Puzzling Personality

An unusual pilot’s dramatic crash in the Sunshine State still has investigators wondering what happened many years later.

Peter Garrison

Friday, November 12, 2021 at 10:18 PM ET

Verified

A pilot’s actions before an accident can illuminate a personality disposed to one. Courtesy: Van's

Key Takeaways:

An experienced pilot displayed significant communication difficulties with air traffic control before initiating an abrupt, extreme maneuver that led to his plane's structural failure and fatal crash.
The accident involved a sudden negative 3-G push into a 45-degree dive, followed by an inverted roll and rapid descent, resulting in the left wing failing.
The pilot had a troubled personal history, including disbarment, "valor theft," and numerous unreported medical conditions like depression and PTSD, for which he was taking psychoactive medications.
The NTSB concluded the crash was due to unsafe maneuvering influenced by the pilot's unreported psychiatric disease, suggesting it "could have led to intentionally unsafe maneuvering," though the exact cause remained undetermined.

See a mistake? Contact us.

On a clear January day in 2018, the 68-year-old sport pilot of a Van’s RV-12 took off from Fort Myers, Florida, bound for Everglades City, a trip of 51 nautical miles. Before taking off, the pilot had requested flight following, but when he was airborne and the tower controller told him to contact departure control, the pilot did not respond. The controller repeated the instruction and, after checking whether the departure controller had heard from the pilot, tried a third time. There was still no response.

A minute later, the departure controller established radio contact with the pilot. Communication did not go smoothly.