There’s a reason pilots don’t train for some inflight failures. Sometimes those failures are so rare that the likelihood of a pilot encountering them is not deemed worthy of more than a mention during ground school. Then there are those failures for which no solution exists, as was experienced by a designated pilot examiner and a commercial student in April 2018 near Daytona Beach International Airport when the left wing of the Piper Arrow they were flying separated from the airplane. Following a touch-and-go landing, the Piper was climbing on a westerly heading at about 80 knots when, with less than 1,000 feet of altitude between the airplane and the ground, the structural failure occurred. The DPE and the student were both killed in the accident.
NTSB Issues Final Report on 2018 Daytona Beach Accident
Key Takeaways:
- A Piper Arrow flight training aircraft crashed due to the inflight separation of its left wing, caused by extensive fatigue cracking in the main spar.
- The fatigue cracks developed faster than anticipated due to the severe loads experienced in a flight training environment, including frequent landings and low-altitude operations.
- These critical cracks were undetectable by visual inspection, highlighting the need for specialized nondestructive testing and leading the NTSB to recommend stricter, usage-specific inspection requirements for similar training aircraft.
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