As a volunteer firefighter on our island I had attended four fatal airplane crashes, none had fires. I also seen a number of other other significant crashes and also no fires. I wonder how often fires do occur.
Printable View
Did any of the articles say who was flying?
I might have something mixed up, but I think one of them said she was a private pilot and he bought the airplane for her. Also that he held no aeronautical rating.
If she’s the one “working towards” a PPL and he’s just supporting her, I’d argue he didn’t fully understand the risk he took by getting in the plane as her passenger.
From the Katherine report she bought the airplane for him and he was a student pilot.
I know this is kind of late, but a little update. I just did a pre-buy inspection on a 182 owned by the NTSB investigator on that crash. According to him, the Aircraft had no fuel caps on it. After reading everything about this, I wonder if it was fueled by a FBO operator or the PIC. Once in the Air the fuel was probably sucked out of the plane. My guess and opinion only.
Investigation must still be going on
RIP Heidi Sue
https://i.imgur.com/lCrT5Cq.png
https://i.imgur.com/j6sWYLm.png
I looked at the FBO at Kingman, they have full service and self service fueling.
If I was in the corporate KingAir, I might go full service.
Every Shortwing owner I know (and that's a lot of em) would, given a choice, pump their own fuel and use the savings to have fries with their burger.
http://airzonaaircraft.com/fuel-prices/
I'm sure the NTSB can look up the N Number in the fueling logs and see who fueled the plane, FBO or pilot/owner.
A very sad story in any case.
GG
Ask the pilot https://www.facebook.com/christopher.anderson.338
If he was a pilot, nobody knows if he was a pilot or student. He must have been or he would be held responsable for killing Heidi.
Regardless, the pilot should always check the gas caps are on correctly, oil cap on, tie downs not tied down... if its important it should be checked.
His Face book page is no longer there, at least I can't get to it. An experienced pilot would know to check all this on pre-flight, at least I do. I spend most of the time pumping my own gas, but sometimes the FBO will do it. Every time I fly my plane it gets a pre-flight check, even if it is a quick turn around or just to fuel up the plane. It's hard to believe, but I see a lot of people, including students with instructors, fly in, fuel the aircraft, jump right back in and be gone. No pre-flight check no run up, just fuel and fly.
I didn't see anything in that NTSB report that pointed to fuel as the cause of the accident. There was mention of the aircraft being fueled. But the report states that the accident happened with "unknown circumstances". How did anyone draw conclusions from this? It seems somewhat negligent to be flying on a student certificate and carrying a non-CFI passenger. But beyond that, there doesn't seem to be an explanation for the crash.