Fatal Crash! Pilot’s 3AM Return Flight Got 6 People Killed…

Fatal Crash! Pilot’s 3AM Return Flight Got 6 People Killed…
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#fligdebrief #pilotfatalcrash #plaincrash
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Fatal Crash! Pilot’s 3AM Return Flight Got 6 People Killed…
July 8th, 2023.
4:14 in the morning.
Murrieta, California.
A Cessna Citation II is on final approach to Runway 18 at French Valley Airport.
They’ve already gone missed once.
The ceiling is 300 feet.
The visibility is below minimums.
The runway is somewhere in the fog.
The jet descends through decision altitude.
Five seconds later, it’s gone.
Six people die 800 feet short of a 6,000-foot runway.
The airplane was working.
The engines were producing power.
Nothing failed.
So why did they keep descending?
Tonight, we’re going to walk through exactly what happened, what the data shows, and why this accident didn’t begin at 100 feet above the ground.
It began much earlier.
Fatal Crash! Pilot’s 3AM Return Flight Got 6 People Killed…
The airplane was a 1979 Cessna 550 Citation II, registration N819KR.
On board were six people. In the left seat sat 25-year-old Riese Lenders, a commercial pilot with about 950 hours total time. In the right seat was 32-year-old Manuel Vargas-Regalado, a commercial pilot and certified flight instructor with roughly 1,600 hours. In the cabin were four passengers: Abigail Tellez-Vargas, Manuel’s wife; Lindsey Gleiche; and a married couple, Alma and Ibrahim Razick.
There were no survivors.
Just after 4:00 a.m., the Citation was established on the RNAV (GPS) Runway 18 approach into French Valley. It was an LPV approach, providing vertical guidance down to a published decision altitude. At that altitude, you either have the required visual references and continue, or you execute a missed approach immediately.
Fatal Crash! Pilot’s 3AM Return Flight Got 6 People Killed…
The published visibility minimum was seven-eighths of a mile.
At the time of the second approach, the field was reporting half a mile in fog — below minimums.
ADS-B and Garmin data show the airplane tracking runway heading at about 180 degrees. Groundspeed was roughly 128 knots. Indicated airspeed was about 130 knots.
For that airplane at typical landing weight, reference speed would have been approximately 95 to 99 knots. FAA stabilized approach guidance calls for being within plus 10 and minus 5 knots of that speed. They were about 30 knots fast.
For most of the final segment, the descent rate was around 760 feet per minute. In the final seconds, it increased sharply to more than 2,300 feet per minute.