Reply #9: I don't have a dog in this fight but I'm a commercial pilot and an aero engineer [View All]

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and I can address some of your questions.
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Now can someone who is is a pilot explain a few things to me here. I am trying to understand the verbiage and elements of your profession:

1. If there were no "issues with flight control" do they mean avionics?

Avionics (aviation electronics) are essential to safe flight in less than optimum conditions...in clouds, low visibility, at night,
freezing precip, etc. They are not required at all for engines and control serfaces to function...in the typical 'small' airplane.
Obviously the situation is different in large 'fly by wire' types like an Airbus, for example.


2. So given that everything else was ruled out, the only thing left is mechanical, am I right? Am I wrong and missing an important genre?

Nothing has, AFAIK been ruled out. That will be done by the NTSB which has barely had a chance to take pictures, let alone formulate the syllabus for this particular investigation. Any "conclusions" you may have heard are no such thing, they are speculation...generally from people who know not one damn thing about airplanes.


3. Is there anything else that is not covered under mechanical, avionics, health, and weather (he was not a drug user from what I have been told, so for now at least, let's leave it off the table of considerations) that would explain that his plane went down three miles from landing (I know he was on instruments now, rather than line of sight), with a working engine?

There are many possibilities...including physical incapacitation (stroke, heart attack etc.), vertigo (a very real and common phenomenon), clear and/or rime ice on the wings and control surfaces, high powered neutron beams aimed from hidden bunkers in the Ohio countryside...(okay I made that one up). (By the way, there are times when 'line of sight' is marginal enough that a reasonably well trained pilot will be "on instruments" anyhow.)


4. Is the propeller mentioned only as indicative of the engine working or is it being broken something to consider as an actual cause for the accident?

If the propeller is bent with the tips forward, it means the engine was producing positive thrust power (at least enough to overcome drag)...if the tips are bent back, the engine wasn't working...much. These things are even more basic than Accident Investigation 101. ;-)