ETLB Squawk Forums — Archive

this happened yesterday. as the weather here was pretty good for a change a pilot was shooting landings and take offs in an avid bandit and for reasons still unknown crashed at the end of the runway at the washgington county airport.  he was life flighted to pittsburgh where he later died of his injuries.  there arent many details...faa is investigating.  my thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.

http://www.wtae.com/news/small-plane-crashes-at-washington-county-airport/24920852

I hate it when accidents happen.  Here the guy was practicing flying and somehow "lost it" and ended up dying. How sad for his family/friends and the aviation community.

Paul Fiebich

the last ( and basically the only ) report said he was making a turn back to the AP.  dont know if he lost an engine and was trying to pull a quick 180 and land or what?  i always feel particularly bad when a small plane goes down as i have known several good pilots it happened to and unfortunately one very nice gentleman didnt survive his.

We are all guilty of that thought of doing a 180 to save our airplane even though our training tells us that is exactly the wrong thing to do. I guess that is the natural thing for us humans to think will work. Sad that we lost another of our flying friends.

If you have good obstacle clearance, long runway, altitude, speed and no wind,  you may do a 180. But its seldom. I ve lost already two friends doing 180. One with a Kitfox, the other is with Glider. Very sad. Proximity of the airport is tempting badly.