Can you put that in english for us non-pilots?
I believe MB26 is speculating pilot error.
I'll wait for the NTSB to do their thing.
Bookmarked.
The altimeter in an aircraft reads the altitude based on the barometric pressure around it. You have to get the local barometric pressure from the airport and manually turn a knob on the altimeter to set that pressure, and then you will have your accurate altitude in feet above sea level. If you put the wrong barometric pressure into the altimeter, you'll have the wrong altitude reading.
Typically a higher-end plane like that Gulfstream will have a radar altimeter that reads height above ground, not height above sea level, and also will have radio equipment that let it conduct an accurate approach in bad conditions. But the equipment's only as useful as the guy behind the controls, and the vast majority of crashes in situations like this turn out to be pilot error of some kind.
}:-)4
I'll step in for MindBender:
"100 foot altimiter errors usually put them down,"
In this statement he's saying that errors in altimeter reading of + or - 100 feet are not unusual.
" on the localizer,"
The localizer is a radio signal "located" at the airport which aircraft can follow to get to the airport. So "on the localizer" means that the pilot was flying on a specific compass heading towards the localizer (you will often hear this called 'flying the radial')
" but about 4 miles short of the threshold. "
The thresold, is of course, the near end of the runway. So he's saying that the if your approach is 100ft low, while flying on the radial for that runway, you'll hit the ground about 4 miles short of the runway.
"Sounds like stupidity 101 here."
Translation of this is that the pilot was probably a idiot for attempt an approach in conditions where visibility was near zero.
I think MindBender is probably correct, but I'm waiting to see a microburst or some windshear caused the crash (although it's pretty unlikely).