[aviation news]
Experts with the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) have released a preliminary analysis of a small airplane crash that killed a family of four earlier in July.
In a video posted Wednesday, Mary Kuehn and Rob Geske of AOPA’s Air Safety Institute examined the roughly 560-mile final journey undertaken by pilot Travis Buchanan, with his wife and two young children on board.
The family departed Merritt Island Airport (KCOI) near Cocoa Beach, Florida, on a Cirrus SR22 on the morning of July 7 bound for Raleigh Executive Jetport (KTTA) near Sanford, North Carolina. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Buchanan reported problems with the airplane’s communication and navigation systems before encountering issues with the engine.
“Our radio’s going in and out, not sure what’s going on, but we seem to be having some kind of an electrical problem,” the pilot told Jacksonville Center, according to audio captured by LiveATC. “So if you lose us, you might want that noted in your system.”
The Cirrus ultimately lost contact with air traffic controllers but continued north before crashing in a field several miles short of KTTA.
The NTSB did not identify Buchanan or the family by name. This was done by local media, which identified Buchanan through aircraft ownership records. Friends of the family and the children’s school in Lee County, North Carolina, later confirmed that the four people killed were the Buchanans.
Early Assessment
Kuehn, the Flight Instructor Refresher Course (FIRC) program manager at the Air Safety Institute, and Geske, who serves as the organization’s senior manager for aviation safety analysis, said the pilot’s loss of radio was not an immediate emergency, as pilots can and do carry on without their radios. The bigger problem was that he did not know why the system was malfunctioning.
“One of the biggest issues is that he doesn’t know what’s happening with his electrical system,” Kuehn said. “It’s one thing to take off knowing you don’t have radios, but to run into this issue midflight and not know what is happening to your system or if something bigger is going wrong, I think that’s something that would need to be addressed.”
At some point, the pilot was able to contact the local FBO, possibly by calling on his cell phone, and said he was having trouble with his engine and alternators. Airspace was then cleared for the Cirrus to come in under distress.
“At this point, it’s looking more and more like there’s an underlying electrical issue,” Geske said. “This aircraft, the [Cirrus SR22], is equipped with two alternators, two batteries, and while the pilot elected to continue the flight down the coast, at this point we can see that they’re starting to have a cascade failure that’s going to be more challenging.”
Kuehn noted that the fuel gauges in the Cirrus are electrically powered.
“So if he did lose his electrical system and he lost the fuel gauges, he’s not going to be able to see how much fuel’s in each tank,” she said. “And with his fuel selector, he might have lost track of how much fuel’s in each tank and, potentially, even run out of fuel in a tank.”
Geske said that some pilots rectify this issue by having a message to switch tanks come up on the Cirrus display.
“If we’ve lost the electrical system, we won’t be able to display that message,” Geske said. “We won’t be able to see the gauges, which can lead to a rough-running engine or an engine not producing full power. While the checklist should cover what to do in this event, this pilot is already kind of overwhelmed by the electrical issues, the navigational issues, and we ultimately find ourselves at the scene of the crash.”
A problem with the electrical system could have also interfered with the pilot’s ability to deploy the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS), a whole-plane reserve parachute recovery system. The NTSB will have to look at the operability of that system as it prepares its final report on the accident, Geske said.
Kuehn said the crash illustrates the importance of pilots addressing problems that may not feel pressing at first.
“A key takeaway with this is not letting a nonemergency turn into an emergency,” she said. “This pilot knew he was having electrical problems over Daytona Beach when he started losing his radios and didn’t know what was happening with his system.”
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