John Denver Plane Crash Explained! #johndenver #johndenverplanecrash

do you have it now John Denver's last words we're reviewing that faithful day on taking off Sunday October 12 1997. [Music] welcome to taking off I'm Chrissy Wong today's episode is brought to you by Flying Eyes Colton mortgage and Marshall Security Services more on them later but first we're exploring more high-profile GA crashes on the channel and this is one that I've been interested in for a while many people remember John Denver as a folk singer and actor he was also an activist and general do-gooder and it's widely known that he died in a plane crash in the 90s but what exactly happened I've been doing some research on this crash and I feel like I've gotten to know John Denver pretty well now in order to understand the crash you have to understand John Denver to be honest I knew about some of his music but didn't really know much else about him I assumed he was a pilot but then again a lot of actors and singers are because let's face it flying's pretty cool he was actually born Henry John deutschendorf Jr in December 1943. Junior because he was named after his dad Henry deutschendorf senior a U.S Air Force pilot Henry senior known affectionately as Dodge was an ATP with several Learjet type ratings as well as a flight instructor which is the nature of Air Force life the family moved around a lot they lived in New Mexico Oklahoma Arizona Alabama and finally in Fort Worth Texas when I first started doing this research I did not expect a North Texas connection so I was pleasantly surprised until I found out that kids in Fort Worth were especially mean to him we'll get to that in a minute now because they moved around so much John found it hard to make friends easily he was super introverted but around age 11 he received his first guitar from his grandmother that he started to play with and he quickly found that others would pay attention to him if he sang along with it this is when his family was living in Montgomery Alabama which he hated because of the general bigotry hatred racism type of environment of the 1950s so he seemed pretty shut in unfortunately things did not improve when the family moved to Fort Worth his dad was stationed at Carswell Air Force Base and John attended Arlington Heights High School we all know that high school years are pretty rough but John was especially alienated I've always thought of Texans being super nice and relatively welcoming but not for John the kids alienated him like to the point where one time he tried to throw a party and no one came it was so distressing for him that in his junior year of high school he literally ran away to California to pursue a musical career it sucks when your dad's a pilot though because Dutch borrowed a fringe jet to go retrieve John from California alas he went back to Texas to finish high school he then went on to Texas Tech in Lubbock to study architecture and it was there that he joined a folk music group the Alpine Trio it was around this time that he decided to go by John Denver because it sounded more folksy than John deutschendorf also it fit better on a marquee so there's that he was getting pretty good booking gigs singing in local clubs so he decided to drop out of college in 1963 and moved to Los Angeles to really pursue his music he joined a music group there but in 1969 decided to go solo one couldn't say he did pretty well because he wound up releasing his first album with RCA records the early 70s started seeing great success for John I'm sure everyone knows Country Roads Take me home and Rocky Mountain High do you know the song Leaving on a Jet Plane by the folk group Peter Paul and Mary yeah John Denver wrote that it said he wrote that song on a layover while feeling particularly lonely one day but also because he really liked airplanes flying was his passion only second to his music John's dad taught him how to fly in the mid-1970s he became an accomplished Private Pilot throughout his career obtaining a single-engine land single-engine C and multi-engine land he was also rated to fly gliders even got typed on the leader jet so he could buy one to fly back and forth the concerts he wound up hogging over 2 700 hours over the years the 1970s were definitely John's Peak years he recorded and released around 300 songs with 33 million records sold worldwide he even starred in some TV shows and films but his career started to dwindle into the 80s he continued to do performances but he focused a lot on his activism he was also super into NASA mostly due to his love of flying and actually went through the testing to go up on one of the shuttle missions and although he was a finalist he never actually went up in the 90s he continued supporting different causes but also his personal flying friends of John said that he was kind of a daredevil when it came to Flying though he loved aerobatics and glider flying and would cut the engine on his plane 35 miles from Aspen just to show off that he could Glide it in he owned a Christian Eagle of Waco and a couple of Cessna 210s shout out to Dan and in 1997 he was looking for a new thrill that's when he found the Long Easy the Routan Model 61 long EZ is a popular home build