Report: King Air Down Near LVJ

Pilot is from Alabama and we have a lot of mutual friends. Still waiting to hear some details.
 
I know they happen, but it just seems like there have been so many accidents the last month or so.
 
Lots of fog this a.m and I am only a few miles a way...
 
Pilot was on their way from AUS to Scholes. Scholes was below min and pilot diverted to LVJ. Seems they made one attempt at LVJ, went around and crashed on second attempt.
That's all I know at this time, it's close to my office?
 
Get there itis. May he rest in peace.
 
I work in downtown Houston. The cloud ceiling was barely above my office window at 9AM. I'm on the 25th floor. RIP
 
This seems so senseless to me. AHX is 9 min due west and SGR was just a few minutes more, they were both above minimums. Pilot had to know that as he had just flown in from the west.
I just don't get these types of tragedies.

I guess it's the old addage you just can't legislate stupid, but you can elect it.
 
DaytonaLynn said:
This seems so senseless to me. AHX is 9 min due west and SGR was just a few minutes more, they were both above minimums. Pilot had to know that as he had just flown in from the west.
I just don't get these types of tragedies.

I guess it's the old addage you just can't legislate stupid, but you can elect it.
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I can't say this is fact, but it appears from the name released by the news and a lookup in the FAA database, that the pilot did not have an instrument rating. Its possible he just passed his checkride and had a temporary certificate.

It also seems like he tried to get in to LVJ instead of calling ATC and asking for help getting to an airport where he could land VFR. Which would have been the prudent thing to do, had he been trapped on top without an instrument rating.
 
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dell30rb said:
I can't say this is fact, but it appears from the name released by the news and a lookup in the FAA database, that the pilot did not have an instrument rating. Its possible he just passed his checkride and had a temporary certificate.
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Will anyone even insure a pilot in a KA without an instrument rating?
 
Fearless Tower said:
Will anyone even insure a pilot in a KA without an instrument rating?
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I know of at least one guy that had a 414A that was VFR only, but that's nothing like a King Air! A pressurized turbo-prop without an IR is pretty much useless, you are limited to staying below FL180 if nothing else. I would be surprised if the pilot did not have an IR.;)
Very sad for all involved.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Will anyone even insure a pilot in a KA without an instrument rating?
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If he's wealthy enough to self-insure he can pretty much do anything he wants. It's the insurance companies that tell us what we can and cannot do with the ratings that we have on our pilot certificates. Take the insurance company out of the picture and a VFR only private pilot with a multiengine can fly a KA-100 (or any other propeller light twin) to his heart's content on nothing but a VFR checkout and a current BFR. Money never was nor will it ever be an adequate substitute for skill and experience. Doing what he was doing is prima facie evidence that he was lacking in the good judgement department.
 
Dead Stick said:
If he's wealthy enough to self-insure he can pretty much do anything he wants. It's the insurance companies that tell us what we can and cannot do with the ratings that we have on our pilot certificates. Take the insurance company out of the picture and a VFR only private pilot with a multiengine can fly a KA-100 (or any other propeller light twin) to his heart's content on nothing but a VFR checkout and a current BFR. Money never was nor will it ever be an adequate substitute for skill and experience. Doing what he was doing is prima facie evidence that he was lacking in the good judgement department.
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That is certainly true, although I would venture to say that the majority of folks who can afford to buy a King Air (even an older one) have sufficient assets that they want to protect from a liability standpoint and are not likely to go barefoot.
 
The Dixie Company is owned by a pilot, Claude Hendrickson, the person wearing the red cap in the op's link. Claude is a warbird collector,a nice gracious fellow I had the pleasure of meeting recently. Before this most recent tragedy he had a warbird ,Douglas AD-4N Skyraider forfeited to DHS after losing a court ruling that it was illegally imported.
My sympathies go out to the pilot's family and to Claude.I think we should wait for the facts to come out before judging the pilot's decisions and actions.It is a lot easier to make the right moves from where we're sitting than where he was sitting there in the soup.
 
