The REAL Pilot Mistake That Got Brittney Killed!

Hey, it's Hoover! I've got a weekly letter for you on the patterns that keep killing pilots. Free → https://pilotdebrief.com/pattern On an April afternoon in 2022, a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan flew an RNAV approach into Burley Municipal in light snow and 2.5-mile visibility — and struck a 100-foot vent stack on the rooftop of a potato processing plant on short final. The flight was a Part 135 cargo run into Burley, Idaho. Conditions were IMC with light snow, temperatures below freezing, and the runway 20 VASI permanently out of service — decommissioned years earlier because the very stacks involved in this accident penetrated the obstruction clearance surface. The pilot flew the RNAV (GPS) approach once, made a low pass to assess conditions per company policy, then circled back for a second attempt. On that second approach, the pilot elected to leave the flaps up but slowed below the speed she'd flown the first time. ADS-B data showed the airplane tracking the glide path past the stepdown fix at roughly 85 knots calibrated — below the 95-knot minimum for flaps-up operations in icing conditions. Shortly afterward, the Caravan descended about 130 feet below the published 3.75-degree glide path. A witness saw the airplane break out of the clouds and immediately enter a steam plume rising from a row of six adjacent stacks before striking the agglomerate stack. A security camera caught the final seconds: wings level, flaps up, nose-high — possibly a last-second pull as the pilot saw the obstacle. The FAA had previously ordered the plant to paint the stacks high-visibility white and aviation orange and install warning lights. On the day of the accident, the paint scheme had not been brought to standard, and the warning light on the accident stack could not be verified as operating. The pattern here is the chain: an obstruction directly under the approach course, a VASI removed because of it, mitigations the plant had not fully completed, a steam plume that masked the hazard, and an approach flown below the icing-supplement minimum airspeed with a descent below the glide path on short final. Each link alone might have been survivable. Stacked together, they weren't. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ JOIN THE DEBRIEF CREW ON PATREON Ad-free videos and exclusive analysis From $5/month:   / pilotdebrief   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES NTSB Accident ID: WPR22FA151 Status: Final Final Report: https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/ap... Docket: https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket?ProjectI... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT PILOT DEBRIEF Pilot Debrief is hosted by Hoover, a retired F-15E pilot and current pilot for a major U.S. airline. Every video on this channel analyzes publicly released NTSB final reports, factual narratives, CVR/FDR transcripts, and docket evidence to extract practical safety lessons for general aviation pilots. We do not speculate beyond the evidence. We do not blame pilots for being human. We debrief the decisions and the systems, not the people. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Sponsorships and brand partnerships: pilotdebrief@outloudtalent.com #PilotDebrief #NTSB #AviationSafety #CFIT #Part135