aircraft with a Canard layout which was designed by Bert rutan's Rutan aircraft Factory it's derived from a previous design at the very easy has a larger version now let's talk about this particular Long Easy it was built in 1987 by a builder in Texas it had a unique modification to it that the fuel selector was placed over the Pilot's left shoulder this was contrary to rattan's original design which had the fuel selector placed on the floor the original Builder modified it this way to prevent having the fuel lines run through the cockpit where they might rupture during a belly landing but Rattan had actually accounted for this by strengthening the fuselage below the fuel switch to provide additional protection of the fuel lines another interesting modification was the engine the original design allowed for a rear mounted 100 horsepower Continental o200 or a 115 horsepower Lycoming o235 this particular plane had a 150 horsepower Lycoming o320 on it making it very fast this modification also required 50 pounds of ballast to be put in the nose as well but instead of standard ballast This Plane had two 20 pound batteries relocated to the nose to help offset the CG and despite these modifications the Houston office FAA inspector certified the error worthiness of the plane back in 1987. in 1994 the Builder sold it to a Southern California veterinarian named vindel snow at the time it was registered as November 5 Lima Echo so snow had it re-registered as November 228 Victor Sierra and it was well loved and kept by snow for three and a half years so fast forward to September 97 and vandel snow had decided to put his beloved Long Easy up for sale he claimed to have no mechanical issues with the plane and it was overall in very good condition when John saw the plane for sale he knew he had to have it and he contacted snow they arranged to meet up and go for a test flight on September 27 1997 John Denver bought the plane for 56 thousand dollars which translates to a little over one hundred thousand dollars in 2022 dollars he had a local flight instructor who was very well acquainted with the long easy Ferry it to an aircraft paint shop so that he could get it repainted and branded with a new registration November 555 Julia Delta while the plane was in the shop he continued touring playing his last concert in Corpus Christi Texas on October 5th 1997. man there are an awful lot of Texas Connections that I did not expect not so fun fact the last song he would play during his final concert was calypso on Saturday October 11 1997 John went to the paint shop to procure the plane with the same flight instructor from before they flew it away and the flight instructor did the checkout in the plane that same day the checkout consisted of two Touch and Go Landings and some slow flight Maneuvers all consisting of about a half an hour they also reviewed aircraft systems including the wonky placement of that fuel selector valve the instructor called it good and John was on his way the next day Sunday October 12th John went to play golf with friends They begged him to stay for another round but he was super eager to go fly his newly acquired toy dressed in green pants a multi-colored sweater and cowboy boots John arrived at Monterey Peninsula airport in Monterey California winds were light and the skies were VFR it was the perfect day to fly he went on with his pre-flight inspection borrowing a fuel sump cup from a local aircraft maintenance technician who happened to be nearby the two chatted about the odd placement of the fuel selector valve and its resistance to being turned with John telling the technician that he was already coordinating to have the fuel selector relocated to the originally designed location he mentioned that he had a hard time reaching it but it would be no bother because he would set the autopilot before reaching back to switch tanks John return the fuel thumb cup and when asked declined fuel service just after 5 PM with less than half a tank of fuel in the right wing and less than a quarter of a tank in the left wing John contacted Ground Control and received his taxi clearance after his run-up he contacted tower for takeoff clearance on Runway 2-8 requesting pattern work for touch and goes at 5 12 pm he was cleared for takeoff and performed three Touch and Go Landings without incident at 5 27 pm he requested to depart the pattern and go fly around the area Tower granted his request and asked him to squawk zero three six seven when they couldn't identify him Tower asked him to reset his transponder do you have it now he asked those would be John's final words at 5 28 PM Pacific time the Long Easy suddenly dropped out of the sky and crashed into the Pacific Ocean just outside of Pacific Grove California according to multiple eyewitnesses the plane flew overhead about 500 feet when it suddenly and sharply banged to the right and went straight down into the ocean some of the eyewitnesses mentioned a popping or backfiring noise coming from the engine before it descended the plane was so low there was just no time to recover the wreckage was mostly recovered as the plane crashed into an area that was only about 30 feet deep investigators found that the wreckage