LAX02FA059

During low level cruise flight, within 2 minutes following takeoff, the airplane collided with terrain. The student pilot arrived at the airport during nighttime hours when the flight school was closed. He was not scheduled to fly that night and was not endorsed for night flight. He removed keys from the lockbox to an airplane of a type he had never before flown and for which he was not endorsed. He entered the airplane without a preflight inspection, started the engine with difficulty, and then proceeded to the runway and took off without pausing for any pretakeoff checks. The airplane was observed to takeoff into the clear night, turn, and fly into a mountainside about 2 miles distant. The pilot's flight instructor and the owner of the flight school both found the pilot's behavior on the night of the accident completely out of character for him. A local law enforcement official said the pilot was the subject of a criminal investigation and that a search warrant had been served on his home earlier the same day while the pilot was not home. The pilot returned home to find that entry to his home had been forced and records and a computer were seized. The local coroner ruled the death a suicide.

History of flight

On January 4, 2002, at 2158 Pacific Standard Time, a Cessna 152, N24223, impacted mountainous terrain shortly after takeoff from the Petaluma, California airport. The student-certificated pilot, the sole occupant, was fatally injured and the airplane was destroyed. The local area (personal/instructional) flight was operated by Aero Venture. Nighttime, visual meteorological conditions prevailed, and no flight plan was filed.

The pilot was a student at the Aero Venture flight school at the Petaluma airport where he was training for his private pilot certificate. The owner of the school told the Safety Board investigator that the pilot had not been scheduled or authorized by the school to fly that night. He was not qualified in the accident airplane type and was not qualified or endorsed to fly solo at night.

The flight school owner said that the pilot came to them to learn to fly with no prior flying training. At the time of the accident he had acquired about 95 hours total time, of which 25 hours were solo. He had about 4 hours of (dual instruction) night flight time, which included a night cross-country to Sacramento. He said that the pilot had never displayed any unsatisfactory behavior with respect to his flight training or he wouldn't have been allowed to continue. He was in the final stages of preparation for his private pilot checkride, which was scheduled for the latter part of January.

His flight instructor said he had known the pilot, as a flight student, for about a year and considered him a little more than an acquaintance. He had had the student over to his home a couple of times. He was not aware, based upon their conversations, that the student had any family. He knew that he was divorced, and believed that the student's considerable wealth was from property he had inherited when his father died. He never spoke in particulars about his personal life except that he, at one time, told the instructor that he was estranged from his adopted daughter by means of divorce from his ex-wife and that caused him emotional distress.

The instructor described the pilot as a diligent, "meticulous" student who always came well prepared for each lesson. Because both he and the pilot were large men, his flight training was conducted in the Piper Warrior, because it better accommodated their size. The pilot never showed any reckless or careless behavior in his flying or his personal life except one occasion, about 10 days earlier, when he arrived for a lesson and his car literally ran out of fuel in the parking lot of the airport. On that one occasion the pilot expressed surprise and disbelief to the instructor that he had let that happen. The instructor said "nothing in [the pilot's] flying performance suggested he was [emotionally] troubled."

According to the flight school owner, on the night of the accident the office was closed and locked. The keys and aircraft charge books for two airplanes (the Piper Warrior and the Cessna 152) were left outside in a lock box because two other pilots (not the pilot involved in the accident) had those two airplanes scheduled for night flights. The pilot who had the Cessna 152 scheduled for 2000 never showed up. Another pilot did schedule and fly the Warrior. That pilot told the school owner that he was fueling the Warrior sometime after 2100 when the pilot involved in the accident arrived at the airport, abruptly picked up the keys to the Cessna 152, which at that time were the only ones in the box, and walked to the Cessna. Without preflighting the airplane, he got in. He had difficulty starting the engine and, when he did get it started, taxied directly to runway 11 and, without stopping for an engine run-up or pretakeoff checks, took off. The sky was clear and the visibility was unrestricted.

The flight school owner and the pilot's flight instructor agreed that the pilot's behavior on the night of the accident was out of character for him. On the afternoon of that day he had flown the Warrior solo for about 2 hours, returning at 1700. Everything was normal in his demeanor and performance. He left the airport about 1730. But in the evening everything was very different. He had never given them any indication of his intent to fly that night, and he was not scheduled to fly that night. He had never flown the Cessna 152 (or any other high-wing airplane) and he did not have the necessary logbook endorsement to solo that airplane or the endorsement to solo any airplane at night. Had he asked them to let him fly solo at night they would have said "no" because his recent night training was inadequate.

The pilot who rented Aero Venture's Piper Warrior airplane on the evening of the accident said he was preflighting for a local area nighttime proficiency flight about 2130. The Warrior he was to fly was the only Warrior Aero Venture the flight school had, and was the airplane the accident pilot regularly flew. He said the Warrior was parked next to the Cessna 152 that was involved in the accident. As he was preflighting, the (accident) pilot walked up behind him with heavy footsteps. He appeared to be in a hurry and said (rather gruffly) something like "where's your flight instructor?" The second pilot replied he was flying alone and inquired where (the accident pilot) was going, to which he replied to the effect that he was going to Gnoss airport (Novato) to practice touch-and-go landings.

The second pilot observed the accident pilot seat himself in the Cessna 152 without any exterior preflight. The accident pilot sat in the 152 for 3 or 4 minutes with the interior light on and then tried to start the engine. The other pilot thought that he wasn't going to get the engine started but it did finally start. The second pilot was preparing to taxi his plane to the gas pump about this time but said he saw the Cessna 152 taxi onto the runway without any pretakeoff checks and take off. The takeoff roll was a long one, after which he saw the Cessna climb to 500 - 600 feet agl and turn left. He next saw a flash of orange light out of his peripheral vision and another pilot came up to him and said the departing plane had crashed.

Personnel information

According to an investigator for the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, the pilot was the subject of an on-going criminal investigation. During the afternoon of the day of the accident, a search warrant was served on the pilot's residence while the pilot was away flying the Piper Warrior. Neighbors reported he returned home after the flight to find that entry to his home had been forced and records and his computer had been seized. The accident flight occurred that same evening.

Wreckage and impact information

The accident site was in low, rolling grass and tree covered terrain approximately 1.5 miles north, northeast of the Petaluma Airport. The locale was in a sparsely populated area of residential ranches in the foothills of the mountains rising north and northeast of Petaluma. The location was at latitude 35 degrees 16.026 minutes north and longitude 122 degrees 33.537 minutes west (GPS). The elevation was 496 feet (GPS). To the south and southwest of the site the terrain descends on a gentle (3 - 5 degree) slope, and the departure end of runway 11 at the Petaluma airport is visible in the valley below and about 2 miles distant. To the north terrain rises into local coastal mountain peaks about 2,500 feet high and 5 miles distant. There was a single residence visible about 500 feet north of the site, and access to the area was via a 1-mile-long gravel road connecting several residences.

The wreckage was distributed along a linear path about 150 feet long and oriented 020 degrees. All of the aircraft was present at the accident site and there was a postcrash fire in the area of the cockpit and engine. The terrain along the wreckage path was a local drainage ravine which