N8DX

HISTORY OF FLIGHTOn March 24, 2017, at 1924 eastern daylight time, a Cessna 500, N8DX, collided with terrain in a residential neighborhood near Marietta, Georgia. The private pilot was fatally injured. The airplane was destroyed by impact forces and postcrash fire. The airplane was registered to Shelter Charter Services Inc., which was operating the airplane as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 business flight. Visual meteorological conditions existed near the accident site at the time of the accident. The flight was operated on an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan. The flight originated from Cincinnati Airport–Lunken Field (LUK), Cincinnati, Ohio, about 1812, and was destined for Fulton County Airport–Brown Field (FTY), Atlanta, Georgia.

The pilot, who was based in Atlanta, was returning home from a business trip. The airplane was equipped with a cockpit voice recorder (CVR); the recording started about 1853. The air traffic control (ATC) transcript showed that, at 1851:36, when the airplane was level at 23,000 ft, a controller with the Atlanta Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) advised the pilot of an amendment to his original flight plan. Ten seconds later, the controller provided new routing information. The controller repeated the new routing at 1852:50 and 1855:17, and the pilot correctly read back the information at 1855:25. The airplane was equipped with a Garmin GTN 750 unit that provided navigation, radio tuning, and other capabilities. Aural clicks and the sound of knobs turning were heard on the CVR consistent with the pilot attempting to enter the new routing into the Garmin GTN 750 GPS.

At 1858:57, the controller instructed the pilot to descend the airplane to 22,000 ft, and the pilot acknowledged this instruction. At 1859:04, the pilot told the controller, "I'm having a little trouble with my ah GPS did you give me direct (unintelligible) on that arrival." The controller then asked the pilot to repeat his request, and the pilot said, "I'm having difficulty with my GPS it's not picking up this arrival and I was wondering if you can give me uh direct routing then instead of going to the arrival." At 1859:46, the controller cleared the airplane direct to FTY and, at 1900:10, instructed the pilot to descend the airplane to 11,000 ft; the pilot acknowledged this information. About three minutes later the CVR recorded the pilot saying, "I have no idea what's going on here."

At 1907:42, the controller instructed the pilot to descend the airplane to 6,000 ft, and the pilot acknowledged this instruction. At 1910:26, the CVR recorded a sound similar to the autopilot disconnecting.

At 1911:02, the pilot told the controller that the airplane was descending though 8,000 ft but was experiencing a "steering problem" and that he could not "steer the aircraft very well." The pilot then mentioned that the airplane was "in the clouds." At 1914:29, the controller instructed the pilot to descend the airplane to 4,100 ft, the minimum vectoring altitude. The airplane continued to descend, during which time the airplane entered visual meteorological conditions. At 1915:44, the controller told the pilot that the airplane had descended to an altitude of 3,600 ft, which was 500 ft below the minimum vectoring altitude, and instructed the pilot to maintain an altitude of 4,100 ft. At 1915:52, the pilot said, "Yeah I understand I'm going back up but an I have no…I have very little steering on here and I have mountains (around me) Atlanta doesn't have mountains." The controller then issued a low altitude warning and advised the pilot again to climb the airplane to 4,100 ft. The pilot responded that he had his "autopilot back…so it gives me stability." At 1917:21, the controller instructed the pilot to change to another Atlanta ARTCC frequency; afterward, the pilot reported that the airplane was at 4,100 ft. At 1917:54, the controller confirmed that the airplane was at 4,100 ft and instructed the pilot to contact Atlanta approach control on a frequency of 121.0 MHz. The pilot reported, at 1918:21 and 1918:26, that "I can't get to one two one point zero" and that, "I'm having a problem with my ah Garmin."

At 1918:33, the pilot asked the controller to "take me in"; the controller agreed. About 1 minute later, the pilot told the controller that he was "just barely able" to keep the airplane straight and its wings level. The pilot also indicated that he was unsure if he would be able to make a right turn into the airport. At 1921:17, the controller told the pilot that the airport was 2 to 3 miles on a heading of 177°, and the pilot responded that he thought that he had a heading of 177° but did not have the airport in sight. At 1922:09, the controller asked the pilot if he wanted to declare an emergency, and the pilot said, "I'm not sure and I think I oughta declare an emergency just in case." The pilot then asked the controller to have the FTY control tower "turn up" the runway's landing lights, and the controller acknowledged this request.

