Staff is blind to the Bat, the Rat, the Firetruck and a few others that obviously live to bring this site down.

They then play the, “what did I do?” card and get away with it.

Disgusting.

I clicked the little narcissist.

N880Z Learjet Crash El Cajon San Diego California - Low Altitude Starts Accident Chain

Almost certainly, Weather related VFR disorientation.

He was asking for them to turn up the lights on the runway due to the weather. He got visually disoriented.

But wait!  There's more!  If you post now, he'll throw in extra obstinance for free!  Mods are standing by!  Post now!  Don't miss out!  This thread may soon become a limited offer!

If he were "head down" he would have been inside the cockpit, but please do keep enlightening us all on your expert knowledge of flying.

It’s odd that they could be so sloppy with the altitude.    

That dude has radio pipes if anybody ever did.

I'm thinking back to my time in aerospace and all of the euphemisms we had for "explosion," when things with even less supposed volatility caused explosions liberation mishaps.  And, all of the time spent ensuring these explosions rapid enthalpy to thermal energy conversions didn't happen, or at least reducing the possibility.

Seriously?

Thank you.

Will be interesting to see if pilot has a history of sloppy adherence to procedures or this was one day where a singular mistake created a link in the accident chain where it bit him.

Apparently threads now have to stay on topic.

Who would have ever thought that would be a rule.

This is unreal.

I was wondering the same thing, would be interesting to look at past flights into the airport.  My bet is he's done this before and gotten away with it, perhaps in better weather.


This was back on December 26, circled in from the northeast about 2:30 in the afternoon.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N880Z/history/20211226/2100Z/KBUR/KSEE

It should raise the issue of what the other pilot saw and if he had time to react to take control of the plane.  Obviously that did not happen assuming an accelerated stall cause of the crash.  Note that it is certainly likely that the other pilot had no chance to prevent the crash.

The two nurses onboard.



Two flight nurses have been identified as being among the four people who were killed when a  10-seater private jet operated by a California air ambulance company crashed near San Diego on Monday.

The Learjet 35A, operated by the company Aeromedevac Air Ambulance, smashed into a power line before exploding on a street in El Cajon, leaving no survivors aboard the aircraft.

The Oceanside Firefighters Association named Tina Ward as one of the victims of the crash, revealing in an Instagram post on Tuesday that she was the wife of a recently retired local fire chief, Joe Ward.

‘It is with heavy hearts that the Oceanside Fire Department and their fire family would like to extend our deepest condolences to our recently retired Chief Ward, his family, and all family and friends of the Aeromedevac flight crew N880Z,’ the post read.


Flight nurses Tina Ward (foreground, circled) and Laurie Gentz (background, circled), have been identified as two of the four people who were killed when a medical plane crashed near San Diego on Monday



Ward was the wife of retired Oceanside Fire Chief Joe Ward, according to an Instagram post from the Oceanside Firefighters Association


‘Chief Ward’s wife Tina, was a flight nurse on board of the aircraft that crashed last night in El Cajon. We are shocked and saddened by this devastating news and are keeping you all in our thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.’

Joe and Tina Ward had been married for more than a decade and had three daughters together.  

Meanwhile, the International Association of of EMTs and Paramedics on Tuesday identified one of the other victims of the plane crash as Laurie Gentz, a veteran nurse with more than 30 years of experience who also served as president of her local union.

‘The IAEP extends sincere condolences for the devastating and sudden loss of Local 162 President Laurie Gentz, her fellow passengers and the Learjet flight crew early this morning,’ the Facebook post read. ‘President Gentz will be greatly missed by all who knew her and all who benefit from her selfless contributions to organized labor in the Greater San Diego area.’

The post was accompanied by an undated selfie showing Gentz, Ward and two men posing in front of the doomed Learjet 35A with the tail number N880Z.



Joe and Tina Ward are pictured with their three daughter in this photo the mom posted on Facebook a day before her death

CBS8 has reported, citing unnamed sources, that the other two victims were pilots, but it has not been confirmed as of Wednesday that the men seen in the photo shared by IAEP were the crew members who were killed on Monday.

According to CBS8, the medevac plane had transported a patient from Arizona to Orange County, California, on Monday and was returning to Gillespie Field when it went down.

The San Diego County Medical Examiner has yet to officially identify any of the victims pending the notification of next of kin.  

According to her Facebook page, Tina Ward previously worked as an emergency room nurse at Palomar Pomerado Health.

Laurie Gantz’s LinkedIn profile reveals that she had only joined Aeromedevac Air Ambulance as a part-time flight nurse in February.

She also worked as a critical care transport registered nurse at Rural Metro for nearly a decade.

