A Beech 76 hit terrain during an aborted landing at Capital City Airport (KFFT) in Frankfurt, Kentucky.
The commercial pilot was not injured and a flight instructor incurred minor injuries. The airplane was substantially damaged.
Day, visual meteorological conditions prevailed near the accident site, and no flight plan was filed. The flight originated at Blue Grass Airport (KLEX), Lexington, Kentucky, and was destined for KFFT.
The rated pilot in the left seat was receiving instruction to obtain a commercial multiengine rating. According to the flight instructor in the right seat, a practice localizer approach to Runway 25 at KFFT was requested and they received vectors for the approach.
The instructor briefed for the pilot to perform a simulated left engine out approach to a full stop. The emergency single engine procedure was briefed, the landing gear were lowered, and the flaps were confirmed up. The left engine was set to zero thrust.
While over Runway 25, at a point between the runway numbers and the 1,000 foot mark on the runway, about 20 feet above the landing surface, the pilot under instruction added power to the right engine while below minimum controllable airspeed. This occurred before the flight instructor could stop him. The airplane reacted quickly with a yaw and roll to the left. The airplane hit the ground between the runway and parallel taxiway, continued across the taxiway, and down an embankment. The airplane came to rest about 150 feet from the taxiway and caught fire. Both pilots got out of the airplane and were met by first responders.
The pilot receiving instruction reported that he maneuvered the airplane to an extended final approach to Runway 25. Once established on final, he noticed that the altitude was lower than the previous approach. Once he determined that he had the runway “made,” he began to reduce power on the right engine. The aircraft “settled low,” so he added right throttle to re-establish the glide path. In doing so, he did not add the required control inputs of aileron and rudder. The approach became unstable, and he announced, “go around” and moved the right throttle full forward. The airplane immediately entered an uncontrollable left yaw and roll and hit the ground in a left-wing low attitude.
Inspectors with the FAA responded to the accident site and examined the wreckage. Both wings and the fuselage were structurally damaged from impact and the post-accident fire.
Probable Cause: The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control during a simulated single-engine go-around, which resulted in a collision with terrain.
This February 2019 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
Ya, ya. Me thinks practicing engine out below recovery altitude always big risk. Good thing they weren’t practicing stalls.
As an MEI, how do you know if you got the student to understand Vmc? And if they do what this person did, you can’t act fast enough.
I think this is one of the reasons that ATP uses Seminoles, because Vmc is at or below stall speed so that if you do something exactly the way you would do it in a single engine plane, you don’t wind up D E A D.
And they do a lot of sim work before you get in the plane so you don’t do something dumb like this.