Bonanza Down in Greenville, NC (PGV)

mark.staggs

mark.staggs

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Display Name
Mark Staggs
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NC26
Not much on this one yet. Just saw it on Reddit...


From https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/accident_incidents:

March 14, 2025​

General Aviation / Greenville, North Carolina

A Beechcraft Bonanza crashed near Pitt-Greenville Airport in North Carolina around 7:50 a.m. local time on Friday, March 14. Two people were on board. The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate. The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation and will provide further updates.
 
N566C, just departed Pitt-Greenville, bound for Vero Beach.

IMG_5023.jpeg

Downwind looked normal, but that’s one heck of a spiral at the end. Increasing speed and descent rate throughout.

KPGV 141130Z AUTO 04005KT 10SM OVC005 08/08 A3008 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT S

KPGV 141150Z AUTO 07006KT 10SM 08/08 A3008 RMK AO2 (note ceiling is missing)

There was an AIRMET for IFR valid throughout the area.
 
midlifeflyer said:
ADS-B Exchange picture has more detail.
View attachment 139033
Click to expand...
Very interesting: ADS-B was reporting an altitude select of 3000’ during the takeoff roll and initial climb. According to the output, autopilot was engaged as it rolled out on the heading to the southeast, and the plane suddenly dropped several hundred feet. It did not recover until almost 175’ baro, as indicated by ADS-B.

At that point, autopilot was disengaged and the aircraft resumed climbing until after the turn to the southwest, when AP was re-engaged with a bugged heading of 202 (alt still 3000) until it almost reached a northwesterly heading while still in a climb. At that point it appears the AP was disengaged, after which the spiral tightened and the terminal dive immediately commenced.

For reference, this aircraft’s ADS-B does not seem to report modes other than autopilot on, alt hold, vnav, or approach (no indication of HDG mode, or when there is V/S mode activity during climbs and descents).
 
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Flying Keys said:
Very interesting: ADS-B was reporting an altitude select of 3000’ during the takeoff roll and initial climb. According to the output, autopilot was engaged as it rolled out on the heading to the southeast, and the plane suddenly dropped several hundred feet. It did not recover until almost 175’ baro, as indicated by ADS-B.

At that point, autopilot was disengaged and the aircraft resumed climbing until after the turn to the southwest, when AP was re-engaged with a bugged heading of 202 (alt still 3000) until it almost reached a northwesterly heading while still in a climb. At that point it appears the AP was disengaged, after which the spiral tightened and the terminal dive immediately commenced.

For reference, this aircraft’s ADS-B does not seem to report modes other than autopilot on, alt hold, vnav, or approach (no indication of HDG mode, or when there is V/S mode activity during climbs and descents).
Click to expand...

How do you know these things?
 
4RNB said:
How do you know these things?
Click to expand...
Most of that data is shown in the left hand column, on the site, you can tap on a portion of the track and see the info at that point in time. Here’s part of that spiral with only a small snippet of the data in that left column, which has much more.

And yes, there is a lot more data produced by ADS-B than position and speed.

1742002351036.png
 
Flying Keys said:
Very interesting: ADS-B was reporting an altitude select of 3000’ during the takeoff roll and initial climb. According to the output, autopilot was engaged as it rolled out on the heading to the southeast, and the plane suddenly dropped several hundred feet. It did not recover until almost 175’ baro, as indicated by ADS-B.

At that point, autopilot was disengaged and the aircraft resumed climbing until after the turn to the southwest, when AP was re-engaged with a bugged heading of 202 (alt still 3000) until it almost reached a northwesterly heading while still in a climb. At that point it appears the AP was disengaged, after which the spiral tightened and the terminal dive immediately commenced.

For reference, this aircraft’s ADS-B does not seem to report modes other than autopilot on, alt hold, vnav, or approach (no indication of HDG mode, or when there is V/S mode activity during climbs and descents).
Click to expand...

What does that suggest to you? Malfunctioning AP?
 
midlifeflyer said:
Most of that data is shown in the left hand column, on the site, you can tap on a portion of the track and see the info at that point in time. Here’s part of that spiral with only a small snippet of the data in that left column, which has much more.

And yes, there is a lot more data produced by ADS-B than position and speed.

View attachment 139046
Click to expand...

I'd love a deep dive into this.
Where in that info is the data saying AP on vs off
and where is heading bug and altitude bug data?
 
