Ameristar Fatal Crash Last Night

[flyinloki]

Dan and Terry will be sorely missed. I can't even begin to imagine what their families are going through right now. Dan would always talk about his son and all the motorcross events he was in and all he ever wanted to do when he was on the road was to be at home with his family. I didn't know Terry that well but I had met him several times and he seemed like a great guy. Rest in peace guys....

 

[100fly]

I hate to see this happen to great guys. R.I.P. from a fellow frieght dog and god bless their families.

 

[chickenwolf]

R.I.P.

Make the most of every day and try not to let your job define you.

 

[Daytonaflyer]

This freaks me out. I hate to think what happend, but this is the story of my experience in Guadalajara three nights ago.
I flew an Ameristar Lear 24 to Guadalajara late at night. It was VFR.
We were being vectored east of the airport for the approach and the controller descended us to 9000 ft. My captain commented on how close we were to the mountains. We were very close...too close, and they were difficult to see in the darkness.
There was a mountain just to our left, it seemed like it was about 1/4 mile away and only a couple hundred feet below our altitude but it was hard to tell at night. It had a lit tower on it.
We flew directly over a smaller mountain to it's south west and it looked about 500 feet below our altitude or so. It had no lights on it.
I checked the approach plate and remarked to the captain that the MSA for our sector was 9700ft. The only other MSA coming from the north was above 10,000ft. We were currently at 9000 ft.
Today I found out that two of our pilots hit the mountains down there. From the reports I've heard, it sounds like they may have struck the same mountains that we were vectored directly over three nights ago.
I recall the GPS showed our position just over 15nm east of the airport. That would have put our position somewhere around 20nm east of the city center.
I don't know if Dan and Terry descended for a visual, but if they got a vector that close to the mountain like we did, any small deviation in altitude could have caused the tragedy.
Terry was a good friend of mine. Dan was always kind. They were both great guys and good pilots. RIP my friends. Fly West.

 

[atpcliff]

Hi!

Sad news. It is tough flying freight at night into Mexico, often tired, without good radar/controller help like in the states.

I knew a crew down there which almost crashed. The Mexican approach controller gave them an altimeter setting that was about 500' low. They checked the altimeter setting 3 times with approach, because it was quite a bit different than another altimeter setting nearby. They went missed when they saw they were way to close to the ground (luckily they broke out) and then the controller told them a totally different altimeter setting. He claimed that he had always given them the higher altimeter setting. They did everything right and still almost crashed.

Take extra care when flying in Mexico!!!

God bless the pilots and their families.

cliff
GRB

 

[FltIdl]

Blue Skies and tailwinds. They shall fly with the angels......

Please all; be real safe out there.

 

[Oakum_Boy]

Controllers outside the US will kill let you kill yourself.

 

[Daytonaflyer]

maybe not CFIT

Tonight I learned some more specific details about the crash. I will not post them now.
It seems that the crash may not have been CFIT after all. The wreckage was apparently not on the side of a mountain like originally believed. It was much lower. There are just too many unanswered questions right now.

 

[big pimpn']

Controllers outside the US will kill let you kill yourself.

exactly

 

[hammer2]

Does anybody know how long they had been on duty?