Monday, July 25, 2022

North American T-28B Trojan, N787AS: Fatal accident occurred July 23, 2022 near Fallbrook Community Airpark (L18), San Diego County, California

Federal Aviation Administration / Flight Standards District Office; San Diego, California 

Aircraft crashed during landing. 

Mach One Air Charters Inc


Date: 23-JUL-22
Time: 20:30:00Z
Regis#: N787AS
Aircraft Make: NORTH AMERICAN
Aircraft Model: T28
Event Type: ACCIDENT
Highest Injury: FATAL
Total Fatal: 1 
Flight Crew: 1 Fatal
Pax: 1 Serious Injuries
Aircraft Missing: No
Damage: SUBSTANTIAL
Activity: PERSONAL
Operation: 91
City: FALLBROOK
State: CALIFORNIA

Those who may have information that might be relevant to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation may contact them by email witness@ntsb.gov, and any friends and family who want to contact investigators about the accident should email assistance@ntsb.gov. You can also call the NTSB Response Operations Center at 844-373-9922 or 202-314-6290.


The Medical Examiner's Office has identified the passenger killed in a crash at a flower field in Fallbrook over the weekend.

The plane crash-landed at around 1:40 p.m. in a flowerbed of Altman Plants on 2575 Olive Hill Rd., less than one mile from the nearby air strip, according to the North County Fire Protection District. Howard Rose, 77 of Chino, was killed in the crash, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office.

Rose was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the San Diego Sheriff's Department.

Herbert Hill told NBC 7 he was behind the controls. He said he didn't break any bones but needed a few days in the hospital to recover.

Plenty of folks in the area come to Fallbrook Airpark to watch the pilots make their landing. On Saturday, some folks were watching as the plane crashed. Several bystanders rushed to the scene to help get those inside out of the plane, first responders told NBC 7.

The plane is a T-28B type owned by Mach One Air Charters and departed from Chino, California, according to Flight Aware. It is a fixed-wing, single-engine, military-style plane from 1953, now used by a private citizen.

It is not yet clear what caused the plane to crash, but some pilots have hinted at possible engine failure.

The Federal Aviation Administration arrived on the scene shortly after the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board was scheduled to arrive Sunday morning to do a deeper investigation into what happened.

No injuries, damaged structures or fires were reported at the scene of the crash.




One person died and a second was critically injured when a 1953 vintage T-28B aircraft they were in crashed in Fallbrook, Saturday, July 23.

According to NCFPD spokesperson PIO John Choi, the pilot and one passenger were the only two people on board at the time of the crash.

The plane made a hard landing on a Altman Specialty Plants flower field in the 2500 block of Olive Hill Road, shortly after taking off from Fallbrook Airpark. No one at the nursery or the ground was injured.

The passenger, he said, died at the scene. Choi said when NCFPD arrived on scene, they found the pilot outside of the plane. People at the scene said that several of them from the Airpark and workers at the nursery helped extricate the pilot, and were working on freeing the canopy to get the passenger out when emergency crews arrived.

One man at the scene, who asked to be kept anonymous, was amazed at the human camaraderie that came together in the flower field to help save the pilot and his passenger.

NCFPD accounts its response time as 14 minutes from the time of call to arriving at the scene. Choi said the “only delay (which was short) is because the reporting call gave us the location of the Airpark, not Olive Hill. But we were at Olive Hill in 7 minutes.”

He reminds everyone to know the correct address when reporting an emergency. It saves valuable life-saving time.

The Anonymous caller said nursery workers and the men from the Airpark all pitched in to get hoses to the plane, to hose down any hot spots. Nursery workers went to find nursery materials that could help pry the canopy off.

"What it meant to me, is good humans go to the great lengths to save a fellow man," he said.

He also said that several of them talked to the pilot and his passenger at the Fallbrook Airpark for awhile prior to their departure. "We had spent thirty to forty minutes with those men before they took off. They were great guys. Had lots of energy. Knew the plane and flying" he said. They watched the plane take off, and saw it rise in the air to about 75-80-feet before it suddenly stalled and fell to the ground at the nursery. "It was no longer than ten minutes after he took off that it stalled and dropped," he said.

The pilot was transported by NCFPD ambulance with injuries to Palomar Hospital. The identities of the two have not been released.

