• Welcome to the new Commander Owners Group Forums. Please bear with us as the kinks are worked out and things are tweaked. If you have any questions or issues with the new platform, please post them here.

Tragic, fatal, accident -- way too close to home

N4843W

N4843W

New member
SE MI
Aircraft Year
1977
Aircraft Type
114
Reg Number
N4843W
Serial Number
14173
A local (NW of Detroit) Cherokee fatal accident was dramatic enough Saturday afternoon that it made the national news. Took the pilot, his wife, and his only child, his son, a college sophomore. If not for just dumb luck, there would have been at least 3 deaths in the family whose house was the end point of the flight. They had just left the room, unable to agree on what movie to watch, I have known the pilot well for many, many years. More than just a casual acquaintance. This is an accident that will be written about, and it's going to be a difficult read. I am not going to say more until the official evaluation comes out, then I will. Suffice to say for now that I am just sick about it. Be careful out there, folks.
 
Scott - i did look this over when the news came out and just looking at the raw data - have my observations.
I know we want to avoid the Monday morning comments .. but i think this one deserves it especially for those operating IFR.

We'll wait till the NTSB publishes .
 
Sorry to hear about your buddy. As you said, best to not speculate and wait for more official findings. Sorry for your loss.
 
As you might imagine, there is incredible speculation going on locally, but the NTSB report will not be pretty. My sadness has now morphed into anger about it. Why? well, for one thing I will say for a fact at this point, the pilot had no IFR ticket and another pilot and I had specifically taken him to task over flying IFR with no ticket. The other pilot even talked to the guy's wife about it. I'll leave it at that for now.

BTW, if you, like me, had a wise old instructor that told you to never ever fly a circling approach unless you could fly pattern altitude and still some room under the ceiling, I hope you have followed his or her advice, and will continue to do so in the future.
 
Scott,

This sort of thing happens way too often.

Years ago a friend of mine (who was also an A&P -- so I'll call him A&P friend) starting fly the approach to his home airport despite him not having an instrument ticket. When we (myself and another friend who has his ticket -- so he is IA friend) called him on it his response was that he always did it on autopilot and we should lighten up. We mentioned the behavior to his wife [who told us to butt out]. So I did -- and disassociated myself with him. IA friend kept in touch.

About 5 years later I got a call from IA friend. A&P friend had met his maker near his home airport in IMC.

I cannot fathom why someone would want to take that kind of a risk. The statistics are super-clear.

Regards,
Neal
 
I think with an IFR ticket .i wouldn't attempt breaking minimums on a circling approach.
Local Wx was 400 OVC. Circling minimum was ~1500. Elevation was 900. Obstacles around 1200.
He was flying at 1100-1300 at or below approach speed.


The point on "illegal IFR" stands. However - even legal IFR ticket pilots should have been diverting after the airport was a no-show at 1500 foot minimums mark.
Descending below minimums to 1100 foot on a circling approach - that was the final bad decision.

How many alternates available with full ILS or LPV approaches nearby ? Even flying illegally, he could have made a safer LPV approach or ILS approach.

ok i'll shut up now. Sorry for your loss, Scott.

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/n8347p#2677d3e2
 
That is good and fair analysis Moazzam. Answer to your question: Airports with 5,000'+ (and wide runways in the area:) PTK, 13 nm north. YIP, 16 nm south. OZW 17 nm NW. so all about 6-8 minutes flight time. When you look at the radar track readouts on flightaware.com, it appears that it took maybe 45 seconds to spiral in. Had to be terrifying for all on board.
 
Sorry about the pilot & his family, known to you for years. Prayers & condolences to family & friends.

A few parts don’t sit well. Dabbling with 400’ OVC & no instrument rating is one. Even if one had a current instrument rating, the WX at the time, at that airport, seemed to be well below minimums. Even the idea of the pilot diverting to a better airport, one still ends up with the no instrument rating, as mentioned by his brother.

