N42CV

HISTORY OF FLIGHTOn December 28, 2019, about 0921 central standard time, a Piper PA-31T airplane, N42CV, impacted terrain shortly after takeoff from Lafayette Regional Airport/Paul Fournet Field (LFT), Lafayette, Louisiana. The commercial pilot and four passengers were fatally injured, and one passenger was seriously injured. One person in a nearby car sustained serious injuries, and two people in a nearby building sustained minor injuries. The airplane was destroyed by impact forces and a postimpact fire. The personal flight was conducted under the provisions of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 91. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.

At 0913:16, the pilot contacted the local controller at the LFT air traffic control tower and requested an instrument flight rules (IFR) clearance to the flight’s destination, DekalbPeachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, Georgia. The controller issued the clearance to the pilot and instructed him to climb to and maintain an altitude of 2,000 ft mean sea level after departure. (All altitudes in this report are expressed as mean sea level unless otherwise indicated.) The controller then instructed the pilot to taxi the airplane to runway 22L. At 0918:26, the pilot advised the controller that the airplane was ready for takeoff, and the controller cleared the airplane to depart and instructed the pilot to turn right onto a heading of 240°. After takeoff, the controller provided the pilot with a frequency change; at 0920:26, the pilot established communications with the departure controller and stated that the airplane was at an altitude of 700 ft. The controller then instructed the pilot to climb the airplane to 10,000 ft and turn right onto a heading of 330°. At 0920:36, the pilot acknowledged this instruction. No further transmissions were received from the airplane.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provided automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) data for the accident flight. These data were used to calculate the airplane’s performance, including its true altitude. (See the Tests and Research section of this report for more information.) The ADS-B data started at 0920:05 as the airplane climbed through an altitude of 150 ft. The airplane then began a slight right turn immediately afterward toward its assigned heading of 240°. The airplane reached a peak altitude of 925 ft from about 0920:37 to 0920:40 and then started a continuous descent toward the ground.

At 0920:58, the controller issued a low altitude alert, stating that the pilot should “check [the airplane’s] altitude immediately” because the airplane appeared to be at an altitude of 300 ft. The pilot did not respond, and no mayday or emergency transmission was received from the airplane. The last ADS-B data point, at 0920:59, showed the airplane descending through an altitude of 230 ft. Figure 1 shows the airplane’s flight track and key points based on aircraft performance calculations and radio transmission information.

Figure 1. Flight track overview.

Multiple witnesses on the ground heard an airplane flying overhead at a low altitude. Several of these witnesses stated that the engines sounded as if they were operating at “full throttle.” Multiple witnesses also observed the airplane descending through low clouds while in a steep left turn. One witness stated that the airplane was in “a very steep left diving turn” before rolling wings level and striking trees and power lines. The airplane then struck the road and continued across a parking lot, and a postcrash fire ensued. An officer from the Lafayette Police Department spoke briefly with the surviving passenger at the accident site. According to the police officer, the passenger recalled only that “the plane went straight up and then straight down.”

One person was seriously injured after the airplane struck her car in the parking lot. The car then rolled several times before it came to rest inverted; a postimpact fire ensued that consumed the car. Two people inside a building sustained minor injuries from glass that shattered during the impact sequence.

PERSONNEL INFORMATIONThe pilot held a commercial pilot certificate with an airplane multiengine land rating. The pilot also held a second-class medical certificate, dated November 14, 2019, with a limitation that required him to wear corrective lenses. According to FAA medical records, the pilot wore bifocal glasses “all the time.”

On his most recent medical application, dated November 4, 2019, the pilot reported 1,531 hours of total flight experience, 46 hours of which were accumulated during the preceding 6 months. The pilot also had about 730 hours of flight experience in the accident airplane make and model. The pilot’s most recent logbook was not located. The last entry in the pilot’s previous logbook showed that he had 1,194 hours of total flight experience and 910 hours of flight experience in a multiengine airplane as of July 25, 2017.

