Plane crashes into homes in San Diego, Ca

azpilot said:
But let's tug on the, "he still FAILED to fly the plane" thread a bit. Regardless of whatever else happened, whether it was his AP, or situational awareness, or spatial disorientation, or getting behind the airplane, anticipating one instrument approach and receiving one that he had was not familiar with, or just being confused; whatever else the distraction or problem was, something contributed to his inability to fly the airplane at that particular moment in time.
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He failed to fly the airplane.
He failed to comply with ATC requests (over a span of minutes and numerous pleading requests)
He lied repeatedly about his actively complying with those requests ("Correcting..." when he was not)
He failed to ask for help if he was behind the plane
He failed to ask for help if he was suffering a malfunction

That broken layer would have allowed him a few peeks at the ground, I'd wager. If he was ever looking out any window. 800 foot thick broken layer, c'mon, that's not an operational hazard. I bet a 40 hour PPL could manage that.

He even knew he was in the kimchi when he told ATC he was at 2500 after being cleared several times to 5000.

I hate this accident the more and more I ponder it.
 
Fearless Tower said:
We don't know for sure. Bases were around 2400 and he got down to around 2400 right about the time ATC cancelled his approach clearance. Only the deceased knows what was visible at that moment.
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The pilot checked in with ATIS Sierra, but just before this approach began the controller announced ATIS Tango which included 1700 broken. However, he still could have simply been trying to circle early, by what visual means I can only guess.
 
and of course, sadly, less than 24 hours later, the very next day we have CAVU in San Diego. Those distant mountains are 30 miles away.
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You really can’t visualize how much more dangerous maneuvering at low altitude in low ceiling conditions is than a straight in? Remember that jet in Truckee recently? He was jovial up until he augered it in circling.
 
texasclouds said:
You really can’t visualize how much more dangerous maneuvering at low altitude in low ceiling conditions is than a straight in? Remember that jet in Truckee recently? He was jovial up until he augered it in circling.
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The risk of inadvertently going back into IMC during a circling is definitely there, but the approach itself shouldn’t be any more dangerous than any other, that could be equally fudged up if it’s not done correctly.
 
texasclouds said:
You really can’t visualize how much more dangerous maneuvering at low altitude in low ceiling conditions is than a straight in? Remember that jet in Truckee recently? He was jovial up until he augered it in circling.
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No. I'm not instrument rated. My point of reference is doing a five mile straight in final vs. flying a normal pattern entry and landing at a towered class delta airport. For me the normal pattern entry and landing is more straight forward and standardized. But like I said, my experience is all VMC. I don't have a lot of hood time, and so I don't appreciate the complexity and difficulties of a circling approach. I'd hope someone here can help me understand why they're inherently more dangerous.
 
azpilot said:
No. I'm not instrument rated. My point of reference is doing a five mile straight in final vs. flying a normal pattern entry and landing at a towered class delta airport. For me the normal pattern entry and landing is more straight forward and standardized. But like I said, my experience is all VMC. I don't have a lot of hood time, and so I don't appreciate the complexity and difficulties of a circling approach. I'd hope someone here can help me understand why they're inherently more dangerous.
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It's not a normal pattern. In my home airport case, with just one runway, you're "downwind" where you should be upwind, at only 600 feet AGL and you have to maneuver delicately to downwind and then base and then you can finally descend to final. You're at an unusual power setting for longer and at a lower altitude for longer.

That's my take anyway. A circle to 23 in this case wouldn't have been as bad as a single runway airport.
 
azpilot said:
No. I'm not instrument rated. My point of reference is doing a five mile straight in final vs. flying a normal pattern entry and landing at a towered class delta airport. For me the normal pattern entry and landing is more straight forward and standardized. But like I said, my experience is all VMC. I don't have a lot of hood time, and so I don't appreciate the complexity and difficulties of a circling approach. I'd hope someone here can help me understand why they're inherently more dangerous.
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There's no one thing but a combo. In the case of ctl 23 at myf, you could be doing a "pattern" at half the altitude of a standard vfr pattern. you likely just came out of IMC and transitioning to possibly low vis ground ref (1 mile, edit not act vfr). and in yesterday's case, the wind was strong, but importantly turbulent - there are mountains and valleys in the immediate vicinity. go fly a non standard pattern at 500 agl in 1 mile vis at an unfamiliar airport - that at least is the potential.

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CRQFlier said:
There's no one thing but a combo. In the case of ctl 23 at myf, you could be doing a "pattern" at half the altitude of a standard vfr pattern. you likely just came out of IMC and transitioning to possibly low vis vfr (1 mile). and in yesterday's case, the wind was strong, but importantly turbulent - there are mountains and valleys in the immediate vicinity. go fly a non standard pattern at 500 agl in 1 mile vis at an unfamiliar airport - that at least is the potential.
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I'm a VFR guy, but I see this being even more difficult in a fast mover. Something that wants to fly 100+ knots in the pattern and has a turning radius to match. Playing around low and tight in low viz (night or extremely low MVFR) in something like that has to be challenging.
 
