During a cross-country flight at night, the pilot was attempting to deviate due to deteriorating weather. He failed to maintain terrain clearance and the Piper PA-34 hit the top of a tree.
The pilot subsequently landed the airplane uneventfully at the airport in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, about 23 miles away from where the tree was hit.
Examination of the airplane by an FAA inspector revealed damage to the wings and windshield.
Probable cause: The pilot’s failure to maintain altitude in cruise flight due to his diverted attention, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain.
NTSB Identification: ERA16CA105
This February 2016 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.
Did he think to turn on his landing lights if he was going to operate down that low though range limiting might not have been enough to enable a quick pull up to avoid the tree tops but it couldn’t have hurt any to have them on. That said he should not have been that low on a dark night or any other time.
According to the FAA commercial airliner flight hours are actually .65 of every hour logged considered hands on flying. The rest is considered auto pilot time. Thus 26,000 logged hours is actually a little more than half those hours hands on flying, big difference. This still doesn’t constitute why some of these high time flyers continue to crash and kill people, just don’t make no sense. I suppose people are people and we will continue to screw up, regardless of experience, training, and equipment at hand. Terrible to say the least. Must be that little piece of mushy stuff between the ears we call, ” decision making “.
No one should fly at night without Synthetic Vision & Terrain Awareness in the cockpit. The tool is invaluable day or night, especially in the mountains. By the way, you can get this on Garmin Pilot, Foreflight or FlyQ on a tablet too… https://foreflight.com/products/foreflight-mobile/synthetic-vision/
Where to begin?
–Judgement and decision making?
–Launching AT NIGHT into MVFR with known ice in low BKN to OVC ceilings, with visibilities often less tha 1 1/2 mile at the nearest reporting station, over mountainous and uninhabited (dark) terrain.
–Flying a twin that, even if below cruise is still clipping along at 2 miles per minute. How quickly can the pilot see, then avoid dark terrain in all an all black night?
Too bad he didn’t think of the mitigations he suggested in his after accident BEFORE it became necessary to report to the NTSB:
“–Take ground transportation”
“–Fly known ice certified aircraft” and file IFR??
“–Post pone the flight until weather improved” and it did a few hours AFTER his encounter with invisible (to him) trees!
“–Turned back sooner”
It’s interesting that the 26,000 hour pilot didn’t think it necessary to report his CFIT event. Only because he flew a rented aircraft was this accident made known. I wonder how many previous mishaps he had that he concealed?