More

My buddy works for a larger FBO in Socal, he is looking into everything he can find, but it's all a guessing game for all of us.  From what I can tell, the crew was flying from John Wayne to the field he was asking for a VFR approach and he was low at base leg and spun it in.  Assuming that airfeild was where the plane lived it is hard to imagine they would make a error like that unless something else happened in the cockpit and they got distracted.

It’s a shame the PIC killed those two nurses and his copilot.

From all of the information posted in this thread, it seems hubris killed them.  No more, no less.

I ride along with a friend who pilots a 414. It's gotten me 40+ hours of free right
seat time over the last year.

We had an ugly approach one time and he had me go around. No big deal.
The next time was perfect.

Some random pilot in the lounge made a smart ass comment about going around
while we were waiting on the airplanes owner. Before I could say anything, my
friend piped up with...."That attitude will get you and your passengers killed"

It got realllllllll quiet inside the lounge.

The only thing a go around costs is fuel.....

This was already covered by the rubes so I guess you didn't catch it.  Runway 17 would have put them closer to their hangar.  The prevailing theory is that they wanted the longer runway due to wet conditions.  I can totally buy that having seen a Lear 35 eat up a 8500ft runway in daytime dry conditions.

Edited 1387Delta - I know this was from a previous page and you wouldn't have seen the warning I posted on this page.  Please do not respond to his posts.


Thanks for the edit, you were correct I hadn't seen your post before I posted it.  

So why wouldn’t they have planned their flight for 27R?

Edited because I didn't see the warning before posting.

Stay on topic, gents.

I figured.  Only way we'd have the audio that quickly, if at all.

Hopefully one of the pilots can confirm, but I think they planned for an instrument approach to the airport to runway 17 as that was the normal instrument approach when coming from the North.  The approach to 27R would have taken them farther east of the airport up over the terrain to then come in straight on from that direction on the localized approach.  Not sure if they planned to cancel the instrument approach from the start or in the brief before landing decided to take a visual on 27R given the added length.

That's an interesting question.  The Tower is generally deciding what runway is in use.  If you don't like it, you can request a specific runway and the tower may or may not grant your request.  In this case, they approved them for the visual approach to 27R once they had the airport in sight and canceled their IFR.  You could also request it with Approach who is talking to the tower you are flying to in order to hand you off.  I have no idea why they wouldn't have requested vectors to an approach for 27R as soon as SoCal Approach gave them vectors to 7, I believe I saw someone else posted that there is an instrument approach to it.  Perhaps another indicator of them being behind the curve before they even got there, or maybe they felt just canceling their IFR, going visual, and flying an abbreviated left pattern to 27R would be easier and safer than it was.  

As I mentioned earlier, I rode back seat with my usual instructor and a different, ATP rated instructor doing circle to land approaches and they are TOUGH to divide your attention between "maintain visual contact with the runway" and flying the airplane.  Even in a GA single.    

There are instrument approaches to runways 9L and 17.  I don't recall the winds to know if 9L was a viable choice.

San Diego airport is 12 miles away and has a 9400 foot runway.

Reading more about this I'm pretty convinced they planned this straight in approach and 'circle' maneuver the whole time, and probably did this very thing as a regular way to get into the home base. The fact that instead of conducting a IFR circle to land (which wasn't authorized), they flew the straight in, got below the clouds, and then cancelled their clearance in order to not violate the night circle restriction, says they knew exactly what they were going to do to get in. They probably needed the longer runway for landing distance, and had their 'way' of making this work. Only this time they fucked it up. These kind of pilots and operations were very prevalent not even that long ago, but are getting more and more phased out as time goes by fortunately. I highly doubt these days even a small 135 wouldn't have a somewhat safe circling approach policy in the books. In the 91/135 world, circling approaches are not that uncommon at all. The most common one I fly regularly is into PWK with north winds. That one can be very tough at times, and a lot of times we go elsewhere. Forget it if it's actually near circling minimums, that would be very stupid to try imo (and yes that is also on my I'll never do that again list )

Thanks to those of you in the know for walking through this.. and prayers for the lost souls and their families.

Not a pilot but I tend to agree they had this workaround in mind the whole time.

Sad way to end

Appears they picked up a tailwind component (from an ATC pic on page 6) ground speed picked up to 151 the fastest indicated during the approach. They also gained 225’. Difficult to make yourself lower the nose in the dark with known terrain.

I believe they had done that same approach before but probably not in that kind of weather. Maybe they get some marine layer scud, but with an annual rainfall average of less than 13” I bet they rarely see a contaminated runway there?  

I haven’t flown as part of a crew in quite a few years. When I did, the pilot not flying handled the nav boxes and the comms, also called  out airspeed, altitude, and course indications. I got the impression that the pilot flying had his finger mashed on the PTT switch? A bunch of non standard stuff that you can probably  get away with during a VFR day.  The links of the chain of events started to add up very quickly.

