Introduction
On 21 December 2002, a Socata TB-20 Trinidad (single-engine, low-wing aircraft) crashed on open ground near Brno-Turany, Czech Republic. The aircraft was destroyed, and all three occupants sustained fatal injuries. No third-party damage occurred.
Flight History
The pilot intended to fly from Brno-Turany to Paderborn-Lippstadt with two passengers. An IFR flight plan for the return leg had been filed in Germany prior to the outbound flight on 18 December 2002. The departure from Brno occurred at 10:40 UTC on runway 28.
Instead of proceeding directly to the departure waypoint 'BITSI' as cleared, the aircraft turned left at a low altitude of approximately 220 ft AGL, heading 120°. The low-wing aircraft then entered an increasingly steep climb under instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), rapidly losing forward speed. It eventually rolled to the right. At 10:43:29 UTC, a radio call from the tower, which observed the course on radar, was answered with the transmission: "... we are just coming back to normal," shortly before the aircraft struck the ground in a knife-edge attitude with high pitch angle.
Cause
The investigation determined that the accident resulted from a loss of speed while the aircraft adopted an unusual flight attitude, from which the pilot could not recover due to low altitude and insufficient visual reference. The primary reason was a departure course that had been incorrectly preset by 180°, initially followed by the autopilot. When the pilot noticed the error, he took manual control and attempted a rapid correction. Under stress, he was unable to coordinate control under instrument conditions, and during the initiated turn, the minimum speed was undershot. A contributing factor was the exceedance of the maximum takeoff weight (MTOW).