CAA Aircraft Accident Report and Summary
This discussion contains extracts from the SACAA’s accident report. It is compiled in the interest of aviation safety and is not to establish legal liability.
Aircraft registration: ZS-FAI
Date and time of accident: 13 Oct 2016 1010Z
Type of aircraft: PA28-235
Type of operation: Private Part 91
PIC licence type: PPL
License valid: Yes
PIC age: 67
PIC hours on type: 619
Total in the past 90 days: 11.6
Last point of departure: Manzengwenya Airfield
Point of intended landing: Brakpan-Benoni Gauteng
Location of accident site: Jozini Kwa-Zulu-Natal
Meteorological information: Surface Wind: Calm. Clouds: SCT018 BKN018. Cloud base: 1800 ft AGL.
POB: 1+1
People injured: 0
People killed: 2
Synopsis
On 13 October 2016 at approximately 0915Z, the private pilot accompanied by a passenger, who were German nationals, took off from Manzengwenya airfield, in KwaZulu-Natal, on a private flight to Brakpan-Benoni aerodrome in Gauteng.
The chef at the lodge that transported them to the aircraft stated that the pilot requested him to activate his GoPro camera for him whilst he was doing the pre-flight inspection and securing the baggage in the aircraft. The pilot also requested that the chef wait at the airfield for approximately 30 minutes after they took off, in case he elected to turn back to the Manzengwenya airfield.
However, at approximately 1010Z the aircraft broke-up in IMC near the Jozini dam.
The pilot and the passenger were fatally injured and the aircraft was destroyed.
Witnesses stated that the aircraft made a loud noise and they saw debris falling from the sky. The aircraft impacted the ground in a nose down attitude whereafter a post impact fire erupted and destroyed the main wreckage and engine.
The Weather Services indicated drizzle at the accident site with the temperature 17ºC and cloud base at 1800 ft AGL and it was IMC.
The pilot was issued with the South African Validation Licence from 16 August 2016 to 15 August 2021. He had flown a total of 619.0 flying hours on the aircraft type. He was however, not in possession of a valid instrument rating.
The main wreckage consisted of the engine and fuselage with the right-hand wing still attached. The left wing was located 584m away and the vertical stabilizer located 412m from the main wreckage. The horizontal stabilizer and part of the tail section were located 445m from the main wreckage.
The wreckage revealed signatures consistent with the inflight break-up. No evidence of any pre-existing deficiency such as fatigue fractures or corrosion was found.
When the aircraft entered IMC, it was structurally overloaded leading to an inflight breakup.
Probable cause
The aircraft entered IMC and the pilot probably became disoriented. Disorientation occurs when there are insufficient visual cues to determine orientation. The sense of balance is extremely unreliable and may provide erroneous information to the pilot. Because of the pilot’s disorientation his input on the controls would have put the aircraft in an unusual attitude and in an attempt to correct the attitude the aircraft was overstressed.
Jim’s Analysis
Briefly, the aircraft broke up in a graveyard spiral. This is pretty much the standard way of losing control in IMC if you are not current. Rudder bias, turbulence or asymmetric fuel will cause one wing to gradually drop. Your first indication of trouble will be an increase in wind noise and engine revs as the nose drops and the airspeed increases.
You ease back on the stick and this seems to fix the problem – but only temporarily.
Soon the airspeed and wind noise start to dominate. You glance at the VSI and altimeter and are appalled to find how quickly you are losing height.
It’s time to really pull hard to arrest this terrifying descent which now has your attention to the exclusion of all else.
But pulling only tightens the unrecognised spiral. Your vision starts to go grey, but you have to keep pulling.
Suddenly there is a sickening crack, like lightning, and your body is flung away from the seat and hurled sideways.
The aircraft has lost one, or both, wings.
You had been warned, many times, of the dangers of this happening. But somehow those warnings vaporised.
You, and JFK Jnr, and many others, all knew better.
The Germans had three days of bad weather leading into their return flight to Europe. I suspect that’s the reason-behind-the-reason for this flight, and a thousand others is Passive People Pressure (PPP).
I have long been fascinated by why pilots press on into bad weather, or run out of fuel, or fail to do a pre-flight, or do a stupid beat-up. And it seems the pilot is often urged into these actions by other people’s explicit, or even silent, expectations.
Can you take this thinking too far? They crashed because they had insufficient sleep, or were distressed by domestic problems. The reason for the lack of sleep, or personal problems, are outside the scope of accident investigations.
I would tend to put the JFK Jnr Saratoga crash into a get-home-itis box.
And probably the very sad story of Albie and Marie Visser, which I’ll tell you now.
Albie was more than a pupil, he was a good friend of mine. I taught him to fly in the little Karoo town of De Aar. Soon after getting his PPL, he bought an Arrow, and I did his conversion and Night Rating training.
Perhaps a year later he phoned me, sounding deeply upset. He had been flying his wife Marie and their two children and had got on top of some developing Cu. The cloud had out-climbed the aircraft and Albie found himself in the muck and in serious trouble.
He had lost the limited instrument skills I had taught him during his night rating training. Albie realised he was losing control of the aircraft. He was a quick-thinking guy who had been a racing driver. He engaged the wing-leveller and let go of the controls.
This undoubtedly saved their lives, but it left him very shaken. His phone call was to ask for some more dual instrument training, in case he ever got into that situation again.
This put me in a spot. I didn’t want him to use that training to blast off into marginal weather again. But I knew that if I didn’t do it he would go to someone else, who might not do a good job. This is a dilemma that many instructors face.
In the end, I reluctantly gave him another 10 hours of dual IF. And continually hammered into his head that this was only a back-door – not a front door into cloud,
Perhaps a year after that I got a call from ATC in Port Elizabeth to say that Albie and his wife were missing in bad weather.
When they found the wreckage the next day it was obvious that he had spiralled and pulled the wings off in flight. Can you imagine those horrifying last seconds in which they plummeted down in a bare fuselage?
Their two beautiful children were orphaned in that moment.
I know Albie would have wanted me to use his story to save the lives of others. So if these words come home to you, then some good came out of this tragedy. 
What Can We Learn?
Next time you feel a bout of get-home-it is, or the urge to cut a corner, or to stray from the straight and narrow, take a long honest look at whether you are somehow giving in to other people’s pressures or expectations.
Jim Davis is a natural teacher with a passion for flying training, believes in learning through enjoyment. His book is refreshingly un-textbookish yet thoroughly covers its subject clearly. With over 15,000 hours, including 10,000 in flying instruction for civilian and military pilots, Jim founded South Africa’s largest and most respected flying school, 43 Air School. He is also an author of multiple books on flying training and has contributed numerous articles to flying magazines across two continents. https://www.jimdavis.com.au