How does this happen? Plane crash at towered airport not noticed for hours...

It would seem hard to not see a gasoline fire or the glow even in fog, not that far away. My guess would be one person in the tower, saw that it was a lousy night, ate the other half of his sandwich and took a nap.
 
Jimmy cooper said:
It would seem hard to not see a gasoline fire or the glow even in fog, not that far away. My guess would be one person in the tower, saw that it was a lousy night, ate the other half of his sandwich and took a nap.
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Two people in the tower ever since the DCA sleeping controller incident.

I've seen some pretty nasty fog in my life. Doesn't surprise me at all that they didn't see it.
 
From watching the local news lastnight they stated he was flying from his home in Canada to Pelee Island? Not that the news is consistently correct but if this is true he kinda overshot his landing by a few hundred miles. Is there a Flight Aware track on this flight?
 
Two people in the tower. Approach controller and local / ground combined. 1/4 mile vis. Crash isn't going to be heard from the tower and occurs greater than 1/4 mile out. Not to mention both controllers most likely weren't talking to any other aircraft at the time so they probably sitting around not even looking out the windows of the cab.

Similar thing happened at CRG when I was a kid. Single engine Aero Commander shows up over the field at night while field was IMC. Pilot never called tower to get clearance into the control zone. Pilot eventually got a hold of tower but crashed (fatality) just after getting a SVFR clearance.

So in the BNA case an arrival crash without talking to tower is completely plausible if he was lost or thought the tower was closed. Even a crash on takeoff if he thought the tower was closed.
 
Was listening to a Canada radio station this afternoon, they said He was a pilot since 99 and in good standing. He was going to Pelee Island. He landed there and then went to Nashville after Pelee (leaving before sunrise supposedly). According to the Canada news no one is going to miss the pilot since he was going to court in the next few days. So maybe this was a suicide mission. Too bad he took a perfectly good plane with him.
 
roncachamp said:
Reports that I've seen do not indicate that he was ever in communications with ATC.
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This will be an interesting one. I wonder if the guy went VFR into IMC and followed the magenta line with autopilot to the airport, hoping to see it.
 
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