Twenty-two months after the crash of a Cessna 208B Caravan Cargomaster following its night takeoff from Mobile, Ala., NTSB investigators still appear no closer to discovering the cause of the accident, although theories abound.
Cargomaster N76U departed the Mobile Downtown Airport at 7:40 p.m. on Oct. 23, 2002, on an IFR flight plan to Montgomery, Ala. Five minutes later, after a routine exchange of communications with ATC, the aircraft descended rapidly from its assigned altitude of 3,000 feet and hit the ground 7.7 nm from the airport in a right-banked, nose-down attitude at a speed estimated to have been more than 200 knots. The 56-year-old ATP instrument-rated pilot had about 4,000 hours experience, including a period as a Cessna 208 instructor, and he had flown the route many times before. His last words to ATC were, “I needed to deviate. I needed to deviate. I needed to deviate. I needed…”