The pilots son posted over on BT a really sincere post about his father, stepmother, the airplane, the mission they were flying, along with recent updates made to the airplane. It was a full, modern, glass panel all Garmin.

Say a prayer for this family. A devastating loss impacting so many.
 
GLMS_NC said:
The pilots son posted over on BT a really sincere post about his father, stepmother, the airplane, the mission they were flying, along with recent updates made to the airplane. It was a full, modern, glass panel all Garmin.

Say a prayer for this family. A devastating loss impacting so many.
Click to expand...
Yes. We are getting caught up in the details of ADS-B tracks. Me too. But this is a tragedy :(
 
Ed Haywood said:
What does that suggest to you? Malfunctioning AP?
Click to expand...
Sadly, I think this is could be a case of avionics mismanagement. Wrong mode coupled on the AP, followed by "what is this thing doing?" and a manual override and the resulting disorientation.
Or a really bad case of somatogravic illusions, and it all went bad from there.
 
AV8R_87 said:
Sadly, I think this is could be a case of avionics mismanagement. Wrong mode coupled on the AP, followed by "what is this thing doing?" and a manual override and the resulting disorientation.
Or a really bad case of somatogravic illusions, and it all went bad from there.
Click to expand...
I think there is a tendency to armchair quarterback events based on ADS-B data plots. Assuming data and data transmission accuracy, we can see what? happened. The why? is not as clear.
 
We don't know if AP mismanagement is the cause.

Speaking of the Garmin GFC-500 AP, everyone who has one if they have not already, needs to watch this training video. Matt does an excellent job going over buttonology, how to set, functionality, along with why verification is important after any change is made.

 
Groundpounder said:
Just because something was selected on the autopilot MCP doesn't mean the autopilot was on.
Click to expand...
I think in this case it may just mean that. You can clearly see various modes selected in addition to “autopilot.” In past flights, some modes were selected but the ads-b “autopilot” was not displayed, which might indicate the scenario you proposed. It might depend on the avionics setup, though, so take that with a grain of salt.
 
midlifeflyer said:
I think there is a tendency to armchair quarterback events based on ADS-B data plots. Assuming data and data transmission accuracy, we can see what? happened. The why? is not as clear.
Click to expand...
This exactly. All we have is some data, which we might be able to associate to paint a little picture - we know there was a spiral at the end, we know the conditions had been IFR, and we have an incomplete snippet of what might have been going on with the avionics. This allows us to eliminate some possibilities (for instance, it clearly did not skid off the end of the runway), but a lot more remain - the why @midlifeflyer mentioned. We really won’t know which of those possibilities are eliminated until more details are revealed as the investigation progresses.

RIP to those lost and condolences to those that knew and loved them.
 
GLMS_NC said:
We don't know if AP mismanagement is the cause.

Speaking of the Garmin GFC-500 AP, everyone who has one if they have not already, needs to watch this training video. Matt does an excellent job going over buttonology, how to set, functionality, along with why verification is important after any change is made.

Click to expand...

Additionally, Garmin offers in person two day classes.
 
0750 am local time or so. In the interest of learning, anyone check what the weather was like at 1:00 in the afternoon, local time? Instead of talking about mishandled autopilots, would there of been a benefit to wait 4-5 hours? If that wasn’t enough, maybe 2 days later.
 
1. Yes, weather was better later in the day. I don't know his schedule but I suspect he was meeting up with others. Group of dentists traveling.
2. He was on a mission trip ultimate destination was the DR. He was loaded with fuel and supplies. Heavy plane.
3. He could of also pressed the blue LVL button on the AP. That would have helped him as well.

We just don't know all that was going on inside the cockpit. If his G5 has a memory card in it, and it survived the crash, that will provide more detail.

For ANYONE that flies with a Garmin G5, if you don't have a microSD card installed, please put one in. It logs flight parms and you don't need special software to interpret the data.
 
GLMS_NC said:
The pilots son posted over on BT a really sincere post about his father, stepmother, the airplane, the mission they were flying, along with recent updates made to the airplane. It was a full, modern, glass panel all Garmin.

Say a prayer for this family. A devastating loss impacting so many.
Click to expand...
BT? Unfamiliar

Tragic. Praying for comfort for the family.
 
All this AP talk has me missing my old Cessna 200A wing leveler. So simple.
 
ahmad said:
Another bonanza kills Another doctor.
Click to expand...

More like: recreational IMC kills another human who keeps shrugging his/her shoulders about IMC being banal enough to be considered a novelty to be sought after.

