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Aftermath: Delayed Reaction

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • A fatal Cessna 172 crash occurred during a go-around maneuver, killing the flight instructor and student pilot, which the NTSB attributed to the instructor's excessive climb and failure to maintain airspeed, leading to an inadvertent stall.
  • The instructor had a severe, undisclosed medical history, including psychological conditions (panic attacks, PTSD, OCD) stemming from a prior F-16 ejection, for which he was prescribed multiple psychoactive medications, and had falsified his FAA medical certificate.
  • Although the instructor had a previous similar accident involving an overshoot, the NTSB's probable cause finding did not explicitly link his complex medical and psychological history to the specific pilot error, acknowledging such connections as speculative.
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(March 2010) — The girlfriend of a student pilot, eager to see how his flying skills were coming along — he had recently soloed — arranged to accompany him and his instructor on a flight. They took off in a 172 on a beautiful June evening. She was sitting behind her boyfriend, who was in the left front seat; in the right front seat was the instructor, a former Air Force F-16 pilot.

She had thought they were just going up to fly around a bit, but it turned out that the instructor had other ideas. After he had put the student through several stalls, the back-seat passenger asked them to stop because the activity was making her nervous.

Peter Garrison

Peter Garrison taught himself to use a slide rule and tin snips, built an airplane in his backyard, and flew it to Japan. He began contributing to FLYING in 1968, and he continues to share his columns, ""Technicalities"" and ""Aftermath,"" with FLYING readers.

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