complied with eyewitness accounts as the front end had been crushed in indicating a nosedive impact the pathology report revealed multiple blunt force trauma this was a non-survivable crash the NTSB got to work right away to figure out what exactly happened through their investigation they found several potential leads so plot twist John had some complications in the past that prevented him from obtaining a medical certificate in 1993 he was arrested on drunk driving charges fortunately the judge went relatively light on him John pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a probation and a 372 dollar fine at that time that would be enough for me to clean up my act and never drink and drive again I'll tell you what but just a year later in 1994 John was arrested yet again for drunk driving in fact he smashed his portion to some trees as it turns out John had some pretty bad substance abuse problems he once even said that Rocky Mountain High was conjured up under the influence of LSD and marijuana oh and also in 1994 he taxied his Christian Eagle in to a Cessna at a Runway intersection in Jackson Hole it was clear that John had an alcohol abuse issue he went into rehab and was told that his continued Airmen medical certification remains contingent upon his total abstinence for use of alcohol in June 1996 he was issued a third class Medical but John continued to drink and when the FAA found out they revoked his medical certificate for clarity the FAA found out during a routine inspection of medical records and found that John had reported to his doctor in 1995 that he was averaging two to four drinks per week due to the prior stipulations put forth and him breaking said stipulations the FAA no longer found him medically fit to fly he received a certified mail notification from the FAA revoking his medical certificate in March of 97 but he continued to fly anyway it's not really clear why he did that but it probably has something to do with John's Daredevil tendencies restoring a little faith in John his blood pathology results after the crash came back indicating no drugs are alcohol found so at least there's that now going back to those leads the NTSB had a lot to work with but ultimately it came down to the placement of that fuel selector valve according to interviews with other pilots who are familiar with this airplane and had flown it to change the fuel selector a pilot had to go through a whole process one remove his hand from the right side control stick if he was hand flying the aircraft two release the shoulder harness three turn his upper body 90 degrees to the left to reach the handle and four turn the handle to another position two pilots even shared their experiences of having inadvertently run a fuel tank dry with nearly catastrophic consequences because of the fuel selector and side gauge locations in fact when the NTSB investigators physically got into a long easy to replicate those Maneuvers they found their Tendencies were to inadvertently Smash in the right Rudder pedal with their right foot as they turned overall the NTSB determined that the cause of the crash was due to the following factors one the Pilot's diversion of attention from the operation of the airplane two his inadvertent application of right Rudder that resulted in the loss of airplane control while attempting to manipulate the fuel selector handle three the Pilot's inadequate pre-flight planning and preparations specifically his failure to refuel the airplane four the Builder's decision to locate the unmarked fuel selector handle in a hard to access position and unmarked fuel quantity sight gauges 5. inadequate transition training by the pilot and six his lack of total experience in this type of airplane Daredevil John found exactly what he wanted in this long easy he was only 53 years old when he died which is so so young is it that old adage of old pilots versus bold Pilots what do you guys think should John Denver have even been flying after his medical was revoked should he have been flying a plane by himself that he had so very little experience in especially one with so many Advanced modifications leave your thoughts in the comments below and remember to be respectful as a loss of life is never great but we can hope to learn from it and make Aviation a little better through it now is there a ga crash or incident that you're interested in and would like us to review it on the show leave your comments below if we choose your suggestion you'll even get a special shout out a big thank you to all of you for watching and 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Channel: Taking Off

Views: 1,342,700

Keywords: aviation news, christy wong, dan millican, flying, flying news, general aviation, in the hangar, inthehagar, learn to fly, plane news, planes, taking off, takingoff, john denver, john denver crash, john denver death, how did john denver die, john denver airplane, john denver pilot, faa, ntsb, airplane crash, rutan, rutan long ez, longez, long ez crash, plane crash, john denver leaving on a jet plane, airplane crash documentary, john denver country roads, john denver plane crash

Id: n4nf3w9UpK4

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 12 2022