Dale Earnhardt’s Jr Prelim NTSB Report

Got to love the media. They demand the cause within minutes of the crash. Parade a bunch of "experts" to give the "cause" and take the prelim as the final report. The prelim states the hard facts of what happened not why. The why takes about a year. When learning to fly I was assigned reading of accident reports. I learned all accidents have mulitlple reasons which was the point of the assignment. We love to have that one quick reason but we miss the full story. I will wait for the final.

Bingo Mr. Doyle. I flew out of a 1400’ grass strip, 700’ usable if you landed on 24. 1960’s we had a fly-in. Piper sent a guy in with a Cherokee 6 to fly dignitaries. High hrs pilot, but not carrier rated. He loaded up 5 big guys for a quick tour. Upon return it was runway 24 that required topping a commercial building at threshold, he landed mid field, dug trenches with wheels locked and put it through the fence at runway end. We pushed him out of the cornfield and he departed immediately.
Lesson: when on final and you wonder if you are going to get this SOB on the ground....go around.

Yes , landing gone wrong , No not a single fatality !

"Engines did not respond as expected?" I would sure like to know more about this statement.

They screwed up. Bad landing, too fast. A fast Airplane and short runway. It wouldn’t hurt to land a little before touchdown zone too. Something like this you have to do everything right.
You abort on short final not after bouncing on departure end. The flight might not have computed right to begin with. Then you have to really do everything perfect.

Accident investigations typically include all factual information associated with the incident whether or not it contributed to the accident. Doing so avoided a lot of questions and second guessing later. There is no requirement for a VFR flight to file a flight plan or request ATC services, although both are generally a good idea.

They attempted a go-around and the acft didn't respond as expected...possibly an indicator of acft performance issues that contributed to the initial "bounces". Pilots certainly had plenty of flight hours so can't attribute it to "rookie" mistake.

As an aside...that's an interesting term, "runway excursion".

Of course Martin is correct, a duh.

No flight plan filed and no services requested from ATC. Huuummm

Thanks for the full prelim. Strange incident given good weather, winds, etc. Perhaps just a case of not recognizing 'too high and hot' ?

Unfortunate incident. The PIC is likely done for a while, looking for work somewhere else...