I didn't know about his comments at the time, but due to the extent of the modifications I wondered about that issue when I worked on the assignment. I've seen first-hand what's in the aircraft records, included the information in my report, and would testify thereto. He can think whatever he wants to think.
The official "final" report on the crash investigation is finally out and published on the UAE GCAA Web site here:
http://www.gcaa.gov.ae/en/epublication/pages/investigationreport.aspx
From what I was able to cull from the report and contrary to Wayne's previous assertions above, the GCAA investigators and whomever it was at the FAA and NTSB who collaborated on the crash investigation all seem to have agreed with the guy over on the WIX forum - that there were serious problems and/or issues with the conversion and certification history of the accident airplane.
The fact of the matter seems to be that it actually was NOT built or certified by McKinnon and never properly conformed as a model "G-21G" aircraft - and therefore was not actually a "McKinnon" G-21G - this time contrary to its supposedly "official" registration and airworthiness certification. Look up photos online of
N77AQ (s/n 1205) and
N70AL (s/n 1226) for comparison; they were the only 2 model G-21G aircraft ever built and certified as such actually by McKinnon Enterprises, in 1969 and 1970 respectively.
Anything else that has ever claimed to be a "McKinnon G-21G" (supposedly modified like the Aleutian Goose or otherwise) was and/or is really only at best an
amateur-built copy of McKinnon's design and as such really eligible only for
Experimental category certification.
That wasn't even the case with the so-called "Aleutian Goose." It was instead actually designed and built by the
Fish & Wildlife Service in Anchorage as their own model "
G-21F" design which was never certified or approved by the FAA in its own right (albeit according to the report, without sufficient or proper oversight by the FAA.) They apparently pulled a fast one with the certification, airworthiness, and registration paperwork for N221AG (originally registered as N780) because they wanted to make it appear to be a fully certified Standard category aircraft when in fact it was not. That was doubly stupid because as a Federal Government agency operating a "public-use" aircraft, they were not actually bound by or required to operate in accordance with the FAR's.
Not, however that those certification and conformity issues had any direct causal relationship to the crash according to the report, which seems to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the pilot/owner. They say that:
He was not current in the aircraft and in fact had not flown it in almost 6 months, yet he was flying it for the first time in a long time at night with 3 passengers on board.
Because of several recent delays in their planned schedule, they seem to have had a bad case of "get-home-itis" which caused them to rush and almost literally cut corners.
They were most likely considerably overweight with just the fuel that was uploaded prior to the flight - even before the crew, passengers, and cargo were loaded. According to the numbers provided, the aircraft had an Empty Weight of 7,980.64 lbs and the line guys at Al Ain were unable to load as much fuel as was requested; that suggests that there was still some fuel in the airplane and that they topped it off.
It normally* held a total 708 gallons of Jet-A (@ 6.7 lbs./gallon = 4,743.6 lbs. - *not including a ferry bladder tank that they were trying to install, although there was no evidence that it was connected to the fuel system or held any additional fuel at the time of the crash.) That means that with just full tanks and no crew, passengers, or cargo on board (all of which were loaded later) the airplane grossed out at 12,724.24 lbs. - some 224.24 lbs. over its certified maximum gross weight of 12,500 lbs.
With 4 people on board (average 170 lbs./ea. = 680 lbs.
but that official average may be out-of-date and too little for typical Americans...) plus baggage & cargo (tools, the empty and at that point not-yet-used ferry bladder tank, etc.) they could have easily been 1,000 lbs. over gross.
I came away from reading the report wanting to ask "what didn't they do wrong?"
