The airline transport pilot and his daughter departed in day visual meteorological conditions with the morning sun behind the Piper PA-28R.
About 10 minutes after takeoff, the airplane hit a charted, 1,793-foot-tall television/radio tower about 200 feet below the apex of the tower, which was near Kaplan, Louisiana.
Both the pilot and his daughter died in the crash.
The pilot and his wife were in the process of divorce. The pilot’s wife was very concerned after the pilot and her daughter departed without notice several weeks before the accident. The pilot had become unresponsive to phone calls from his work supervisor and had been making unauthorized purchases with his work credit card before the accident.
On the day before the accident, the pilot’s attorney informed the pilot that a warrant had been issued for his arrest.
A direct course from the departure airport to the pilot’s home airport was over 5 miles south of the tower. Although a surveillance video and witness statements indicated that the tower’s lighting was erratic, the tower was adequately lit, and the visibility of the tower was not a factor in the accident.
Probable cause: The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from a charted and illuminated television/radio tower.
NTSB Identification: CEN18FA359
This August 2018 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.
Sad, sad indeed. Many years ago I heard about a guy who rented a C150 and tried to fly to Hawaii from the Los Angelss area. Rumor had it his girlfriend had left him…
A tragedy at so many levels! It’s fairly obvious it was intentional but so needless to kill an innocent person and destroy an airplane because his life was on the skids. As the saying goes, it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
It is unfathomable to me that anyone would use an airplane to kill themselves. I actually had a similar situation many years ago going through a divorce and was very blessed to own a C-172 which gave me great pleasure whenever I flew it and helped me put my worldly problems into a much less bleak perspective.
Anyone who says “I’d never do that” doesn’t understand human nature very well. Some people’s breaking point is lower than others, but we all have one. Given a certain set of circumstances, each of us are fully capable of reaching that point.
Point taken but I’m not debating breaking points but rather killing another human being because things are not going our way. That is what is unfathomable to me.
Depression messes with your ability to think logically.
I know this because of what I have witnessed with people who did serious logic stuff (Operating system development, theoretical mathematics, etc.) and then had a genetic thing trigger and they became seriously depressed (yes, there are tests for such genetic markers). And they lost their ability to do the logic their profession required.