Max talks about the July 2021 crash of a Challenger Jet that was doing a circling approach at the Truckee, CA airport. The NTSB just released its final report on that accident, And there’s a lot that GA pilots can learn from this accident.
The NTSB faulted the first officer’s improper decision to attempt to salvage an unstabilized approach by executing a steep left turn to realign the airplane with the runway centerline, and the captain’s failure to intervene after recognizing the FO’s erroneous action. Both pilots both ignored stall protection system warnings, which resulted in a left-wing stall and an impact with terrain. The NTSB also cited the flight crew’s self-induced pressure to perform and poor crew resource management, which degraded their decision-making.
The weather at the time reported showed visibility of 4 statute miles, ceiling broken at 2,300 ft agl, and variable visibility between 3.5 and 5 miles and smoke from wildfires in the area. The pilot flying in the left seat was a 43-year-old male with nearly 5700 hours of total time. However, he only had 235 hours of total time in the Challenger. The first officer was a 56-year-old male with a total of 14,300 hours in all aircraft and over 4400 hours in the Challenger, and had acted as an instructor to the captain throughout the flight.
The flight was the first pairing of this crew with the operator. The captain, who had signed an employment contract with the operator, but was not yet an employee at the time of the accident. The first officer was not the accident operator’s employee at the time of the accident and had been hired as a contract pilot for the accident flight.
The pilots calculated that runway 20 was too short for the landing distance required by the airplane at its expected landing weight. Instead of making a request to ATC for the straight-in approach to runway 11 (the longer runway), the captain told the FO they could take the runway 20 approach and circle to land on runway 11. There is a straight-in RNAV (GPS) approach to runway 11, but the pilots didn’t request it.
The circling approach maneuver began at 160 kts, which was 20 kts higher than the upper limit of the circle-to-land approach speed established for this airplane’s approach category (category C) and did not drop below the category C maximum speed until the flight crew was preparing to start their base leg turn. Instead of flying a downwind leg that was parallel to the runway, the crew flew and angled downwind, that resulted in a base leg that was so short that the aircraft overshot the final to turn.
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