I sure wish pilots would rethink the whole IFR thing when it is at mins. Seems like a lot of pilots just are not proficient enough. Granted we only hear about the ones that don't make it. Regardless, I'm tired of reading about the ones that don't.

May the family find comfort in their time of grief.
 
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Fearless Tower said:
That is certainly true, although I would venture to say that the majority of folks who can afford to buy a King Air (even an older one) have sufficient assets that they want to protect from a liability standpoint and are not likely to go barefoot.
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You and I think that way, but I recently ran into a guy who was flying around without coverage in an MU-2. They are out there and more common than you would think.
 
housefly said:
The Dixie Company is owned by a pilot, Claude Hendrickson, the person wearing the red cap in the op's link. Claude is a warbird collector,a nice gracious fellow I had the pleasure of meeting recently. Before this most recent tragedy he had a warbird ,Douglas AD-4N Skyraider forfeited to DHS after losing a court ruling that it was illegally imported.
My sympathies go out to the pilot's family and to Claude.I think we should wait for the facts to come out before judging the pilot's decisions and actions.It is a lot easier to make the right moves from where we're sitting than where he was sitting there in the soup.
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Odd how this pilot is getting skewered, yet the little plane full of pro pilots out west was mostly conjectured to be mechanical failure. IFR stuff bores me so I don't know enough to say in either case, I do find the different reactions curious.
 
ClimbnSink said:
Odd how this pilot is getting skewered, yet the little plane full of pro pilots out west was mostly conjectured to be mechanical failure. IFR stuff bores me so I don't know enough to say in either case, I do find the different reactions curious.
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True, but chances are........
 
Obviously we don't know yet what happened but I think one person in this thread mentioned landing when at minimums.

I just started my ifr training and what we practice each flight is to confirm the minimum and stick to it. If my cfii wants me to do the holding pattern he says the clouds are too low and to start the procedure as soon as I reach minimum. If he wants me to land I get to the minimum and he says take off my foggles.

So since the minimum altitude is a hard and fast number with clearance to push in full power how or why do people go below that altitude?

And I imagine if you filed ifr and even your alternate is below minimum then you can simply ask atc for a nearby Vfr airport. Heck, wouldn't you ask atc if your alternate is below minimum after doing a missed at your primary?

Or am I thinking about this because its fresh in my mind but after months go by once I get my rating will I start forgetting things like this?
 
Dead Stick said:
You and I think that way, but I recently ran into a guy who was flying around without coverage in an MU-2. They are out there and more common than you would think.
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Damn! Talk about writing checks your body can't cash.
 
Dead Stick said:
You and I think that way, but I recently ran into a guy who was flying around without coverage in an MU-2. They are out there and more common than you would think.
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Some people subscribe to the theory that they can afford a loss, if the airplane is totaled, they just get another one. The problem is the liability, not the hull cost, would I want to lose an airplane, no. But, it wouldn't destroy me financially. IF I was to hurt someone with an airplane, that could very well harm my financial picture, so I have insurance.;)
I know several guys that only carry liability insurance on new vehicles, they just self insure the collision and let someone else carry the liability, seems to work for them so far. ;)
 
ClimbnSink said:
Odd how this pilot is getting skewered, yet the little plane full of pro pilots out west was mostly conjectured to be mechanical failure. IFR stuff bores me so I don't know enough to say in either case, I do find the different reactions curious.
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I'm guessing you're referring to the crash in aspen. In my mind these crashes are very similar. Both involved pilots going beyond their abilities, one with flying in conditions he wasn't qualified for, the other in conditions exceeding the limitations of the airplane. Simply pilot error.
 
Groundpounder said:
I'm guessing you're referring to the crash in aspen. In my mind these crashes are very similar. Both involved pilots going beyond their abilities, one with flying in conditions he wasn't qualified for, the other in conditions exceeding the limitations of the airplane. Simply pilot error.
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I think he meant the Debonair accident near KTEX.
 
N747JB said:
Some people subscribe to the theory that they can afford a loss, if the airplane is totaled, they just get another one. The problem is the liability, not the hull cost, would I want to lose an airplane, no. But, it wouldn't destroy me financially. IF I was to hurt someone with an airplane, that could very well harm my financial picture, so I have insurance.;)
I know several guys that only carry liability insurance on new vehicles, they just self insure the collision and let someone else carry the liability, seems to work for them so far. ;)
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Insurance is not unlimited protection from personal liability. It seems that most people carry insurance with liability limits around $1,000,000. So someone who's willing to self-insure for that amount is in the same position, liability wise, as someone with insurance up to that point. Where insurance really proves its value is in defending you against claims where there's no (or less) liability.
 
If the airplane is bought under an LLC, you could skip the insurance and let the liability protection of the LLC take the hit.

I suspect these billionaire self insured folks are doing that.

RIP to the KA people.
 
txflyer said:
If the airplane is bought under an LLC, you could skip the insurance and let the liability protection of the LLC take the hit.
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The fact that the airplane is owned by the LLC might protect the owner(s), but it doesn't affect the pilot's liability. So if those are the same person, it may be moot.
 
Lindberg said:
The fact that the airplane is owned by the LLC might protect the owner(s), but it doesn't affect the pilot's liability. So if those are the same person, it may be moot.
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I think if you are not the manager of the LLC, the liability does not carry through to you. Only if you're actively managing.

I could be wrong.

Only an arrogant numbskull would fly without liability protection of some kind if you have anything to protect at all.
 
txflyer said:
I think if you are not the manager of the LLC, the liability does not carry through to you. Only if you're actively managing.

I could be wrong.

Only an arrogant numbskull would fly without liability protection of some kind if you have anything to protect at all.
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This has been discussed before. If you're the operator of the flight at the time of the accident, it matters not what entity the airplane is registered to. You're personally liable. LLC status as an owner only helps you if you're not jockeying the contraption when it steamrolls through the proverbial bus of schoolchildren and white soccer moms.
 
But if you don't survive the crash, which is the case the majority of the time, who cares?!

That's why other assets are in different LLCs and trusts.
 
hindsight2020 said:
This has been discussed before. If you're the operator of the flight at the time of the accident, it matters not what entity the airplane is registered to. You're personally liable. LLC status as an owner only helps you if you're not jockeying the contraption when it steamrolls through the proverbial bus of schoolchildren and white soccer moms.
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A hypothetical ...

This is why wealthy peoples bulk of their wealth is tied up in Trusts. With an LLC owning the plane, and the pilot not really owning anything outside of Trust, there's no where to get blood from.

The wealthy pilot may have had a few hundred thousand and a house outside of Trust, and the plane was in an LLC, so who gets sued for how much?

The liability would not carry through to an irrevocable Trust. They are almost ambivalent and insulated against creditors and litigants.
 
timwinters said:
Why have a house outside the trust? Mine isn't.
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Good point. I said he 'may' have a house outside Trust, mine still is, but if we upgrade, I may deed it to our ILIT.

If you keep yourself in a position where you don't 'own' anything, as in a Trust owns it, specifically as in an irrevocable Trust owns it, you can be the beneficiary of it all, but you don't own it or run it, so you can't be sued for it.

In this way, I can see where a man may get away running without liability, but it's still insane when there's cheap enough insurance out there, and your wealthy and can afford it.
 
That's exactly the point I was trying to make in post #32...but, apparently, fearless didn't get it.
 
If a man did want to go self insured, he better have several million$ to back himself up.

Or have nothing. Or the appearance of nothing.

In which case, this is what wealthy people do. They remain wealthy while giving off the legal appearance that they don't own Jack Squat. They fragment their estate into Trusts and vehicles that have limited liability.
 
timwinters said:
That's exactly the point I was trying to make in post #32...but, apparently, fearless didn't get it.
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Trusts, perhaps, but you also included LLCs which won't necessarily protect you or your family if you are the pilot.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Trusts, perhaps, but you also included LLCs which won't necessarily protect you or your family if you are the pilot.
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If other assets are in other LLCs then, yes.

But, I'm not advocating running naked. I don't, I just know it can be done successfully if that's what one chooses to do, especially in a hobby where one will likely be killed in an accident. It's relatively easy to protect your heirs.
 
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