The owner of the company for which the pilot worked stated that he and the accident pilot would generally hand fly the airplane up to an altitude of at least 2,000 ft (rather than engage the autopilot soon after takeoff). The company owner also stated that the accident pilot was “proficient” in the airplane.

According to the owner of the airplane (who was also a pilot), the accident pilot had “a lot of involvement” with the airplane and “wanted to be the very best that he could be” at operating it. The airplane owner stated that the accident pilot was involved in selecting and installing the airplane’s flight instruments and that he was “very meticulous” about understanding the flight instruments.

The pilot’s most recent recurrent training in the airplane occurred on April 22, 2019. The training was conducted by a pilot whose FAA-issued flight instructor certificate had expired in February 2019, and no FAA records indicated that his certificate had been renewed or reinstated at the time of the training. The flight instructor reported that the accident pilot’s most recent recurrent training was conducted at the same time as the airplane owner’s recurrent training.

The flight instructor stated that ground training included using the airplane manuals and discussing any anomalies that either pilot had experienced during the previous 12 months. The flight instructor stated that, according to the pilots, no “big anomalies” had occurred during that timeframe. During flight training, the pilots performed stall recovery maneuvers at the first indication of an impending stall, steep turns at 5,000 ft, and go-arounds with a simulated failed engine at 4,000 ft. After the maneuvers were completed, the pilots returned to the airport to conduct instrument landing system and VOR approaches. (A VOR approach uses a very-high-frequency omnidirectional radio range system for navigation.)

The flight instructor stated that all the training was conducted in visual meteorological conditions. He did not simulate instrument conditions by having the pilots wear a hood (a viewlimiting device) but stated that he could “load a pilot up enough so he would not have a chance to look outside.” The flight instructor also stated that the accident pilot was a “great stick and rudder guy” and that he “was not an autopilot pilot as he enjoyed [manually] flying the airplane.”

The accident airplane’s flight log showed that, on April 22, 2019, the airplane flew from LFT to David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport, Spring, Texas, for the pilots’ training and then returned to LFT. The entry included the accident pilot’s initials and showed a total flight time of 2.7 hours. As stated above, the accident pilot’s most recent logbook was not found, and the accident pilot’s previous logbook did not include a flight review endorsement for this training. The last flight review endorsement recorded in that logbook was dated March 12, 2017.

The airplane owner’s logbook did not include a flight review endorsement but showed the training event; the logbook entry stated, “Recurrent training per FAR [Federal Aviation Regulation] Part 91. Steep turns, Engine out, Emergency and Normal procedures.” The entry also included the signature of the flight instructor and his pilot certificate number, but “CFI” (certificated flight instructor) and the CFI certificate expiration date did not appear after his pilot certificate number, as required for flight reviews.

AIRCRAFT INFORMATIONThe accident airplane, which was owned by Cheyenne Partners LLC, was equipped with two Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-28 turbopropeller engines with two Hartzell constantspeed, fourbladed propellers. The airplane was configured with pilot and copilot seats, an aft-facing seat and a forward-facing seat on both the left and right sides of the airplane, and a side-facing seat opposite the left-side main entry door.

The airplane was equipped with a King (now Honeywell) autopilot and a KAP 315 annunciator panel that displayed vertical and lateral flight director and autopilot system modes. The airplane was also equipped with a Garmin G600 integrated avionics display system that presented primary flight instrumentation, a full-color moving map with navigation information, and supplemental data. A Garmin GRS 77H attitude heading and reference system (AHRS) unit provided attitude and heading information to the airplane’s Garmin G600 flight deck displays. The Garmin G500/G600 Pilot’s Guide stated, “any failure of the internal AHRS inertial sensors results in loss of attitude and heading information. This is indicated by red ‘X’ flags over the corresponding flight instruments.” There were no maintenance writeups or reported anomalies with the display system before the accident flight. A standby digital attitude indicator was located directly beneath the Garmin G600 flight deck displays.

In addition, the airplane was equipped with a Collins Aerospace stability augmentation system (SAS), ...