Accident Analysis: ‘Watch me!’

Last month I wrote about a commercial pilot who bet everything on his ability to pull off an exacting feat of airmanship, landing a heavy airplane on a short field at high density altitude (“Accident Analysis: Calculate your risks,” November 2016 Flight Training). Less than a month after that tragedy, an even more baffling accident showed that those well beyond retirement age can remain vulnerable to takeover by their inner 5-year-olds.

The airplane was a homebuilt floatplane that resembled a Super Cub. The pilot was 75 years old; he’d obtained his private pilot certificate in 1973. In 1996 he was awarded a repairman’s certificate for his “Polar Cub” six days after its airworthiness certificate was issued. Friends said that he’d taken off from Jewel Lake in the southwest part of Anchorage, with the intention of scouting territory for a fly-in hunting trip near Willow, Alaska.

Much as we prefer giving other pilots the benefit of the doubt, there’s no way to excuse aggressive low-altitude maneuvering over a residential area.The NTSB’s preliminary report quotes multiple witnesses who saw the airplane make “two low-level, high-speed, 360-degree right turns” over a residential neighborhood in Anchorage. The first was flown about 150 to 200 feet agl, the second at no more than 50 feet. One witness, himself a pilot, said that the bank angle of that second orbit exceeded 60 degrees. At the end of the turn the airplane’s nose pitched down sharply and the engine noise increased. The wings rolled level an instant before it hit the trees. Photographs from the site show it lying inverted, the fire that consumed the fabric fuselage still burning.

No one on the ground was injured, but a man walking his dog narrowly avoided being hit. The pilot’s dog died with him in the crash.

At this early stage, of course, a great deal remains unknown. Did he have a friend (or enemy) in one of the houses he buzzed, or had he chosen the location at random? Had some medical event or intoxicating substance impaired his judgment? Did he have a history of this kind of stunt? Answers to at least some of these questions should emerge from the investigation, but it’s hard to imagine any that could exculpate this airman.

Much as we prefer giving other pilots the benefit of the doubt, there’s no way to excuse aggressive low-altitude maneuvering over a residential area. Even if the pilot understood the aerodynamics of accelerated stalls and consciously accepted that risk, it wasn’t his choice to make. The people whose homes he just missed never signed on—and his dog didn’t stand a chance.

As pilots in command, we have responsibilities—to those on the ground and in the aircraft—that far outweigh any gratification we might get from shouting, “Look at me!”