Small plane crashes at Nashville airport, and no one notices

Sometime after 3am on Tuesday morning, a single engine Cessna, operated by a Candian pilot that had rented the aircraft from the Ontario Flying Club, crashed on Runway 2C at Nashville Airport (which operates 24/7). The morning was foggy (thick fog in Kentucky where I was), and the wreckage wasn't discovered until a taxiing plane went past, and noticed the fire.

The man had filed a flight plan to Pelee Island on Lake Eerie, and notified the Flying Club when he landed there. He apparently said nothing about continuing on to Nashville to anyone.

The man had been licensed since 1989, and was flying legally.

The stunning part of this isn't that he crashed, or that no one knew he was heading to Nashville, but the fact that he crashed on the airport and no one noticed. They are staffed 24 hours a day, and have a fire staff on hand all the time. They did a debris sweep at 2am, and saw nothing. The taxiing plane called it in at 8:45am.

Investigators are still working to piece together details surrounding a puzzling plane crash that killed a Canadian pilot at Nashville International Airport early Tuesday morning.

The wreckage of the single-engine Cessna was discovered on a runway by a taxiing plane at about 8:45 a.m., several hours after authorities believe the accident took place.

The pilot, a man in his mid-40s who has not been identified, came to Nashville without logging a flight plan. It remains unclear if he had communicated with officials here.

www.tennessean.com...

Lucy, u got some splainin to do.
How does the tower not notice an unscheduled flight entering its airspace?

reply to post by dashen


That's the question that everyone wants to know the answer to.

Hi Zaph, agreed, this is without any doubt unexcusable, there is an investigation on going and people being questioned. Fog or not, someone was asleep....

reply to post by teslahowitzer


And that scares the hell out of me. What's gonna happen when they're asleep and don't notice a pair of Heavies heading at each other?

reply to post by Zaphod58


Is the answer haarp? Bermuda trapezoid? Electronic fog? Stargate? Ley lines? Swamp gas?..... oh i know. Gross incompetence is the likely culprit. People were prolly asleep at the tower at 2 am

Well if it was foggy and he didn't radio any trouble that would explain why nobody noticed the actual crash and I'm not a flight expert but if he was flying low enough wouldn't he have avoided any radar signature?

Maybe he was a smuggler.

reply to post by dashen


Maybe budget cuts? I could never work ATC -- I'd pull all my hair out!

's interesting to see that he's still listed as an ... 'unidentified' pilot....


aside from this message board thread/discussion, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see/find that 'this incident' somehow goes by the wayside and is simply 'lost' by/in the media over the next few days.

reply to post by Spookybelle


But if he crashed on the airport, he HAD to have been talking to the tower. Which means they should have noticed that he never contracted Ground for instructions to parking. There are several points where he SHOULD have been seen, and wasn't.

As far as the radar, he was right on top of the antenna, which means there's no way they missed him on radar.

reply to post by 12m8keall2c


Me either. I usually catch stuff like this, but I didn't have any idea about it until my other half read it to me. I looked it up, and found it after that.

Doesn't sound too far fetched, especially in the fog.

I was standing on the tarmac at up at Stead with my CFI, and the owner of a biplane, that was getting taken for a test flight.

At about mid field and 100', or so , it just kplu-kplu-k-kp... then silence, and coasted back in out of view around the hangers.

Even though the three of us were standing right there, the other two had no idea, whatsoever.

After thinking, "Man, I hope that thing has some good brakes", I said, "You guys didn't see that"?

"See what"?...

reply to post by lernmore


Yeah, but apparently no one even knew he was there. Nashville is an extremely busy airport at times. It's ranked 34th in US airports, with over 65,000 flights between June 2011, and May 2012.

There is NO excuse for this.

reply to post by Zaphod58


What about Obamas trip to Port St Lucie. Fla? A plane crashed in the no fly zone around the President and no one found the plane until a couple days after he left. You would think they would have known exactly where that plane was?

reply to post by JBA2848


That's different though. Depending on where he was, he may not have been followed on radar by ATC. They might have seen him in the area, but not know exactly where he was. Planes crash out in places that take days to find all the time.

This was on the airport. There is no excuse whatsoever as to not knowing about it.

ZAPH! You're always picking up on this stuff.
I wanted to let this thread fester a bit to see if folks have answers.
Now we got more questions.

Maybe you knows better than I.

1: so a small craft leaves Canadian airspace. Without a single soul taking notice?
2: a Canadian aircraft crosses over into u.s. territory passes we'll say 5 states...and didn't ask for coordinates or a need to ask for proper altitude. So not to interfere with other aircraft?
3: for what ever reason decided not to have on it's transponder thus evading air traffic controls. And air traffic controllers never noticed a blip on radar.

Wow like another said... I hope no one gets the idea to start rigging up bombs.
I blame chemtrails...sorry had to. Oh! That reminds me.
I wanted to pass off a website of a company in Florida that specializes in upgrading small aircraft into armed aircraft. Gimme a minute

reply to post by Zaphod58


Never said it was excusable, hell, I've talked to the tower at Reno International, told them I was staying in the pattern, and 30 seconds later they didn't know I was there. That's a busy place too.

Like I said, though, I can see how it might happen, from my own experience, it's all I got. I was just adding my worthless comment.

No airfield Iv'e ever been to has designated "watchers" beyond the tower, and half the time those aren't even manned.

Obviously, a busy place, like that, it should never have taken that long to discover. No argument here.

Not that it was likely to help, because they wont even start looking for you for 30 minutes past closing, but it's a good example of why you should always file a flight plan if c/c. Flight Following is available too.

reply to post by Bigburgh


No he was on a flight plan from Ontario, to the Lake Eerie area. He apparently had flown that route a number of times. He checked in when he landed at the island that he planned to stop at. It's from that point things get murky. He didn't say anything to anyone about going to Nashville, and it's not clear if he filed a flight plan for that leg.

Sai flight test facility. It's at Bob Sikes airport in Florida. I stink at linking. But sunshineaero.com should get you there.

They take small planes like a Cessna or gulf stream..and modify it so it can carry missiles.
I only bring it up. Because though this was an accident. The possibilities are there.

reply to post by lernmore


Yup. I've always been of the thinking that if you're flying, you're filing. I don't care if I have to or not, I want someone to know where I'm going, and when I plan on being there. It might take awhile to look for me, but at least they WILL look for me.