Aspen (KASE) GIII crash - March 29, 2001

[Flight Safety]

I searched the forum and couldn't find where this had been discussed previously. I just found and read the following NTSB preliminary reports for this accident, and thought others should have a look. To my knowledge, no final report has been issued yet regarding this accident. All of the reports are in .pdf format.

Operations/Human Performance Group Report (377kb) (http://www.avweb.com/articles/aspengiii/aspen_ops.pdf)

Cockpit Voice Recorder Group (970kb) (http://www.avweb.com/articles/aspengiii/aspen_cvr.pdf)

Aircraft Performance Group Report (5.82mb) (http://www.avweb.com/articles/aspengiii/aspen_perf.pdf)

Air Traffic Control Group Report (10.2mb) (http://www.avweb.com/articles/aspengiii/aspen_atc.pdf)

Meteorological Factual Report (1.23mb) (http://www.avweb.com/articles/aspengiii/aspen_wx.pdf)

The main index link for all of these reports is on the Avweb website at the following link...

Aspen GIII accident reports - main link (http://www.avweb.com/articles/aspengiii/index.html)

In a number of ways, this is a very interesting accident to look at.

Later...

Added this link, a June 11, 2002 synopsis of the accident. This report is quite informative.

NTSB June 11, 2002 synopsis report (http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2002/AAB0203.pdf)

[con-pilot]

FS, I was there the night they crashed. I really hate to second-guess what happened in the cockpit; I do believe they lined up on the highway in very poor visibility due to a rapid moving snow shower. About ten minutes after the crash the visibility in town dropped down to about a half a mile in heavy snow in just a few minutes.

I lost what little respect (if any) I had for the media after that accident. When the passenger list was released I could not believe the disappointed looks and disappointed tone of the voices of the reporters when they discovered no one famous was on board.

But for the grace of God (and sometime plain stupid luck) goes all of us.

:(

[Flight Safety]

CP, I remember your comments when the accident occurred. The June 11 synopsis report includes a very good discussion on what the accident investigators believe was the cause of this crash. They think that the charter customer got very "pushy" with the charter company and the pilots, and got the pilots convinced that they just had to make this particular landing. So the pilots pushed the attempt to land far beyond what was safe.

It's the several sources of pressure on the pilots to make this landing no matter what, that lies at the heart of this accident, I think. I think the important lessons to learn are to recognize when these pressures began to mount, and to understand how these pressures begin to affect the pilot's judgement from a procedures and flight safety perspective.

While the June 11 report contains a fair amount of good analysis, the early investigation reports contain a wealth of detailed data related to the accident.

[con-pilot]

You hit the nail squarely on head FS. A good lesson to be learned by all.

[411A]

Having done a fair bit of corporate flying years ago (line pilot and flight department manager) I noticed considerable insistance from some lower down on the corporate management ladder to..."get the job done, no matter what". Would always give them the phone number of the company vice chairman and mention..."why don't you give Mr _____ a call and ask him what HE thinks..." as the flight department reported directly to top management. This shut them up pronto as this company had lost a JetStar several years before and they did NOT want it to happen again...ever.
It was a pleasure to work for these folks.