Witnesses reported that the pilot/owner/builder of the experimental, amateur-built, turbine-engine-powered Lancair IVP had been troubleshooting the landing gear and electrical system on the day of the accident.
After working on the airplane, he made an uneventful flight. Later that day, he departed on a flight with two other certificated pilots aboard.
About 40 minutes later, relatives of the pilot/owner received text messages from him stating that the landing gear would not extend and that they should ask for emergency services to be available at an airport near Hartsville, S.C.
About the same time, witnesses observed the airplane flying over the runway at that airport at an altitude about 600 feet above the ground. The plane then banked steeply left, pitched upward to an angle of about 25°, and then descended in a nose-high pitch attitude to ground impact. This maneuvering was consistent with an inflight loss of control and subsequent aerodynamic stall/mush.
The airplane was almost entirely consumed by the subsequent post-impact fire and all three aboard died.
A post-accident examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of any pre-impact mechanical failures of the flight control system or the engine.
The nose landing gear was retracted, and the left and right main landing gear were partially extended.
The seat cushion for the right rear seat was displaced from its normal mounting position, and an access panel that was located beneath the seat and allowed access to the main landing gear actuators had been removed.
Despite the fire-related damage to the hydraulic system, which was used for extension and retraction of the landing gear, the hydraulic reservoir remained intact and contained only a trace amount of hydraulic fluid.
Given that both the primary and emergency landing gear extension mechanisms relied on the presence of hydraulic fluid for proper operation, it is possible that a lack of available fluid precipitated the pilot’s inability to extend the landing gear as reported in his text messages.
However, due to the extent of damage to the remainder of the hydraulic system, a definitive cause for the failure of the landing gear to extend could not be determined.
Examination of the wreckage also revealed that at the time of ground impact, the pilot/owner of the airplane was seated in the left rear seat, while the other two pilots were seated in the two front seats. It could not be determined which of the other pilots was flying the airplane when the loss of control occurred, and the seating positions of each occupant at the beginning of the flight are unknown.
However, as neither of the other pilots had any flight experience in the accident airplane make and model, it is likely that the pilot/owner was in one of the front seats when the flight began and climbed into the rear seat during the flight when the landing gear would not extend in order to access the landing gear actuators.
Review of the airplane’s maintenance records revealed no entries documenting that any of the required inspections or maintenance had been completed in the decade preceding the accident.
Additionally, the maintenance records did not document repairs and modifications that had been performed on the airplane following a previous accident during which the airplane was substantially damaged.
The NTSB determined the probable cause as failure of the flying pilot to maintain control of the airplane while maneuvering at a low altitude, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall.
Contributing to the accident were the pilot/owner’s decision to transfer physical control of the airplane during an inflight emergency to pilots with no previous experience in the accident airplane make and model and the failure of the landing gear actuation mechanism for reasons that could not be determined due to impact and post-crash fire damage.
NTSB Identification: ERA14FA144
This March 2014 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
Given it’s impossible to nail down what was going on in the cockpit, one can guess the following:
1-the maneuver was an attempt to lower the gear via G-loading. In this Lancair model, you can G-load to the point of snapping off the wings, and the gear still will not extend & lock
2-the maneuver as described will result in a loss of control (due to the airfoil design) that is not recoverable, even if performed in the flight levels, never mind 600ft AGL.
3-unless special tools are machined ahead of time and available in the cockpit, access to the rack system on the main gear will not allow physical extension of the gear
I hate making logical assumption from the couch, but it appears that the owner was less than familiar with the aircraft, and relegated flight responsibility to someone that was even more naive. There’s a lesson here for the rest of us.
I often wonder if retractible landing gear is a wise idea for amateur fliers? Just another distraction when they don’t work, which I can tell you from my experience in the Navy, isn’t rare. I realize these accident reports are cherry picked, but it seems retractible landing gear failures aren’t all that uncommon in the general aviation community either. A distraction when they do work.
This is of course a guess but the maneuver made sounds like an attempt to force the gear down under G loading, a common trick that can work depending on the gear design and malfunction. However given a low time inexperienced pilot at the controls it could well have resulted in an Accelerated Stall and given the low altitude an instinctive refusal to lower the nose and recover. High performance planes are not know for gentle stall characteristics and if you have a pilot used to low performance trainers that is a bad mix. Even an experienced Air France pilot can fly an airliner into the sea by refusal to recognize a stall condition and react properly for recovery. As I said it is just my own educated guess but it does fit the given scenario.
This is of course a guess but the maneuver made sounds like an attempt to force the gear down under G loading, a common trick that can work depending on the gear design and malfunction. However given a low time inexperienced pilot at the controls it could well have resulted in an Accelerated Stall and given the low altitude and instinctive refusal to lower the nose and recover. High performance planes are not know for gentle stall characteristics and if you have a pilot used to low performance trainers that is a bad mix. Even an experienced Air France pilot can fly an airliner into the sea by refusal to recognize a stall condition and react properly for recovery. As I said it is just my own educated guess but it does fit the given scenario.
This report has a whole bunch of stuff. Poor maintenance??? No maintenance??? Anyhow, nothing was documented anywhere and it was a maintenance issue that got it. Unqualified and unfamiliar with the accident airplane, and overall very inexperienced pilots in the front of a twitchy, mechanically deficient airplane??? Maybe one or both of the unqualified pilots who couldn’t avoid lookin’ over their shoulder to see what was goin’ on instead of actually flying the plane? Neither of the unqualified pilots in the front seats were high time (one, 29 yrs old, had a freshly minted PPL with 100 hr in his log. The other, 75 yrs old, had about 200 hrs). The PIC hadn’t received a BFR in 10 years. The aircraft had a long history of recurrent problems with the landing gear known to many others who mentioned this in multiple witness statements. Family members who deluded themselves (or lied to investigators) about the absence of known-to-others mechanical deficiencies and previous gear damage from prior accidents? If there’s a moral, it’s be VERY careful who we ‘go for a ride’ with. It might be our last.