Pilot vs Passenger - Aspen's Deadliest Plane Crash!

🔒 Remove your personal information from the web at https://joindeleteme.com/DEBRIEF and use code DEBRIEF for 20% off 🙌 DeleteMe international Plans: https://international.joindeleteme.com 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 the evening of March 29, 2001, a Gulfstream III charter racing Aspen's nighttime landing curfew flew the VOR/DME-C approach in snow and darkness — and never reached the runway. The Part 135 flight had left Los Angeles 41 minutes behind schedule, carrying two pilots, a flight attendant, and 15 passengers into Aspen-Pitkin County Airport. Weather at ASE had deteriorated to roughly two miles visibility in light snow with broken cloud layers, and the airport's 1858 nighttime landing restriction was closing in fast. The crew flew the VOR/DME-C approach in effective nighttime IMC. They descended well below the minimum descent altitude without the runway in sight, drifted off course, and struck sloping terrain about 2,400 feet short of the threshold. All 18 people on board were killed. The NTSB found the flight crew operated the airplane below the minimum descent altitude without an appropriate visual reference for the runway. Contributing factors included unclear FAA wording in the March 27, 2001 NOTAM restricting the VOR/DME-C approach at night, the FAA's failure to communicate that restriction to the Aspen tower, the crew's inability to see mountainous terrain in darkness and weather, and pressure on the captain to land — from the charter customer, the delayed departure, and the looming curfew. This is the pattern the Pilot Debrief Method keeps surfacing: a non-precision approach at night, into terrain, with the clock running and the customer waiting. The MDA is a hard floor for a reason. When the runway isn't in sight at the missed approach point, the only safe answer is the missed approach — no matter who is in the back of the airplane. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ JOIN THE DEBRIEF CREW ON PATREON Ad-free videos and exclusive analysis From $5/month:   / pilotdebrief   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES NTSB Accident ID: DCA01MA034 Status: Final Final Report: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/A... 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 #CFIT #AviationSafety #GeneralAviation