Based on the ADS-B track and the location of the wing and other wreckage parts, it seems like there’s a good chance the plane hit powerlines on a too-low approach.
edit: looks like CNN is confirming that theory.
The business jet first hit a power line, then careened into homes in a San Diego military housing community just before 4 a.m. Thursday, authorities said. The debris field is at least a quarter mile long across the residential street, where jet fuel rained down, igniting several cars and damaging others as far as several blocks away from the main crash site.
It was still NAS Miramar at the time. Will Smith’s character was based at MCAS El Toro, in Orange County. Wendover Airport (Utah) doubled for the MCAS El Toro exteriors.
The weather report given to the pilots a half-hour before the accident was below the lowest legal minimums for landing from any of the approaches available to that runway. Had this been an airliner, the regs would have required a diversion.
It is not illegal for a private plane to attempt the approach and if they get lucky and can see to land before reaching the minimum approach altitude, they are OK to go ahead and do so. But it is definitely a situation that can lead pilots to press past the legal limits when they get oh so close to the runway and yet see nothing. The temptation to just hold what you’ve got and wait for the runway to appear can be extreme.
In the instant case they must have been below the proper altitude for their distance to the runway. I Google-measure that distance as about 2 miles, which suggests they should have been about 600 feet above the runway elevation of 423 feet above sea level. There is rising terrain in that area, but not that much higher.
It looks like this was not the pilots pressing below minimums that got them; those mistakes usually lead to on-airport crashes. Instead they were well below the proper descent path as they drove towards the runway. Was that a deliberate effort to cheat low hoping to see something despite the weather report? Or just 4am sloppiness / sleepiness that got them?
While looking at the article I just discussed, CNN offered me a link to this recent article about a 2023 bizjet crash that we addressed here back when it happened.
What’s noteworthy is what’s in the headline. The airplane was badly maintained. And was owned by the wealthy people on board. Jets, like yachts, are an expensive hobby / indulgence and it’s easy to buy something you can afford to mortgage and insure, but not maintain or use. Shame the cheapo owner killed people beyond just themselves.
There is a fix PALOS inside the final approach fix on both the Rwy 28R ILS localizer & Rwy 28R RNAV approaches at 2.9 nautical miles (3.3 statute miles) from the runway end at 1380 MSL, or about 950AFL. The only reason a fix is installed inside of the FAF like that is for terrain clearance.
As best I can tell they clipped the powerlines about 1-1/4 statute miles past PALOS.
This Streetview link is taken from the golf course looking directly towards the runway 2.2 statute miles away on the other side of that ridgeline and the canyon beyond it. It seems they hit those lines and the wreckage ended up spewing across the houses on the other side.
If they just squeaked over PALOS on altitude and then really dumped the nose hoping to “dive and drive” down at the MDA ASAP, they might have fallen out the bottom of their intended maneuver. Or more likely found that the ground past PALOS was not flat enough to be that low that early. Or they deliberately undercut PALOS by a couple hundred feet, and dove and drove once past it.
Then again, the weather minimums for doing a dive and drive maneuver are lots higher than for doing a steady descent via glideslope or RNAV/VNAV. Such that the weather report was a total no-hoper for a dive and drive arrival.
Trying to have it both ways by using the dive and drive technique and the lower steady descent minimums is always illegal and often fatal.
Or, maybe they weren’t trying to do anything dumb and it’s just bad luck that the normal clearance over the powerlines was minimal versus the regulatory limits and they were just a bit sloppier than the regs assumed pilots need to be.
There are a few spots on a few approaches I’ve dealt with where terrain or obstacle clearance at some point is fully legal, but just barely legal. The margins are soberingly small when you can really see them cut right to the bone. The vast majority of approaches have lots of clearance just because the geometry of the land, airport, and obstacles is so much more permissive.
A bit like Tolstoy didn’t say, but might’ve:
There’s one way to do it right and lots of ways to do it wrong.
Both the ILS and the RNAV LPV approaches I cited upthread offer a 250 foot AGL decision altitude and require a 300 feet ceiling and 3/4 statute mile vis.
If you’re doing one of the less-capable versions of either approach, the numbers only go up from there.
The obstacles are far enough from the runway area that they should not affect the full ILS or LPV minimums. IMO the difference between the 250 mins here versus the more typical 200 mins most everywhere is down to the shitty minimal approach light system on that runway.
I also note the ILS glideslope and RNAV VNAV/LPV path are the typical 3.00 degrees. Suggesting the terrain is not a factor if you stay on or above the standard glideslope / VNAV path all the way down. As you are required to do.
