should a jet that size have attempted to land with those gusts (35mph) or could there have been a wind sheer, or icing? Do you think he should have diverted? The radar loop at the time seems to show a large storm. 
I flew a business jet for the last fifteen years, albeit one less ‘sensitive’ than the Lear 35 (so I can’t conment on that particular model). However, most people flying these airplanes are fairly competent and flying in wind gusts to 35 mph should not be a big issue. Wind shear, in that area, sure, that could be a factor, same goes for icing.
It’s way too early to draw conclusions. Our prayers should be going out to the families of the two pilots, who’s father/brother/son, etc., won’t be coming home tonight.
Ditto…
Horrible thing. There’s a rather chilling account on airliners.net by a guy that was driving by when the thing pitched nose down and crashed.
Why does the FlightAware page for this plane show a positive arrival? Is it just assumed to arrived after the final position is reported at 3000 ft and final approach? I see that the green line does not go all the way to the airport, but it says arrived!. I realize that there is not someone watching the runway saying ‘there she is’ and typing it into this page, but surely there is some form of landing confirmation?
I’m new to this and don’t fully understand how the flight tracking system works…
We received an arrival message or cancellation message at low altitude, so we mark the flight as arrived. There’s no way to tell a crash from someone cancelling IFR just before arriving.
AFAIK, the FA data is simply compiled from FAA tracking feeds and therefore a positive outcome cannot be measured by radar data. When a plane lands, the pilot switches off the transponder to standby and that’s it. This plane crashed very low to the ground and I don’t think the radar feed gives you the complete track to the ground anyhow.
FA is just data streams, so no one is typing in arrivals or whatever. It’s purely automated.
Thanks for the info. I knew it was just an automated data stream from FAA tracking, but I’m no expert on how the flightplan system works.
Interesting.
In addition the the position reports, we also get flight plan, departure, diversion, cancellation, and arrival messages in the data stream.
I haven’t checked to see if that Lear’s final message was an arrival or a cancellation, but as I said there’s no message to indicate that a flight ended with a crash.
Very sad indeed. If anyone has even seen this airport, much less tried to land at it, it is NOT easy at all. Between the mountains within a mile of the ends of two runways to the noise abatement procedures (to keep the folks in Truckee happy) this is not an easy airport.
Talked to Glider Pilot who is a regular at TRK sez a eye witness said the aircraft went wing up thru 180 Deg to wing up then crashed and exploded. Rotor turb is very common at the field based on winds down canyon from Donner Summit.