Aircraft Stalled As Pilot Attempted To Recover From Loop

The National Transportation Safety Board ruled this week the pilot killed last year during a performance at a New Mexico airshow attempted to recover from a loop too close to the ground, and stalled the aircraft.

As ANN reported, Guy "Doc" Baldwin (right) had just begun his performance at the 14th Annual Tucumcari Rotary Club Air Show when the accident occurred. The NTSB report indicates Baldwin attempted in vain to pull up from the loop maneuver, "resulting in an inadvertant accelerated stall."

That correlates with what witness Ralph McCormick, publisher of FLY-LOW magazine and a friend of Baldwin's, told ANN following the accident.

"He performed several maneuvers, made a low pass from the west and pulled up to a vertical hammerhead and then returned back down the same direction," McCormick said. "At the bottom of the maneuver he pulled the Extra 300 back to straight and level. From the photos that I took, it appeared that he remained level for some time and then as he pass overhead I took one more photograph and immediately after that the plane appeared to just fly to the ground."

A cameraman recording Baldwin's performance told the NTSB the pilot did not "start his pull until he was too low to recover. When the plane passed overhead, the noise the air was making as it passed over sounded very interrupted or turbulent... There was a definitive break in the wing flight, a dip or stall, as it passed by."

Contributing factors included the low altitude for recovery from the loop, according to the Board, and the high density altitude on the field at KTCC. Examinations of the wreckage revealed no apparent problems with the aircraft or its engine, although impact forces prevented investigators from establishing control continuity.

Baldwin, a family physician and AME based out of Tulsa, OK, had logged 4,093 flight hours, 590 of which had been in the Extra, which he purchased new. He had been flying for 35 years, and held multiple certificates, including an ATP.

FMI: Read The NTSB Probable Cause Report