Aftermath: Basic Mistakes

Peter Garrison

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

Verified

Key Takeaways:

A Maule aircraft crashed during a landing approach due to an aerodynamic stall, attributed by the NTSB to the pilot's inadequate airspeed and excessive bank angle.
The pilot flew an unusually low and tight traffic pattern, with groundspeed near stalling speed that further decayed during the critical turn from downwind to final, increasing the angle of attack.
A former flight instructor's detailed report from nine months prior revealed the pilot's consistent pattern of poor airmanship, including casual speed control, disregard for procedures, and failure to recover from stalls.
The accident exemplifies a classic stall-spin scenario during traffic pattern maneuvering, exacerbated by the pilot's documented history of dangerous flying habits.

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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.”