Aftermath: The New Normal

Peter Garrison

Friday, January 16, 2015 at 08:50 PM ET

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Key Takeaways:

An experienced pilot and his wife crashed their vintage aircraft at night into severe thunderstorms and instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), despite prior warnings from Flight Service.
The NTSB attributed the accident to the pilot's intentional visual flight into dangerous weather and his failure to obtain updated weather information, leading to flight at an unsafely low altitude.
The incident serves as a cautionary tale about "get-there-itis" and how even highly seasoned pilots can gradually lower their personal safety minimums, unconsciously accepting increasingly dangerous conditions until a fatal error occurs.

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The pilot, 73, had more than 18,000 hours and an ATP certificate. He and his wife, an instrument-rated private pilot with over 800 hours, kept several airplanes, all vintage or Experimental, on their private strip in northeastern Pennsylvania. One of these was a taxicab-yellow 1944 Cessna T-50 “Bamboo Bomber,” a five-seat steel-tube-and-fabric taildragger with two 275 hp Jacobs radials. (A video of the pilot and his lovingly maintained airplane can be seen on YouTube here.)

On Labor Day weekend, 2013, the pilot and his wife were returning home from a fly-in at Antique Airfield in Blakesburg, Iowa. Over Sandusky, Ohio, the pilot contacted Flight Service to ask whether there was a TFR at Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport. There was no TFR, but the briefer provided an ominous weather report.