The Most Disturbing Pilot Mistake I've Ever Talked About!

🔒 Remove your personal information from the web at https://joindeleteme.com/DEBRIEF and use code DEBRIEF for 20% off 🙌 DeleteMe international Plans: https://international.joindeleteme.com Hey, it's Hoover! I've got a weekly letter for you on the patterns that keep killing pilots. Free → https://pilotdebrief.com/pattern On a clear May afternoon in 2017, a Learjet 35A on a Part 91 positioning flight rolled in to circle runway 1 at Teterboro — and never made it around the corner. The crew launched from Philadelphia just 25 minutes earlier, bound for Teterboro on an IFR flight plan in visual conditions. On board were a pilot-in-command and a second-in-command who, by the NTSB's findings, was not approved by the operator to act as pilot flying. There was no real approach briefing, the preflight planning was incomplete, and the cockpit dynamic between the two pilots set the tone for everything that followed. Cleared for the ILS to runway 6 with a circle to runway 1, the approach unraveled almost immediately. The airplane was fast, high, and out of position as it tried to maneuver onto final. Rather than break it off and go around, the PIC attempted to salvage what had become a deeply unstabilized visual approach at low altitude — and the Learjet stalled, departed controlled flight, and impacted a commercial building and parking lot just short of the airport. Both pilots were killed. By a narrow margin of luck, no one on the ground was hurt. The NTSB determined the probable cause was the PIC's attempt to salvage an unstabilized visual approach, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at low altitude. Contributing were the PIC's decision to let an unapproved SIC fly the leg, inadequate preflight planning, the absence of an approach briefing, Trans-Pacific Jets' lack of safety programs to catch patterns of procedural noncompliance, and the FAA's ineffective Safety Assurance System oversight that failed to identify those company deficiencies. The pattern here isn't a single bad maneuver — it's a chain of normalized shortcuts. An unapproved pilot in a seat he shouldn't have been in, a briefing that didn't happen, a stabilized-approach gate that wasn't enforced, and a company and regulator that weren't watching closely enough to notice. Teterboro is the case study for why the go-around decision and the safety-management system behind it both have to be non-negotiable. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ JOIN THE DEBRIEF CREW ON PATREON Ad-free videos and exclusive analysis From $5/month: Patreon: pilotdebrief ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES NTSB Accident ID: CEN17MA183 Status: Final Final Report: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/A... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT PILOT DEBRIEF Pilot Debrief is hosted by Hoover, a retired F-15E pilot and current pilot for a major U.S. airline. Every video on this channel analyzes publicly released NTSB final reports, factual narratives, CVR/FDR transcripts, and docket evidence to extract practical safety lessons for general aviation pilots. We do not speculate beyond the evidence. We do not blame pilots for being human. We debrief the decisions and the systems, not the people. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Sponsorships and brand partnerships: [email protected] #PilotDebrief #NTSB #AviationSafety #Learjet #UnstabilizedApproach