Strange Plane and Unusual Environment Lead to Tragedy

On a clear August day in 2023, a 63-year-old pilot and a 41-year-old passenger, also a student pilot, took off from KHKY in a Brazilian two-seat amphibious light sports biplane Scoda Super Petrel LS. They flew 5 miles northeast to the point where there was a highway bridge crossing Hickory Lake. There they turned left over the lake, made a touch-and-go landing, and then continued west at low level.

Halfway back to the airport, the small plane was seen suddenly diving around a bend in the lake; but it was too late to avoid hitting power lines. Transmission wires have cut through the body at the base of the windshield. A high voltage electric current resembling an explosion occurred and the plane fell into the water. Both passengers died in the accident.

A friend of the pilot, who described himself as very experienced and very skilled, believed that the crash must have been caused by a medical or mechanical problem because “the pilot had flown around the lake several times before and was familiar with it.”

The pilot’s logbook told a different story. He was a wealthy businessman and owned a TBM (single engine turboprop) which he flew regularly. In October 2022, he logged 5.1 hours at Super Petrel in Ormond Beach, Florida, where the aircraft’s US distributor is located. He then took a 2.4-hour flight from Barnwell Regional Airport (KBNL) in South Carolina to KHKY and apparently took delivery of the $350,000 amphibian.

He did not record another flight in the Super Petrel until May 2023, when he flew 0.9 hours. Three months followed with no logbook entries for either aircraft; This was an unparalleled gap in the nearly two-year-old logbook pages in the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) crash file.

After an unexplained three-month break, the pilot flew the TBM on 9 and 11 August. The accident in Super Petrel occurred on August 13.

The NTSB does not comment on the strange break, but notes that the pilot had spent 3,000 total hours on duty and only 8.4 hours on the Super Petrel. If this count is correct, there is not much time left to explore the lake, and if research has been done, it has been closed. In fact, the strongest evidence that the pilot did not discover the lake, or at least the part of the lake through which the transmission lines passed, was the collision itself.

It is not uncommon for planes flying low over bodies of water to crash into power lines. I wrote two more examples in this column. One involved a pilot who saw power lines on an earlier flight but then became distracted and forgot about them. The other was about a daredevil who liked to do risky things and then brag about them. He was flying along a river towards the low sun, which blocked his view of the wires in his path.

A third example involved a Super Petrel striking wires over a river in Montana in October 2022. A second plane flying next to the first did not hit the wires or even see them at all.

All these accidents have one thing in common: They happened on the river. True, Lake Hickory is a lake, but it looks more like a wide river. The thing about rivers, as opposed to lakes, is that power lines go around lakes, but over rivers.

Large power transmission towers over 200 feet in height are planned. Not so those that cross the smaller Lake Hickory. Nor are they marked with brightly colored balls, as are the lines that cross canyons.

The power company, which owned the cables and, incidentally, the entire lake, probably did not realize that the probability of a plane flying over the lake at an altitude of 30 meters was greater than zero. Ironically, the company’s website includes a long section on safety precautions, which include never flying kites or model airplanes near power lines. There’s no mention of actual planes, but the same principle applies.

But the cables are clearly visible on Google Earth. It would be easy for the pilot to spot obstacles online across the lake. Alternatively, he could fly the length of the lake at a safe altitude before allowing himself and his companion to enjoy a more intimate journey over the lake.

There is a technical aspect to this accident that is worth mentioning as general information. With a given control effort, an aircraft ascends much faster than it descends. Therefore, it is better to go over a suddenly perceived obstacle than under it. Moreover, the Super Petrel’s configuration, with biplane wings positioned above the cockpit, was not suitable for getting under anything.

However, it was not possible for the pilot to weigh these thoughts in the short time between seeing the wires and hitting them. There was little time to react. By the time the pilot saw the cables, the opportunity to avoid the accident was long gone.

There is also a broader lesson here.

The pilot had thousands of hours, was instrument rated, and flew his own turboprop. The small, slow, lightweight amphibian will be fun and easy to fly, opening up a world of possibilities beyond the airport. But it will also bring new dangers. In Super Petrel, the pilot was no longer at FL 180.

No matter how experienced we are, we still become novices when we board a foreign plane and fly in an unfamiliar environment.

The word “pilot” as used colloquially covers everyone from the novice student to the best fighter to the 20,000-hour airline captain. People in general, and even pilots themselves, tend to assume that experience and success at all levels includes those at lower levels. So people might think that a pilot flying F-18s on an aircraft carrier would have no problem flying a Skyhawk. But this is not true.

Every type of flight, every plane, every environment carries its own secrets. Just as knowing how to survive in the Alaskan woods does not guarantee your safety on the New York City subway, mastery of a higher type of piloting does not lead to mastery of all lower types of piloting.

No doubt the pilot’s control of the Super Petrel included warnings about cables, submerged trees, and bird strikes—all the dangers inherent in flying over water. However, being warned is one thing, being awake is another. Alertness cannot be transferred within us; it grows from the inside out.

Notes: This article was prepared based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report on the accident and aims to bring the issues raised to the attention of our readers. It is not intended to make judgments or draw definitive conclusions about the capability or capability of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in October Issue 951 of the FLYING print edition.