The pilot, who had accrued 954 hours of flight experience but had only flown about 3.2 hours during four flights in the experimental amateur-built amphibious Aventura II, departed from a grass area next to a runway at the airport in Merritt Island, Florida, where he kept the airplane.
After an uneventful local flight he returned to the airport to land.
He performed go-arounds during the first two landing approaches due to being either too high or too fast.
During the third landing attempt, he thought the approach looked “OK” but then he noticed that he was too low and too slow, so he increased engine power and applied slight up elevator.
The pilot told investigators that the engine was on top of the wing (mounted in a pusher configuration) and normally when power was added the airplane would initially pitch down but would level off and then climb.
The pilot described that this time, though, when he was too slow (about 45 knots), he added an extra amount of power, which pushed the nose down and made the airplane descend.
He then “got scared,” “gave too much up elevator,” and believed that the airplane entered an aerodynamic stall.
The airplane then hit the ground and a fence at an airspeed of about 55 knots.
The pilot was seriously injured, while the airplane’s fuselage was substantially damaged.
The pilot reported that during the accident flight, the flight controls and engine all operated normally.
Probable Cause: The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during final approach to land, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack, aerodynamic stall, and collision with a fence and terrain.
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This July 2022 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.
Sounds like another go-around would have been a good idea if he had enough fuel.
Just curious: What is the legal and contractual relationship between a pilot and a CFI? Is there legal recourse when the pilot gets bad advice? In other professions (is CFI a profession?) such as accounting, engineering, medicine, et.al., there is legal recourse for malfeasance, i.e., bad performance and advice. Wonder if this home brew airplane was insured, and if the insurance company would go after the CFI? In the accounting field, for example, there is the notion of placing reliance upon professional advice. If the client is ill-advised, he has legal recourse to the advisor, both financial and possible loss of license should the advice be sufficiently egregious. So tell me, o GA Oracle: what’s the story here with bad advice from a CFI?
Thanks/Regards/J
The pilot is a dear friend, what isn’t mentioned is that his instructor directed him to use the grass on the approach end of the runway (I think to “save the tires”). VERY Bad instruction. If he had used the runway he would have had no obstruction to panic over and the same home field sight picture where he had hundreds of landings under his belt not the handful in the grass.