3 Tesla Execs Dead In Palo Alto Plane Crash

http://jalopnik.com/5473942/3-tesla-execs-dead-in-palo-alto-plane-crash

by jazzychad • 16 years ago

145 71 16 years ago

jazzychad3• 16 years ago

I wish I didn't get karma for submitting this :(

btipling• 16 years ago

News organizations make a ton of money when lots of people die in some horrific way. You're not profiting from the bad news, you're gaining from informing others.

maurycy2• 16 years ago

Fuc^W

My deepest condolences to their families.

I'm suspicious it is somehow related to the oil overlords. Big money, big risks.

djb_hackernews• 16 years ago

Sad News. This reminds me of the time I was working at a startup and the office admin booked a flight for the three founders to attend a conference or some such. Same flight for all three, seemed reasonable to me, but after some stern discussion that never happened again.

diego• 16 years ago

It's interesting how some people do this, yet don't give a second thought to driving together all the time.

jamesbkel• 16 years ago

True, I imagine a plane crash is very much an all or nothing venture (major and few survivors vs. minor with just injuries). Perhaps not so much with driving.

Right now just speculating, but I'd be curious to if anyone's created a breakdown of traffic fatalities by # of passengers in each vehicle and # passenger fatalities. I've seen that sort of thing before, but almost always in the context of teen/new drivers.

Couldn't find anything quickly, will look after work.

neurotech12• 16 years ago

From experience As somebody who lost their flight status after a car wreck, driving is much more dangerous.

At least in an aircraft, theres always the possibility of ejecting out, bailing out, or using a "ballistic parachute" (Cirrus makes them)to recover the plane - the problem is when the pilot doesn't realize they're in trouble until its too late. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Aircraft_Parachute_Syste...

Bailout options do exist for GA/Light Aircraft.

timdorr• 16 years ago

The same thing happened to Atlanta's arts community. Most of the benefactors from the area were in Paris for an event of some sort. They flew back on the same plane and it crashed, and with it went Atlanta's funding for arts. The community died the instant the benefactors did. It's really a horrible story :(

gte910h• 16 years ago

Do you have a link to a story about this? (Concerned Atlantean here)

idlewords2• 16 years ago

It was perfectly reasonable, assuming you weren't flying a regional airline. Commercial air travel via large jets is orders of magnitude safer than civil aviation.

ryanwaggoner• 16 years ago

http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety

elblanco• 16 years ago

I was just on a conference call today with some coworkers out in the area when the power went out. Had no idea why.

This is truly sad news.

staunch2• 16 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_310

JshWright• 16 years ago

So, it's at least a 30 year old plane.

I'm not connected at all with the private aviation industry... What is the useful (safe?) lifespan of an aircraft like this?

masonry• 16 years ago

This may be useful:

http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/Query.asp

noodle• 16 years ago

if you take care of a plane well, especially a small one not being used heavily, it'll last.

for reference, most of the big commercial airlines have an average fleet age in the range of 15-20 years.

pc• 16 years ago

It's common. GA aircraft have quite rigorous maintenance schedules, with inspection and overhaul every 50 or 100 hours, which (mostly) keeps even old planes airworthy. Almost all airfields will have plenty of 30 or 40 year old planes.

c1sc02• 16 years ago

Not a GA expert here, skydiver though. GA is indeed far more dangerous than commerical aviation although a well-maintained 30-year old airplane can be perfectly airworthy. We in the skydiving community are used to flying old planes & as long as the maintenance is ok & the airplane has not been pushed too many times outside of its performance envelope everything should be fine. Very sad to see this happen to Tesla.

luminary2• 16 years ago

Inside job, anyone?

tbgvi• 16 years ago

How much karma do I need before I can down vote someone? This seemed like a good place to ask.

jazzychad3• 16 years ago

200, in my experience. Interestingly, you cannot downvote top-level comments on stories that you submit, however you can downvote the children comments.

luminary2• 16 years ago

Irrespective of the down-votes, I do see another user expressing something similar. "I'm suspicious it is somehow related to the oil overlords. Big money, big risks."

korch• 16 years ago

It wouldn't be the first time. Remember that IT guy who admin'd Bush's secret gwb43.com email servers(in overt defiance of mandated Federal record keeping laws) and who was involved with the election fraud in Ohio? That guy who conveniently died in a small plane crash in 08' right before he was facing summons to testify before Congress?

