Update on Kewanee, Illinois Cessna 182P crash.
A Cessna 182P similar to accident airplane. (Photo by Fir0002-Flagstaff Fotos via Wikipedia. GNU Free Documentation License Ver 1.2)
When an accident investigator shows up at an accident scene and realizes that the pilot of the flight survives, he (or she) may think for a moment that maybe the investigation will go a little more smoothly than it would otherwise. That is, until the investigator realizes that the pilot’s memory has a large gap in it that pretty much covers the entire accident process. Such is the case in the accident involving pilot Harold D. Middleton, in which his Cessna 182P Skylane (registration N1986M) crashed a half-mile south of Kewanee Municipal Airport (EZI) very soon after takeoff on November 23, 2009. His wife, Peggy G. Middleton, was one of two passengers on board and the sole fatality. Both the pilot and his grandson survived the crash with minor injuries. You can read Velozia Air’s original report on the accident HERE. This post deals with the National Transportation and Safety Board’s (NTSB) preliminary information on the crash.
The Middletons had departed Memphis Memorial Airport (03D) in Memphis, Missouri earlier in the day and intended to fly to Marshall County Airport (C75) in Lacon, Illinois. The plan was to pick up their grandson and fly him back to 03D. Due to adverse weather at Lacon, the Middletons landed in Kewanee, Illinois and waited for their grandson to be brought over to them. The plane then departed EZI and ended up in an uncut cornfield south of the airport. When asked what happened, the pilot could only remember having a good takeoff run and waking up in the accident site. Everything in between that may have indicated what happened appears to have been wiped clean from his memory (at least for now).
Normally, with this kind of accident soon after takeoff, you tend to think something went wrong with the engine. However, accident investigators found that every system in the engine appears to have been working properly at the time of accident. The report states that there was no pre-impact failure of the engine or its systems. Fuel was found on both wings. The flight control surfaces were also found to be in good working order.
The NTSB investigation seems to place a lot of focus on the weather conditions in this accident. The pilot and a nearby weather station report the weather as being OK: three to four miles forward visibility and clear skies. However, other weather stations point to very low cloud ceilings and very low visibilities. In the general area of the airport, weather conditions were marginal between visual and requiring instruments. It is possible the pilot may have lost orientation somehow after takeoff if visibility was low enough, but Kewanee could have easily had well-enough weather conditions in which this wasn’t a problem. However, at 5:30 PM Central Standard Time, this was already a night flight and that may have played a factor in a loss of orientation, especially with marginal visibility.
We could also focus a bit on the pilot’s memory. It isn’t all that rare for a crash victim to forget the moments before the crash. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including the blunt force trauma itself from the accident or the brain’s own psychological defense mechanisms. However, it does open the possibility that the pilot himself was unconscious and was the main reason for the crash. Could it be that Harold Middleton had some kind of medical problem that led to the accident? Did he lose consciousness right after takeoff? It is definitely something for investigators to look into.
Of course, you have to study every possibility and you can’t leave out the unlikely possibility that the pilot could be covering up something (such as his own mistake or maybe the grandson was flying the plane in violation of Federal Aviation Regulations). Still, at least if pilot error was involved, most pilots fess up to their mistakes in accident investigations, so I’d like to think this is the most unlikely possibility.
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