Patsy Cline Airplane Crash: Pilot's Perspective

March 5, 1963:  A Pilot's Perspective

More speculation:

My pilot pal Bill Knight was comparing the recent plane crash of young singer Aaliyah to the tragedy of March 5, 1963. He gave me his permission to share his thoughts on the comparison, and while he wants it emphasized that it is only his speculation, I always appreciate Bill's input on a subject he knows so well. He has a way of helping laymen to understand this stuff:

... (The crash which killed Aaliyah) sounds like an all-too-familiar series of events with these sort of things. That was just plain stupidity on the part of that pilot to take up an overgrossed plane by 500+ pounds. There are other factors that, had they been in his favor, he might have possibly made it. Had the temperature been around 60 degrees AND the plane was in top shape with two strong, recently overhauled engines AND the load was balanced properly, that plane could have theoretically flown and made altitude until the fuel burned down enough to get back under gross. Russian Roulette if you ask me. Manufacturers give a gross load limit with a rather large margin of safety, which is not always necessary. I don't argue with it though. They calculate the gross based on all possible negative conditions that could exist.

If the truth were known, I would not be at all surprised that Randy Hughes' Comanche was overgross a little that night.

Think about it. Four passengers, luggage, instruments and as much as 540#s (90 gal) of fuel. The payload on that Comanche is about 1200 pounds, maybe a little less. Let's say he only took 360#s of fuel (60 gal). That would fill the two main fuel tanks and put nothing in the reserves. That would have given Randy a good three hours (counting a little reserve in the mains) of flight time before he had to stop, which would have fit with a landing at Dyersburg because of fuel availability and weather information in that day. Hawkshaw and Cowboy were big men and I'd say Randy was about average. For conversation, assume they each weighed 180#s. That is probably conservative. Say Patsy weighed 130#s. That adds up to 1030#s and only 170#s left in the payload for luggage, instruments, etc. From what was scattered about from that crash, there well could have been over 200#s of stuff; one heavy suitcase can weigh 40-50#s. You can pack a bunch of stuff in the baggage compartment of a Comanche, plus there is a backshelf that can hold some stuff up over the back seat. Unless Randy was really careful he may have overgrossed a little.

The thing that makes me believe he was trying to manage the weight was the fact that he only took 19 gallons of fuel at Dyersburg. That is not much on a plane that will hold 90 gallons. If a plane is overgrossed it can cause the handling characteristics to be unpredictable. Long story short, they were close to gross if not overgrossed. If he had been 50-100 pounds over, that could have played a minor role in that accident. I guess we will never know....

More from pilot Bill Knight:

I have contacted Piper Aircraft Museum in Lockhaven, Penn. for details. I did find Randy's Comanche tail number (N7000P) in the FAA registry database. It was a Comanche PA-24-250. Rated cruise speed is 157 knots, which is 180 miles per hour. I have the serial number and it was registered to the "Hughes Agency Randy". I really thought it would be taken off the registry by now but it wasn't.

Randy was flying the Victor 140 airway between the VOR signals at Dyersburg and Nashville, which was the most modern navigation method at the time. He was flying below the clouds and inadvertently entered the clouds near Camden. He tried to turn around and went into the dead man spiral. The crash site is off of the Victor airway enough that he had to be turning around. It was his training to turn around if he got into trouble. Randy's navigation up till the crash was, apparently, right on the money.

I now have the benefit of knowing the ceiling height that night at Dyersburg: 1200-1500 ft. Your airplane altimeter registers altitude above sea level. Cloud ceilings are reported above ground level. The elevation at Dyersburg is 500 feet or less, as I recall. That would have meant Randy could have flown as high as 2,000 feet indicated altitude before getting into the clouds. Current VFR rules state that you must stay 500 feet below clouds. Sometimes it is hard to estimate just by looking. That would have meant that Randy could only fly about 1500 feet indicated altitude. That is low at night. The terrain around Dyersburg would not have been a problem, but the terrain rises as you go towards Nashville. Even if they had gotten past the Tennessee River at Camden, and the fog, they would have been in jeopardy of hitting other obstacles.

I have not studied the route that much concerning terrain, but I know there were smoke stacks at a steam plant along the route about 1500 feet msl, and the victor 140 came very close to the WSM TV tower which stands over 2000 feet msl. That flight was what is known in FAA terminology as marginal VFR (Visual Flight Rules). VFR weather is at least 1,000 foot ceilings and three miles of visibility. Marginal VFR is anything less than 3000 feet and more than 1000 feet and at least three miles visibility. Anything below 1000 feet or less than three miles is considered IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) weather.

