What happened
On July 24, 2012, a Piper Aircraft PA28, registration F-GEBA, was conducting a cross-country flight from Blois to the private Rebeyrot and Rebeyrotte airfield. The flight was operated by a flying club and carried a pilot and one passenger.
During the flight, the pilot had programmed the destination coordinates into a portable GPS. While south of Périgueux, the passenger noted the airfield was visible, despite the GPS indicating more than four minutes of flight time remaining. The pilot performed a visual check of the area; the runway orientation and surrounding landmarks appeared to match the expected configuration of Rebeyrotte.
As the aircraft approached the runway on a right downwind for runway 19, the pilot noticed that the tree placement and ground conditions did not match his previous experience at the site. Following a suggestion from the passenger to aim for the upper part of the runway slope, the aircraft touched down and bounced. The pilot initiated a go-around. During this maneuver, the pilot identified overhead power lines and attempted to fly beneath them. The aircraft subsequently struck a fence and a tree, coming to rest upside down in a field. There were no fatalities, and the aircraft was destroyed.
The investigation
The investigation focused on the discrepancy between the GPS data and the visual identification of the airfield. Investigators examined the possibility that the coordinates had been entered in a format incompatible with the GPS settings (such as a mismatch between degrees/minutes/seconds and degrees/decimal minutes).
Evidence suggested that the pilot's trust in the GPS was already compromised due to a previous experience where the device had shown an incorrect time-to-arrival. The investigation also looked into the influence of the passenger's input during the critical moments of the landing attempt.