The 222-hour pilot of this Beech Travelair encountered a gust on short final. Corrective action failed to prevent loss of control and serious damage to the airplane.

by Paul Berge

If you arrived at your local airport after a two-week absence to find 56 airplanes on the ramp damaged, many substantially so, and all the vandalism caused by human, not natural, causes you’d be furious. You’d call 911 to get the FBI to catch the bums who did it. You’d demand better airport security and, mostly, immediate answers.

Put the phone away; the culprit is us—pilots. In a two-week period, selected at random in April of this year, 101 aircraft crashed (all types). Of those accidents/incidents, 56 were GA landing events, meaning 56 general aviation pilots somehow fumbled the critical phase of flight when air travel ends and ground…