Florida Learjet Crash 11/1/26: Possible cause? (5 Viewers)

[raising hand]

I was rated VFR and knew all the gauge functions in the types I flew.

In order to operate an aircraft (VFR/IFR), it is necessary to know what's going on - you don't just jump in and go.
👍
 
When in MN about '60, I sought out Max Conrad, paying him for a dozen hours of remedial instruction. By that time, I was 17 with well over 1500 hours or more then, from gliders, dusters, seaplanes and heavy twins, flying anything that I could, including nearby Harlingen warbirds. (I lived in San Antonio)
Max Conrad - Wikipedia - only tip of his accomplishments. Even more significant perhaps than his solo distance flight records are the 45,000 hours he had in the air, and the 3000 students he took to license.
Some of best money I'd ever spent, and would do it again, if possible, since having survived 200+ Navy fighter night traps, and upwards of 18,000 hours, including Lears and bizjets.
 

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSngzLP6fR8

Video has some disturbing content, including the crash itself as well as the copilot's communications with ground. This video makes the incredibly dodgy claim that icing may have caused the crash.

When an aircraft nosedives at near the speed of sound into the ground, isn't it always because of lost elevator control, right? This is clearly a maintenance failure.

I believe this is around the seventh fatal crash in the US since 2025. Before that there were zero as far back as I can remember.


As a ICAO qualified fit and proper person for the investigation of aircraft accidents and incidents I can categorically reject that this was a maintenance issue.

For beginners the sort of turbulence that the copilot was reporting would have been close to that aircrafts structural limits. Secondly the radar track shows the aircraft departing an area of severe weather and entering an area of extreme weather

Thirdly icing can stall a wing, especially at high altitudes where the stall speed is approaching the cruise speed. Stall speed is directly related to air density and as air density decreases stall speed increases up to the point that pilots call coffin corner. Add to that the turbulence and they were in a very dicey situation even without icing. Climbing to a higher elevation as they were compounds this.

Thirdly, if a wing stalled, the aircraft would have dropped its nose and rapidly exceeded Vne - the Velocity never exceed - for the type. That can rip the tail off, especially on a T tail aircraft like the Lear 60.

So my recommendation is to wait for the NTSB to complete their investigation instead of launching ill informed idiotic claims on a subject that you are obviously not qualified to discuss.

My expectation is that there will be multiple root causes when the NTSB report comes out and that maintenance will not be one of them. Pilot error from entering the centre of a storm is likely to be one of the findings and the NTSB will do their best to determine why the pilot made any error because why that error was made is the critical issue.

The NTSB exists so that smart pilots, and ground staff, learn from others mistakes.
 
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My expectation is that there will be multiple root causes when the NTSB report comes out and that maintenance will not be one of them. Pilot error from entering the centre of a storm is likely to be one of the findings and they will do their best to determine why the pilot made any error because why that error was made is the critical issue.
Hear, hear!!!

We don't need these greedy clickbait counters and perpetual media trotted out "I've been flying my Wombat Super Q out of Miami for 12 years" second guessers to feed us over masticated rumors, and endlessly regurgitated repetitive semi-related ideas. The majority will end up being wrong, at least in part, and usually unrelated.
We've become an impatient, spoiled, instant gratification society, and it demeans us. Let the excellent NTSB do its work.
 
Why the optimistic 🌈 A Admiral Beez ?
If I'd clicked the Like, Informative or Useful button, would you be asking why? There's something Pavlovian about that Optimistic button.
And again, why would a VFR pilot not know what his/her instrument gauges do?
Given the number of VFR pilots who crash perfectly fine aircraft through I can only assume ignorance or neglect of their aircraft systems, assuming that they know what they're doing is the very exercise of being optimistic, IMO.

Of course if we weren't inherently optimistic as a species, we'd never get out of bed, let alone drive a car or get on a plane.
 
As long as we are passing along severe weather stories, I'll mention a friend, now gone, who flew F4Us & F6Fs in world war twice. He was an avid flyer before the war and loved the old planes. About 45 years ago, he found, and was flying back, a 1939 Taylorcraft which had no electrics and had a Flathead flat four engine. He was coming from Louisiana north of the lake towards MSY New Orleans. He had made arrangements to use hand held radio and they knew he had no lights. As he approached the northern lake shore, he saw the thunderstorm, but with no place to land as it began to get dark, he told MSY he would try to cross the lake. He said just over the water, he was tossed upside down in an inverted spin. He said without his navy training, he would have been gone.
As I recall, he said he skirted the storm by following the shore line around to the airport, landing in the dark. Fortunately, all this was planned and executed on a Sunday.
 

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