At 1923:09, the pilot asked the controller, "what runway am I running into…is the runway going sideways." The controller responded that runway 8 was the active runway. At 1923:44, the pilot said, "well I've got my landing gear down but I don't know." This statement was the last communication from the pilot to the Atlanta ARTCC controller.

At 1923:55, the CVR recorded the pilot straining. At 1924:00, the pilot is heard on the CVR saying, "..it's going down, it's going down" followed by the sound of the autopilot disconnect tone. At 1924:07, the Terrain Awareness and Warning System (TAWS) announced "sink rate, sink rate" followed by "pull up, pull up." The CVR recording ended at 1924:19.

Data recovered from the TAWS unit, which is part of the onboard enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS), recorded the two warnings heard on the CVR. The first warning, a Mode 1 Sinkrate warning, occurred when the airplane was at an altitude of 4,000 ft and on a heading of 160°. The airplane's descent rate increased from approximately 0 ft per minute (fpm) to approximately 8,500 fpm. About three seconds later, as the descent rate increased, and a Mode 1 Pull Up warning was triggered at an altitude of 2,900 ft. The data ended approximately 7 seconds later with a recorded descent rate of almost 12,000 fpm.

Several witnesses observed the airplane before the accident. A witness, who was a professional pilot, stated that he observed the airplane flying level on a southerly heading about 1,000 ft below the cloud layer. The witness said that there was nothing unusual about the airplane until it made "a complete 360 degree roll" to the left before entering a steep 90° bank to the left. He described the turn as similar to a "military high key turn." The witness also said that the airplane then rolled inverted and entered a sudden vertical nose-down dive. He further said, "the plane entered a slow counterclockwise spiral…as it started its dive" that continued until the airplane disappeared behind a building. Another witness stated that she observed the airplane make a "barrel roll" with the nose of the airplane "slightly elevated." She then observed a second roll and stated that the airplane slowed before its nose began to point down and the airplane spiraled downward counterclockwise. PERSONNEL INFORMATIONThe pilot, age 78, held a private pilot certificate with ratings for airplane single-engine land, single-engine sea, multiengine land, and instrument airplane. He purchased the airplane in May 2001 and received a Cessna 500 type rating in 2002. The pilot's last Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) third-class medical certificate was issued on September 27, 2016, with the limitation that he possesses glasses for near/intermediate vision. At that time, he did not report his total flight time; his previous medical application (dated September 18, 2013) indicated a total flight experience of 6,000 hours and 50 flight hours in the previous 6 months. The pilot's logbooks were not available for review. As a result, the pilot's overall currency and total flight experience in the accident airplane could not be verified.

The Cessna 500 was originally certified to be operated with a pilot and copilot. The FAA can delegate an exemption to an authorized training facility to approve pilots to operate several aircraft, including the Cessna 500, with a single pilot. To qualify for single-pilot operations, a pilot must successfully complete an FAA-approved single-pilot authorization training course annually.

The previous owner of the accident airplane had been issued a single-pilot conformity certificate by Sierra Industries, Ltd, of Uvalde, Texas, which had performed earlier modifications to the airplane. However, no record indicated that the accident pilot received training under Sierra Industries' exemption. Several training facilities that have the single-pilot exemption training for the Cessna 500 were contacted to see if they had provided such training to the pilot, but none of those facilities had any record showing that the pilot had been trained for and granted single-pilot authority.

A friend of the pilot, who was a flight instructor and an airplane mechanic and had flown with the pilot several times, stated that he repeatedly told the pilot that he needed to fly with a copilot. The pilot said that he preferred to fly alone. The pilot also told his friend that he did not need a single-pilot exemption because the airplane had been given a single-pilot exemption with the Sierra Industries modification.

The friend of the pilot said that he had conducted postmaintenance test flights on the accident airplane and instructed the pilot on operating the Garmin GTN 750, which had been installed in the airplane about 3.5 years before the accident. The Garmin GTN 750 was a more advanced upgrade from the KLN-90 GPS that the pilot had previously been using "for years." The friend said that t...