A Georgia pilot, 52, had 380 hours, an instrument rating, and a Cirrus SR22. He was working on his commercial. He had the day free, so he called an instructor friend and arranged to do some flying.
One of the skills tested for the commercial license—it used to be required for the private as well, but no longer—is the 180-degree, power-off approach to a landing. You cut power to idle on the downwind leg abeam a target point on the runway. You have to touch down on or beyond that target, but within 200 feet of it. It’s a routine landing for a sailplane, but in a powered airplane it has the exotic flavor of an emergency.
The pilot and his instructor, evidently practicing this maneuver, flew several circuits on Runway 20 at Barwick-LaFayette Airport (9A5). The most likely target point on that runway would be the displaced threshold—the runway numbers are placed a convenient 200 feet beyond it. The displaced threshold is 610 feet from the approach end, so you can arrive short and still alight on the pavement.
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On the first circuit, judging from the accident report’s depiction of the download from the airplane’s data recorder, the Cirrus was high crossing the threshold and landed long. The second circuit ended the same way. In fact the pilot may have gone around without even touching down. During both approaches, he made a continuous turn from downwind to final.
On the third attempt, the pilot flew his downwind leg closer to the runway and started his turn earlier. Possibly he hadn’t used flaps on the previous approaches, but he did on this one, and his rate of descent was about 200 fpm greater. Despite a light headwind on base, he misjudged his turn rate and had to bank steeply to avoid crossing the extended centerline. And now he was low as well, with the target spot still hundreds of feet ahead. He began to raise the nose, hoping to delay the touchdown.
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The Cirrus stalled and crashed 150 feet short of the threshold, sliding past it before coming to rest in the grass beside the runway. The airplane was consumed by fire—both men died.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) blamed the accident on two factors: the pilot’s exceeding the critical angle of attack and the instructor’s failure to intervene in time to stop him.
The instructor’s electronic log revealed that of his 1,600 hours he had flown 382 over a five-year period between 2019 and ’24. That’s low for an active instructor, but the pandemic would account for a lapse in activity during part of that period. He had ceased logging time during the past year, and so his recent flight experience, if any, went unrecorded. In 2024, he had been hired as a first officer by a fractional corporate business jet operator, but he received unsatisfactory marks on several simulator sessions and resigned after two months.
A few details emerged from the data recorder. The propeller was in flat pitch. The greatest bank angle attained during the final turn was 48 degrees, about 80 feet above the ground. The stall occurred at around 72 kias, 8 knots below the handbook value for a 45-degree bank with half flap.
We don’t know how many times the pilot had attempted this maneuver in the past, but it’s the sort of thing that requires some feel, and feel is acquired by repetition. That he had trouble executing it isn’t surprising. It’s not as simple as it sounds. Two hundred feet goes by in less than two seconds. It’s difficult to judge the touchdown point when the airplane isn’t facing the runway. A little wind, from no matter which direction, can throw things off. A glider pilot has spoilers to manage the glide path. Multiple methods are available to a power pilot, including ground track, speed, flaps, the forward slip, and propeller pitch. But the very number of options increases the complexity of the task.
Flight tests require you to perform certain tricks with a certain degree of accuracy. You can learn to do the power-off approach by memorizing some power settings, altitudes, and turn points. But real emergencies don’t set themselves up as neatly as flight test maneuvers do, and so practicing to get the power-off 180 right counts for less than just doing lots of power-off approaches from various locations and altitudes. The thing that you’re after is the feel of the maneuver, and for that, accuracy isn’t as important as just doing it over and over.
Possibly the pilot, having begun his turn closer to the runway than on the two previous circuits, became preoccupied with managing his turn rate so as not to cross the centerline, and in the process lost focus on his altitude. But in that case it should have been up to the instructor either to advise him to go around, or caution him not to bank too steeply, or take over control and fly the airplane safely away before unloading on the pilot some familiar boilerplate about why extreme maneuvering at low level isn’t a good idea.
We can ponder why the instructor didn’t intervene, but we can’t be certain that he didn’t. He may have tried and been too late, or the pilot may have ignored his warnings. The instructor might have anticipated that the position of the airplane, and its rates of turn and descent, were not going to lead to a successful completion of the approach, but he couldn’t foresee that the pilot would make such a drastic effort to salvage it. During the final seconds events may have unfolded so quickly that an attempted intervention came too late.
The fact that the student and the instructor were friends could have played a role. The instructor might have had a more indulgent view of his friend’s airmanship than was warranted, or been reluctant to offend him, and the pilot, conversely, might have felt that because he was with a friend he was allowed to fly a little more flamboyantly than he would with a more censorious instructor.
But that’s just speculation. It’s not necessary to apportion blame for their common catastrophe between the two men. If there’s a lesson to be found in this accident, it’s that some mistakes aren’t worth trying to fix. Even a failed maneuver can have value. It’s just as important to know what “wrong” feels like as what “right” feels like. Going to extremes to rescue a failed approach risks an even worse failure. Instead, practice recognizing a bad approach and going around. It’s better piloting and a better use of training time.
Needless to say, if the pilot had banked 45 degrees two wingspans above the ground on a commercial check ride, he would have gone home then and there.
This column first appeared in the August Issue 973 of the FLYING print edition.