"The accident occurred on the return flight to GAI while the airplane was operating on an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan.
Dark night instrument meteorological conditions prevailed in the area of GAI at the time of the accident. The reported weather at GAI included variable wind at 4 knots, an overcast ceiling at 200 ft above ground level (agl), and 1.25 statute miles visibility in fog. A convective SIGMET was valid for the accident time."
The first error the pilot made was the decision to make the flight at all in night instrument (low visibility) conditions with an active convective sigmet. A convective sigmet (significant meteorological condition alert) tells you that you can expect nasty turbulence, including strong downdrafts. Also, the ceiling (bottom of clouds) was too low to allow landing at the destination airport.
And then the pilot failed to fly the airplane within tolerances that have to be demonstrated to get the IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) certificate (license) that he had. He was doing a bad job of flying the airplane, while not being able to see where he was going.
"About that time, another airplane on approach to GAI announced that visibility was below minima and requested a diversion to another airport."
Finally, after another pilot reported that the visibility and clouds were too low to land at the destination airport, the pilot decided to continue on to that airport anyway. Another major mistake.
He is lucky, as is his passenger, to be alive.
Brew on
