Plane down. New Smyrna, FL

Sounds like a first solo.........

RIP

EDIT: Channel 2 News reports that the owner of the flight school stated that this pilot was not to be up alone. She started flying with his company 3 days ago and was active taking instruction. She was told that she needed more instruction yesterday and "took it upon herself to take the plane and go out."
 
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RIP. Used to instruct Chinamen out of SFB so this kind of hits home. Hard to believe she was a 400+ hour pilot. Pencil whipped logbook?
 
Ralph Hicks, senior air safety investigator with National Transportation Safety Board, said the pilot was rated a certificated instrument pilot on single-engine or multi-engine aircraft.

“The pilot was talking to air traffic control shortly before the accident,” Hicks said. “We do have the pilot log book that was recovered in the wreckage. That will help us out quite a bit.”
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Wow.
 
A lot of flight schools in FL don't even let their instructors go up in actual. She probably didn't have much (if any) experience in IMC. I know I had about 30 to 40 hours of IFR/dual-IMC instruction before I went out by myself for the first time shooting approaches close to mins in the soup. It was an eye-opening experience.
 
dustoff17 said:
Sounds like a first solo.........

RIP

EDIT: Channel 2 News reports that the owner of the flight school stated that this pilot was not to be up alone. She started flying with his company 3 days ago and was active taking instruction. She was told that she needed more instruction yesterday and "took it upon herself to take the plane and go out."
Click to expand...


I don't know. The owner said that she wasn't to take it up by herself, but the instructors said the 420-hr commercial/IR pilot was a good. Being a little cynical, I wonder if some of this is for the insurance company.
 
There is a lot that does not make sense here. After listening to that audio, I have a hard time accepting that she was a 420 hr IR pilot. She did not sound or act like one at all.
 
There is literally no way she was a 420 hr Instument rated pilot. I agree that panic can make you do crazy stuff, heck, I've seen it. But there is WAY too many things adding up here. Sounds like someone trying to cover some butts. Also, the story says that this was the first time flying by herself for a flight block that she bought of 500 hours. Mayby this was the first time she was by herself since solo...

Anyway, RIP, very sorrowing regardless
 
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That sucked to listen to... That being said, I'm not sure how many of you have ever instructed foreign, and specifically chinese students before. I can totally believe she was a 400-500 hour "instrument pilot". I once had a female chinese student with almost 300 hours who was working on her instrument rating. 250 of those hours were to get her a PPL Cert. Not even exaggerating.
 
Box hauler said:
Listening to the audio makes you wish you could have been in the cockpit to save her from the situation.
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Yea... That's how I felt. She couldn't have had a static failure because she was giving accurate altitude call outs. Perhaps a pitot (enough to disorient a pilot) or some sort of gyroscopic/vacuum failure preceded this? Really a bummer to listen to.
 
I had one like that when I was an ATC'er, a female student on a solo cross country. She had been lost so long the sun had set. She was crying and I couldn't understand her. She was low on fuel. I did manage to teach her how to find then turn on the transponder.

Ma'am In the first box put a 7, in the second box put a 7, in the third box put a 0, in the fourth box put a 0.

Nothing! Should have been a oral and visual alarm.

Ma'am is the orange light blinking?

Yes.

The controller one scope over says; I've got a 0077 code over here.

I did have a better outcome, got her to an airport.
 
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chrisreedrules said:
A lot of flight schools in FL don't even let their instructors go up in actual. She probably didn't have much (if any) experience in IMC. I know I had about 30 to 40 hours of IFR/dual-IMC instruction before I went out by myself for the first time shooting approaches close to mins in the soup. It was an eye-opening experience.
Click to expand...

The day after my instrument checkride, I went out and rented a plane and went and flew IFR to close to mins, just to get the time. If you don't use the skills, you don't stay sharp, especially that new to the game. When I was in DAB, about the only time I'd grab a rental (with no other purpose for training) out of the blue was one of the IMC days, just to go get the time.
 
I wonder why she just didn't maintain wings level and climb climb climb. I think the turn northbound probably made her orientation worse.
 
cmhumphr said:
I wonder why she just didn't maintain wings level and climb climb climb. I think the turn northbound probably made her orientation worse.
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As is often the case, I don't think the controller realized how dire her situation was until it was too late. Also, (and this is just pure speculation) I suspect an unrecognized and slow vacuum failure could perhaps be the culprit... She felt confident enough to go in the clouds so she must have had some level of IFR training.
 
Since the logbook was recovered hopefully NTSB prelim will provide some clarify on the 420 flight hours the flight school owner claims the pilot had.

Panic and disorientation notwithstanding, I have trouble understanding how a 420-hour, foreign-born pilot can simultaneously lose the ability to aviate, communicate using basic aviation syntax, and possibly not understand the NAVCOM (she seemed to be broadcasting on one COM, listening on the other).
 
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