20170216002149A

On February 16, 2017, about 1852 eastern standard time, a Beech A45, N3434G, collided with trees and terrain during a forced landing at anderson airport (GE21), Climax, Georgia. The airplane was substantially damaged. The private pilot fatally injured. The airplane was registered to a private company and was operated by the pilot under the provisions of 14 CFR part 91 as a personal flight. Dusk, visual meteorological conditions prevailed, and no flight plan was filed for the local, personal flight. The flight originated about 1800.

On February 17, 2017 an FAA inspector from the atlanta FSDO was dispatched to the scene in order to determine the cause of the accident. At the accident site the FAA was joined by a member of the NTSB and a teledyne Continental motors safety investigator. An initial examination of the wreck site revealed that the aircraft was sitting inverted on the approach end of the grass strip runway. A row of trees approximately 50 yards behind the crash site was the initial impact point with pieces of the aircraft tail cone still suspended. The right wing was heavily damaged as a result of impacting the trees and an extensive amount of fuel was loss as a result. The propeller was relatively straight with no twisting or scraping characteristics normally displayed with an engine making power. The aircraft cabin area sustained a great deal of damage as a result of the inverted impact with the ground. The aircraft landing gear was fully extended with the flaps fully retracted on impact and this configuration corresponded with the actual aircraft levers.

During the investigation process investigators were informed that the pilot/owner had just received the aircraft back from a repair facility in Florida, where an annual inspection and wing spar AD had been accomplished. Maintenance records from the a&p/ia that performed the annual inspection and AD did not reveal any anomalies. Further examination of the aircraft maintenance records showed that the annual inspection had been signed off on 02/09/2017 and the previous annual had been accomplished on 10/16/2009. The aircraft had not been flown in over 7 years and had acquired only 18 hours since the last annual in 2009. A friend of the deceased pilot/owner gave a statement that he had flown the aircraft from the repair facility in Florida to the owner?s private airstrip seven days prior to the accident with no issues and the aircraft did not fly again until the day of the accident. On the day of the accident the daughter of the deceased pilot provided the FAA and NTSB with a 15 second video clip of the aircraft making a high speed flyby of the airfield with no issues. A witness statement from a nearby neighbor stated that he had heard the aircraft flying around that day and it sounded as if the aircraft was sputtering and not running smoothly. The aircraft was recovered by atlanta air salvage and transported to their facility in griffin, Georgia to conduct a thorough investigation of the aircraft and power plant.