Aftermath: Basic Mistakes

Peter Garrison

Monday, July 08, 2013 at 06:32 PM ET

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Key Takeaways:

A Maule aircraft crashed due to the pilot's inadequate airspeed and excessive bank angle while maneuvering for landing, resulting in an aerodynamic stall.
The pilot was flying an abnormally low and tight traffic pattern, leaving insufficient space to execute safe turns and forcing dangerously steep bank angles.
GPS data showed the aircraft's groundspeed dropped significantly below safe margins during the turn from downwind to final, contributing to the stall.
A previous flight instructor's report detailed the pilot's history of unsafe flying habits, including poor speed control, disregard for procedures, and failure to recover from impending stalls, which foreshadowed the accident.

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The owner of the float-equipped Maule saw it crash. He was there to watch as his friend and a passenger arrived in the airplane. “I witnessed the airplane fly over the field,” he wrote, “and enter a downwind for a landing on Runway 4. As the plane turned from base to final, it banked at a very steep angle (est 75 degrees) and then continued to bank even steeper then went vertical from 50-60 feet altitude and within a second impacted, exploded and burned.”

The 42-year-old, 1,300-hour commercial pilot and his longtime girlfriend both perished in the accident, which the National Transportation Safety Board attributed to “the pilot’s inadequate airspeed and excessive bank angle while maneuvering for landing, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.”