• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Contact

Golf Hotel Whiskey

Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts

Blinding sunshine brings a plane down into trees

General Aviation News will often print excerpts of accident reports put together by the USA’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) – including a July 2009 report about a Piper J-3 that suffered substantial damage in South Charleston, West Virginia.

According to the accident report, the Piper’s pilot was practicing takeoffs and landings late in the afternoon. The first two patterns went smoothly but while executing the third approach, the pilot was blinded by the setting sun during the landing flare. Hence, the Piper ended up touching down on its left main landing gear and then it bounced too high – forcing the pilot to attempt a go-around. However, the aircraft instead stalled and ended up in the trees bordering the runway.

And while the probable cause was ruled the pilot’s failure to maintain control of the aircraft while attempting a go-around, the other indirect cause was practicing takeoffs and landings late in the afternoon while the sun was starting to set.

Sun Set

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Blinding sunshine brings a plane down into trees – Golf Hotel Whiskey | Share My Aircraft News says:
    July 20, 2011 at 00:13

    […] Read Full Article This entry was posted in INTERESTING ARTICLES FROM THE WEB. Bookmark the permalink. ← Evaluating the Decision- Making Skills of General Aviation Pilots […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Matthew Stibbe
Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He has an FAA CPL/IR and an EASA PPL/IR and sometimes flies a Cirrus SR-22. He also writes about wine at Vincarta and being a better manager at Geek Boss.
Bureaucracy must die eBook
Subscribe via RSS

Recent Posts

  • IATA Airport Abbreviations
  • Upcoming Concorde and Apollo documentaries
  • Lie Back And Think Of England: London To Austin On BA’s New 787 Dreamliner
  • Video: Parachuting from the edge of space
  • Hilarious preflight safety video for GA aircraft
  • San Francisco Airport at night – beautiful time lapse video
  • A practical jetpack (finally) takes off
  • A man in a hot air balloon realises he is lost
  • Pegasus House: The former HQ of the Bristol Aeroplane Company is restored
  • Vintage British aviation posters from the 1920-1930s

Copyright © 2023 Golf Hotel Whiskey. All rights reserved.