Despite their difficulty seeing the runway at night and in marginal conditions, the Learjet 35A pilots canceled their instrument clearance and attempted an unauthorized to circle-to-land approach in El Cajon, California, U.S. The airplane, being repositioned following completion of a patient-transfer flight, stalled at low altitude and struck the ground, killing the two pilots and two flight nurses.
In its final report on the Dec. 27, 2021, accident, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the probable causes were the flight crew’s decisions to descend below the minimum descent altitude, to cancel their instrument flight rules (IFR) clearance in favor of the unauthorized approach, “and the exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack, and subsequently entering an aerodynamic stall at a low altitude.”
The NTSB report cited as contributing factors the airport traffic control tower crew’s “failure to monitor and augment the airport…
