Casual Decision Turns Deadly for Pilot

Maybe it was engine trouble, or maybe it was just a bad guess.

Peter Garrison

Thursday, August 07, 2025 at 09:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

The author naturally wonders whether the crash was the result of the pilot merely overestimating his airplane’s ability to clear the hill. [Google Maps]

Key Takeaways:

The article investigates an A36 Bonanza crash where conflicting eyewitness accounts, particularly regarding engine sounds and flight maneuvers, complicated the investigation.
The aircraft was reportedly unusually low and slow after takeoff, likely due to a combination of high density altitude, near gross weight, and a potentially insufficient takeoff run.
While no engine failure was found, the pilot executed a steep turn towards higher terrain at an airspeed close to the estimated stall speed for that bank angle.
The NTSB faulted inadequate airport chart information for the terrain, and the article concludes that choosing the opposite, safer runway would likely have prevented the accident.

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The testimony of witnesses to crimes is notoriously unreliable. The testimony of witnesses to airplane accidents is even more so, because most people are poor judges of heights, angles, distances, and speeds.

Besides, they don’t know what airplanes ought to look and sound like and how they might be expected to behave—or misbehave. Accident investigators have to pick and choose among testimonies to construct a physically plausible scenario.