I suspect this is one of those “happens more than people realize” events that now we’ll see more often because everyone is carrying instant-on high quality video cameras at all times.
Why do I think this? Because it happened to our family on the way to a restaurant in 1986. A small plane crash-landed on the boulevard in front of us. My dad slammed on the brakes and kept the plane from hitting our car. They were trying to do an emergency landing on the lightly-trafficked road, and almost made it. Over a pedestrian bridge, under a power line, then clipped a street light at the last moment. Plane flipped, crushing the cockpit and killing both people. Very sad. My dad kept us all in the car, so my sister and I remain unscarred from what he found in that plane when he ran to help. We were in our 30s before he would tell us what he saw, and I will spare all of you the details.
Oh very good. That’s clearly it. This was the return flight from the Flight Aware one you’ve got there. THey were heading back to Napa. I stopped looking because the plane I found was also a Mooney, so I figured it had to be it.
For all we know that’s exactly what they did after taking this video. It’s not like there was anything they could have done to help before all the vehicles involved came to a stop.
It’s misleading to call this particular accident CFIT though (a better example is an aircraft flying full-power into a mountain because the pilot didn’t realize his proximity to the mountain until it was too late). The Mooney pilot lost power, which turns his aircraft into a glider. It sounds like he was trying to make it to the airport and ran out of altitude and airspeed at the same time.
Interesting that that would ALSO be a Mooney M20 (I’m not good enough at recognition to get the variants). I also read the number off the plane as N3264F.
CFIT requires the aircraft to be airworthy. A powered aircraft suffering a loss of power doesn’t fit that definition.
