Small Plane Crashes at Big Airport, No One Notices

Story here. It was a foggy night at Nashville Airport, and when it lifted Tuesday morning, it was discovered … a small plane had crashed and burned near a runway! The sole occupant, the pilot, was dead. All they know is it occurred sometime after 3am.

WTF??? How did no1 notice a fire on the runway? Other pilots, the controllers, ground personnel, passengers on other aircraft… no1 noticed?

OP said it was foggy. The tule fog we get here can drop visibility to a few yards.

Typing “no one” would only require three extra taps on the keyboard, you know.

It was 3 AM, and the pilot apparently did not use the radio. At that time, there may have been only 1 controller in the tower anyway, and it’s not unknown for them to fall asleep. Who else would there have been to notice?

It was a flying club plane. I wonder if the pilot legitimately had possession.

Really? Because that is the sort of thing that is pretty important, and easy to find out in most overnight jobs. Seems like a huge international airport would sort of know that sort of information.

If you have a problem with someone, take it to the Pit.

BNA is not that huge, and only barely international either. But yes, the management obviously knows who was on duty, and they certainly have PATCA involved along with the Airport Authority and the FAA and the NTSB. The facts will emerge, but slowly.

But might not be willing or allowed to release it to someone calling and claiming to be with a news agency.

Ow! :smiley:

The SD is cracking down on being pedantic now?

Well, one guy probably noticed.

Well, to put it in perspective, they’ve had big planes crash and the tower wasn’t aware of it right away because of fog.

In 1977 there was a crash on the Spanish island of Tenerife. You think it’s hard to miss a small plane on fire? What about two 747’s that collided and are both on fire? The tower wasn’t aware of the accident until an incoming plane saw smoke and something glowing on the runway and contacted the tower about it on the radio. The firetrucks and ambulances went to the closest plane and found everyone dead, and didn’t see the second plane further down the runway. It took them 20 minutes to realize that there was a second crash site.

It was the deadliest accident in aviation history (583 fatalities).

If only they could equip planes with computers that communicated with the tower, so if something goes wrong, the tower would know about it.

Like, if the plane crashes or the electrical system goes dead, the tower would see that the plane was in trouble. Maybe someday we will have such devices.

nm

It was ridiculously foggy that morning. There were places on the freeway as late as seven o’clock that were down to a crawl.

According to local news, he was way out of the area he had originally planned to fly. At the time of the crash, there had been no radio contact and visibility was almost nil. It was reported by other pilots. The tower had no clue.

But nor for long!

Still, you’d think someone would have heard it if not actually seen the explosion through the fog. How far away from the tower or terminal was that?

A plane that small? No chance, really. They don’t explode in an earth-shattering kaboom, and towers are pretty well insulated from the constant drone of airport traffic.

I was looking at redeyes into Nashville and they may not have any regular flights that late. The tower would probably still be manned, but they were unlikely to be looking for random unannounced private flights. Given that we’re talking about a small plane which may have been invisible to radar anyway, yeah, it’s not at all improbable that nobody at the airport could have spotted it.

Or maybe a little orange box about the size of a walkie-talkie that has an inertial switch that sets it off on impact and transmits an alarm on 121.5 MHz. :wink: