Pilot's Sightseeing Flight Ends In Family Tragedy!

Hey, it's Hoover! I've got a weekly letter for you on the patterns that keep killing pilots. Free → https://pilotdebrief.com/pattern On a clear April day in 2022, a Diamond DA40 lifted off from Cedar City, Utah, 128 pounds over gross weight and pointed toward rising canyon terrain. Four people were on board for what was supposed to be a sightseeing leg. The airplane departed Cedar City Regional Airport with the pilot and three passengers aboard, bound for a scenic loop through the canyons southeast of the field. Density altitude at the airport was already around 6,000 feet, and the terrain ahead would push that figure past 7,200. The math, run after the fact, gave the DA40 a climb performance of roughly 300 feet per minute under those conditions. Witnesses watched the airplane track east through Cedar Canyon at only 200 to 300 feet above the ground. It didn't look distressed — until it didn't. As the canyon walls closed in, the airplane began what looked like an attempted turnaround, banking until the wings were nearly vertical. It impacted mountainous terrain about seven miles from the departure airport, and a postcrash fire followed. Postaccident examination found no mechanical malfunction. What investigators did find was a weight-and-balance picture that was wrong before the wheels ever left the runway: about 128 pounds over the 2,646-pound maximum gross weight, with the center of gravity outside the approved envelope. The NTSB concluded the accident was caused by the pilot's failure to maintain obstacle clearance, resulting in controlled flight into terrain, with the decision to operate above maximum gross weight as a contributing factor. The pattern here is one of the oldest in mountain flying. An airplane loaded near the limits at sea level becomes a different airplane at a high-density-altitude airport surrounded by terrain. When the canyon stops climbing as fast as you can, the turnaround is the last option — and at low altitude with degraded performance, it is rarely the option that works. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ JOIN THE DEBRIEF CREW ON PATREON Ad-free videos and exclusive analysis From $5/month:   / pilotdebrief   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES NTSB Accident ID: WPR22FA164 Status: Final Final Report: https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/ap... Docket: https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket?ProjectI... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT PILOT DEBRIEF Pilot Debrief is hosted by Hoover, a retired F-15E pilot and current pilot for a major U.S. airline. Every video on this channel analyzes publicly released NTSB final reports, factual narratives, CVR/FDR transcripts, and docket evidence to extract practical safety lessons for general aviation pilots. We do not speculate beyond the evidence. We do not blame pilots for being human. We debrief the decisions and the systems, not the people. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Sponsorships and brand partnerships: [email protected] #PilotDebrief #NTSB #GeneralAviation #DensityAltitude #MountainFlying