Plain, Valley

The instrument-rated private pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight in the multiengine airplane under instrument flight rules (IFR). As the flight neared its destination, the controller issued clearance for a GPS approach, and, shortly thereafter, the pilot informed the controller that he needed to review the approach procedure before continuing the approach. The controller acknowledged, and, after the pilot reported that he was ready to proceed with the approach, the controller again issued clearance for the GPS approach. Radar data showed that, during the approach, the airplane tracked a course that was offset about 0.5 miles right of the final approach course until it was about 1 mile from the runway threshold. The airplane then turned left towards the threshold and descended to an altitude of about 145 ft above ground level over the runway threshold before the pilot performed a missed approach. It is likely that the pilot performed the missed approach because he was unable to align the airplane with the runway before it crossed the threshold. The controller provided radar vectors for the airplane to return to the approach course and cleared the airplane a third time for the GPS approach to the runway. Radar data showed that the airplane was established on the final approach course as it passed the initial approach fix; however, before it reached the final approach fix, its airspeed slowed to about 111 knots, and it began a left turn with a 25 degree bank angle. About 18 seconds later, while still in the turn, the airplane slowed to 108 knots and began descending rapidly. The airplane's rate of descent exceeded 10,000 feet per minute, and it impacted the ground about 9 miles from the destination airport. Examination of the accident site showed that the airplane was severely fragmented and fire damaged with debris scattered for about 450 feet. Postaccident examination of the wreckage did not reveal evidence of any preimpact failures; however, damage to the left engine indicated that it was not producing power at the time of the accident. The severity of impact and fire damage to the airplane and engine precluded determination of the reason for the loss of left engine power. Weather conditions present at the time of the accident were conducive to super cooled liquid water droplets, and the airplane likely encountered moderate or greater icing conditions. Several pilot reports (PIREPs) for moderate, light, trace, and negative icing were reported to air traffic control but were not distributed publicly into the national airspace system, and there was no airmen's meteorological information (AIRMET) issued for icing. However, the pilot received standard and abbreviated weather briefings for the flight, and his most recent weather briefing included three PIREPs for icing conditions in the area of the accident site. Given the weather information provided, the pilot should have known icing conditions were possible. Even so, the public distribution of additional PIREPs would have likely increased the weather situational awareness by the pilot, weather forecasters, and air traffic controllers. The airplane was equipped with deicing and anti-icing systems that included wing and empennage deice boots and engine inlet heaters. Due to impact damage to the cockpit, the positions of the switches for the ice protection systems at the time of the accident could not be determined. Although the airplane's airspeed of 108 knots when the steep descent began was above its published stall speed of 77 knots, both bank angle and ice accretion would have increased the stall speed. In addition, the published minimum control airspeed was 93 knots. It is likely that, after the airplane passed the initial approach fix, the left engine lost power, the airplane's airspeed began to decay, and the asymmetric thrust resulted in a left turn. As the airspeed continued to decay, it decreased below either stall speed or minimum control airspeed, and the airplane entered an uncontrolled descent.

When flying in the Ethiopian Airspace, the crew informed ATC about engine problems and was cleared to divert to Addis Ababa-Bole Airport for an emergency landing. On approach, the twin engine aircraft crashed in an open field located in Legedadi, about 20 km northeast of the airport. Both pilots were seriously injured and the aircraft was destroyed.

Aircraft left Maputo Airport at 1126LT on flight LAM470 to Luanda, Angola. En route, while overflying Botswana and Namibia, aircraft encountered bad weather conditions with CB's at high altitude and turbulence. In unknown circumstances, aircraft went out of control and disappeared from radar screens at 1230LT, most probably after diving into the ground. As the aircraft did not arrive at Luanda, SAR commenced but were suspended by night due to low visibility and bad weather conditions (heavy rain falls). The day after, on 30NOV, Namibia Police forces announced they located the wreckage in the Bwabwata National Park, near Divundu. Aircraft was completely destroyed by impact forces and post impact fire. All 33 occupants were killed, among them 16 Mozambicans, 9 Angolans, 5 Portuguese, one French, one Brazilian and one Chinese. The aircraft crashed in a dense wooded and isolated area, sot SAR are difficult. No distress call was sent by the crew.

The airplane departed Annecy-Meythet Airport at 1033LT on a flight to Toussus-le-Noble, carrying five passengers and one pilot. The flying time was approximately one hour under IFR mode. At 1111LT, while cruising at FL180 near Auxerre, heading to EBOMA, the pilot informed ATC he was ready for the descent. He was cleared to descend to FL120 when the aircraft started to drift to the left of the airway. Two minutes later, ATC informed the pilot about the deviation and the pilot acknowledged and initiated a turn to the right when control was lost. The airplane entered a dive and reached an excessive vertical speed until it crashed in an open field. The airplane disintegrated on impact and all six occupants were killed.

