The fatal crash of a Whiting Field Naval Air Station training aircraft into Lake Pontchartrain last year was the result of pilot error, according to a Navy investigation.
The T-34 Texan II with a student aviator and a flight instructor onboard crashed at about 6:40 p.m. on January 23, 2010, during a cross-country training flight.
Instructor pilot Lt. Clinton Wermers, 33, suffered from hypothermia and drowned while awaiting rescue in the 52-degree lake. The student pilot, who was unhurt, was not identified in the report.
The accident and drowning were "completely preventable," according to the investigation.
Thick fog forced the aircraft, bound for Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, to divert to Lakefront Airport outside of New Orleans. Both the instructor and the student pilot lost their bearings and crashed while searching for the airport, the report said.
"(I) didn't even realize we were descending until I looked back into the cockpit right before the altimeter hit zero, and it must have been a split second before we impacted," the student told investigators.
"When we hit the water, we bounced back up in the air. "» And that's when I heard the splashing and whooshing of water and realized that we were in the lake."
A rescue helicopter pulled the student pilot from the lake about two hours after the crash. Wermers' body was recovered three days later.
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