Cessna 340A Crash San Diego, CA 11 Oct 2021

it's tuesday october 12th my name is juan brown you're watching the blanco lyrio channel and yesterday on 11 october a 1979 twin cessna 340a went down near san diego california killing the owner operator pilot on board a well-known cardiologist dr sugata das from the yuma regional medical center while attempting to fly the ils runway 2-8 right at san diego's montgomery field here's what we know so far from the aviation safety network the aircraft cessna 340a owner operator samarath aviation llc registration november 7022 golf only one occupant on board the owner operator fatally injured a cessna 340a was destroyed by fire and impact with a ups delivery car and residential structures about two miles north northeast of gillespie field airport ksee that's not the airport that he was attempting to land at at the intersection of green castle and jeremy streets san diego el cajon california the pilot sustained fatal injuries number of occupants is currently unconfirmed that's been confirmed now to just the one pilot on board the aircraft was the sole occupant a ups delivery driver was fatally injured and two people on the ground sustained a serious burn injuries two homes were destroyed three seriously damaged let's go inside and listen to some atc audio tapes and talk about the cessna 340 and some of the systems on board that aircraft starting here with catherine's report here's dr sugata das in a cessna 172 looks like he's receiving some flight training in it and if we come down here a lot of great links on catherine's report that to a lot of great information here's some still photographs of the video data that was captured by door ring camera surveillance cameras i cannot show the actual video itself no longer here on the blancolyrio channels the youtube is threatening to demonetize my channel permanently as that content according to youtube is not suitable for all advertisers even though we're here to learn from it if we take this still picture and zoom in on it we can see what appears to be all four corners of the aircraft this is something investigators will always be looking for there's the two wing tanks which are the main fuel tanks and the cessna 340 both engines the nose and the tail of the aircraft all appear to be intact and if you go back and listen to the audio on those video recordings to me i hear two good engines at climb power or better just prior to impact a good 45 degrees a bank or more and quite a few degrees nose low a very high speed high energy impact here's the approximate flight path for this flight from yuma arizona where the doctor worked back to san diego california where he lived at 200 miles an hour that's about a short 45 minute flight or so here's some pictures of the actual accident aircraft number november 7022 golf in 1979 cessna 340a just a beautiful aircraft only 1860 hours total time since brand new tsio520 continental engines those are the turbocharged engines that give you the pressurization for this aircraft only 516 hours since major overhaul on both engines recent prop work done and it has the vortex generators which is very common for these aircraft to help reduce vmca your minimum controllable speed on one engine making it a safer airplane in that respect now looking at the interior of this aircraft it can seat a total of six people if you got all the seats in there including the two seats up front and here's the picture of the instrument panel back when these pictures were taken we do not know if this if the doctor has modified this panel as a lot of people are going to uh full electronic displays now but this is what we call the old school six-pack steam gauge instrument set up six-pack meaning the six primary flight instruments right there lined up the way that you see them late model communications com radios nav radios here weather radar right here and here is the original autopilot i believe it's a navimatic autopilot so twin engine dual everything dual redundancy on vacuum systems generators and a backup set of instruments here on the standby instrument panel from the faa database we can see the ratings for dr sugata das first class medical aid of 2020 basic med 2017 commercial pilot date of issue 2014. he's got a commercial pilot multi-engine instrument rating and a private single engine rating here's the preliminary adsb data from flightaware showing the flight from yuma to san diego and it shows a very consistent 10 000 foot cruise 10-5 heading westbound vfr and then the descent and then things begin to get very unstable at the last portion of the flight with speed excursions from between 200 and 17 miles an hour down to 138 miles per hour then back up to 230 miles per hour and down to 197 and then right back up to 250 plus estimated near the time of impact so this portion here is representative of the aircraft being on autopilot this portion here looks like the aircraft is being hand flown here's the airport diagram for the airport he was landing at montgomery field in san diego so he was cleared for the ils approach runway 2-8 right that's this runway here however the active runway was runway two three this shorter runway here three thousand four hundred feet long so the clearance was cleared ils runway two eight right circle to land runway 2-3 here's the instrument approach he was cleared to fly the ils runway 2-8 right with a circle to