Strange crash at Nashville (KBNA)

[mooneyman]

Sounds like same old story - VFR pilot into IMC at night.  But not talking to anyone???

 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/us/nashville-plane-crash-mystery/

[201er]

Strange indeed. But considering this happened at night and that he did not talk to anyone, I contemplate a scenario in which the pilot had an electrical failure... therefore no radio to communicate with or navigation and desperately tried to plop it into a major airport using VFR handheld GPS/Ipad.

[N601RX]

There is a very long thread about this on Beechtalk. There is a lot more to this story.

 

http://www.beechtalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=84344

[John Pleisse]

Bizzare.

[yvesg]

With the background on this guy, here is what I think happened: He was on his way to pick-up some illegal stuff somewhere... got caught by IFR weather. Due to his illicit activity he did not dare to talk to anyone on radio... tried to finesse his landing but missed...

Yves

[PTK]

Apparently it was a C172 from a Canadian flight school. 

 

Two questions come to mind: 

 

1. What is a C172 from a Canadian flight school doing down at BNA at 2 AM with just the pilot, and

2. What is the range of a 172 and were there any fuel stops?

 

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!"

[RocketAviator]

While the pilot and his actions or inactions are as posted earlier "bizarre" at a minimum, I find even more puzzling and concerning is the actions or inactions of the airport personnel.... A very well equipped airport with apparent knowledge that a plane was in the air circling the airport at 2:00 AM.... Does that not set off some major ALARMS to anyone other than me!?  Sorry for the human loss and sorry for the black eye this gives to all aviation!!!  Not Good, not good!

[N9453V]

I think we aren't hearing a lot about this accident since nobody wants to talk about it due to the massive number of government agencies that screwed up!

 

From what I've read so far, he departed CYQG (Windsor) in a 1999 C172R (C-GRJH) while the tower was still open probably around 10pm (it is open till 11:30pm). His planned destination was CYPT (Pelee Island). It is greater than 25nm away, so a VFR flight plan or flight itinerary would need to have been filed, but it appears none was. It's unclear if he ever landed at CYPT, but he then crossed the border without a flight plan or filing eAPIS presumably whiles squawking 1200 or not at all, flew through/near CVG's bravo, through BNA's charlie and finally apparently tried to shoot an approach below mins without talking to anyone (24 hour tower) which unfortunately ended badly.

 

The fact he managed to avoid detection as long as he did is really quite amazing.

 

-Andrew