A Good Man Goes West--Morgan County, UT Crash

[RanchPilot]

Very sad. Good guy who was trying to do some good for others. He left behind 5 kids, she left behind 3.

http://www.abc4.com/mostpopular/story/P ... 74Afg.cspx

http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional ... b27c9.html

[Bighorn]

So Sad.....for some reason the good always die too young.
prayers

[mountainmatt]

Heartbreaking

[qmdv]

Sounds IMC to this guy. My son lives in Mountain Green and have landed at Morgan County many time. It at first felt very odd to land on a pretty steap downhill runway but am used to it now. I did not know that Morgan has a tower, when did that go up.

Tim

[Cary]

As usual, one can't put too much stock in what the news media gives as facts. There is no tower there, according to Airnav, so he was probably talking to Salt Lake Center. But also, FAA.gov shows that he did not have an instrument rating--and that probably tells as much as anything. Mountainous terrain, iffy weather, all pretty risky. It is still very sad, especially for the children and other surviving family. May God comfort them in their grief.

Cary

[SixTwoLeemer]

I met Daleray on the ramp in Grand Junction this summer, I was admiring his immaculate 1960 210 and we talked for a few minutes. Neat guy. When I saw the photos of the downed plane on the news I thought "hope thats not the 1960 210 I admired, but it sure looks like it"

Thoughts and prayers go out to the families.

I don't pretend to know all the details or reasons for these types of accidents but I wish I could talk to the pilot afterwards and find out what the rationale and thought process was? I think leaving Morgan Co. airport at night, low ceilings and some residual blowing snow, flying over hostile mountains into windy Wyoming in a single engine recip.... absolutely scares the pi$$ out of me but he must not have felt that way. Maybe someday I'll get a chance to ask the question.

[OregonMaule]

Very sad
Don't!! mess with wx.

From Trib.com
Madewell was meeting Sebesta in Salt Lake City to bring her back to Douglas but was forced to land short of the city because of bad weather on Thursday, according to a story on the newspaper’s website Friday.

Sebesta later met Madewell in Morgan County, where the two left for Wyoming. About 20 minutes after takeoff, around 2 p.m., Madewell radioed the tower in Morgan County and advised them he was turning back because of bad weather.

Read more: http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional ... z1m5zS8mOm

[Darinh]

Tim,

Your not going crazy, there is still no tower in Morgan and never will be... I live 20 min down the road. He was most likely talking to SLC. Clouds were really low with rain/snow mix. Not a day I would like to be flying.

[qmdv]

Tim,

Your not going crazy, there is still no tower in Morgan and never will be... I live 20 min down the road. He was most likely talking to SLC. Clouds were really low with rain/snow mix. Not a day I would like to be flying.

Guess I should have put a wink in my post.

Tim

[Jaerl]

Sad story. The guy sounds like a great guy donating his plane and time to help others. I flew from Moab to Provo on Thursday and had to detour down South to get through the pass over I-70. Mountains were buried to the North. I-70 was the only place I could find a way through. Still wasn't much room in the canyon between the mountains and clouds. I stopped in Nephi to call a friend in Provo because it was starting to snow and getting worse the farther North I got. There was a cloud layer at 9000' and another one a few hundred off the ground. Moab was beautiful but the Wasatch Front was another story. RIP

[lesuther]

I tried to leave Thursday for a flight up through Big Piney to Hamilton and heard folks on the radio getting turned into ice cubes near Rawlins and called it quits before even getting near the the soup. This is really heartbreaking. My thoughts to the families, and the S&R folks.

[gbflyer]

Hard to be objective about things like this. It's one thing to light - out into deteriorating conditions and try to kill yourself, it's quite another to do it with a Mom on-board. High altitude, ice everywhere, waining daylight, old underpowered POS airplane like most of us have...honestly WTF was this guy thinking?

I will stop now...thoughts and prayers for the surviving families.

[Grassstrippilot]

I took off that afternoon in the Bus out of SLC and was thinking, "Glad I have nice equipment to fly on days like this."

I went through recurrent training last month and my an instructor, an old Pan Am guy was our instructor. He's been around a long time and seen/done most, if not all of it. After reading this tedious technical slide from a PowerPoint presentation on how a certain computer takes readings of certain conditions around the plane, he paused, looked up at us and said, "Guys, when the weather if F****ed up, be careful!" Sage advise.

[Cary]

The NTSB preliminary has been published. http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief ... 5329&key=1. It doesn't seem to add anything to what's already in this thread.

Cary

[norm]

Makes my wonder about the sponsoring organization, "Pilots for Christ", and what guidelines they have for pilots and flying conditions.

We know that the majority of accidents in the NTSB database are preventable, but this one seems more questionable and preventable than most.

My deepest sympathies to the families and especially to the 8 children who have lost a parent.

[Cary]

I looked at their website and couldn't find anything about pilot qualifications, unlike Angel Flight and other compassion groups. Of course, even with minimum pilot qualifications, there's no way to assess judgment. Perhaps the final report will say more, but until then it certainly appears to be VFR pilot continuing into IMC, the 178 seconds to live scenario. So sad for their surviving families.

Cary