Yeah, something bad happened all of a sudden.  

This stood out to me. Ordinarily, you'd only hear pilot's voices on the CVR. But I reckon this pilot was keying his PTT because, maybe, he was gripping the yoke like hell. Isn't the PTT on the yoke?

Usually one one each yoke or stick and one for each pilot on the glare shield.

They should have done VFR to runway 90 (which is 27 going east).

How do you know the copilot wasn't the one flying?  Captain would've been the one looking out the window keeping the airport in sight on the downwind turn, he could've been PM and the one on the radio.  He's eyes outside while the copilot is flying.

Yes the PIC is ultimately responsible for the aircraft and everybody onboard, but the copilot could've done something stupid unexpectedly that killed them.

On the audio what's that noise at 0:49?

The localizer approach to 27 is a LOC-D, so even though it's pointed at the runway, it's a circling approach, and circling to 27R isn't authorized at night.  It looks like the RNAV approach to 9L isn't authorized for category C and D aircraft, and I'm betting the LR-35 is a CAT C airplane.  So that leaves the RNAV 17 as the only usable approach.  It's been posted elsewhere that the company minimum runway length for landing was 5,000', 17 isn't that long, so they had to use 09L/27R.

I'd agree that San Diego would have been the better option.

I didn’t hear that in any of the other recordings. Sounds like something added in after the fact.

...

I should know better, but........

It has been a long time since I have been in a LR 35(A), I'll let those current on the type to correct me on the specifics.  That said, I will offer a coupe of things to ponder.

A circling maneuver is a maneuver where the crew maneuvers the aircraft with reference to the ground using visual cues as opposed to electronic instruments in the aircraft providing lateral and vertical guidance to the crew, i.e. ILS, LOC, GPS VOR etc, etc.

The circling geographical area limits are restricted by obstructions in the immediate airport area.

Minimum altitudes and visibilities on the Approach Chart are designed, flight checked, and designated by aircraft categories (A, B, C, D & sometimes E).

These categories are based on aircraft speed, (speed categories are based on a percentage above the aircraft stall speed calculated on the aircraft configuration being flown).

Category A aircraft for example use the smallest area, drawn 1.3 miles from the ends of the runways and being the slowest maximum speed (90kts) being flown during the circling maneuver.  

As the speed of the aircraft goes up (higher categories of aircraft, the LR is at best Cat C 2.7 NM and most likely Cat D, 3.6 NM) the area is larger which takes in more obstacles requiring higher minimum altitudes (to miss the rocks) and placing the aircraft farther from the end of the runway, hence more visibility required.  

Faster aircraft need more room to maneuver without excessive banking, etc.

Now for the aircraft.  LR's have a critical wing and incorporates designed elements that enhance performance (lift devices (flaps), vortex generators) at slower speeds (landing and take-off) with the least drag penalties for cruise/high altitude flight.

The LR also has a roll augmentation computer that tells the spoilers (in normal operation, spoilers are drag generating/lift killing device) to work to enhance roll (turning response at lower speed) and takes inputs from flap position (>25 degrees), aileron deflection and yaw damp inputs.

A proven standard operating procedure for a circling approach for a crew aircraft is for the crew to use the autopilot to fly the approach and level off at the appropriate minimum (or higher altitude if weather conditions permit).

The pilot flying (PF) will only make inputs to the A/P heading knob to maneuver the aircraft over the ground while keeping the airport in sight.

The pilot not flying (PNF) will be responsible for thrust management, to maintain airspeed, monitor time, the aircraft energy state, altitude, configure the aircraft as commanded, communicate with ATC, etc.

The bank limits of the autopilot (usually 25 degrees of bank) will keep the dirty side down and the aircraft in the flight envelope.  Drag goes up quickly in a bank while maintaining altitude!

Only when the aircraft is in a position to make a normal decent for landing will the autopilot be disconnected by the PF, at which time he manually takes control of the aircraft, adjusts thrust and calls for final landing configuration (flaps) to be selected.

Now start throwing in the holes in the swiss cheese accident chain someone posted earlier, and possible mechanical issues, human factors break downs, corporate culture, etc, and a through root cause analysis will determine where the failures in safety lie.

The Man, the Machine and the Environment all come into play here and will be investigated.  

Pilots haven't been very original in finding ways to bend tin for quite a while.

Forgive my ignorance of terminology.  In my head whoever isn’t the PIC becomes the default copilot as he isn’t in command at the time. That’s probably inaccurate however.

PIC is always PIC, but he may be the pilot monitoring. Either way, this was just sad. Circle to land....at night......in shit weather.

Just no.

Damn. That scream at the end was rough.