I fly into TLH everyday. i didnt see this accident happen but I saw it 5 hours after it happened. They were making a straight in to runway 9. Dark, early morning and sky clear. Runway 9 is served only by a PAPI which is very bright and glares, I find it hard to use. There is no ILS or glideslope information, but we usually cheat and use the localizer for 27. Also, there are no lights on the ground for the ten-twenty miles leading up to the threshold, so you have a classic "black-hole" approach. Plus the runway has a slight upslope. The tower was closed. They went into the 200' tall pine trees right wing low and trimmed the trees for about 150 yards. then they popped out onto the airport property, hit the ground, again, it appears right wing low. As the right wing caused drag it spun the airplane around to a heading of about 250 and slid for about 200 yards. the left wing was largely intact, as was the left side fuselage and cockpit area. It was all burned up when we saw it.
**wild speculation here**
they might have got low, or slow, or both (a factor might be the black hole approach and glaring PAPI)and caused them to go into the trees. When that happened they lost airspeed and that was the end of it. Thank god they got out OK. I dont think they were making an emergency landing, I heard the rumor they were on fire before landing but I dont believe it.
