https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2019/08/15/dale-earnhardt-jr---family-involved-in-tennessee-plane-crash

Seems to be a bad day to fly.  Thank God all were ok.

 

Wow glad he and his family made it out. I have a photo with his father a few years before his fatal accident. I was a welder at the time and I welded the equipment for his spray booth in his shop behind his dealership where they worked on his racing cars, as well as the booths that went into the dealership. He flew up to our factory and spent the day with us, got a picture with him and autograph. Sad day when he passed, I always appreciated his son continuing with the legacy. 

Edited August 15, 20196 yr by Matthew Kane

Noticed the baynews9 link...shout out from Pinellas!

The Earnhart family were neighbors of mine when I lived and worked in Kannapolis, NC many years ago. They are a very nice family!

1 hour ago, n4gix said:

The Earnhart family were neighbors of mine when I lived and worked in Kannapolis, NC many years ago. They are a very nice family!

My parents new Gary Bettenhausen when we lived in Tinley Park Illinois.  Some of our furniture was bought from the furniture store he owned.  I also knew Mario and Michael Andretti and would talk to them before their races at Sears Point near Napa when I was living there from the 60's to early 90's.  Very nice men, both of them, when taken away from the stress of their racing.  I have been to Phoenix International Raceway but never saw a race there, other than a stock car going around the track on a July 3rd fireworks celebration.  Amazing how one car was so loud.  I lived just off of Avondale Blvd north of I-10 and the raceway was some miles south of I-10.  But during the Nascar events there, I could hear the cars all the way up at my house.  The Goodyear Blimp would often buzz our home. 

Best view of PIR I ever had was during a fifteen minute R44 flight I took from an Airshow in Goodyear AZ, we flew right over the track, which was our furthest destination before returning to Goodyear.  The Goodyear airport is known where they bring in retired airliners and convert them to freighters, you can see them lined up on I-10 driving past the airport and many people think it is a commercial airport with all the widebodies there.  Lufthansa also trained their pilots there, but I do not know if they still do.  Goodyear Airport and Luke AFB are big economic engines for the Valley of the Sun, as is Sky Harbor and Williams Gateway, our only other airport with commercial service.

John

I watched a news release showing the Cessna Citation on fire after leaving the runway. From the angle of the wreckage, it appeared as though the pilot flying realized that he was running out of runway, and steered the aircraft to the right so as to avoid a total overrun of the runway and possibly colliding with infrastructure,

It is amazing that everyone was able to de-plane safely before the fire destroyed everything aft of the leading edge of the wings. The burned aft including the pax cabin totally vaporized the composite fuselage and left only the 'chicken wire' on which the composite materials were formed.

Well, this came to my attention in today's AOPA email:

NTSB: Citation Latitude Bounced Twice before Overrun

Quote

The Cessna Citation Latitude carrying retired race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., his wife, and infant daughter bounced twice on landing and collapsed the right main landing gear on the third touchdown preceding its runway excursion and post-crash fire, according to the NTSB preliminary report on the August 15 accident. It then went off the departure end of Runway 24 at Tennessee’s Elizabethton Municipal Airport, traveled across an open area of grass, down an embankment, through a chain-link fence, and up an embankment before coming to a stop on the edge of a highway.

Full story here at AIN Online:

https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2019-08-26/ntsb-citation-latitude-bounced-twice-overrun

I have a feeling that a gust of wind allowed Dale's jet to float too far down the runway, then then wind stopped, but the jet was too far down the runway to stop, and not enough runway left for a successful go around.