172 Crash near KFWN (Sussex County)

Many articles now out now. This is my flight school and my instructor Thomas Fischer (he is an owner of the school). 2nd guy was Glen M. Devries, who flew on Blue Origin with Shatner last month. Glen was working with Tom on his commercial license. I have no details on what happened with the flight.

RIP. So sad...

I am not sure what's going to happen to the school now
 
I should add that tail number on FAA crash record is wrong and has a typo. it's actually 2011 CESSNA 172S registered in NJ. It's one of the flight school's planes
 
Vadim said:
I should add that tail number on FAA crash record is wrong and has a typo. it's actually 2011 CESSNA 172S registered in NJ. It's one of the flight school's planes
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What is the correct tail number?
 
Ed Haywood said:
What is the correct tail number?
Click to expand...

Nevermind, found it. N90559.

Track is interesting. Short flight of about 15 minutes west bound, gradual climb at steady airspeed with minimal maneuvering, then suddenly stalls at 6000'.

How the heck do two very experienced pilots stall a Cessna 172 and fall out of the sky from 6000 feet? With no Mayday?

stall.PNG
 
Wow... very tragic accident indeed. I would speculate based on the FA data that, if this were a training flight, they were starting off by climbing to a safe maneuvering altitude, and proceeded into a power-off stall. You can even see right before - two 90 degree clearing turns. That area of NW NJ is the traditional "practice area" for flight schools - I did all of my primary training out there. I can't imagine how an experienced instructor, on a great weather day like it was yesterday, could end up in an unrecoverable spin in a 172S. I'm betting there is another factor involved here.
 
Yes I went to that general area with this particular CFI numerous times. However usually at or below 3500. But I'm working on private while In this case I know that the student was working on commercial license. So maybe they practicing stalls/spin recovery or something similar?
 
There was another fatal crash just a few years ago close by (Orange County airport area) where a long time CFI (who owned a small Flight instruction operation and also flew a float plane off the Wallkill River in Wallkill, NY) crashed with a commercial student. Makes me think twice about getting my spin endorsement except with an aerobatic pilot in an aerobatic airplane.
 
Some things just make no sense…this is one of them…
 
Vadim said:
Many articles now out now. This is my flight school and my instructor Thomas Fischer (he is an owner of the school). 2nd guy was Glen M. Devries, who flew on Blue Origin with Shatner last month. Glen was working with Tom on his commercial license. I have no details on what happened with the flight.

RIP. So sad...

I am not sure what's going to happen to the school now
Click to expand...

Sorry for your loss. Not flight related, but I lost a friend today, too. Just retired a couple of years ago. RC pilot, ham, 9-11 responder. A tough day.
 
N90559 just came out that day after annual done by Andrew from Adventures Aviation located in Solberg.
Awaiting FAA /NTSB reports.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Nevermind, found it. N90559.

Track is interesting. Short flight of about 15 minutes west bound, gradual climb at steady airspeed with minimal maneuvering, then suddenly stalls at 6000'.

How the heck do two very experienced pilots stall a Cessna 172 and fall out of the sky from 6000 feet? With no Mayday?

View attachment 101798
Click to expand...
Why do you think it suddenly stalled?
 
If it just came out of annual that will certainly be a focus area in the investigation. I lost a friend last year on a aircraft just out of annual that was a maintenance failure. Seems to be happening more often.
 
200mph is a LOT for a Skyhawk. If the surface winds are that strong I think about staying home.
 
Robert W said:
Never Exceed Vne 158 KIAS. Looks to me like on flight aware on several occasions they were over 200
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Are we looking at the same track? I see one spike to 171 MPH at 10:34am. Other than that, the speed data stays under 150MPH for the entire flight.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Last minute of flight. Blue line is speed. Orange is altitude. What does this look like to you?

View attachment 101811
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Looks like probably a stall/spin to me also. I was wondering if you had read something else about it that narrowed that down. There are other things that could account for the last FlightAware ADS-B 'hit' to have been then
 
Vadim said:
Yes I went to that general area with this particular CFI numerous times. However usually at or below 3500. But I'm working on private while In this case I know that the student was working on commercial license. So maybe they practicing stalls/spin recovery or something similar?
Click to expand...
Perhaps, but having spun my Skyhawk many times, recovery is a non-event (literally, let go and do nothing and most of the work is done for you.) If it's a relatively late model it may have some recording capabilities. Something went wrong, and given the fleet size I'd like to know what it was.
 
