3 Fatalities in KA 90 crash in FL

O

old cfi

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Old CFI
A King Air 90 with 3 aboard crashed into Lake Harney northeast of KSFB shortly after 11am this morning. Dive teams have located a seat and reflective vest so far but unable to find the plane. The plane belonged to a flight school based at KSFB. Weather at the time of the crash was 700 broken.

Condolences to family and friends.
 
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Shoot.... didn’t hear about that and I live very close.
 
People were probably not the first responders.....

Sad to hear.
 
Listening to ATC, they were doing ILS to 27R. Cleared down to 1,600 and headed to FAF. ATC gave them low altitude alerts twice. Tops were 2,000 with 700 broken. Excluding equipment failure, sounds like spatial disorientation possibly when they came down from 3,000 to 1,600 along with opposite runway change (from 9L). They had already turned around for 27 when ATC lost them.
 
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Training flight gone wrong? Recurrentification? Checkride?
No emergency declaration which is weird. A King Air 90 is capable of level flight on 1 engine. Let's see what the NTSB can find out.
R.I.P.
 
Heard lesson of the day was single engine approaches. With the weather being what it was, thinking possibly one shut down, or simulated, possibly spatial disorientation when they hit the soup or VMC. Don't know if school allows complete shut down but if they do could see scenario of instructor letting student get in too deep too low, possibly stall or VMC roll over. Instructor was FO for Silver Airlines and was my son's best friend's neighbor. They finally found the plane and it's going to JAX for reconstruction. Its in pieces so hit pretty hard. Bodies were recovered inside plane. I'm currently 20 miles from there so watching this one very closely.

Either way, hard to explain not being able to recover if done early enough. King Airs fly very well on one engine with only 3 on board. This one is going to be very interesting.

Sad for those involved.
 
NTSB prelim gives a witness statement that had not made the news earlier saying he saw the plane come out of the soup flying level about 250-300 ft above the water, then climb RAPIDLY! Lost him in the soup but he looked toward the sound of the engines then saw the plane dive vertically into the lake. Beginning to sound like they pulled up into a stall without enough air under them to recover. Talked with a former controller who had reviewed all ATC transmissions and he said the instructor seemed disoriented at times and he was doing all the radio work. They had done 1 approach and were doing another when runways were switched. ATC vectored them for the change and that seems to be when the confusion started. Maybe instructor was too distracted getting setup for next approach. But the old MEI in me wonders why he wasn't just monitoring his student letting the student do all the setup work while also flying the plane. These were Commercial rated students. Someone has to be ready to take control of the plane. We may never know the whole story on this one but sure sounds like pilot error and not plane malfunction.
 
old cfi said:
NTSB prelim gives a witness statement that had not made the news earlier saying he saw the plane come out of the soup flying level about 250-300 ft above the water, then climb RAPIDLY! Lost him in the soup but he looked toward the sound of the engines then saw the plane dive vertically into the lake. Beginning to sound like they pulled up into a stall without enough air under them to recover. Talked with a former controller who had reviewed all ATC transmissions and he said the instructor seemed disoriented at times and he was doing all the radio work. They had done 1 approach and were doing another when runways were switched. ATC vectored them for the change and that seems to be when the confusion started. Maybe instructor was too distracted getting setup for next approach. But the old MEI in me wonders why he wasn't just monitoring his student letting the student do all the setup work while also flying the plane. These were Commercial rated students. Someone has to be ready to take control of the plane. We may never know the whole story on this one but sure sounds like pilot error and not plane malfunction.
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That’s a bold assumption. I’ll wait for the findings.
 
True. But there is more info out there that doesn't appear on POA or anywhere else for that matter. Like I posted before, I am very close to this crash. The bottom line is to LEARN from this and hopefully not make the same mistake.

I'm waiting for the final report, too. But it's POA - it's what we do.
 
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