C-172 down at HPN - 2 fatalities

The damned ceiling couldn't have been more than 500 feet. Temp/dewpoint
spread was zero. Says something about American Flyers that it's taking a
primary student up shooting instrument approaches in low IMC .



"Tom Fleischman" k wrote in
message
news:250420051652421759%bodhijunkoneeightyeightjun ...
In article ne.com,
Andrew Gideon wrote:

George Patterson wrote:

Sounds completely cockeyed to me. Westchester is a controlled field,
yet
the reporter states that the "pilot had no verbal contact with the air
tower"? Conditions were IMC, yet "their arrival was not scheduled"?

The reporter thinks of "scheduled" as in part 121. If someone mentioned
"general aviation" to him, he'd probably want to interview the fellow
(of
obvious import due to his high rank {8^).

It's possible that there was no contact with the tower if the pilot
hadn't
been handed off yet (or if he never made contact with the tower after
the
hand-off). It's been a couple of years since I ILSed into HPN, so I
don't
know how early/late TRACON does the hand-off.

Believe me, by the time he got to his final position he would have been
handed off long ago. Normally NY App does the handoff shortly before
clearing for the approach, certainly outside the HESTER (the outer
makrker/FAF). He went down less than a half mile from the threshold.

It's worth noting that the student was NOT an instrument student. He
was still working on his private ticket. It was a pretty low day for a
student pilot to be shooting instrument approaches, in fact I have no
idea what they were doing out there that day. I can't imagine my
primary instructor allowing me out in such low weather.