piper cargo twin crashes in eastern washington

"Bob Gardner" wrote in message
. ..
As reluctant as I am to assign blame before all the facts are in, it does
appear that Eric Beard was "ducking under" on a nonprecision approach,
making it hard to point fingers in any other direction. The Easton crash
sounds to me (again, without any factual knowledge), like a mechanical.

I agree that the events leading up to the crash suggest a mechanical problem
(especially with the pilot radioing about what sounded like some sort of
mechanical issue). But even if they determine what mechanical problem
existed, if any, it doesn't explain how the pilot failed to make a
successful emergency landing.

While forested, it's not as though there are no clear areas in which to
land. Even the area shown in the news footage appears reasonably landable
with plenty of space between the trees and open terrain generally. Given
the terrain, if the airplane had struck a tree during the landing roll, or
had come to rest against a tree or something like that, I think it would
have been understandable. But one witness they interviewed for the news
said that he saw the airplane descending upside down, meaning that it had
struck a tree (losing the wing) prior to landing.

The question of why *that* happened will be much harder to answer, assuming
it's answered at all.

Pete