RyanB said:
The risk of inadvertently going back into IMC during a circling is definitely there, but the approach itself shouldn’t be any more dangerous than any other, that could be equally fudged up if it’s not done correctly.
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This wasn't true Circling though. It's not like flying an approach to circling mins and then flying a circling maneuver below pattern altitude. That's the aspect that many commercial operators avoid.

What should have happened in the accident example, and what I've done many times at MYF, is that after breaking out on the ILS, you essentially shift to a visual approach and enter a left base for 23. If ceiling is high enough, there is no reason to go below pattern altitude.
 
There is a big difference circling with wx at say, 2300 broken verses just below ragged bottoms at <800’ AGL with marginal viz. This event had very generous cloud cover, just join a visual pattern once out of the clouds.

Yes, nighttime, marginal wx, throw in some terrain, circling can get dicey.
 
Throwing another one out there: Perhaps the personality of a successful cardiologist, one who is used to performing amazing procedures and saving lives, could that same personality be reluctant to ask for help while in trouble?
 
dreyna14 said:
It isn't fun but doable if you are aware and prepared
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That's the key isn't it. Since this pilot frequented the area often it's unlikely the slightly higher altitude was a factor, at least not by itself
 
RyanB said:
How so?
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I think they're more dangerous because pilots seem to have a tendency to panic if they screw them up and instead of flying the missed approach they yank and bank to try and make it work...
 
texasclouds said:
You really can’t visualize how much more dangerous maneuvering at low altitude in low ceiling conditions is than a straight in? Remember that jet in Truckee recently? He was jovial up until he augered it in circling.
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This assumes conditions are near the approach minimums. And my experience and in the case of this accident the ceilings were well above that. This was weather where planes could have been almost flying around the pattern VFR. It may have been a factor in so much as it threw the pilot off his mental game but it should not have objectively been a factor that far out on the approach by PENNY
 
Tantalum said:
This assumes conditions are near the approach minimums. And my experience and in the case of this accident the ceilings were well above that. This was weather where planes could have been almost flying around the pattern VFR. It may have been a factor in so much as it threw the pilot off his mental game but it should not have objectively been a factor that far out on the approach by PENNY
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Yeah. Looking at this case, this doesn't look like a LOC issue to me and I don't see that the visibility would have made a circle to land situation difficult in this case. But I think the question was asked generically, and that's where low scud, darkness, etc. would seem to make this a much more difficult task.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Human nature. Reminds me of a discussion on a FB group about a recent Decathlon crash in Georgia. Pilot did a low pass to show off for a pal, below treetop level, and tried to roll the aircraft. Of course he ate the trees on the far end. Decathlon is a pig when it comes to roll rate, and requires substantial nose up in inverted flight to avoid loss of altitude. Patty frigging Wagstaff could not roll that aircraft in that situation. And yet the discussion on the FB group was about carbon monoxide poisoning or a heart attack. Infuriating to me because according to my search of the NTSB database he is at least the 10th Decathlon pilot to eliminate himself from the gene pool in this exact manner.
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Sometimes (and most times) the easy answer is the correct one.
 
CRQFlier said:
There's no one thing but a combo. In the case of ctl 23 at myf, you could be doing a "pattern" at half the altitude of a standard vfr pattern. you likely just came out of IMC and transitioning to possibly low vis ground ref (1 mile, edit not act vfr). and in yesterday's case, the wind was strong, but importantly turbulent - there are mountains and valleys in the immediate vicinity. go fly a non standard pattern at 500 agl in 1 mile vis at an unfamiliar airport - that at least is the potential.

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I saw the video of the crash, and listened to the ATC tapes, at the time approach told him to climb and turn to 090, he was still more than 7 miles out, and was supposed to be at 3,000'. This wasn't a case of circling to land below pattern altitude. For what ever reason, mechanical, medical, a bad case of the leans, or whatever, instead of a climbing turn as instructed, he ended up in a high speed dive with what looked like nearly a 90 deg. bank angle.
 
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Fearless Tower said:
This wasn't true Circling though. It's not like flying an approach to circling mins and then flying a circling maneuver below pattern altitude. That's the aspect that many commercial operators avoid.

What should have happened in the accident example, and what I've done many times at MYF, is that after breaking out on the ILS, you essentially shift to a visual approach and enter a left base for 23. If ceiling is high enough, there is no reason to go below pattern altitude.
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Exactly. Some circling approaches, like the ones you practice for type ratings single engine at minimums with some other random failure thrown in, can definitely be hairy. But the ILS28R circle 23 at MYF on a day like this really should not be much of a factor for the average (IFR) pilot.
 
RudyP said:
...But the ILS28R circle 23 at MYF on a day like this really should not be much of a factor for the average (IFR) pilot.
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Once he popped out in that particular day/situation, it *looks* like a very straightforward VFR kinda thing. Just fly the airplane. Obviously it didn't work out that way.
 