land runway 2-3 the weather at the time was 1700 foot broken 2800 foot overcast so there's a typical marine layer probably a thousand to 2000 feet thick that he's got to fly through to fly this approach but he's got plenty of good weather below the weather in other words the weather is well above minimums for this approach and well above minimums for the circling approach which is 501. unfortunately he never got to the circling approach part of the procedure things started to go wrong intercepting the localizer for the ils so this more granulated adsb data shows airspeed and altitude date and time and this section of the data appears to me again that the aircraft is on autopilot the autopilot is connected and is helping him with this navigation as he's getting vectored around here's the airport he's trying to land at montgomery field over here here's runway 2 8 with the extended localizer off the extended center line coming in right about through here he ended up crashing just north of gillespie field located right here thus the confusion as to what airport he was heading for so right about here this looks to me like the aircraft was on autopilot and then for some reason he did not intercept the localizer course he may have very well flown through it and then started what appears to me to be a classic spiral descent of spatial disorientation to the right more on that in a minute as we listen to the atc audio tapes prior to where we picked this up with vas aviation 2-2 golf was conducting normal vectors and a descent to intercept the localizer and 2-2 golf was given the weather at montgomery a 1700 foot broken 2800 foot overcast 10 miles visibility landing runway 2-3 now let's pick this up with victor over at vass aviation i highly recommend supporting his channel i'm a patreon supporter of victor because he provides invaluable information to the aviation community i've tried pulling this data together myself it's an incredible amount of work what he does here q two golf turn right hitting two five zero joint funnel two players that's that thirty degree intercept heading to join the two eight right localizer final again this is edited for brevity and now do you say uh let's do it right raider four seven turn left heading one eight zero joint final let's start with zero joint final ready for him okay a little point of confusion on behalf of 2-2 golf here he was cleared to intercept final and then he will be cleared for the approach he 2-2 golf is getting very close to the localizer right now they're teaching off your formats from penny the center maintain 2 800 until established on the localizer clear to ils runway 2 8 right surface land runway 2 3. uh established on the localizers okay massive confusion on behalf of the pilot there about what that clearance actually was cleared the ils two eight right circle to land runway two three it appears that the circle to land portion of that clearance baffled that pilot and all this is happening at the crucial moment of intercepting the localizer this is why flying a multi-engine aircraft one of these light twins especially a resip light twin solo in the weather is the most is the most demanding form of aviation you can partake in this is done this is made much easier in a 121 style operation where you have the co-pilot handling the radios for you and the pilot just concentrating on flying the airplane so now with this little bit of miscommunication a little bit of misunderstanding tutu golf has now flown through the localizer course it's likely that he did not properly set up the autopilot to intercept the localizer approach because of this momentary confusion causing him to fast turn or shoot through the localizer approach and now he's got to begin to hand fly the aircraft to get it back on course here's t2 golf traffic two o'clock three miles southbound five thousand descending four thousand sixty one thirty they are restricted above you caution right here your q2 golf looks like you're drifting right of course are you correcting correcting what to okay you can hear it in his voice completely task saturated very clipped communications the c130 traffic is a bit of a distractor he's up high he's no factor but in the meantime he has s turned through the localizer approach final approach and is deviating further to the right of course and continuing to descend um you're not even tracking the localizer i need you to fly actually cancel approach clearance climb and maintain three thousand two two golf three thousand low altitude alert minimum vector analysis in your area of two thousand eight hundred okay he's blown the approach now he's really the pilot of 2-2 golf is very stressed now he's made the mistake of completely missing this approach from the beginning of the approach but no harm no foul he can just climb up and get re-vectored back around for the approach but this has put the pilot of tutu golf under an incredible amount of stress flaring okay now he's climbing he says he's climbing when he in fact is not climbing crater four seven over hill cleared vr or attacking alpha approach to brown so they're all checking out for approaches to brian ray deporter t2 golf climbing maintain 3 800. that's 3800 that's a typo on the slide there he's still below the minimum vectoring altitude he's still too low raider 4 7 contact brown tower 128.25 southwest 825 ready to pull seven thanks good night turn