PiperSport intro flight -Santa Monica, Sept 8, 2022

[Rush]

This one gets to me. The CFI, what a cutie pie. Needless death! Intro flight coming in for landing. During or before flare it pitches sharply up, someone is pushing the mic and you hear “Let go! Let go! Let go!” Then stall, crash, fire.

Three theories: 1. Something broke in the plane (unlikely), 2. Student panicked and froze on the stick, and 3. Student committed an intentional act. My opinion is number 2 is most likely but we may never know. There is debate in the comments about whether to allow intro students to follow on the stick (yoke) during landing. Consensus leans to no, I would agree.

There is one more possible theory put forth. The student was on the stick and throttle, the CFI said “Pull the throttle all the way back,” and the student had the laterality problem talked about in Naked Pilot (brain sent the signal to the wrong hand). I think this very unlikely on an intro flight as I don’t see any CFI allowing a first time in the air student to have hands on the throttle during landing.

They were both young men. It’s sad when old pilots die but the young ones way more so.

CSA PiperSport, N126WK: Fatal accident occurred September 08, 2022 at Santa Monica Airport (KSMO), Los Angeles County, California

This is preliminary information, subject to change, and may contain errors. Any errors in this report will be corrected when the final repor...

www.kathrynsreport.com

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I also favor #2. Similar accident in our area where the student apparently just froze. https://flyersforum.org/threads/ercoupe-ak-chin-az-10-sep-19.82/

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Video with detailed description and ATC audio (somewhat disturbing).

ATC audio separately at https://archive.liveatc.net/ksmo/KSMO-Twr-Sep-08-2022-2300Z.mp3

Incident at 25:50 or 1551 seconds into recording. The commentor on the video is correct that it sounds like the passenger is grunting or saying no and the CFI is screaming 'let go'.

The one thing that seems like it argues for student on controls is that that would be consistent with the CFI screaming sounding like it is in the background and the student grunting on his mike. Student locked up on the yoke and pressing the transmit button.

Intentional act seems less likely. Why wouldn't the student have just crashed into the mountains or the ocean of something if wanting to commit suicide this way.

This is scary if you are a CFI. I know an instructor who was retired and getting ready to come back in as an LSA instructor. After the 2019 crash at Ak-Chin, she decided it was not worth it.

 

[Rush]

What is he talking about, feet can go to the other rudder pedals? I’m not familiar with that plane but how on earth would the person in the right seat use the left seat pedals thinking it‘s theirs? About 22:15.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Was just discussing this with my wife and remembered something from my first few landings in a small plane. I was pretty convinced the plane was going to crash into the runway. The approach seemed so steep and fast. I remember thinking, do I really trust this instructor is not going to crash this?

So perhaps a very new person on the introductory flight just got overwhelmed by that feeling, grabbed the yoke and tried pulling back?

I was always told that as a CFI you have to be willing to hit the student in the head to get them off the controls if needed. This by CFIs who actually did have to hit a student.