Flagstaff – Temecula

On October 13, 2001 at 10:20 PM, Flagstaff – Temecula experienced a crash involving Rockwell Grand Commander 690, operated by Mach 1 Aircraft, with the event recorded near Temecula-French Valley California.

The flight was categorized as positioning and the reported phase was landing (descent or approach) at a airport (less than 10 km from airport) crash site.

2 people were known to be on board, 0 fatalities were recorded, 2 survivors were identified or estimated. This corresponds to an estimated fatality rate of 0.0%.

Crew on board: 2, crew fatalities: 0, passengers on board: 0, passenger fatalities: 0, other fatalities: 0.

The listed crash cause is human factor. The airplane collided with an airport boundary fence during an aborted landing. The pilot made a normal approach following the visual approach slope indicator (VASI) with gear down and full flaps and touched down just past the numbers and began to decelerate. The pilot selected reverse thrust with both engines. As he added power to decelerate, the airplane suddenly veered to the left and off the runway when the right engine did not go into reverse thrust. He deselected reverse thrust and aligned the airplane with the runway. He was approaching the end of the runway at high speed and elected to attempt a takeoff. The airplane went off the end of the runway onto smooth grass. The pilot rotated the airplane, but the airplane collided with an airport boundary fence and came to rest in a field. In a post accident examination, when the power levers were placed in the full reverse position, the left fuel control measured 4°, while the right measured 0°. The left pitch control measured 10°, while the right measured 0°; the controls should have read 0°. A controls engineer determined that during landing, there would be a 10° propeller pitch control (PPC) angle mismatch, which would be about 2.5° of BETA angle. With matched levers, there would be asymmetric reverse thrust with the left engine lower in torque. This would result in the airplane turning towards the left if both propellers had gone into reverse pitch.

Aircraft reference details include registration N690JM, MSN 690-11072, year of manufacture 1973.

Geospatial coordinates for this crash are approximately 33.5894°, -117.1210°.