Safety Board Rules on Crossfield Accident

The National Transportation Safety Board’s final report on the plane crash that killed a legendary aviator last year concludes that both the pilot and an air traffic controller were at fault in the mishap. Scott Crossfield’s Cessna 210A (N6579X) crashed on the morning of April 19, 2006, in Ludville, Georgia. He was piloting the aircraft and was the sole occupant. According to the Safety Board, "The pilot's failure to obtain updated en route weather information, which resulted in his continued instrument flight into a widespread area of severe convective activity, and the air traffic controller's failure to provide adverse weather avoidance assistance, as required by Federal Aviation Administration directives, led to the airplane's encounter with a severe thunderstorm and subsequent loss of control." The airplane flew into an area of severe thunderstorms identified as a mesoscale convective system (MCS) with intense to extreme intensities during cruise flight at 11,000 feet then descended rapidly and impacted the terrain. The Cessna 210A entered the severe convective weather; the pilot then requested and received clearance from the air traffic controller to initiate a turn to escape the weather. The airplane was lost from radar about 30 seconds after the pilot initiated the turn. Before the airplane entered the weather, the controller's radar scope depicted a band of moderate to extreme weather along the accident airplane's projected flight path that was consistent with an embedded, heavy-precipitation, supercell-type thunderstorm; however, the controller did not provide the pilot with any severe weather advisories and did not advise the pilot of the weather depicted on his radar scope. On the basis of the controller's workload and available resources, he should have recognized that the adverse weather represented an immediate safety hazard to the accident flight and should have provided appropriate advisories to the pilot. The Safety Board said Crossfield was aware before departure that he would likely encounter adverse weather along the planned route of flight; however, by the time the airplane encountered the weather, the pilot had been airborne for over an hour and had not requested any updated weather information from air traffic controllers. In October 2006, the NTSB issued Safety Alert SA-11 Thunderstorm Encounters as a result of this accident and three other fatal accidents that involved in-flight encounters with severe weather. The safety alert addresses controller involvement in these accidents. The alert also states that IFR pilots need to actively maintain awareness of severe weather along their route of flight, and the safety alert provides suggestions to assist pilots in avoiding involvement in similar accidents.