Pitot failure

[Mconner7]

Pitot mast failed in flight.

[avrojockey]

Makes me think AOA built into Garmin tube is not the greatest idea

[Desert Rat]

I'm not saying I would have done any better, because really, who looks at something like that, but clearly that has been working for a while. You can see the sooty streaks down the side of the mast.

Thanks for posting this, it's one more thing that people can have in the back of their mind during preflight.

[Bill Boyd]

My mind went first with "This is why you don't let an eager passenger tie down and untie the wing on their side without supervision," but it's probably got another root cause. Hard to imagine a robust air load on a pitot in flight, though. What's the age/time in service on this one?

[wawrzynskivp]

It may or may not be helpful. You could get some really good magnification on the surface of the failure and get an idea how long the fatigue cracks had been working and how much material failed to ultimate load.

I would think a continuous bead should have been applied, but it looks like it was only welded on the sides?

[lr172]

I remember reading that early safair pitot masts had bad welds. They changed the welding method and new versions had blue anodizing. Maybe you had an early one.

[wawrzynskivp]

Hello OPer

Can you share the make model and est date of manufacture?

[ILikePike]

It looks like a safe air gold one. They replaced those with blue ones with better welds.

[Daida]

that is a quite uncommon failure!
Even more interesting though, glad nobody got hurt and no metal was bent.

I would be interested in:
-make and prediction year of the mast.
-how many flight hours did it last before failure?
-what kind of pitot cover do you use (if any)
-do you touch the pitot during preflight? (i always tap very slightly with my finger on the bare metal tip of the pitot tube, just to confirm and remember that i removed the cover. But i have seen much more aggressive routines, i am not saying the OP does things like that...)
-what were the indications (IAS and Altitude) after ist happened?

thanks in advance!!

Peter

[Mike S]

Originally Posted by Bill Boyd

Hard to imagine a robust air load on a pitot in flight, though. What's the age/time in service on this one?

Vibration from unbalanced prop, or lots of rough field work, etc might also be a factor.