Do we weep for the Marlin that dive-drowns the trophy fisherman? Def don't answer that, I'm being polemic for effect. To be clear, my sincere condolences to the surviving family. I make these criticisms in the interest of hobbyists staying safe, and keeping the reputation of the hobby from further degrading. We're failing, which is why I make the appeal.
 
hindsight2020 said:
More like: recreational IMC kills another human who keeps shrugging his/her shoulders about IMC being banal enough to be considered a novelty to be sought after.

Do we weep for the Marlin that dive-drowns the trophy fisherman? Def don't answer that, I'm being polemic for effect. To be clear, my sincere condolences to the surviving family. I make these criticisms in the interest of hobbyists staying safe, and keeping the reputation of the hobby from further degrading. We're failing, which is why I make the appeal.
Click to expand...
Was this recreational IMC? Apparently it was a daylight flight, a capable aircraft, a business trip. I thought that was what we got our instrument ratings for. Do you suggest that non-professionals should fly VFR only? We obviously don't know the capabilities/status of the pilot at the time. Hopefully will know more later.

Condolences to the family and friends.

edit: I misunderstood the purpose of the trip. They were headed to the Caribbean on a mission I guess. Not business.
 
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midlifeflyer said:
More like, it's important to understand how it works. The GFC500 is really very simple.
Click to expand...
It is simple, but there are things you need to pay attention to. For ex. when you go missed, what's the buttonology? You go missed on the GPS but what to you press? And what is the default behavior?

Again, if you don't know and aren't 100% comfortable with all its features, take some training before you're in a position when you have to use it.
 
edo2000 said:
Was this recreational IMC? Apparently it was a daylight flight, a capable aircraft, a business trip. I thought that was what we got our instrument ratings for. Do you suggest that non-professionals should fly VFR only? We obviously don't know the capabilities/status of the pilot at the time. Hopefully will know more later.

Condolences to the family and friends.

edit: I misunderstood the purpose of the trip. They were headed to the Caribbean on a mission I guess. Not business.
Click to expand...

Given you answered your own question (the former) after posting, I'll consider your rhethorical question to me (the latter) moot at this point.

For the record, no I'm not trying to gatekeep (like your question implies). I'm agnostic to people killing themselves for recreation, lest I be a hypocrite. But I'm not going to sanewash their recalcitrance when they do. I'm just trying to appeal to people who don't have to risk their necks to pay the mortgage, from doing party tricks the human body wasn't built for and adding to the excess death rate, pedestrian pax included. That's all.

I'll concede a slight pinch of self-interest in wanting to keep insurance rates attainable, but given how cooked the hobby already is on the cost front this decade, that's really a distant second.

Fly safe.
 
edo2000 said:
Was this recreational IMC? ….
Click to expand...
Unless the pilot is being paid to make a schedule, it’s recreational. Even when done under the guise of a business/mission/charity outfit.
 
TCABM said:
Unless the pilot is being paid to make a schedule, it’s recreational. Even when done under the guise of a business/mission/charity outfit.
Click to expand...
Interesting definition of recreational flying. I grew up and learned to fly in Alaska. My dad started an industrial drilling and water well business there, in the 60's. My brother still runs it. Much of our work was in remote locations, not on the road system. My brother and I co-owned a C310 and C185 (and several other aircraft at times...). We often flew those in support of our rigs and drilling crews. I never thought of that as recreation.

I remember reading Richard Collins columns on small aircraft IFR ops, in Flying. He was sort of my hero. Was that recreational flying? I flew DC-3s in Alaska, part 91, a lot of IFR, hauling salmon from remote villages back to Anchorage or Kenai for processing, but I guess we were trying to make a schedule then...
 
GLMS_NC said:
It is simple, but there are things you need to pay attention to. For ex. when you go missed, what's the buttonology? You go missed on the GPS but what to you press? And what is the default behavior?

Again, if you don't know and aren't 100% comfortable with all its features, take some training before you're in a position when you have to use it.
Click to expand...
We agree completely. That’s what understanding how it works means.

But, sticking with this thread's topic, we don't know whether this was any kind of issue in this tragedy. It was departure, not a missed approach. And the AP shouldn't have been on below 800 AGL. The big turn to 220 matches the clearance, but from the takeoff runway, that's a 200°turn. Whether it was disorientation or something else is purely speculation at this point, but definitely not missed approach buttonology.
 
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