AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2020 - T-12

By now, automation has been recognized as a double-edged sword, and those edges only get sharper as the technology
becomes more capable. The more the panel can do for you, the easier it becomes to forget that someday you may have to
do it yourself. That's not a good situation. Crucial components have been known to pick inconvenient times to go on strike.
And even when all the equipment is working properly, it's essential to know how to actually make it work.
WHAT HAPPENED

T-12 |

At 7:24 p.m. on March 24, 2017, a 1976
Cessna 500 Citation CJ1 crashed into the
front yard of a home in Marietta, Georgia,
igniting a fire that consumed much of the
wreckage and left the house uninhabitable.
The residents were not home, fortunately;
the solo 78-year-old private pilot was the
only casualty. According to the NTSB
report, the airplane hit the ground "in an
approximate nose-level/wings-level attitude with little to no forward momentum."
There was no apparent damage to wires or
trees near the initial point of impact, suggesting a near-vertical descent.
The flight departed from Cincinnati
Municipal Airport Lunken Field at 6:12
p.m. on an IFR flight plan to Fulton County
Airport-Brown Field in Atlanta. At 6:51,
with the jet in level cruise at Flight Level
230, the Atlanta ARTCC amended its route.
The controller repeated the transmission
twice more before the pilot read it back at
6:55. The Citation's cockpit voice recorder

(CVR) captured the sound of him turning knobs on the Garmin GTN 750 GPS
installed three years before.
At 6:59, the pilot transmitted that he
"was having a little trouble with my...GPS"
and requested direct routing to the airport.
He was cleared direct with instructions to
descend and maintain 11,000 feet. Three
minutes later, the CVR caught him saying,
"I have no idea what's going on here."
At 7:07, he read back the controller's
instruction to descend to 6,000 feet. At
7:10, the CVR picked up "a sound similar
to the autopilot disconnecting." Thirtysix seconds later he radioed that he was
descending through 8,000 feet but was
"having a steering problem...can't steer
the aircraft very well." He reported being
"in the clouds" and received a series of
descents down to the minimum vectoring
altitude of 4,100 feet.
At 7:15, the controller warned that radar
showed the piliot 500 feet below the sector's minimum vectoring altitude. The pilot

replied, "I'm going back up but...I have very
little steering on here and I have mountains
around me. Atlanta doesn't have mountains." When the Citation reached 3,400
feet, the controller issued a low-altitude
alert. The pilot responded that "Apparently
it looks like I have my autopilot back for
some reason, so it gives me some stability" and climbed back to 4,100...but when
handed off to Atlanta Approach, replied "I
can't get to one-two-one-point-zero...I'm
having a problem with my, uh, Garmin...
Can you take me in?" The center controller agreed to coordinate his approach.
At 7:19, 28 miles from the field in
visual conditions, the pilot radioed that
"I'm just barely able to keep straight on
this and wings level. I cannot get to onetwo-one-point-zero and I don't know
if I can make a right turn into the airport." Three minutes later, he accepted
the controller's invitation to declare an
emergency and asked, "What runway am
I running into about, is the runway going

AVIONICS FOR
WHATEVER YOU FLY.
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AND MORE EFFICIENT WITH
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SOLUTIONS AVAILABLE.
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AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2020