The first link in the chain of errors was the failure to capture the LOC. When automation doesn't function as expected, it is very distracting. After that, there were other things that happened (or didn't) that completed the accident chain. I could envision a stubborn effort to configure the AP to work right instead of breaking that chain by taking over by hand. Or maybe the pilot did try to take over by hand, but it didn't come off right. Failure to successfully disconnect the AP, or failure to control the AC in IMC? Was there a gyro failure that contributed to the sequence of events? We will never know. But this really wasn't hard IMC, which makes it a head-scratcher.
 
wilkersk said:
I saw the video of the crash, and listened to the ATC tapes, at the time approach told him to climb and turn to 090, he was still more than 7 miles out, and was supposed to be at 3,000'. This wasn't a case of circling to land below pattern altitude. For what ever reason, mechanical, medical, a bad case of the leans, or whatever, instead of a climbing turn as instructed, he ended up in a high speed dive with what looked like nearly a 90 deg. bank angle.
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I know. I was responding to the general question that was posed about whats so difficult about ctl.

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I thought he was slurring real bad listening on the tablet, not so much on real speakers. Overly-abbreviated calls.-minor or major pet peeve?

Is the door cam to the North looking SSE?
Bank almost >90*
Correcting angle with the roof to level makes pitch not as dramatic either, could be as low as 25*-30* (eyeballing tape, no protractor))
 
I'm going to toss this out as something I've heard, not experienced - flying VFR is fine, flying IFR is fine, being somewhere between these two is not at all good. I'm wondering if someone's situational awareness can be completely confused by switching from the IFR approach, mentally to VFR for the circling approach, trying to get back to IFR and getting behind with everything, not knowing how to restore that IFR situational awareness. Maybe not mentioning it because they thought they knew where they were.

Or maybe just as simple as getting behind on everything, and not either going missed or just saying "N1234, I've lost the approach can you give me vectors to go missed?"
 
I ran everything into a 3D projection, including all relevant navaids and intersections. Then I overlayed the communications with the position timestamps.

Summary of Facts:
  • The first time he was told to expect the ILS 28R, landing 23 was well prior (at least 10 minutes) to the tape segment with the accident.
  • He was within 1/4 mile of the center of the localizer course when he suddenly turned to a course of 303°and diverged, descending quite sharply. Up until this turn, his altitude and headings were laser precise, after, both got very erratic.
  • 21 seconds later ATC queried him about drifting right of course.
  • 13 seconds later, he asked if he’s cleared for runway 23, to which ATC replied “you’re not even tracking the localizer” and began re-vectoring him.
  • 10 seconds later is the first low altitude alert. A climb was ordered and 22G began to climb, still on the original diverging track of ~300°.
  • The next several climbs he executed were what ATC ordered, however groundspeed got very low, down to 105kts at one point, considering there was a tailwind aloft.
  • After he finally executed a very slow right turn to 090, his altitude decayed to 2500 while in the turn, despite being ordered to 3800 and 4000, respectively. At this point his speed picked up dramatically.
  • He then did one more gentle climb and descent before the second low altitude alert.

  • After the second altitude alert, he climbed up to 3400, but at this point, his speed was much higher than the last zoom climb.

  • After that he began a rapid, spiraling descent with no further communication from the accident aircraft.
  • His altitude throughout the entire sequence (until the terminal dive) was above the reported cloud bases.
 
If you ever find yourself in doubt request vectors out of the class airspace to regroup. Whoever you are talking with will respond favorably and vector you safely away. Make a determination and, if in doubt, request another approached or go somewhere else. Stay within your limits. :(
 
PiperW said:
If you ever find yourself in doubt request vectors out of the class airspace to regroup. Whoever you are talking with will respond favorably and vector you safely away. Make a determination and, if in doubt, request another approached or go somewhere else. Stay within your limits. :(
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I think the lure of the airport can be very strong at the end of a flight, and can see a pilot instinctively not wanting to climb back into the muck with the ground so near. If things did start to go wrong, I’d like to think I’d do my best to find level flight and then establish a best rate of climb, at least initially on whatever heading I happened to be on, and then regroup. If ATC didn’t like it, I’d just declare an emergency.

But that’s easy to say, and no doubt much harder to do in a state of panic and disorientation - if that’s in fact what was going on.
 
Don’t be afraid to ask for vectors. If they give you “fly the missed approach and contact xxx.xx” tell them you are behind the airplane and need immediate vectors.

I saw a CFI commenting about learning from this to better teach his students. I don’t know if he already teaches this or not…but teach your students what to do when they get behind the airplane and disoriented on an approach. Teach them how to communicate that to ATC and dig their way out of the hole. In my experience this isn’t really taught to students. I never once had an instructor take me fully deflected off the glide slope/localizer, screw up my airspeed (high or low) and ask me what to do now. We focused on flying it right every time. Teach a student what to do that one time it goes wrong.
 
When he started those dives and pull outs at the end, he was alternating between 0G and >2G. That's gotta play havok with your inner ear.

I'm not an IFR guy, my things are taildraggers and acro, but seems to me a guy like that has the means to upgrade his panel to glass. Redundant digital AHI with battery backup. Take the whole "vacuum or gyro failure" discussion out of the realm of possibility. What would it have cost him to throw a pair of GI-275's in the panel ... 15K?
 
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