Jeff767 said:
If it just came out of annual that will certainly be a focus area in the investigation. I lost a friend last year on a aircraft just out of annual that was a maintenance failure. Seems to be happening more often.
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Given that POA is Speculation Central, I will submit a question: what mistake(s) on a typical annual could cause a loss of control accident?
 
luvflyin said:
Looks like probably a stall/spin to me also. I was wondering if you had read something else about it that narrowed that down. There are other things that could account for the last FlightAware ADS-B 'hit' to have been then
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No, nothing additional, just the track. I agree, conclusion is never certain, could be other explanations. But flight profile is clearly consistent with intentional stall or spin. Pilot and CFI working on Comm ticket, gradual climb to 6000 MSL, arrival over known training area, clearing turns, then linear deceleration to stall speed while holding altitude.

But why did an activity done many thousands of times without incident suddenly go wrong? Given benign nature of C172, two very experienced pilots, and plenty of recovery altitude, some kind of mechanical issue with controls seems plausible. Annual the day before certainly makes you go "hmmm".
 
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Ed Haywood said:
No, nothing additional, just the track. I agree, conclusion is not certain, could be other explanations. But flight profile is clearly consistent with intentional stall or spin. Pilot and CFI working on Comm ticket, gradual climb to 6000 MSL, arrival over known training area, clearing turns, then linear deceleration to stall speed while holding altitude.

The obvious question would be why did an activity done many thousands of times without incident suddenly go wrong. Given benign characteristics of 172, two very experienced pilots, and recent annual, some kind of mechanical issue with controls seems plausible.
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Yeah. We may get some clues pretty soon. Lately the NTSB has been putting a lot more info in their Preliminaries than they used to.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Are we looking at the same track? I see one spike to 171 MPH at 10:34am. Other than that, the speed data stays under 150MPH for the entire flight.
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Look at the flight before the fatal flight. The plane exceeded 210 and 217 mph on the previous flight.
I think someone damaged the air frame on the prior flight and it failed during the first maneuver?

Look at all the previous flights! Am I looking at that right? It looks like they regularly over speed ed that plane?

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N90559/history/20211107/1804Z/KSFZ/KCDW
 
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Gary Ward said:
Look at the flight before the fatal flight. The plane exceeded 210 and 217 mph on the previous flight.
I think someone damaged the air frame on the prior flight and it failed during the first maneuver?

Look at all the previous flights! Am I looking at that right? It looks like they regularly over speed ed that plane?
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Good eyes!

There has to be something wrong with the ADS-B data. Aircraft takes off, climbs to 2000 MSL, levels off, accelerates to 226 mph IN LEVEL FLIGHT, and holds it for 2 minutes? That's no Cessna 172.

speed.JPG
 
Hi everyone.
Very sad Indeed. RIP and condolences to all related in some way.
I agree there is something wrong with the ADSB Data if you look at the ..flightradar24 you can see a very unusual track.
Many of the ADSB out are not transmitting sufficient data points for some of these Inet sites to get a good track.
 
Gary Ward said:
Look at the flight before the fatal flight. The plane exceeded 210 and 217 mph on the previous flight.
I think someone damaged the air frame on the prior flight and it failed during the first maneuver?

Look at all the previous flights! Am I looking at that right? It looks like they regularly over speed ed that plane?

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N90559/history/20211107/1804Z/KSFZ/KCDW
Click to expand...

I does look like that.

Here is a flight where it looks like they dove from 1600 (!) to 600 agl at speeds in excess of 170 knots
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N90559/history/20211106/1640Z/KCDW/KCDW

A regularly over-sped airframe sure sounds like a recipe for disaster.

I completely agree that two competent pilots in a stock, benign airplane falling out of the sky from 6500 feet without so much as a radio call is quite unnerving. There has to be more to this.

Looking further it's not hard to find flights with +/- 100 knot variations in level flight such as this https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N90559/history/20211102/1321Z/KCDW/L 40.91885 -74.25659
 
Wouldn't a bird strike have to be considered as a possibility with such a sudden and precipitous outcome ?
 
N444MD said:
Wouldn't a bird strike have to be considered as a possibility with such a sudden and precipitous outcome ?
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I think just about everything will be considered; In my very limited experience I've never seen birds that high AGL.

Hopefully given the high profile of the pilots the NTSB will give this one the fine-toothed comb treatment and we'll get some answers.
 
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