The aircraft registration is N787AS and according to the FAA registry, is owned by Mach One Air Charters in Chino. Mach One's website says they specialize in private aviation charter, sales and management.

The plane, explained pilot Tom Wilson, was a North American Trojan T-28 and is a single-engine, fixed wing, post World War II style training airplane, that was used for decades to train the Navy and Marine Corps pilots and crew.

According to the flight details on Flightaware.com, the plane took off from Chino Airport at 12:34 pm Saturday and landed at Fallbrook Airpark at 12:52 pm. The crash was then reported at 1:33 pm.

Another person said that the pilot landed at Fallbrook Airpark to pick up the passenger. Lisa Boylan, owner of Fallbrook Flight Academy said "Very often people will drive to Fallbrook to get picked up by pilot friends because it's an easy and uncongested place to land and depart."

The FAA and the NTSB is investigating the accident.





FALLBROOK — A passenger killed Saturday when a single-engine plane crashed at a nursery in Fallbrook was identified as a 77-year-old San Bernardino County resident, authorities said Monday.

Howard Henry Rose, who lived in Chino, was the passenger on the plane and died in the wreckage, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The pilot was taken to a hospital for treatment of serious injuries.

According to the Medical Examiner’s Office, the plane took off from Fallbrook Airpark and ascended roughly 50 feet before its engine stalled.

The plane then descended onto Altman Plants’ property on Olive Hill Road, just west of South Mission Road, where it “skipped” along the ground multiple times, then crossed a berm and stopped next to a greenhouse, the Medical Examiner’s Office said.

The Federal Aviation Administration said previously that the aircraft was attempting to land on runway 28 at the airpark when it crashed but the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed Monday that the plane crashed during takeoff.

The crash occurred about 1:30 p.m.

A witness called 911 and helped free the pilot from the cockpit.

When deputies arrived, they checked on the pilot and then turned their attention to Rose, who was not breathing and did not have a pulse, the Medical Examiner’s Office said. Firefighters freed Rose from the cockpit, but he died before he could be taken to a hospital.

The FAA described the plane as aNorth American T-28B Trojan. It appeared to be a T-28 Trojan, a military trainer aircraft used by the Air Force and Navy beginning in the 1950s.

Records show that the plane is owned by Mach One Air Charters, a Chino-based private jet charter company. Contacted by phone Monday, an employee said the company did not wish to comment.

According to the website FlightAware, a T-28 Trojan with the same serial number left Chino Airport at 12:34 p.m. and landed at the Fallbrook Airpark at 12:52 p.m. — about 40 minutes before the crash.

Located several miles south of downtown Fallbrook, the county-owned airpark covers about 290 acres, with a single 2,190-foot-long runway.








FALLBROOK, California – One person is dead and another was injured after a small plane crashed near a county airport in Fallbrook Saturday afternoon, authorities said.

Officials with the North County Fire Protection District, the San Diego County Sheriff Department, the FAA, and NTSB are investigating the crash, which took place at Altman Plant Nursery in the 2500 block of Olive Hill Road, just outside of Fallbrook Airpark. The FAA and NTSB will be the lead on the case with the sheriff’s department on security.

“We had a total of two patients. We are sadden to report one patient was dead on scene and another was transported to a trauma center in critical condition,” North County Fire Protection District officials said on Twitter Saturday afternoon.

“Just to know another aviator had crashed, it hits the flying community,” said Michael Ehrengruber, a longtime pilot.   

Ehrengruber has been a pilot for 30 years, flying out of Fallbrook Airpark for 15 years. When he heard of the crash he got concerned it was a friend and showed up. He said it was not a friend of his, but said the crash is the unfortunate risk of flying.

“Anything can happen, it’s just one of those things. It’s sad but we as pilots accept it,” Ehrengruber said.

It’s unknown at this time where the plane was headed before it crashed.

“We have no witnesses as to whether they were taking off or landing but the airport … believed they were trying to take off,” said Jason Scroggins, a sergeant with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department Fallbrook Division.

Officials said Fallbrook Airpark does not have an air tower, and officials said they did not receive any “alert status.” According to FAA registry, the plane is a 1953 T-28 owned by Mach One Air Charters in Chino. The N-number of the plane is N787AS.