Randy was flying legal at the time he left Dyersburg. So his decision to leave and try his luck to the East might have been ill-advised, but not illegal at the time. He assumed he could see deteriorating conditions soon enough to turn back ~ a fallacy that came with being a fairly inexperienced pilot. As a pilot you are considered by the FAA as pilot in command of the flight and you bear all of the responsibility of conducting the flight and the decision to go or not go. The FAA folks at the flight service station in Dyersburg could not tell Randy he could not continue.

Judging from the time it is getting dark here in Smyrna now, I would say without a doubt it was dark when they departed Dyersburg that night. Personally, I have been flying at night in marginal VFR conditions and found myself in the clouds thinking I was well below them. It happens. Sometimes a layer of clouds will have a few lower scattered clouds at a lower altitude and you do not see them or realize they are there at night until you are in them.

The worst part of it all is the fact that he had an autopilot. If he'd had it on at the time he entered the fog or clouds near Camden, and just held on a few minutes, he would have popped back out a few miles east of the river where the ceiling was back up to 1500 feet above ground. If he'd had it on, he may have had to disengage it to make a 180-degree turn. That is why we are trying to find out what, if anything, the autopilot was "slaved" to from Piper Aircraft. Sometimes autopilots are slaved to a heading bug and all you have to do is turn the dial and the autopilot would make the turn for you. If not, you would have to disengage the autopilot and make the turn manually. If Randy made that turn manually it is no mystery why he lost control.

I think Randy really believed they would make the trip to Nashville fine. After all they were less than an hour away in a Comanche 250. All he would have to do is "scud" under the cloud deck. He could fudge up to, say, 1900 feet and stay out of the clouds. He probably felt some pressure to get his passengers home, and he probably wanted to go home too. An experienced pilot familiar with the terrain along that route could have made it, even at night, if the ceiling would have been the same all of the way; it would have been risky.

For the sake of comparison, I would say an experienced pilot with consistent ceilings and familiarity with the terrain would have had a 90% chance of making it. Throw in the unexpected event of flying into low clouds or fog without instrument training, it would cut the odds down to maybe a 20% survival chance. It would have been 10 times easier in the daylight. In fact, I would dare say had it been daylight (just an hour earlier) when he neared Camden, he would have seen the lower clouds and fog and turned back in time to avoid them. He just could not anticipate lower clouds and fog at the Tennessee River. The flight service station could not forecast that at that time unless they had a reporting station there, which I don't think they did.

I could speculate from now on why this tragedy happened. The fact is... it did. It happened because a lot of factors worked against the safety of the flight. Randy's flight hour experience, the fact that Randy was not instrument rated, variation in the ceilings from one point to another, the fact that a Comanche 250 is fast and unforgiving in an emergency requiring quick thinking, flying low to avoid clouds and, last and most critical in my mind, darkness....

From Ray Williamson, a flight instructor who flew with Randy Hughes on a couple of occasions as an instructor when Randy's regular instructor was unavailable:

Randy was warned not to continue the flight at Dyersburg. He didn't listen, and when he got near Camden he got into the clouds and probably tried to turn around and head back. When you are in the clouds in a turn, the wind noise changes, making you believe you are picking up speed and descending. Not being instrument trained, he pulled back on the yoke, tightening the turn more and more, until he entered a graveyard spiral. It is the same thing that happened to Kennedy a year or two ago. He lost control and came down pretty much straight. All he really had to do was pull out the wing leveler (autopilot) and hold his course and he would have eventually come out of it. I guess he was in shock or something, but if he'd have done that they might still be living today.

More from pilot Bill Knight:

I don't know who came up with the notion that Randy was looking for a road to land on. I suppose anything is possible, but if that were the case he would have found a road or a field to land on and probably made it. In order to do that, he would have to have been under control when he broke out of the clouds. From everything I can discern he came screaming fast out of the clouds at a 45 degree angle. The clouds were only 500 feet off the ground at that time. 120 miles per hour is a conservative straight and level cruise speed of a Comanche that has been batted around. Comanches can "cruise" as slow as 100 miles per hour (actually they can fly as slow as 67 miles per hour without stalling) and as fast as 180 miles per hour, depending on the engine size and the selected RPM's, landing gear position, flap setting and Manifold pressure the pilot selects. That's before you consider putting the nose over 45 degrees.

