Not all aircraft accidents require clever detective work to figure out why they happened. Some investigations quickly uncover so many regulatory and procedural violations that you wonder how the crash didn't happen sooner. A disastrous ending seems inevitable given the starting conditions. A newly published National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on a June 27, 2020, crash falls into this category. A little after midnight, a solo pilot in his 2006 Piper PA-32R Saratoga Ⅱ TC left the David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (KDWH) in Spring, Texas. He was heading home to a personal airstrip near Zavalla, Texas. The Piper Saratoga is a comfortable single-engine six-seat low-wing fixed-gear high-performance 300-hp single-engine airplane, a development of the Cherokee Six/Piper Lance line of six-place aircraft.
展开▼
