Did anyone else here about a crash in Richmond around 10ish this evening?
It’s all over the news: news.google.ca/news?q=plane+crash+richmond
Two fatalities.
A very sad and unfortunate outcome for those two. From what I have read it sounds to me that they might have taken the opportunity to crash in the area that they did to save the lives of others.
Very sad indeed. But they likely couldn’t have done anything at all. Consider they were around 700 feet doing 140 mph (120 knots) on a 2 mile final when radar was lost. The aircraft came down with a nose down attitude, per witness reports. Not even calculating acceleration from a dive, it would have taken less than 3 seconds for the aircraft to hit the ground from 700 feet @ 140 mph. Not much time to respond to anything. If it was caught in wake turbulence from another aircraft there would have been zero response from the controls as well. Very unfortunate. 
If anyone is interested in the radar info at Vancouver International and/or this incident you can go to this web site for current or archived radar.
yvr.webtrak-lochard.com/template/index.html
If your interested in this incident zoom closer to the airport and over Richmond to the right. On the bottom left unclick “show current flights” and enter date 09/07/2009 at 10.06 pm. wait until it loads. Hover your cursor over targets for data. You will see the PA31 following an A321 about 2.5 nautical miles apart. It appears by this site there is not a 2 minute separation between the two aircraft for wake turbulence so this may be the cause. 
I don’t know shit about this, but you said they were doing 120 knots, and were 2.5 miles apart. Is my math wrong in thinking that means they were more than 2 minutes behind the airbus? Or would 2 minutes behind be 4 miles?
@ 60 knots you will reach one nautical mile in 1 minute. If you double the speed to 120 knots you will double the distance in one minute, which is 2 nautical miles in one minute. Or 4 miles in 2 minutes if you like.
Kinda chilling but here is the ATC recording for the incident. APEX 511 is the aircraft ident.
archive-server.liveatc.net/cyvr/ … -0500Z.mp3
The date difference is because it is Zulu time.
And just for info on Wake Turbulence