At approximately 1830 hrs on 3 November 2013 the operator’s duty pilot received a request that the aircraft should be dispatched to carry out a search. The volunteer crew-members were alerted and made their way to the airport. Weather conditions in the Channel Islands were poor, with a southerly wind gusting up to 41 kt, turbulence, rain, cloud below 1,000 ft aal, and visibility of 3 to 6 km. On arrival at the aircraft’s hangar, the crew was established, consisting of a pilot, search director, and three observers. They donned immersion suits and life jackets and prepared for flight. The search director obtained details of the search request, which was to search for two fishermen near Les Écréhous (a group of rocks in the English Channel approximately 5 nm north-east of the north-eastern corner of Jersey). Some evidence suggested the men were in a small dinghy; other information was that they were in the water. The men were reported to be alive and communicating by mobile telephone. One crew-member carried out pre-flight preparations, although he did not check the fuel quantities or carry out a water drain check. When interviewed, he recalled having reported to the pilot that he had not checked the fuel. The aircraft was then pulled out of its hangar and the search director explained the details of the search request to the pilot and other crew-members. Bearing in mind the weather, the fact that it was dark, and the fishermen’s predicament, the pilot recognized the need for “a lot of urgency” about the task. In the context of the operation, he regarded the task as being routine, but the weather not so. The pilot “walked round” the aircraft, though he did not carry out a formal pre-flight inspection; it was the organization’s custom to ensure that the aircraft was ready for flight at all times. The technical log showed that the aircraft was serviceable, with no deferred defects, and that the wing tanks contained 55 USG each side and the tip tanks, 18 USG each side. The search director recalled asking the pilot whether he was content to fly in the prevailing conditions, and that the pilot stated that he was willing to fly. The crew boarded the aircraft. The observer in the front right-hand seat had recently obtained a Private Pilot’s Licence and this influenced the decision for him to be placed next to the pilot. The pilot reported that he carried out a “fairly rapid” start, although the normal pre-departure sequence was interrupted while a problem with switch selections, affecting the functioning of the search equipment in the aircraft’s cabin, was resolved. The pilot obtained clearance from ATC to taxi, enter the runway, and take off when ready. He described that he carried out engine power checks during a brief back-track, checking the magnetos and propeller controls at 2,100 rpm, before carrying out pre-takeoff checks. He did not refer to the written checklists provided in the aircraft but executed a generic set of checks from memory. Following an unremarkable takeoff, in the strong crosswind , the pilot corrected for drift and established a climb towards a cruising altitude of 900 ft. When interviewed, he described the conditions as being “awful” and “ghastly”, with turbulence from the cliffs contributing to occasional activation of the stall warner, even though the speed was “probably 100 plus knots” . At 900 ft, the aircraft was “in the bottom” of the cloud, which was unhelpful for the observers, so the pilot descended the aircraft to cruise at 500 or 600 ft, flying by reference to the artificial horizon, and making constant control inputs to maintain straight and level flight. He stated that, although he would normally have begun checking fuel flow, mixture settings, etc, shortly after establishing in the cruise, he found that the conditions required him to devote his full attention to flying the aircraft. As the aircraft passed north abeam the western end of Jersey, the rain and low cloud continued and the turbulence worsened, The pilot gained sight of red obstacle lights on a television mast on the north side of the island but had few other visual references. The pilot noticed a change in an engine note. He immediately “reached down to put the hot air on” which made little difference; the observer recalled that the pilot checked that the mixtures were fully rich at this time. The right-hand engine rpm then began surging. The pilot made a quick check of the engine instruments, before applying full throttle on both engines, setting both propellers to maximum rpm and beginning a climb. The observer noticed that the fuel pressure gauge for the right-hand engine was “going up and down” but did not mention this to the pilot; the pilot did not see the gauge indication fluctuating. Around this time the pilot switched the electric fuel pumps on. The pilot turned the aircraft towards Jersey and made a MAYDAY call to ATC; the search director made a similar call on the appropriate maritime frequency. These calls were acknowledged, and a life boat, on its way to Les Écréhous, altered course towards the aircraft’s position. Although the pilot was “amazed” at how few lights he could see on the ground, he perceived what he thought was the runway at Jersey Airport, and flew towards it. The aircraft reached approximately 1,100 ft amsl. The right-hand engine then stopped. The pilot carried out the shut-down checks, feathering the propeller as he did so. The aircraft carried on tracking towards Jersey Airport, descending towards the north side of the island. Some moments later, the left-hand engine’s rpm began to fluctuate briefly before it also stopped. The pilot later recalled being “fairly certain” that he “was trying to change tanks” but acknowledged that he could not recall events with certainty. He trimmed the aircraft for a glide, still heading towards the airport at Jersey, but with very limited visual references outside the cockpit. The crew-members prepared the cabin for a ditching or off-airport landing; the observers in the rear-most seats considered how they might deploy the aircraft’s life raft (stored behind their seats) should a ditching occur. The pilot’s next recollection was that the automated decision height voice call-out activated (he had selected it to announce at 200 ft radio height). He switched the landing lights on and maintained a “reasonable speed” in anticipation of landing or ditching. One crew-member recalled the pilot calling “brace, brace, brace”, while another recalled being instructed to tighten seat belts and brace. No brace position had been set out in the operations manual, or rehearsed in training, and the responses of the crew-members to this instruction varied. The pilot glimpsed something green in front of the aircraft, and flared for landing. The aircraft touched down and decelerated, sliding downhill and passing through a hedge. With the aircraft now sliding somewhat sideways, it came to a halt when its nose lodged against a tree, with significant airframe damage. The pilot made various cockpit selections safe and all the occupants vacated the aircraft, with some difficulty. The search director became entangled in his headset lead as he egressed but freed himself. The front seat occupants experienced difficulty because their door could not be opened. They climbed over the search director’s desk and vacated the aircraft via the door adjacent to the search director’s position (the rear-row observers simultaneously opened the pilot’s door from the outside). The pilot and crew made their way to nearby habitation where they were subsequently assessed by an ambulance crew; none were injured. The search director returned to the aircraft with fire-fighters, to ensure that pyrotechnics and the self-inflating life raft on board the aircraft did not pose a hazard. In his very frank account of the flight, the pilot acknowledged that a decision to turn back soon after departure would have been justified by the weather conditions. He added that before the engine power changed, his workload was already very high, on account of the task and conditions.

