re: Plane crash in Lafayette

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I'm the furthest thing from a specialist in this field but that makes me wonder about his experience flying strictly by instruments.

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The guy was a professional pilot. This was not a hobby for him.

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Ian E. Biggs, the plane's pilot, was 51 years old. Biggs received his commercial pilot certificate on May 12, 2005, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Biggs has privileges for commercial flight (airplane multiengine landing and instrument airplane privileges) and private flight (airplane single-engine landing). A November update to his records indicates he needed glasses to fly. Biggs's LinkedIn profile says he has worked as a pilot and aircraft manager for Global Data Systems since April 2001.

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No CVR or FDR it could take a year or more for the NTSB to reach a conclusion.

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The Chicago Tribune this morning's edition had that time frame in a short article on their other news page. Assume an AP source.

He got paid to fly so that makes him a professional pilot, and has the title, but it could still be a part time job with significant time between flights which is a lot different from a line pilot flying several times a week. This is pretty common among businesses that own a single plane.

Yep, if you do the MAPS street image you see the powerlines (on both sides of Verot School Road) the airplane, most likely, hit coming down. That large oak tree didn't help either. Dang this could have been a really nasty crash with more victims. Those folks in that apartment complex darned near had a Piper Cheyenne doing a sliding belly flop down the middle of their apartment complex parking. It appears the brave pilot fought to get his airplane (and passengers) past that P.O. hoping to ease her down in that field. He simply ran out of altitude. We'll just have to wait for the final NTSB report.

Hey you folks in that apartment complex may I make a suggestion? Go to church next Sunday.

Really sad.

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but if one engine fails and the uneven thrust kicks in i could see it spin back towards the post office

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We had a fule linkage go out on a King Air on take off flying out of Indy one time during prep for the 500. Damn near flipped us, the pilots did everything right and got us back on the ground thankfully.

Two of the wives involved made it their last time flying ever. It was that scary. One of the two wives was the spouse of a retired Air Force test pilot who was our test pilot. I was working for a company called VisionAire back then we were developing a single engine all composite jet.

If they lost an engine at take-off and were operating single pilot that could have spelled doom.

twin engine turbo prop corporate plane should have immaculate maintenance logs.

No radio declaring emergency...if we play the speculation game then either he was busy managing a catastrophic air-frame or power failure (one of those turbo props can maintain a climb rate of almost 500/ft per minute with other engine inoperable according to piper specs), OR he did become disoriented and was convinced of the climb when in fact he was left banking and didn't trust the instruments.

witness reports of a descending left bank as he emerged from the clouds would lead to a preliminary guess of spatial disorientation.

It happens to the best of pilots, and its hard to imagine the stresses of trying to find a balance of simply telling them all "we won't fly today" vs trusting your training. Hindsight is BS and useless...if he no-go's the flight, an hour later the ceilings were 3x higher and visibility 5x greater.....sure he is supposed to no-go it if conditions are too poor, but this happens far more often than you can imagine in GA (hell and commercial).

Since we are speculating, maybe he managed a critical aircraft failure and was lined up for a beautiful ditch in that field that would have been an "..in other news" story, but bad luck led to the wing being sheared by a power or light pole and thus the ensuing fire.

Unfortunately it was likely spatial disorientation.

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Possibility the airplane hit something in the air? A flock of geese maybe?

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I know someone who works at the airport in LC. He is responsible for something to do with the planes landing and taking off. When I talked to him Saturday he strongly thought that a bird could have caused this. He wasn't sure, and didn't hear anything, but that was his educated guess.

Those twins are scary. I'd rather a single any day. I've put down 2 with no power (blown jugs). Also had a pilot of ours put one down on top of a house off of Plank road a while back and he walked away unharmed and no injuries on the ground either except for the lady renting the house had a weed crop growing in the backyard and the planes wingtip was sitting in the weed plants.

What year was this?

07