It’s only if you try a dive to the MDA and drive from the FAF to the runway that you’ll end up intersecting terrain along the way. The intermediate fix is intended to force your dive and drive into a two stage process; once from the FAF altitude down to ridgeline clearing altitude, then once past the ridgeline, a second dive to the MDA followed by driving towards the runway. All perfectly safe if done skillfully and with full compliance with the published limits.
The dive and drive technique is pretty well deprecated today in anything faster than a lightplane. The incremental hazard is large and the incremental successful approaches that would be made versus missed when using the constant descent angle method is small. CDA for the win.
Thanks LSL for the explanation. They’re always nicely detailed. Are airliners subjected to different mins? I thought they had to qualify for a 200 ft ceiling as a separate certification.
There are several factors to minimums. The operating minimums for any particular attempt at a particular approach on a particular day are the highest (= most conservative / restrictive) of:
What the crew can do,
What the airplane can do, and
What the “runway” can do. Which is really the combo of runway, approach lighting, obstacles, ground-based nav equipment, weather reporting, etc. Quite a laundry list of factors.
Your typical bizjet or RJ airliner and crew is certified / certificated to so called Category I ILSes, the typical 200 feet and 1/2 statute mile vis.
Your typical Boeing/ Airbus airliner and crew is certified / certificated to Category II or III ILS, with minimums as low as zero feet vertically and 300 feet of forward visibility. With a few subdivisions in between these two extremes depending on carrier and equipment.
In the San Diego crash, the runway is only good down to 250 feet. The fact that some jet and crew could fly a generic ILS to a different runway down to e.g. 200 feet is immaterial. 250 is as low as it gets at that airport for anybody.
Also note that the term “minimums” applies to two different but related concepts:
What is the required weather to attempt the approach?
How low can we descend before needing to either see runway or go around?
In the case of the Montgomery crash the answer to the “Required weather?” question is “at least a 300 feet AGL ceiling and at least 3/4 statute mile visibility.” and the answer to “How low?” is “250 feet above the touchdown zone elevation”.
It is also the case that for some operators both the ceiling and visibility reports must exceed the charted minimums, but for other operators (mostly airlines) the ceiling is legally irrelevant and only the visibility legally matters. Depending on the nature of the weather and the approach that ceiling may be legally irrelevant but also be operationally rather significant.
Dick Karl, longtime columnist for Flying magazine, is retiring.
He’s had a colorful and eventful life. A cancer surgeon who flew GA airplanes for many years, he became a professional pilot after concluding his medical career. Not too many people who have held a human heart in their hands and flown a Lear jet on the same day.
I was fortunate to fly with Dick and he’s still a friend. As impressive and accomplished as he is, Dick makes YOU feel like the most interesting person in the world when you meet him. I encourage the readers of this thread to explore his trove of aviation writing.
Pretty much. A true 300 foot forward vis arrival requires a computer to make the landing and bring the airplane to a stop on the runway centerline. Then using your eyeballs and now GPS-driven moving maps you feel your way to the nearest exit and then try to taxi without inadvertently driving off into the weeds.
The lowest visibility requirements for a human-controlled landing are 600 feet of forward vis at touchdown, 600 feet during the slowdown phase, and 300 feet in the final slowing & runway exiting phase. And you need to spot the runway / lights with your eyeballs by 50 feet above the runway which at worst case translates into 3-8 seconds before impact. Worst case you can only see a few lights leading off into the gray or black gloom ahead. And around touchdown you’re covering 250 horizontal feet per second, so can only see about 2-2.5 seconds into your future. Hope there’s nothing big of any size to run into out there in the murk.
It’s fun … for a certain adrenaline-fueled value of “fun”.
A band I saw in concert last Friday - Drug Church - announced the cancellation of the US leg of their tour because of this crash; one of the passengers, David Shapiro, was their booking agent.
I has a . Although the forecast says we wouldn’t have flown anyway (too windy & rainy) & was calling for generally sucky overall (rainy & unseasonably cold), for the first time in over a dozen years I’m not spending my Memorial Day weekend at the Grand Canyon of the East, which is an absolutely gorgeous place to fly! There is something magical about having the opportunity, while you are flying, to look UP & see the ground.
I don’t know if you intended to share the whole album or just that one photo, but that album shows some truly beautiful work. You are a man of many talents.
The whole album is limited to pics that were posted to the Dope at some point but thanks for the heads up.
The event was cxl’d this year because of family commitment of the organizers; the bad weather just makes it sting a little less, though still missing hanging out with everyone, the hiking & the waterfalls, & of course gorge flying
. Although the forecast says we wouldn’t have flown anyway (too windy & rainy) & was calling for generally sucky overall (rainy & unseasonably cold), for the first time in over a dozen years I’m not spending my Memorial Day weekend at the Grand Canyon of the East, which is an absolutely