![]() The “slight” pitch up reported by the witness suggests that the pilot belatedly became aware of his low altitude and instinctively attempted to correct it by raising the nose. The added drag of the steep turn would have eaten up some speed. The pilot’s excessively low altitude when turning to final hints that, possibly from force of habit or because he was too dependent on “the numbers,” he may have descended with the manifold pressure setting that he would use for a normal base leg, much closer to the runway. The standard glidepath angle for a landing approach, used by both ILS and VASI systems, is three degrees, which requires a height of almost 300 feet a mile from the runway threshold. Investigators uncovered a couple of pieces of information that seemed relevant in retrospect. An instructor who gave the pilot eight additional hours of instruction before endorsing him for retest did not remember much about him, but did comment that eight additional hours after a failed private ride seemed like a lot. Both are skills requiring sensitivity to the feel of an airplane at speeds close to the stall. His deficiencies were in soft field takeoffs and short field landings. The pilot had failed his first private check ride. Another witness told a newspaper reporter, “I have never seen a plane flying so close over my head.” By the time the stall occurred, the 210 was still a mile from the end of the runway, but was reported by one witness to be only 30 to 50 feet above the ground. Some of the loss of groundspeed resulted from turning into the wind, but it is more difficult to account for the loss of altitude. The striking thing about the radar data is the rapid loss of both altitude and groundspeed-nearly 25 knots-during the turn to final. The pilot of the 150 described the 210 as “banking steeply” from base to final and then pitching up slightly. The combination of its westward drift and its increased groundspeed on base carried it past the extended centerline. Its groundspeed increased by about five knots as it turned base, suggesting that the wind may have been more easterly than reported. ![]() The 210 maintained a fairly constant height on the downwind leg until the runway was behind it, when it began to descend. The pilot, a 46-year-old doctor with 200 hours, died. Rolling out of the turn at a very low altitude but still a mile from the runway, the 210 stalled, crashed, and burned. The 210 overshot the extended centerline, and the pilot turned tightly in order to re-establish himself on the final approach course. The board’s analysis does not match the actual circumstances of the accident.īy the time the 210 turned base, it had drifted somewhat westward, perhaps because of the quartering tailwind or because the runway, which was on the pilot’s right, was so far behind him that he could no longer accurately judge his position with respect to it. ![]() ![]() The 210 followed the 150, gaining on it slowly, and extended its downwind until the 150 had turned final. The 210 passed south of the traffic pattern, turned north well east of the downwind leg-the area west of the airport is residential-and then entered the pattern behind the trainer that had just turned downwind. Two Cessna 150s were in the pattern doing touch-and-goes, making right traffic for Runway 33. ![]() A gusty 10-knot wind blew from the north. The field elevation is 6,877 feet, but the density altitude was closer to 10,000. Near noon on a warm August day, a Cessna T210N, inbound from Colorado Springs, approached Meadow Lake Airport (KFLY), at Peyton, Colorado. ![]()
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