![In daylight, the pilot would probably not have started the turn so early and so close to the ground...in pitch darkness, he had no idea where the ground was. [Adobe Stock]](https://flyingmag1.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/FLY1025_1.7-Aftermath.jpeg?width=2330&height=1573)
Moab, utah lies nestled in a bend in the Colorado River, a green dot in a Martian landscape of ochre plains and low rocky outcrops that resemble the protruding vertebrae of buried monsters.
Sixteen miles northwest of Moab is Canyonlands Regional Airport (KCYN). Its runway, 100 feet wide and 7,360 feet long, is oriented 03/21. All of the airport’s buildings are at its north end, alongside the highway that leads to Moab.
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At 5:45 on an October evening in 2023, a Cherokee 140 landed at Canyonlands. The pilot bought 27 gallons of fuel and parked the airplane. He and his family—wife and two young boys—used an FBO’s courtesy car to go into town. It was a Sunday, and they were on their way back to their home field of Mandan, South Dakota, with a planned stop in Casper, Wyoming.
They returned to the airport after a couple of hours, and at 8:22 p.m. the Cherokee was on Runway 21, about to take off. The wind was calm, the night was dark—a gibbous moon lurked just below the eastern horizon.
A man camping near the south end of the runway watched the takeoff. The pilot-controlled runway lights were not on, but the airplane’s landing light was. The engine sounded loud and smooth. After the airplane broke ground, its landing light went out and it banked steeply to the right. It continued to turn until it had reversed course, but now it seemed to the watcher to be losing altitude. He heard two thumps a second apart, then nothing more. After a few moments he realized what had happened and called 911.
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The Cherokee’s nosewheel had grazed a low rise at an elevation about 60 feet above the runway. The airplane traveled some 540 feet in three or four seconds before slamming back against the ground and breaking up. All four of its occupants died.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) attributed the accident to the pilot’s loss of visual reference to the horizon, which led to spatial disorientation. But that’s not the whole story.
The pilot had instrument ratings for both airplane and helicopter. The bulk of his 2,080 hours had been flown in Air National Guard helicopters, probably Black Hawks, which have a crew of two or three. He had about 240 hours in the Cherokee, and that was nearly all of his PIC time. He had a total of about 45 hours of night experience, some of it quite recent, but it was impossible to tell from the NTSB’s report how much night or instrument time he had logged in the Cherokee. The reason the instrument rating matters is that managing this takeoff safely required an ability to fly by the instruments.
The density altitude of 5,500 feet was a factor, at least to the extent that the pilot failed to take it into account. The airplane must have been at or near its allowable gross weight of 2,150 pounds, and of the engine’s rated 140 hp only around 110 was available. Still, the POH predicts a takeoff roll of 1,500 feet and a climb rate of 450 fpm at 85 mph. (The FAA did not replace mph with knots until 1969. This was a 1966 Cherokee, so it flew in mph.) That’s a rather shallow climb—287 feet per mile—but it would have been adequate, given the flatness of the surrounding terrain.
The first choice the pilot had to make was which runway to use. The wind was calm, so he could use either. But the ramp was at the approach end of Runway 21, and so his natural inclination would not have been to taxi a mile and a half to 03. A Part 135 operator at KCYN told accident investigators that the lack of any surface lights off the end of 21 made 03 preferable. On 03 you’d be taking off toward the lights on the airport buildings. However, that may not have occurred to a pilot unfamiliar with the airport.
The pilot may or may not have thought about the scarcity of ground lights. Maybe he was just thinking about how late they were going to get to Mandan. Whatever his reasoning, he chose 21. The airport has pilot-actuated runway lights—three, five or seven mic clicks on the CTAF frequency select low, medium or high intensity. If the pilot had used them, they could have helped him establish a positive climb rate and keep his wings level.
But he didn’t. Perhaps he reasoned that the landing light was all he needed to keep him aligned with the centerline.
Shortly after becoming airborne, and before he had even passed the departure end of the runway, the pilot, perhaps impatient to get on course to Casper, began a right turn. The camper who watched the takeoff said that the bank angle was steep. He was right.
Based on the ground track from ADS-B returns, and assuming a ground speed of around 80 to 90 mph, the Cherokee’s initial bank angle in the turn must have been between 45 and 55 degrees. Perhaps there was a little of the helicopter pilot in that turn. Helicopters always lift off facing into the wind, then wheel around as needed to get on course.
A Cherokee 140, at gross weight and a density altitude of 5,500 feet, even leaned for best power, cannot maintain altitude in that steep a turn.
We can’t know what possessed him to turn so soon and so steeply, but he did, and it arrested the airplane’s climb. Now he was heading back toward the airport lights, and so he could keep the wings level without using the attitude indicator.
But if he wasn’t looking at the AI, he apparently wasn’t looking at the altimeter or VSI either. He could not have had any idea that the ground, invisible in the inky darkness, was just a few feet below him. In daylight, he would probably not have started the turn so early and so close to the ground, and, once he realized he was losing vertical speed, he would have leveled the wings and resumed his climb. In pitch darkness he had no idea where the ground was.
The judicious thing for him to have done would have been to fly straight out, wings level. He would have had the distant lights of Moab off to the left—a slight help, but a help nonetheless. After he’d put 1,000 feet or so between himself and the terrain, he would have turned on course and settled in for the slow climb to cruising altitude. The boys would have been asleep, and with luck they’d have made Mandan by 3 a.m.
It might have been.
This column first appeared in the October Issue 963 of the FLYING print edition.
