CBreezy

AA pilot crashes and kills himself and son after losing electric in airplane. Unable to turn on the airport lighting late at night, he texts his fiance to bring a flashlight to the airport to help guide him to the field.

Festus is within 30 min of St Louis International, St Louis Downtown and a secondary executive airport, all VFR and all 24/7.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/father-and-son-killed-in-small-plane-crash-in-festus/article_8ae6adcb-fef5-55ec-a341-3868fa136bab.html#tracking-source=home-the-latest

USMCFLYR

Another forum reporting he was an Envoy pilot.

In any case - poor ADM to try and use a person with a flashlight at the end of that runway.

Sad to hear of such an outcome.

JohnBurke

I've done a lot of landings at night with a light, whether car lights or flare pots or hand held lights, to mark a landing spot. It's not that difficult and not dangerous. That said, with other options nearby and likely a host of lit runways in the region that don't require pilot intervention and probably aren't controlled, there's little excuse for not getting back on the ground in one piece.

galaxy flyer

I doubt any AA or Envoy pilots had training or experience qualifying them for that kind of operation. If he could contact his fiancé, he could have landed at STL, BLV or Spirit.

GF

Stoked27

Very sad outcome. I keep my handheld Icom in my flight bag every time I fly (still time-building, so I’m only in small GA planes). After I read this article I double-checked my battery and recharged it for good measure.

Am I the odd man out to always carry a backup or do other people do that too? I understand in the 121 world it wouldn’t be as necessary for a backup, but in GA I don’t know where I learned to be paranoid about always having a backup. I haven’t experienced a radio or electrical failure yet (only an alternator failure). Maybe that was it.

JohnBurke

It looks like a Cessna...neither AA nor Envoy provides any training to fly a Cessna...but as pilots with experience outside of their respective airlines, they should certainly have been able to figure it out.

The father, in particular was an experienced pilot. According to the article referenced at the outset to this thread, "He served in the U.S. Army, Air Force and Iowa National Guard, flying medical evacuation helicopters. He also flew medical evacuation helicopters for the University of Iowa hospital.

He flew commercially for American Airlines after he retired from the military. He was an officer with the Missouri Commemorative Air Force."

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...ome-the-latest

Paranoid about an electrical failure? Having grown up in airplanes with no electrical systems, I find it hard to imagine what's so scary about not having a radio. It really isn't that big a deal.

When doing night landings, I always shut off the cockpit and landing lights and required students to do landing without. It would be a severe disservice to let a student go who wasn't prepared for that.

The father, an experienced military and medevac pilot, certainly had ample night experience and NVG experience landing in unlighted locations or minimally lit locations. While I doubt he had NVG's with him in this case, the ability to land with ground reference lights such as a car at the end of the runway or a flashlight, especially when one is talking to the other person, shouldn't be an issue...especially if familiar with the airport.

With other airports in the area that did have lights, landing would have been a non-issue. Even towered locations.

Perhaps what kept them away from the towered location was the inability to light up. If they didn't have enough battery left to que up the runway lights with radio transmissions, they probably lacked position lights, too, which would have meant that they couldn't even have garnered a light gun signal at a towered airport, as no one would see them. In that case, it would strictly have been see and avoid, and they may have ended up where they did because they didn't want to be in that situation. No way to ask them now.

Adlerdriver

NY to MO is at least 700 NM (if we're talking western NY). Long way for a -150. Considering the time of the crash, maybe they were pushing it? Possible some bad fuel planning limited their options?
I know - don't speculate. Just trying to reconcile how one ends up blowing off some of the available surrounding airports.

Stoked27

I guess paranoid is a strong word. I'm not afraid it's going to fail, it's not keeping me from flying in the slightest bit. My handheld is not on my personal MEL. Although just like keeping some spare batteries on hand, I would rather have my handheld with me rather than collecting dust at home. I was taught all through my PPL to land without the landing light and greatly preferred it so it didn't mess up my depth perception when the light hit the runway, but I've since become fine with both and it makes no difference to me. It took a different instructor after my PPL to make me get used to landing with the landing light. I've more-so considered having my handheld with me for "benefit" of communication purposes (not "necessity" of communication) rather than specifically for turning on the airport lighting at night after hours.

You speak about the accident pilot's experience, but I'm not Monday-morning quarterbacking this unfortunate event. I never suggested they needed to have a handheld, but as with reading about every accident it makes me ask myself... what would I have done in that situation?... and I concluded I would've reached for my radio. Then I realized, dang, I'm the only person that I know who keeps their radio in their bag. Even of the folks who I know that fly gliders and purchased their own radios. So maybe you'll say I'm being dumb, but I'll still keep my handheld in my bag instead of in a drawer at home. I'm sure my perspective will change if I get the opportunity to fly large jets, but right now flying solo day and night in beat-up rental airplanes while I'm still a low-time pilot I'd prefer to aim for being a "old pilot" before being an "old, bold pilot."

(To your point about how you grew up around airplanes... not everyone has had that luxury, so keep that in mind for other folks' ADM process)

JohnBurke

It wasn't a luxury, it was earned, every second of it, cycling 30 miles each way in school to work all night scrubbing airplanes in the winter...so no, not a luxury. Some of us grew up that way because we did whatever it took to be there and worked our asses off doing it.

I have a handheld transceiver. I toted it all over the world, carried it in airplanes without electrical systems, small piston airplanes, turbine ag airplanes, and just bout everything else you can imagine, and came to the conclusion that as I never used it, not once, it was more dead weight. I originally bought it as a personal spare for some work I was doing in Iraq. Never used it there, either. I had plenty of blacked out landings, though.

I don't know the details of what this pair did or decided, but one of them had ample experience landing in the dark in places with little or no light and was no stranger to operations well outside typical airline operations. The decision chain may never be known for this particular incident, but I suspect that a certain amount of the logic will be evident when investigators examine the text conversation with the fiancé.

JamesNoBrakes

Attempting something really opens the door to a lot of bad outcomes. Guy could have thought some other light/car was his wife and ran right into terrain because if it. It depends on the ambient light, light pollution, all sorts of stuff. Yes, this makes a good case for a backup transciever or 2nd battery powered backup GPS unit instead of a dual 530 stack.