"...Betcha a nickel..."

No bet...

The engine cutting off is a good indicator that something wasn't right with the motor; water in the gas is a definite possibility if they didn't check the fuel prior.

If the engine had continued to run and pull them into the trees, I'd suspect disorientation/vertigo; it's real easy to lose your up/down sense once you start climbing through fog. That's why an instrument rating is nice to have. Was the VFR clearance because they were at an uncontrolled field or weren't IFR certified? Taking off below minimums is a bad idea even if you are rated. If he'd gotten on top of the fog he may have been fine.

The FAA/NTSB report will be interesting. Since they have two eyewitnesses to interview there won't be a lot of guessing.

They took off from a private airstrip belonging to the passenger. The people nearby said the fog was extremely heavy, so I'm assuming that he didn't take off in the only clear spot around. The article said the plane veered to the left soon after takeoff, hit the trees, broke off the left wing and rolled over.

If the engine died first, it may have startled or scared him, and he had no outside visual reference in the fog to keep it straight and level. Even if he had an artificial horizon, he may have not paid attention to it, his mental priority probably being trying to restart the single engine.

I guess its better to be dumb and lucky than smart and unlucky.

I wonder if his elderly passenger will fly with him again? Personally, I wouldn't have even gotten aboard if I knew he was using VFR and taking off in fog, and hadn't done his preflights. Kind of sloppy.

Sue

I never left the ground and I don't leave the dock when it's foggy. If anything goes wrong, you have no defense, in my experience!

Back in my early days as an NFO I had the "opportunity" to fly with the squadron Operations Officer who just happened to have a "Special IFR" ticket. One day he elected to use it so that we could take off way below minimums and fly our scheduled mission. It wasn't critical, if we didn't fly it the powers that be would simply have rescheduled. But he had his own schedule and didn't want to extend so we took off in near zero visibility -- really stupid.

Tower did not give us a normal take-off clearance; it was more along the lines of "your on your own", "crash trucks are standing by". If you have any problems right after take-off where are you going to land? The field behind you is below minimums. Really bad judgment IMO. End of story, uneventful flight, field was clear and sunny when we returned later in the day. Never flew with him again.

The two gents in the crash above got off lucky, they should be dead. At least now with that 1979 Piper (Arrow?) in pieces, he won't be able to do it again. Harsh lesson.

I may take that bet of your after all, sounds like spatial disorientation , otherwise known as the death spiral, to me. If I remember what I learned about that long ago, when a pilot listens to his inner ear instead of watching the instruments (is he has them, and knows how), he usually veers to the left, and continues down until the wings fall off, or he makes a smoking hole. Happened to a guy I worked with years ago, he entered fog, lost it, ended up killing both himself and his wife...

I'd go for spacial disorientation after the engine cut out. From the linked article, it appears the engine quit first.

The engine was heard to quit before the crash. Spatial disorientation means you don't know which way is up. It doesn't mean you reach out and turn off the engine because you can't see where you're going.

The oldtime pilots were properly prepared with an artificial horizon created by the level of liquid in their always-handy whiskey bottle. If the top surface of the liquid was parallel to the bottom of the upright bottle, they were flying straight and level. They may have been flying smack into the side of a mountain, but they were going straight and level while doing it. If the bottle itself was spinning crazily on the floor, ceiling or doorframe of the cockpit, they had a serious problem that probably wouldn't last very long.

The site you indicated said "...approximately 40% of the NTSB fatal general aviation accident reports list continuation of flight into conditions for which the pilot was not qualified as either a contributing or proximate cause." [italics are mine]

That's a fancy way of calling it "Death by stupidity, pilot style".

'Tis a pity, though, that we shall never heard the results from the FFA.

Sue

I think a lot of what is being said here is speculation; conditions may have been VFR (even if marginal) when this pilot took off. Unless this gets further investigated and posted to the NTSB site, we may never know.

"Special VFR" (not a "special IFR ticket") is a clearance that a pilot with a current instrument rating may request when visibility is low (but still at least 1 mile) and some other conditions are met, including being in contact with ATC. It's often used to get out of an airport with low visibility (e.g. ground fog) but clear skies above and on the rest of the route.

As a private pilot under Part 91 regulations you can take off on an IFR clearance with visibility as low as essentially zero; it's your judgment call as a pilot.

In this case it sounds like neither of the above would have applied, since he wasn't in controlled airspace and likely not on an IFR clearance (though that's not even clear).

Anyway, sorry to hear about the accident, and glad folks like Martin are out there.

As long as we're speculating...

Pilots do stupid things from time to time, like try four times to take off from an unmowed grass strip wet with morning dew (after forgetting to switch back to both mags after runup) and finally getting off the ground enough to crash.

But my gut tells me that conditions were VFR and the fog was probably only in the low-lying areas. The engine quit on takeoff ($$ on water in the fuel) and the pilot flew the plane all the way to the ground. The fact that they survived and the fuselage was not terribly crunched indicates that the plane came down under control and not in a disoriented spiral dive.

P.S. Sue - The whiskey in the bottle would appear perfectly level in classic disorientation scenario - That's why it happens - It still feels like you are level!