Let’s back this up some, could be the evening before his flight out of GA, weather forecasts are starting to get accurate. This is a key time to make decisions. Let’s say we do blast off, I thought he was flying VFR altitudes for the majority of the flight. Maybe it was fine weather, or he was above a ceiling. Most of us have some type of weather feed while flying, no need for last minute decisions.

I wouldn’t doubt if ‘get-home-itis’ was a player. I go back to the mantra of ‘we never HAVE to be anywhere’. One deals with percentages, it’s not always, we do this, that will happen. The margins can be eroded, it may work a handful of times, eventually your number is up. I also feel for the innocents onboard, likely didn’t have a full grasp of what was going on.

Again, very sorry about the accident, lots of pain to deal with.
 
I went back & looked at the wx observations one hour before this accident. I see widespread areas of serious IFR, 400-1500’ ceilings, mostly firm OVC. It was also similar flying over IN on the way up, didn’t look into OH. I think with onboard wx one could possibly find a VFR divert, if flying on top.

Again, getting back to the preflight thought process, what kind of plan is this? Is one going to arrive to 500 OVC & ‘work it out’?

KARB is Ann Arbor, just south of intended destination. B734A5DA-3433-4490-B5C7-1F17FCC37942.png
 
Another pilot friend said it showed 400 OC at every airport around the area. You are correct. Even someone highly experienced in IFR flying would not, well, should not, attempt an approach with a 700' minimum when the ceiling is 400' ... let alone a circling approach.
 
Neil, we must know similar A&Ps. I know of one who not only flies instrument approaches without an IFR ticket, but also self taught himself to do aerobatics. Is risk taking part of A&P training?
 
alim said:
I think with an IFR ticket .i wouldn't attempt breaking minimums on a circling approach.
Local Wx was 400 OVC. Circling minimum was ~1500. Elevation was 900. Obstacles around 1200.
He was flying at 1100-1300 at or below approach speed.


The point on "illegal IFR" stands. However - even legal IFR ticket pilots should have been diverting after the airport was a no-show at 1500 foot minimums mark.
Descending below minimums to 1100 foot on a circling approach - that was the final bad decision.

How many alternates available with full ILS or LPV approaches nearby ? Even flying illegally, he could have made a safer LPV approach or ILS approach.

ok i'll shut up now. Sorry for your loss, Scott.

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/n8347p#2677d3e2
Click to expand...

I came to a decision early in my "IFR life" that I would do a circling approach, in actual weather conditions, only at an alternate, running out of fuel, with no other options. I was required to do 6 a year for "beans" and every time I did one I thought to myself "why would I ever do this?" Just not a fan.

Mike
 
BUFDRVR said:
I came to a decision early in my "IFR life" that I would do a circling approach, in actual weather conditions, only at an alternate, running out of fuel, with no other options. I was required to do 6 a year for "beans" and every time I did one I thought to myself "why would I ever do this?" Just not a fan.

Mike
Click to expand...

Thankfully circling approaches are becoming less prevalent and even less required as the years go by with the advent of GPS RNAV approaches at all but the smallest airports. I guess the only ones still left are ones at airports with runways that have some obstacle or noise abatement issues that don't allow a normal RNAV approach.

I remember when they were a "normal" way to make a non-precision approach into smaller airports that just had a VOR approach.
 
Stephen, this one has been a VOR-A approach for years and added on a GPS-A.
 
Nothing wrong with ILS or RNAV circling approaches which are normally used due to better minima or preferential winds for landing BUT when you get to circling MDA you don’t descend lower without visual on the entire runway environment, i.e. vfr. You are already below pattern altitude and you can’t get more than 1/2 mile from runway. Otherwise you go missed and climb. But I agree with Steve, circling would be my last choice.
 
Land at the nearest airport with an ILS or LPV approach (if you have that). Uber home. Move plane on next nice day. Been there, done that. Minor inconvenience is a hell of lot better than a fireball. I used to get outraged about such poor ADM. Now I just shrug my shoulders and accept that it happens, there's nothing I can do to change it, and try my best to make sure it's not me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top