The plane is a post-World War II style training airplane, that was used for decades to train for the Navy and Marine Corps.

James Kidrick, the president and CEP of the Air and Space Museum at Balboa Park, said: “This airplane then was a little more sophisticated than the first airplane a young aviator would’ve flown. But you are going to fly formation, and ultimately you’re going to land this airplane on an aircraft carrier. So it’s a very very capable airplane.”

The details are limited for now but it’s still an impact to the aviation community. “As a fire department it hits us hard to see people in their most tragic moments. Our hearts go out to the family members impacted by this,” said John Choi, North County Fire Protection District Public Information Officer.

“The pilot survived I’m just praying for him and his family,” Ehrengruber said.

36 comments:

  1. Track, to the extent takeoff was captured (it's leg 2 of the trip):
    https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=aaaa98&lat=33.353&lon=-117.252&zoom=15.5&showTrace=2022-07-23&leg=2&trackLabels

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  2. Any info on why the propeller stopped turning?

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    1. Camera frames per second are slower than prop rotations per second, giving false visual that prop at times has stopped or going in reverse. Otherwise, where did you get the info that the prop had stopped?

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. It is clearly an EFATO event, not an aerodynamic stall. You can even hear it clap out at 21 seconds, right before the guy says oh oh in response to the engine cutting out, and immediately before it goes down.

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    4. So many misstatements in a platform usually trusted as more reliable. What gives?

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  3. Runway length there is 2,160 feet. Shorter fields like that don't provide much length out front to put back down if trouble crops up. If the engine had quit like that during the origin airport takeoff at Chino, the 4,858 foot long 26R runway he used there would have made the power loss a non-event. Unfortunate to have this happen where it did.

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  4. Asking respectfully..though this acft likely hit the ground with a fwd airspeed of ~ 80 kts, it looks like it skidded to a stop, the cockpit is intact and no fire. Was the vertical impact speed so intense that it was fatal? Was the pax that was fatally injured maybe elderly or unbelted? It feels from the video and photos it should have been survivable....RIP.

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    1. If I had to guess, maybe there wasn't a shoulder harness in the back. I refuse to fly anything without shoulder restraints for that reason.

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    2. Kenneth- I agree. I question the value of a lap belt, even over nothing at all, in certain accidents. A lap belt is a hinge point. Something for your upper body to pivot around, making your face and head almost certain to hit something solid.
      A lap belt only would be useful in turbulence, or some other sort of crash. Too bad- most of us don't get to choose what type of crash we're in.
      Use a shoulder harness!

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    3. For Anonymous: The passenger was 77 years old; could have had a heart attack from the shock.

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    4. T-28 is a fully aerobatic military trainer. Of course it equips with 5-point seat-belts, not just a shoulder harness for all seats. RIP to the GIB.

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    5. SD Medical Examiner report states blunt force trauma

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    6. Older people have calcifications in their Aorta/Vena Cava, as well as the rest of the arteries become non elastic and brittle. Sudden HIGH G impacts tend to tear these blood vessels, causing very quick death. Same with car accidents

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    7. It was bad enough for the right wing to separate at the wing root and that’s tough for a Naval airrraft!

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  5. Maybe a person working outside at the green house was struck?

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    1. It was the passenger that was fatally injured due to 'blunt force trauma'- but the accident doesn't look like it was that severe of an accident. https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/passenger-killed-in-fallbrook-small-plane-crash-identified/

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    2. That news 5 article included "skipped on the ground numerous times prior to crossing a berm". Unlike simple sliding, hitting the berm may have produced a sudden massive deceleration, producing extreme forward inertial effect of head pivoting across the neck, as the A3 photo panel on page A-4 (pdf sheet 37) shows, here:

      https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oamtechreports/2010s/media/201709.pdf

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    3. In the photos it looks like the plane cracked, broke underneath the back seat, probably snapped the guys spine. Sad event :(

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  6. I’d assume that a military trainer designed for aircraft carrier capability would have a large set of flaps…in the video the wings look clean as though flaps were not deployed. I’m not a pilot though so I’m possibly just missing something here…

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    1. It was taking off so the flaps would have been stowed. The time from power loss to impact was so quick he didn't even have time to get the gear back down, let alone the flaps.

