N427LE

kryan11

kryan11

Well-Known Member
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N427LE

I was wondering if anyone had any inside information on this plane tonight. I became good friends with this pilot over the months, and he left Deer Valley tonight to go pick up his kids. He told me he would be back by 10pm with his kids and say good bye for the night.

An hour and a half later I got a call from the FAA saying he overflew his airport, and asked me how much fuel he had on board. They later alerted me they were following him with F-16s, but couldn't give me any more information on whether he was awake.

I fear that he lost pressurization and the auto pilot will fly him until he runs out of fuel over the ocean. This has been hard to watch and hear. Especially since I was one of the last people to say good bye to him as he excitedly hopped in his plane to pick up his kids.
 
I'm seeing it a few hundred miles north of Hawaii right now. Does the Lancair Evolution have that kind of range?
 
Last night around 815 local time, a loud jet went over my house in Morro Bay, CA.

Thinking that odd, I fired up my iPad and FlightRADAR24 to check it out and noticed N427FE flight track overhead.
image.jpg


I came to the same conclusions you guys have.

Sad news.

I also got a screenshot on another system for FlightAware with the datablock shown just before the track went "estimated" which showed a destination of Hesperia (L26).

--
Rick
 
I've crawled around this airplane at airshows, it's Evolution serial number 002.

I think they converted it to PT6 and repainted it gray with orange on the tips of the wings and tail. That was the last configuration I saw it in, although the earlier photos from 2009 show it with a piston engine and a full paint job.

Was the pilot one of the Lancair guys? If so I probably met him. :(

First%2BFlight%2B-%2BAirborne.jpg
 
kryan11 said:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N427LE

I was wondering if anyone had any inside information on this plane tonight. I became good friends with this pilot over the months, and he left Deer Valley tonight to go pick up his kids. He told me he would be back by 10pm with his kids and say good bye for the night.

An hour and a half later I got a call from the FAA saying he overflew his airport, and asked me how much fuel he had on board. They later alerted me they were following him with F-16s, but couldn't give me any more information on whether he was awake.

I fear that he lost pressurization and the auto pilot will fly him until he runs out of fuel over the ocean. This has been hard to watch and hear. Especially since I was one of the last people to say good bye to him as he excitedly hopped in his plane to pick up his kids.
Click to expand...

Just wondering. How did the FAA know to call you?
 
inigo88 said:
I've crawled around this airplane at airshows, it's Evolution serial number 002.

I think they converted it to PT6 and repainted it gray with orange on the tips of the wings and tail. That was the last configuration I saw it in, although the earlier photos from 2009 show it with a piston engine and a full paint job.

Was the pilot one of the Lancair guys? If so I probably met him. :(
Click to expand...

That's the plane. I'm not sure the exact story on it, but he always told me that he had built the plane. He was always out in the hangar tinkering on it. Last night he told me he had done a software update on it and went for a test flight before coming back to leave for California to make sure the software update went ok.

He also mentioned that he took the plane to Oskosh this year where it was on display. Thanks for that picture, I had been trying to find one that looked like the current paint job.


BEEF SUPREME said:
Just wondering. How did the FAA know to call you?
Click to expand...

I work at an FBO so they called me to verify how much fuel he had on board and ask questions about the pilot.
 
kryan11 said:
I work at an FBO so they called me to verify how much fuel he had on board and ask questions about the pilot.
Click to expand...
How much fuel did he have?? That's a long, long way to fly. Sorry about your friend.
 
kryan11 said:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N427LE

I was wondering if anyone had any inside information on this plane tonight. I became good friends with this pilot over the months, and he left Deer Valley tonight to go pick up his kids. He told me he would be back by 10pm with his kids and say good bye for the night.

An hour and a half later I got a call from the FAA saying he overflew his airport, and asked me how much fuel he had on board. They later alerted me they were following him with F-16s, but couldn't give me any more information on whether he was awake.

I fear that he lost pressurization and the auto pilot will fly him until he runs out of fuel over the ocean. This has been hard to watch and hear. Especially since I was one of the last people to say good bye to him as he excitedly hopped in his plane to pick up his kids.
Click to expand...
@ krysn11. Could you shoot me an email?
dlandmomof4@hotmail ...
 
Wow...I'm so sorry for your loss. If it's any consolation, it's likely that he went as peacefully as any person could, by simply falling asleep, and doing exactly what he loved doing.
 
Without knowing what kind of autopilot/FMS/avionics were in it, I don't really know.

That being said, the airplanes I've flown with different FMS/autoflight/etc systems all had different personalities, and were prone to occasionally doing things that fit the "logic" of the system but didn't make sense to humans.

So, it was probably trying to comply with something that had been programmed into the system at some point. Maybe BLH was in the original plan, but he'd been rerouted by ARTCC in flight. There are lots of possibilities but few answers, unfortunately.
 
kryan11 said:
I just saw the NTSB report was released on this accident.

http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=20150814X91539&key=1

Does anyone know why he would have completed the S turn past Blythe, without radio communications? Could it have been a part of his cleared flight plan?
Click to expand...
Total speculation: If his clearance was to transition from J212 to J65, it seems unlikely that ATC would have him make that hard of a turn.

I think that he programed that in as part of his flight plan. My guess is that he programed the transition from J212 to J65 to include BLH.
If the FMS was either programmed to or interpreted CURIV and BLH both as fly-over points, the S-turn makes perfect sense. Either a fly-over point or if the Flight Director was in a half-bank mode, the system would have made a similar turn as well.

Again, I guessing. Sorry for the loss. RIP
 
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