(January 2011) — It happened nearly seven years ago, but the accident remains a shining example of a confluence of unlikely circumstances causing a catastrophe when none of them, by itself, would have amounted to more than a nuisance.
Five airplanes belonging to Pan Am International Flight Academy were flying from Deer Valley Airport in Phoenix to the Palomar Airport in Carlsbad, California, on a May evening in 2004. They left Deer Valley at intervals of five to 10 minutes. The fourth in the line was a Piper Seminole, N304PA, flown by two private pilots who had recently acquired their multiengine and instrument ratings. It was a time-building flight for them; the left-seat pilot had about 175 hours, the other 240. They filed IFR. Apparently neither had logged any prior actual instrument experience, but each had around 50 hours of in-flight hood instrument time. They also had, between them, some 50 hours of night flying experience. This would be a significant milestone: a night flight in the system with an ILS approach at the destination. It was exactly the kind of straightforward flight — two hours, VMC en route, an approach well above minimums at the end — that instrument novices are advised to take.
