that gyroplanes because of the generally lower speed impacts do somewhat better than fixed wing aircraft as far as fire goes.

I feel some manufactures could do better with fire safety.
Exactly. If there wasn't a fire after an aircraft crash, it probably ran out of fuel. .
 

Exactly. If there wasn't a fire after an aircraft crash, it probably ran out of fuel. .
Not really. In GA aircraft crashes worldwide only 26% result in fire. 47% in heavy commercial airplane accidents (but those accidents are very rare to begin with). A well restrained person in studies can withstand up to about 15 G's without serious injury. 11 to 12 being more common with some lateral loading
 
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Not really. In GA aircraft crashes worldwide only 26% result in fire. 47% in heavy commercial airplane accidents (but those accidents are very rare to begin with). A well restrained person in studies can withstand up to about 15 G's without serious injury. 11 to 12 being more common with some lateral loading
Ok. You are right. Most accidents are in the TO and Landing phases. These typically do not lead to a fire. Of the accidents where the engine quits in the cruise phase of the flight, fuel exaustion or missmanagement is a leading cause. If the subsequent crash was severe, a fire is a pretty good indicator of the fuel status.
 
Actions speak volumes........


Looks like 10+lbs of useful load and $800. Add a transponder. Then add an ELT. Then full shoulder belts and seat belt airbags. Then an airframe parachute. All of these things will save lives and all are a compromise in weight and cost. --To put the costs in perspective, the Cirrus parachute needs to be re-packed every 10 years and a repack cost $13K. Is it worth $1300 per year to have the safety of a parachute?
 
Likely the fuel fire comes after the oil fire given the disruption of the oil lines etc and the potential for the turbo to cause things to flash. Just a view but fuel bladders used in the military and motor racing are very easily acquired, but they are not cheap. These are about the best available http://atlfuelcells.com/
 
Looks like 10+lbs of useful load and $800. Add a transponder. Then add an ELT. Then full shoulder belts and seat belt airbags. Then an airframe parachute. All of these things will save lives and all are a compromise in weight and cost. --To put the costs in perspective, the Cirrus parachute needs to be re-packed every 10 years and a repack cost $13K. Is it worth $1300 per year to have the safety of a parachute?
If you use it at least once, its worth it otherwise not.
 
Looks like 10+lbs of useful load and $800. Add a transponder. Then add an ELT. Then full shoulder belts and seat belt airbags. Then an airframe parachute. All of these things will save lives and all are a compromise in weight and cost. --To put the costs in perspective, the Cirrus parachute needs to be re-packed every 10 years and a repack cost $13K. Is it worth $1300 per year to have the safety of a parachute?
Your numbers relate to a plane which weighs thrice as much as a gyro, cruises twice as fast and costs five times price of a gyrocopter. A parachute for ultralights costs 3000-5000$ readily installed. The maintenance intervals for the rocket and the sail are 12 and 24 years. Repacking costs 1000€ not $12000. More information here:


It's worth every cent. And if it was easy to install in a gyrocopter or helicopter, everyone would have it.
 
Your numbers relate to a plane which weighs thrice as much as a gyro, cruises twice as fast and costs five times price of a gyrocopter. A parachute for ultralights costs 3000-5000$ readily installed. The maintenance intervals for the rocket and the sail are 12 and 24 years. Repacking costs 1000€ not $12000. More information here:


It's worth every cent. And if it was easy to install in a gyrocopter or helicopter, everyone would have it.
Repacking costs on the Cirrus are mostly due to the Cirrus being a certified aircraft. Certified means the parachute must repacked every 10 years. And the manufacturer specifies the exact parts and procedure. -No second source. No option not to repack it. It's why the experimental market is so large in the US.

As for gyroplanes. I have found this on google. https://www.galaxysky.cz/gyro-amp-helicopters-s65-en I don't know how real it is.
 
This may have been covered before but I’ll ask anyway. Is anyone aware of a person or manufacturer that has or is putting any research and development into post impact fuel tank safety for gyros?
 
This may have been covered before but I’ll ask anyway. Is anyone aware of a person or manufacturer that has or is putting any research and development into post impact fuel tank safety for gyros?

There are a couple of Gyroplanes that use foam inside their fuel tanks that stops spillage. I don’t know if that stops fires completely but it must be better than nothing. I don’t think the risk can be eliminated but it should not be that 80% crashes result in a fire either. Gyroplane crashes as a fuselage are no different than a trike. They are similar structures and trikes do have post crash fires but not so much. Like I said in my personal experience being on this forum since 2014 where most fatal accidents around the world do come forward Magni seems to stand out on the fire issue on its own. Other brands seem to be inline with trikes and LSA airplane accidents.
 
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