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  7. It looked in the video like the gear had not fully retracted yet...the mains were up, but not the nose. If it touched down like that, the huge increase in AOA that configuration would cause would make it easy to porpoise...the "skipping " that a witness described.
    I am surprised it caused a death- as was said earlier- wear a lap belt AND shoulder harness. That t-28 probably had a 5-point harness. Sad if only the lap part was used by the dead passenger.

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    1. I’ve flown in the back seat of that very aircraft. It has shoulder in both seats. Pilot has compression fractures of spine.

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  8. Fallbrook is short and unforgiving. It's on top of a mesa, and right at the end of runway 18 is a pretty dramatic downhill drop. (36 is worse) This is a worst-case place to have an engine fail on takeoff. I don't know the runway requirements for a T-28, but 2,000 feet has got to be on the marginal side for a plane that big and heavy. That engine just QUIT. A radial can suffer a lot of internal damage and continue to produce power, but that seemed like fuel starvation. No hiccups, backfires, smoke. I wonder if he did a runup or just decided to get out of there?

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  9. The engine quit and the pilot did not immediately lower the nose. This caused the aircraft to hit much harder than if flown into the crash as must be done at this critical time.

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  10. My 2 cents: I'm guessing it was a fuel related engine failure,wrong tank selected, fuel boost pump switch off, primer not locked, fuel handle not in detent... something of that nature, :(

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    1. As an A&P mechanic I agree with you….That plane most likely ran out of fuel on takeoff…Maybe low on fuel and as he rotated it ran dry…Never trust your gauges…Always check your fuel visually !

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    2. The T28 has two fuel tanks that are interconnected. There is no fuel selector valve, just a fuel shutoff valve. A switch on the shutoff valve handle activates the submerged fuel boost pump. The engine will not start if the boost pump is not running since the engine-driven pump cannot generate enough suction to pull fuel from the tanks at cranking rpm. Since the engine was running it can be assumed that the airframe fuel system was not compromised. I more suspect a pressure carburetor diaphragm failure since a change in the exhaust sound can be heard an instant before the engine failed. Another possibility would be blower and accessory gear failure resulting in loss of drive to both magnetos.

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    3. I have many years of flying and maintaining the CW1820. It was probably a dash 76D.No backfire or smoke and it caught the pilot by surprise as he was in the process of raising the gear. The only time I have seen a CW quit like that is no gas to the pressure carb. If you watch close the pilot did a perfect job pancaking it in flat. You have to have been there to appreciate what he did.

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  11. If you full screen the Video and turn the sound up it does sound like the engine QUIT.... not far above the ground with little time to react nor altitude and then.... we hit the ground.......... At 77 the passenger might have had a cardiac issue.

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  12. I suspect a fuel flow issue. Was a runup done? Was the fuel selector checked so it wasn't on off? Generally there will be enough fuel in the gascolator to take off and then make the engine quit when it runs out.

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    1. The engine will not start on the T28 with Fuel Selector in Off position. The Fuel Selector has 2 positions, Off and On. In the On position it opens a Shutoff Valve and powers the Boost Pump in the 3 gal sump tank. In the Off position the Fuel Valve is closed and Boost Pump is off making engine start impossible. The wing tanks gravity feed to a single sump tank/boost pump with no tank selection control.

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    2. It's a bit hard to see, but the plane touched down just before slamming into an abrupt berm that tossed the plane back into the air before impacting the flower field. The fuselage is broken, the engine and mount torn off the nose; this plane did not slide gently to a stop. It was a violent collision with the ground/berm that caused fatal injuries to the passenger.

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  13. I was at the airport in my hanger when the accident happened. I heard the airplane at full power (very loud) accelerate down the runway then abruptly stop. My first thought was that it was an aborted takeoff, and I went out to see people driving and running toward the departure end of the runway

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  14. Sucking the gear up immediately after takeoff seemed a bit premature, but I've never flown one/not aware of the POH procedures. Any abrupt deceleration at aged 77 is not healthy. Godspeed to the man that lost his life.

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  15. Whoever runs this website must have gotten overwhelmed from all the general aviation crashes that occur. She/he did a superb job before. Now I go directly to https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/monthly.aspx.

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