Night Falls on Final: Currency, Avionics and a Dark Approach

Currency rules can feel like paperwork: six instrument approaches with holding and course tracking every six calendar months, and three full-stop night landings every 90 days to carry passengers at night. But the skills they protect are perishable: programming a change in the box quickly, catching the autopilot when it drops off, and flying a stable path to a runway you can barely see. This accident shows what happens when those skills go stale on the same night.

The AOPA Air Safety Institute (ASI) re-creates this flight in its video "Accident Case Study: Night Falls on Final," which you can watch below. The summary that follows is ours and is based on the NTSB final report (ERA20FA014), which also gives the official probable cause. Watch the full case study for ASI's own analysis.

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The flight, in short

On October 20, 2019, a 72-year-old instrument-rated private pilot with about 2,956 hours departed Columbus, Georgia (CSG) at 4:05 p.m. in a Piper PA-32-301 Saratoga on an IFR flight plan to Raleigh-Durham (RDU). One passenger was aboard. According to his logbook, his last instrument experience was three approaches in November 2018, and his last night flight was half an hour that same month. He did not meet the recent instrument or night requirements to carry a passenger at night in IMC.

Sunset at Raleigh was 6:31 p.m., and civil twilight ended at 6:57. At 6:25 the pilot checked in with approach and asked for the RNAV GPS runway 5R approach. The controller told him to expect runway 32 instead. He said he was set up for 5R but would change.

Over the next half hour the flight came apart in small pieces. He told the tower his GPS approach “just shut off” and that he needed to climb, confirmed he was in IMC, and said he was having trouble with his heading. A few minutes later he reported his autopilot had shut off. He drifted off assigned altitudes, asked the controller to spell a fix so he could enter it, and missed it. Controllers vectored him back around.

At 7:17 he broke out of the clouds about 9 miles from the runway, but had trouble finding the runway lights, so the controller turned up their intensity. He got two low altitude alerts on final. His last transmission said he had the runway in sight. A pilot who had just landed watched the airplane descend into the trees of a dark state park just over a mile short of runway 32. He said its landing light was off, though investigators later found the cockpit switch in the on position. Both people aboard were killed. The 6:51 weather at RDU was 1,000 feet broken and 10 miles visibility.

The NTSB determined the probable cause to be: “The pilot’s failure to maintain a safe glidepath during final approach to the runway, which resulted in a collision with trees and terrain. Contributing was the pilot’s lack of recent instrument flight experience.”

What recency really protects

The NTSB said his trouble with the GPS and autopilot was likely due to a lack of recent instrument practice. None of the individual problems was catastrophic. Together, at night, at the end of a long flight, they used up his attention, and he had nothing left for the last mile.

• Check your own currency before you plan a flight that ends at night or in IMC, and be honest about proficiency, which is a higher bar than currency.
• Expect the runway change. Brief the other likely approaches before you leave, so a switch is a button press, not a rebuild.
• When the automation drops off, fly the airplane first. Ask for a hold or a block of airspace to sort out the box.
• On a dark final over unlit terrain, use the approach guidance all the way down, even after you see the runway.