Oh and look at that, just a few weeks ago the NTSB ruled that accident was likely pilot error and not some kind of crazy conspiracy involving mechanical tampering: http://www.ohio.com/news/83119417.html

The world is more often than not a strange place.

volomike2• 16 years ago

Still no report yet on which 3 it was. They're probably talking to family members, first. Sad, none the less.

maurycy2• 16 years ago

AFAIK, no Musk on board.

kqr2• 16 years ago

Tragic, however, there is no confirmation that they were executives either.

fnid23• 16 years ago

This is tragic. Very sorry to hear it.

As an intern, I worked for a company and found in the employee manual that there were explicit restrictions on the number of execs who could be on the same plane or even in the same car!

I thought it was a silly clause and asked about it and the execs said, "Yes, the probability is small, but multiplied by the damage that would occur gives a very big risk of damage." That made a lot of sense. It doesn't cost much to avoid the risk, just take different flights.

maukdaddy• 16 years ago

Most companies have a similar policy actually. I've come across this several times while developing information security policies.

dschobel2• 16 years ago

I knew plenty of kids growing up whose parents traveled separately when the kids were not with them. It's morbid stuff being responsible for other people...

fnid23• 16 years ago

It is. When I started a company and got customers who depend on me, I started driving slower. I stopped taking the kinds of risks I used to take. I even worry, briefly, when I go skiing.

markbao• 16 years ago

It was confirmed that Elon Musk was not on board.

Source: http://twitter.com/kensweet/status/9247008924 (guy is a reporter for FOX Business)

bprater• 16 years ago

My first thought was about Elon. Anyone passing away is tremendously sad. But in that sadness, I think it is good to acknowledge we didn't lose a great visionary today. We need them.

mingdingo• 16 years ago

Speaking of lost visionaries, check out Daniel Lewin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M._Lewin).

He co-founded Akamai and was killed on American Airlines Flight 11, possibly while trying to stop a hijacker. A very smart and influential guy who died tragically.

fjabre• 16 years ago

Tragic...

It's seems like once every other month you hear about a small passenger jet crashing like this. This one happening yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/nyregion/17plane.html

Anyone know if it's certain types of small aircraft that are prone to this or is it just small civilian operated aircraft in general?

Don't think I'll by getting on one of these anytime soon in any case.

gwern• 16 years ago

In general. Small civilian aircraft are death traps (although maybe not as bad as cars); https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/General_aviat...

> According to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, in 2005 general aviation in the United States (excluding charter) suffered 1.31 fatal accidents for every 100,000 hours of flying in that country, compared to 0.016 for scheduled airline flights.

(One can imagine many reasons for this; more professional maintenance, more professional pilots, more redundancy in the systems of big airplanes; whatever. But the safety differential is not imaginary.)

humbledrone• 16 years ago

What a crazy coincidence -- the CEO of the first software company I worked for was a pilot, and he also flew his personal aircraft into some power lines.

wakeupthedawn• 16 years ago

It was crazy foggy in Palo Alto this morning and has been for the past of couple of mornings. I'm really surprised they tried to fly in those conditions.

The report suggests that the power outage in Palo Alto may have been caused by the plane crash. I find this hard to believe because the traffics lights were only down in the area near Stanford and downtown PA; as you drove closer to East Palo Alto, the lights were working. Of course maybe there was a larger outage earlier, and they just restored it in this pattern.

mmastrac• 16 years ago

There's a picture somewhere on the web (sorry, no link) of a severed high-voltage power line linked to this crash.

pavel_lishin2• 16 years ago

I recall reading a list of the top 10 ways to live a longer life somewhere, and pretty high up on the list was "Do not get a pilot's license."

Apparently, CEOs, doctors and the like assume that competence in one area of life implies that they're competent to do anything, like flying a plane.

dschobel2• 16 years ago

While that sounds like great advice to trot out every time a small craft crashes, in the absence of data it is functionally worthless.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Exactly. "Don't get a driver's license" or "don't go outside" are just as valid.

