Jet to Pick Up Elder Bush Was Warned

netscape.cnn.com ^ | Nov. 24, 2004 | JUAN A. LOZANO

[crushelits]

HOUSTON (AP) - The pilot of a private jet was warned the plane was flying low just before
it crashed en route to a scheduled landing in Houston to pick up former President Bush,
a federal investigator said Tuesday.

An investigation is under way into the crash of the Gulfstream G-1159A jet, which went down Monday morning, killing a crew of three. The plane, which belonged to Jet Place Inc. of Tulsa, Okla., left Dallas an hour earlier and was to have picked up Bush, who lives in Houston, for a trip to Ecuador to give a speech at a business conference.

Mark Rosenker, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the control tower at Hobby Airport told crew members about three minutes before landing that winds were calm and their runway was clear.

Rosenker said the controller talked to the pilots again shortly before the accident and warned them that they were flying too low. He said the pilots did not respond. He added that a preliminary review of the instruments and landing system indicated they were working properly.

The jet's wing and the landing gear on the right side clipped a 120-foot tall light pole on a road about 3 1/4 miles south of the runway. The normal altitude for a jet at that point would have been 1,000 feet.

Rosenker said there are alarms aboard a plane that tell a pilot if he is flying too low, but it was not immediately known if they were activated.

[georgiadevildog]

The jet was warned? Too bad it didn't listen.

[newgeezer]

What is this "CNN" thing you're directing us to?

[cbkaty]

I was at the site yesterday....This could have been much worse...had the jet fallen on the tollway... The light poll it hit was within 50 feet of the tollway booths....lots of traffic on the way to Hobby Airport at that time of the day.... The jet actually hit the ground about 50 - 100 feet north of the Harris County Tollway..in a vacant pasture... The wreakage is clearly visible from the tollway...

[USNBandit]

The jet's wing and the landing gear on the right side clipped a 120-foot tall light pole on a road about 3 1/4 miles south of the runway. The normal altitude for a jet at that point would have been 1,000 feet.

This wasn't a guy dropping below mins trying to make a runway in bad weather. Normal tolerances before you get violated are 300 ft. I would be surprised if these pilots normally deviated more than 50 ft flying in that type of aircraft.

[Thermalseeker]

Normal tolerances before you get violated are 300 ft. I would be surprised if these pilots normally deviated more than 50 ft flying in that type of aircraft.

This would depend on what type of ILS system that was being used.

Whatever the cause, smacking a 120' light pole 3 1/4 miles from the end of the runway indicates a serious problem, either with the crew or with the instrumentation.

[Thermalseeker]

Normal tolerances before you get violated are 300 ft. I would be surprised if these pilots normally deviated more than 50 ft flying in that type of aircraft.

This would depend on what type of ILS system that was being used.

Whatever the cause, smacking a 120' light pole 3 1/4 miles from the end of the runway indicates a serious problem, either with the crew or with the instrumentation.

[OldFriend]

Autopsy will reveal the condition of the pilot.

[sd-joe]

Hitting a 120' pole in clear weather, when they should have been at 1000', is beyond in instrumentation error.

[EternalHope]

Autopsy will reveal the condition of the pilot.

I think you hit the nail on the head. No way was the plane that low, with an unresponsive pilot, unless something was wrong with the pilot.

Since three people were aboard, it is possible the plane had a copilot. If so, then something would have to have been wrong with both of them.

If there was no copilot, then I suspect heart attack or stroke. Otherwise... there is a very long list of possibilities, including foul play.

[steplock]

Oral warning give --- NO reply
Alarm lights & sounds in cockpit??

Sounds like an internal power failure --- or one of those three was an islamic jihadist (a dumb one) that crashed the plane BEFORE picking up the prez?

[Thermalseeker]

Hitting a 120' pole in clear weather, when they should have been at 1000', is beyond in instrumentation error.

Well, yeah, but from what I gather this approach was at or near IFR minimums. In that sort of weather you don't have the luxury of looking outside and seeing what is happening or what you are about to hit. Although I've not read what type instrumentation was being used, it's hard for me to believe that two pilots with 19,000+ hours experience each would both make the same mistake simultaneously unless there was erroneous info being shown on their instrumentation. This leads me to believe there was a gross error either in the instrumentation or in the signal the instrumentation was receiving. The tower undoubtedly was receiving Mode C altitude info from their transponder because the tower warned them they were too low at least once. Why they ignored the tower is also a mystery.

About 20 years ago when I was attending Embry-Riddle in Daytona I remember DAB having a problem with the front side ILS because of a leaky cable TV repeater about a mile from the approach end of the runway. It was throwing off the middle marker and the glideslope. I happened to know a guy who worked for the local cable company as a lineman and he gave me the inside poop on what was happening. Fortunately, nobody crashed as a result.

[Robe]

This type of aircraft requires a copilot.....In order to be rated in the aircraft. one must go through a check out in which a scenario the death of the "FLYING " pilot occurs .

The "Nonflying Pilot".. must restrain and secure the unconscious pilot, insuring that he does not interfere with the controls, all while continuing the approach and not deviating not more that 50' and 10* from the required altitude/heading

[kylaka]

It would be very easy to mistake a well lit toll plaza for runway lead in lights in fog. That being said, they would have had to ignore every other piece of information available to them in the cockpit. Arriving over the runway threshold a minute early on a two minute timed approach should have made a go-around automatic, but visual images are powerfully seductive.

With that much experience between the two pilots though, you'd think they'd ignore their ass and eyeballs and fly the numbers.

[PAR35]

Hitting a 120' pole in clear weather,

The weather was a long way from clear. The area was in the middle of 4 days of heavy rain.

"The severe weather that spawned flooding, large hail and small twisters over the last few days has given way today to cool temperatures and sunny skies that will allow cleanup efforts to begin in earnest...." Over 200,000 homes without power. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2916691

[sd-joe]

OK, I stand corrected.

[jwpjr]

re: This would depend on what type of ILS system that was being used

Both major runways at this airport have Cat I ILS. The original report said they were a mile and a half from the airport, the later reports say three and a half miles. That's BIG difference! At more than three miles from touchdown they should have been nowhere near the 400 feet they were warned about earlier.