right heading zero nine or zero three vectors to final through the matter okay we're just gonna do this all over again right turn to zero nine zero degrees and they're gonna re-vector them around for final and try this again so he's in the turn in the weather descending when he should be climbing turn right hitting zero nine or zero climb immediately maintain four thousand thousand he still insists that he's climbing when he in fact is descending this is a classic case of the somatographic illusion portion of spatial disorientation as you as you accelerate forward you push the throttles up on this high performance light twin-engine aircraft it's going to begin climbing and accelerating simultaneously with quite a bit of performance that acceleration when you're in the weather you can't see outside it's going to feel like a tremendous nose up pitch up moment so your natural human reaction if you're not following the gauges is to push forward on the yoke okay it looks like you're descending sir i need to make sure you are climbing not descending he insists he is still climbing when he's descending and again you can hear both engines running just fine at a high very high power setting off stay altitude 2500 they're 2-2 golf low altitude alert climb immediately climb the airplane maintain 5000. expedite climb climb the airplane please he's heading towards higher terrain up here to the north at the same at the same time descending in a right-hand bank in the weather golf just level out the plane out of the heading and climb the airplane up to 5000 when you cancer that's the supervisor jumping on the radio trying to save this pilot's life just break it down to the most simplest terms possible level the wings and climb the aircraft 10 o'clock and a half mile 1 500. you appear to be defending against sir are you say altitude the opponent is currently 2 9 or 7 8. after 129 air traffic ahead half a mile uh eastbound uh tower aircraft just crashed about a half mile in front of us into the houses okay that was the last we heard of 2-2 golf the helicopter traffic ahead witnessed the crash as the aircraft exited the clouds it's estimated that the cloud bases around here are about 1700 feet the higher terrain around there can be as high as a thousand feet when the aircraft came out of the clouds at a very high rate of descent he was basically in a unusual attitude recovery sort of situation a high d amount of bank and steep nose-down attitude and airspeed approaching 250 knots we don't know if the pilot was attempting to recover from that unusual attitude at that time or if he had enough time to recover from that unusual attitude from that point it would seem like with the sealing of the clouds that perhaps he could have recovered the aircraft but yet he didn't again he was completely task saturated and terrified at the prospect of what was going on he was losing control of the aircraft in the weather and breaking out to an unusual attitude high-speed nose-down event was it some form of pilot incapacitation well is spatial disorientation a form of pilot incapacitation when you get spatial disorientation you get extreme tunnel vision you are terrified your world comes down to the smallest little gray circle very similar to a g g induced loss of consciousness some of the first things that you lose when you get into such a tunnel vision state of terror is you no longer hear the radio you no longer hear people talking to you you are just trying to simply save your life and when your somatographic when your inner ear is telling you something completely different from what your instruments are telling you and you are not trusting and believing your instruments it is very har hard if not impossible to overcome speaking of possible medical incapacitation carbon monoxide poisoning leads us to a quick review of the pressurization system in the cessna 340. these cessna aircraft are pressurized using the turbocharger off the tsio520 engines the turbocharger drives a compressor which compresses outside air to pressurize the cabin there's only a mechanical connection between the turbocharger and the compressor there is no way to get exhaust from the engines into the cabin using the fresh air pressurization system since twin engine aircraft do not use the exhaust system to heat the cabin they are equipped with a janitrol or tradewinds heater that runs off of 100 oct 100 octane fuel located in the nose of the aircraft this can produce carbon monoxide if not properly maintained however the weather during this event was too warm for the pilot to even need to use a heater regarding hypoxia this flight was flown at 10 500 feet even if the pressurization was not working it was not high enough nor long enough duration to induce hypoxia for this pilot so i hope this gives you a better understanding of what happened to the cessna 348 that went down in san diego on 11 october again we are here to learn from this not to berate anybody please keep your comments civil in the comments section below thanks so much for your support of this channel especially over on patreon that make this content possible we get more information and additional ntsb reports we'll keep you updated here see you here [Music] [Music] you

Channel: blancolirio

Views: 344,405

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Id: 3Qp7oSPnnUY

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 13 2021