On December 11, 2024, the passenger in the right seat of a 1973 Grumman AA-5 was recording video as they approached Pearland Regional Airport in Texas. The passenger later shared how things started to go wrong.
“First the headphones broke, then the radio, and then the avionics,” they wrote. “We knew we had to get down quickly.”
The video shows the runway ahead and the plane descending towards it. With no radio to coordinate with other traffic and no flaps to slow the approach, the pilot followed a Cessna 182 onto the runway. The propeller rotates and the engine runs normally.
“Fortunately, our pilot with more than 20 years of experience was able to leave us,” the passenger wrote.
We’ll look at the video shortly, but first, let’s look at what happened up to this point.
It was a good day of flying at Pearland, Texas Regional Airport. The sky was blue and the wind was relatively light.
A young commercial pilot was operating a 2003 Cessna 182T for local aerial observation work. Once his work was completed, he returned to Pearland to land on runway 32. He had about 250 flight hours, all on this make and model of airplane.
Another aircraft was hovering close to the runway as the Cessna 182 approached. The pilot of the waiting aircraft radioed to inform the Cessna 182 that another aircraft was on final approach following closely behind.
That other plane was the Grumman AA-5, registered in the United States as N5450L. It had started in Galveston, Texas. The pilot maintained his PPL with some medical exemptions/limitations. He may have been a pilot for more than twenty years, as the passenger claimed, but he only had 455 hours in total, including 79 in type. That same day he had arrived in Galveston with two passengers on a private flight. But when they got there, they discovered that the Grumman AA-5 wouldn’t start. The pilot hurried and they left Galveston at 1:50 p.m. local time.
About five minutes after takeoff, the Grumman lost power. The pilot quickly used his iPad with ForeFlight software to navigate to Pearland. They quickly arrived at the airport and the pilot saw the Cessna 182T in traffic. He was unable to extend the flaps to prepare the plane for landing. Without a radio, he couldn’t call to explain that he was in an emergency or announce his intentions. They were about a quarter to a half mile behind the Cessna. He decided to quietly follow the Cessna to runway 32 to land.
That’s when the pilot on the ground, still near the runway, shouted into the radio that there was a second plane following the Cessna onto the runway. That pilot later described the Grumman’s approach as unstable.
The Cessna pilot responded to the call while landing on the cement runway. The pilot tried to rush to clear the runway so that it would be free for the plane behind him.
The Grumman pilot landed on the runway with a bounce. He realized that the Cessna was decelerating faster than he expected.
The pilot waiting in the doorway watched in horror, unable to intervene. He radioed again and told the Cessna that they were about to be hit. The Cessna pilot didn’t have time to respond.
The Grumman veered left toward the taxiway, trying to avoid rear-ending the Cessna.
The Cessna pilot ran off the runway on taxiway A3 when the Grumman collided with him from behind.
The Grumman passenger wrote: “With our flaps inoperable, we were unable to slow down fast enough and hit his airplane while it was spinning. The propeller tore a hole in the left side of his fuselage and destroyed the side of his airplane. Fortunately, he did not have any passengers in the back seat or it would have been fatal. In our airplane, the impact was devastating with crumpled aluminum and glass exploding everywhere. My shoulder went through the window and I suffered minor external injuries. But fortunately everyone was okay. planes not so much, it is likely that both are destroyed. This video captures the moment.”
When I first saw it, I didn’t have the context of what had happened. I left myself a reminder to check the final accident report. My note to myself simply said “What the hell did I just see?”
This is the passenger video:
The witness confirmed what we can see in the video. The Grumman pilot, the witness told investigators, did not appear to attempt to make a turn or avoid the 182T as it taxied down the runway.
The NTSB final report cites the probable cause as the pilot’s failure to maintain separation:
Failure of the AA-5 pilot to maintain separation from the 182T during approach and landing, resulting in a collision on the ground during the landing roll. Contributing to the accident were AA-5’s electrical system failure, which prevented the AA-5 pilot from communicating with other aircraft in the traffic pattern, and the AA-5 pilot’s poor judgment that the electrical system failure required an accelerated landing when a preceding aircraft occupied the runway.
But reading the pilot’s statement to investigators reveals a more specific root cause: a mindset that turned an emergency into a crisis.
The pilot told investigators that when the electrical system failed, he believed he had to get the plane to land “at all costs.”
“At all costs” is a terrifying phrase in aviation. It implies that the alternative is death. But here the alternative was to simply fly the plane.
The engine was running normally. The weather was clear.
When the pilot arrived at the airport, he could have simply followed a standard pattern, flapping his wings to signal a radio failure. The loss of electrical power meant they had no radio or flaps, but the Grumman AA-5 lowers its wheels and flies well without electricity. It wasn’t falling from the sky.
Instead, the perceived pressure of the electrical failure reduced their attention until the only thing that mattered was the runway threshold. It traded a manageable abnormal situation for a rushed, unstable approach that ended with bent metal.
An inspector examined the electrical system after the accident. The alternator, voltage regulator, battery, drive belt and wiring were all good. Maybe I’m reading between the lines, but I noticed that the report doesn’t use standard language to say that the cause of the failure is unknown.
The inspector did not find any anomaly that would have prevented normal operation.
The findings make it abundantly clear that the pilot of the Cessna 182 was not at fault. A1 is the poor Cessna and A2 is the Grumman.
NTSB findings
- Personnel matters (A1) – Lack of action – Pilot of other aircraft
- Personnel matters (A1) – Decision making/judgment – Pilot of other aircraft
- Personnel issues (A2) – Lack of action – Pilot
- Aircraft (A2) – (general) – Failure
- Personnel issues (A2) – Decision making/judgment – Pilot
Both the Cessna 182 and Grumman AA-5 suffered substantial damage in the accident. There is no evidence that either plane has flown since the crash.
