Trudering plane crash

In a plane crash in Trudering (Munich) on 11 August 1987, nine people were killed.

Sequence of events

The pilot of the Piper PA-31T Cheyenne II, a professional pilot very experienced on the Cheyenne, was on a check flight to renew his ATPL with an examiner and a secretary of the Luftamt Südbayern. The aircraft, registered D-ILRA, was the company aircraft of a Bavarian metal construction firm. During the landing approach shortly before runway 07R at Riem, the examiner unexpectedly intervened and – as the accident investigation office at the LBA later determined – “without announcement in a completely inappropriate situation” pulled the power lever of the right engine back to idle at around 60 metres above ground.

The pilot was presumably meant to show that he could land the aircraft even if one engine failed. This is a standard procedure, but because of the torque of the left engine – and the unexpectedly missing compensating torque of the right turbine – the aircraft rolled about its longitudinal axis to the right and downwards and gained speed. Thanks to this speed, the pilot was still able to pull the aircraft out just above the road, but only one metre above the ground. With its propellers scraping the ground, it slid across a road junction on the Wasserburger Landstraße (Bundesstraße 304), killed a female cyclist and clipped a route bus (MAN SL 200; SWM 4532) of line 192. The bus driver lost control and drove into a McDonald’s restaurant. The aircraft also crashed into the building. In the process a wing ruptured, the kerosene ignited and set the building, the aircraft and parts of the bus on fire.

The three occupants of the aircraft were killed instantly; three people died on the ground. In the following weeks, three of the total of 30 injured died.

The destroyed restaurant building was later rebuilt on the same site. On the opposite side of the road (corner of Truderinger Straße and Nikolaus-Prugger-Weg), the City of Munich erected a memorial stone in a small green strip.