To my simple mind (and I hasten to add my qualifications as a mere Cherokee driver) this guy got himself into a situation that even I would have managed to avoid on a clear VFR day.
He appears to have strted with a too high approach, decided to try and save it by doing an orbit, made the mistake of making a RH orbit, from which he had trouble seeing where he was in respect of terrain avoidance and where his runway he was visually approaching was. He descended by 1,650 feet during his orbit (from 1,700 AAL to 50' AAL) became illegally low at less than 500' above a settlement and then had to climb hard towards rising ground (I guess that is why the residents complained about the noise) to establish a reasonable height to make a stable approach to land off.
I would have thought (based on what I have read) that there was a strong case for suspending his license, a prosecution for reckless endangerment and a breach of rule 5, as a minimum requiring serious re-training and a psych eval into why he thought he could discard so many of his SOPs and ignore all his CRM training. It is difficult to say as much unemotionally.
I also note (as was the case in the Knock incident) that the occurrence date and reporting date were almost a couple of weeks apart. Unfortunately (again) any CVR would have been long since overwritten when the investigators arrived.
It all strikes me as rather unsatisfactory.
Last edited by Dave Gittins; 31st Jan 2007 at 12:57.
Reason: My carp spelling