My thought is, if I die or become horribly brain-damaged, I won't really care, because the capacity to care is gone. Existence only goes as far as you can interpret it.

mrkurt• 16 years ago

It's true. General aviation is reasonably dangerous, approaching motorcycle levels. A link mentioned earlier in this discussion cites some statistics:

> If the average speed of car travel is 50 miles per hour, those 1.7 deaths occur in 2 million hours of driving. This makes general aviation, with 16 deaths per 1 million hours, roughly 20 times as dangerous per hour than driving.

http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety

If you look at "danger per mile", GA is only ~10x as dangerous as driving. I prefer the "per hour" statistic, though, but not for any good reason.

Of note: every insurance company I've ever dealt with for life and property insurance has asked if I'm a private pilot. My last renter's insurance policy had a rider exempting me from coverage when flying. Insurance companies are historically pretty good at assessing risk. Profitable ones, anyway.

clay• 16 years ago

When I had a motorcycle, I would ride it everywhere. I even rode it to the doctors office and carried in my helmet. I sat down with the doctor and when he mentioned my helmet, I was certain he was going to lecture me about it or at least tell me to be safe. He told me about the 900cc Ducati he had and we had a pretty long conversation about bikes and how much fun they were...

brown9-2• 16 years ago

Does anyone else find the editorializing in this article disturbing?

This is the second paragraph of the article:

Employees at the electric carmaker — a company that has done everything but paint its logo green in a bid to sell itself as environmentally-friendly — have always had a penchant for gas-guzzling private airplanes. But that's sort of been the Tesla way. An electric car without compromising speed or style. The roadster's perfect for the Hollywood and Silicon Valley elite — environmental credibility without having to give up your private plane.

3 people just died. Is it really necessary to slam the type of people that buy electric cars in an article reporting on their deaths?

staunch2• 16 years ago

Ban worthy IMHO. I think the whole Gawker network should be banned here though, all bottom feeders.

idlewords2• 16 years ago

That's what voting is supposed to be for. I find this site disturbingly ban-happy.

pkaler• 16 years ago

I flagged the story. Injecting vitriolic editorializing into a breaking story about the death of 3 people is unclassy and flat out poor journalism.

dandelany• 16 years ago

I couldn't agree with you more... I found this paragraph and the one following it to be in terrible taste. Any journalist who thinks that someone's death is a good opportunity to slip in some snide "toldjaso" comment like this should find a new profession.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

It's the kind of stuff the readers want. The first rule of journalism is "write something people want", after all.

Remember, this is a site that hates electric cars. When some public figures who make electric cars die, it's good for the readership's religion. The cause has been advanced, don't you get it?

pg• 16 years ago

I gave the points from this to the SF Chronicle story that seems to contain the actual reporting.

jazzychad3• 16 years ago

Just to clarify, when I originally submitted the article it was very basic facts with absolutely no editorializing. It looks like they rewrote the entire article soon after being submitted and getting enough upvotes to become popular.

MikeCapone• 16 years ago

Elon Musk has written this note on the Tesla Website:

"Three Tesla employees were on board a plane that crashed in East Palo Alto early this morning. We are withholding their identities as we work with the relevant authorities to notify the families. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. Tesla is a small, tightly-knit company, and this is a tragic day for us." - Elon Musk, CEO

dasht• 16 years ago

FYI, and hopefully not just morbid:

Local TV news (sorry, no link) reports that planes taking off from that run-way must turn 10 degrees left or 10 degrees right after take-off. They can't go straight because of a nearby field (Moffet field) - a former naval air base currently owned by NASA and famous for being where the Google guys park their jet.

This plane was planned (or instructed, I'm not sure) to go right - they went left.

That they went left AND that they failed to gain enough altitude to avoid the power lines is tentatively speculated to be indicative of a left engine failure.

They took out three high-tension power lines which, the plane geek quoted on the news pointed out, is "likely to seriously interfere with the forward progress of the plane". They came down in a very dense residential neighborhood with debris hitting a nearby day-care center.

A consolation is that as of this report, the pilot and passengers appear to be the only victims. The plane mostly came down in the middle of a street. Nearby residents report that they tried but could not get anywhere close to the plane because of the intensity of the heat from the fuel flame. It was the resident's impression that post-crash fuel explosions scattered debris which is what led to the structure fires.

The thought that occurs to me is that I wonder if the pilot retained enough control that he aimed for the street on purpose either hoping for a survivable crash landing or (shudder) in a heroic last act to save others knowing he had no chance, personally.

3 Tesla Execs Dead In Palo Alto Plane Crash

Related Stories