The small plane that crashed on Interstate 25 near Larkspur in June was manned by a student pilot whose flight lesson could have caused the crash, investigators said.
The pilot and the flight instructor were practicing “one engine inoperative” emergency procedures near Perry Park Airport in Larkspur when the plane started having trouble, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary investigation report.
Flight exercises where one engine is manually shut down are meant to prepare student pilots for engine failure and train them how to manually restart the engines.
“The pilots shut down the left engine, then struggled to restart the engine,” NTSB officials wrote in the report. “After the second attempt, the engine restarted and they decided to return to the departure airport.”
On the morning of June 16 — around 6:15 a.m. — the student pilot and flight instructor took off from Centennial Airport in a twin-engine Tecnam P2006T airplane, the report stated.
While attempting to return to Centennial Airport, the pilots noticed the plane was having trouble staying on course and started experiencing engine failure, NTSB officials said.
The flight instructor took control of the airplane and attempted to land on Colorado 93, according to the report. When the duo realized they wouldn’t be able to reach the state highway in time, they tried to force a landing on Interstate 25.
During the landing, the plane’s left wing struck a road sign, forcing it to veer off the interstate into a nearby field.
Online videos of the accident flight showed the airplane descending over I-25 with the right propeller rotating and the left propeller not rotating, NTSB officials said.
“Substantial damage” was done to the airplane, and both the student pilot and flight instructor were injured, according to the NTSB report.
Multiple avionics devices were removed and sent to NTSB’s Vehicle Recorder Laboratory for data extraction, and the airplane was retained for further examination, NTSB officials said.
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