Anyway, at 120 miles per hour you are traveling 633,600 feet per hour or 10,560 feet per minute or 176 feet per second. It does not take long for an airplane traveling that fast in a 45 degree down angle to lose 500 hundred feet of altitude. One would have to do the geometry, but for conversation, I would guess that once he broke out of the clouds, Randy had considerably less than ten seconds to pull that plane out of a dive and regain control or start taking the tops out of the trees. A normal person's reaction to coming out the clouds suddenly that close to the ground would be to pull back on the yoke quick and hard, which can and would put the airplane into an accelerated stall. He did cut the tops out of the trees. The engine was "developing substantial power" just prior to impact. Investigators could see the damage done by the propeller and to the propeller from hitting the tree tops, and the debris was strewn in a fairly long path, indicating the airplane was moving on.

I have had my Comanche in a steep dive probably on the order of 45 degrees with cruise power, and it was no problem reaching over 180 miles per hour in a matter of a few seconds. The dive in and of itself is not really dangerous, if you have enough altitude and you can see where you are going. He came out of those clouds and was into the trees before he knew what happened.

Normally, pilots are trained to make emergency landings in a field. Due to power lines, the only time I would choose a road would be on a moonless night when I could not see a field. Then I would only attempt it on an interstate, where power lines are not so plentiful. I would rather take my chances in some trees rather than 10,000 volts. Anyway, I don't mean to sound ghoulish. I have all of the sympathy in the world for those people on board and the families involved. Just to say it was tragic does not seem to do it. It was worse than tragic....

From pilot Bill Knight:

I wanted to thank you for the information on the crash. I read the NTSB report and see now why such a terrible thing happened. Randy was not, as you said, an instrument rated pilot. A recent study performed says that non-instrument pilots have an average of three minutes to live once they go in to instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). Before I became instrument rated I got into the clouds once by accident. Luckily I popped back out quickly. I know the terror you feel when you are confronted with a situation like that. It is easy to panic.

I suspect the same thing happened to Randy. I also own and fly a 1959 Piper PA24. I looked at the aeronautical chart for that area and it looks like Randy was following what we pilots call a Victor airway. It is a route between VOR beacon signals. There is one at Dyersburg and one at Nashville. He was flying between them. Knowing how fast a PA24 cruises, I would say they were about thirty minutes out of Dyersburg when they went down. The most common type of fatal crashes happen because non-instrument rated pilots continue flight into instrument conditions. That is exactly what happened to John Kennedy, Jr. last summer. Both Kennedy and Randy probably got disoriented and entered what is known as a "Dead Man's Spiral." It is simply where you allow the plane to bank and descend at gradually increasing speed and angle of attack. All the while you think you are flying level unless you look at your instruments. From the sound of the witness report, that is what happened. You don't generally descend at a forty-five degree angle if you have your airplane under control.

It is pure speculation on my part, but what could have happened is this: we know Randy had intended to turn back if weather got worse. The crash site was off the airway just enough that he could have been turning around to head back to Dyersburg. Typically where pilots are most likely to get disoriented is in a turn. I have to believe, because of how far they got, that Randy was flying either below the clouds OR he found a hole and had climbed up between layers of clouds hoping to find another hole over Nashville. After all, he "knew" the sun was shining in Nashville, so there must have been breaks in the clouds. When he got near Camden, he inadvertently got into the clouds and he tried to turn around (perhaps disengaging the autopilot if he had one), and the rest was academic. If Randy had an autopilot he could have made it back to Dyersburg, even through the clouds, if it was clear enough at Dyersburg to make a VFR approach. If he would have declared an emergency on the radio, they might have suggested that.

Another scenario is that he did have an autopilot and had it on, flying in and out of clouds, figuring to get a break in the clouds at Nashville. I doubt that he did that, because that would have been extremely reckless on his part, and no VFR pilot in his right mind would attempt it. Most VFR pilots are terrified of going into clouds because they know how deadly it can be. I can't believe he went into clouds intentionally. He may have decided to turn back and found out he was hemmed in with no escape. When clouds are that low, they tend to roll through fast. His route may have been open when he came through, but soon closed up after he passed through. Anyway, I thought you might be interested in a pilot's perspective on the crash.

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