After climbing to and leveling at 15,000 feet, the airplane departed controlled flight, descended rapidly in a nose-down vertical dive, and impacted terrain; an explosion and postaccident fire occurred. Evidence at the accident site revealed that most of the wreckage was located in or near a single impact crater; however, the outer portion of the left wing impacted the ground about 1/2 mile from the main wreckage. Following the previous flight, the pilot reported to a maintenance person in another state that he had several malfunctioning flight instruments, including the autopilot, the horizontal situation indicator, and the artificial horizon gyros. The pilot, who was not a mechanic, had maintenance personnel replace the right side artificial horizon gyro but did not have any other maintenance performed at that time. The pilot was approved under an FAA exemption to operate the airplane as a single pilot; however, the exemption required that all equipment must be operational, including a fully functioning autopilot, flight director, and gyroscopic flight instruments. Despite the malfunctioning instruments, the pilot chose to take off and fly in instrument meteorological conditions. At the time of the loss of control, the airplane had just entered an area with supercooled large water droplets and severe icing, which would have affected the airplane's flying characteristics. At the same time, the air traffic controller provided the pilot with a radio frequency change, a change in assigned altitude, and a slight routing change. It is likely that these instructions increased the pilot's workload as the airplane began to rapidly accumulate structural icing. Because of the malfunctioning instruments, it is likely that the pilot became disoriented while attempting to maneuver and maintain control of the airplane as the ice accumulated, which led to a loss of control.

The crew was performing an illegal flight, maybe from Belarus, with an important load of Belarusian cigarettes on board. By night, while approaching an unused airfield, the single engine aircraft impacted ground and crashed in an open field. There was no fire. The aircraft was destroyed and both occupants were killed. The registration UR-54853 was announced to be illegal as it was already involved in an accident in Ukraine on 07FEB2013. The registration SP-AOD was still painted on the lower left wing, and the aircraft was operated since Summer 2013 illegally with the UR-54853 registration.

Bought in 2000 and stored since, the airplane was under restoration since August 2013. The crew (one pilot and one engineer), decided to perform a test flight in the region of Sevryukovo (Korocha District of the Belgorod region). En route, the engine failed, forcing the crew to attempt an emergency landing. The aircraft impacted ground and crashed, coming to rest upside down and bursting into flames. Both occupants escaped uninjured while the aircraft was partially destroyed by fire.

Witnesses located at a gun club reported observing the airplane make a high-speed, low pass from north to south over the club's buildings and then maneuver around for another low pass from east to west. During the second low pass, the airplane collided with a radio tower that was about 50 ft tall, and the right wing sheared off about 10 ft of the tower's top. The tower's base was triangular shaped, and each of its sides was about 2 ft long. One witness reported that the airplane remained in a straight-and-level attitude until impact with the tower. The airplane then rolled right to an almost inverted position and subsequently impacted trees and terrain about 700 ft southwest of the initial impact point. One witness reported that, about 3 to 4 years before the accident, the pilot, who was a client of the gun club, had "buzzed" over the club and had been told to never do so again. A postaccident examination of the engines and the airframe revealed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation.

The aircraft departed Surgut on September 12 on a special flight to Saranpaul and Arbyn, carrying two pilots and five employees of the Sosvapromgeologya Company. On September 18, the crew was supposed to fly back to Surgut but due to poor weather conditions, decided to fly to Nefteyugansk. About an hour and 10 minutes into the flight, while cruising at an altitude of 700 metres, the engine temperature increased to 305° C. and the oil temperature to 90° C. In the same time, the engine lost power. The crew decided to reduce his altitude and to attempt an emergency landing when the aircraft crash landed in a field located 48 km west of Nyagan. There was no fire. All seven occupants were injured and the aircraft was damaged beyond repair.