On the morning of a late fall day in 2000, a Utah rancher took up two passengers in his Cessna 175 to search for stray cattle. It was part of the fall roundup, an "annual event looked upon with anticipation by many." After spotting a few head, they flew toward a bluff where several cowboys on horseback waited. The plan was for the pilot to drop them a scribbled note describing the locations of the strays they had seen. The engine was "running fine," according to a passenger, but as the airplane approached the bluff, it seemingly encountered a downdraft. The pilot banked hard to the right to avoid the terrain, but the airplane encountered another downdraft, sank again and struck a rocky slope.
One of the cowboys rode away to summon help, while the others rode to the airplane. They extricated the occupants. Despite multiple cuts, bruises, broken bones and other injuries, all were conscious and could sit up and talk. A medevac helicopter reached the scene, after a flight of more than an hour, about two hours after the crash occurred. It took another three-quarters of an hour to get the injured into the helicopter, and almost another hour to return. By the time they reached the hospital, the 55-year-old pilot had died.
The airplane was a 1958 Cessna 175, a version of the 172 originally equipped with a 175-hp geared Continental 0-300 engine and a fixed-pitch prop. It had been re-engined, under an STC, with a Lycoming O-360 and fitted with a Hartzell constant-speed propeller. The airframe had 2,842 hours when the engine change was made in 1976. The rancher had bought the airplane in 1989, but didn't get around to having an annual inspection done until four years later. At that point, the new engine had 1,488 hours, and the airframe 4,330. The airplane soldiered on another two years and 300 hours before its next annual, in 1995, which was also to be its last. In 1997, a mechanic signed it off for a "one time ferry flight...for the purpose of maintenance." There is no evidence that any airframe maintenance was performed, but the engine was removed and overhauled. It had 1,883 hours at the time. Between then and the accident three-and-a-half years later, there were no entries in the engine logbook.
The previous owner of the airplane told investigators that the rancher operated the Cessna on auto fuel, which he kept in a tank on his ranch, and treated it "like it was one of his tractors." Indeed, the yellowish liquid found in the fuel tanks of the wreck did appear to be auto fuel, which is not approved for use in the O-360 because it is a high-compression engine. The engine may have been protected from detonation by the high altitude at which the airplane operated. Investigators found the oil in the engine to be "thick and black, consistent with contaminants and extremely long service."
One can't help admiring the prelapsarian optimism of a pilot who treats his airplane "like a tractor," going years without inspections or, to judge from the inspissated substance in the engine sump, even oil changes. It says something for the fundamental soundness of this old Cessna and its engine that the fatal crash was, to all appearances, unrelated to their neglected condition. It says something, too, about the bias of the FAA employees who are delegated by the NTSB to investigate accidents like this one-small airplane, few fatalities, non-famous victims-that the NTSB report on the crash lays so much emphasis on the airplane's maintenance history, or lack of one. This information would be more pertinent if the engine had quit, the propeller had shed a blade, or the airplane had caught fire in flight. Its inclusion here seems to be intended merely to paint the pilot as a scofflaw and a generally reckless fellow.
