Private pilot and YouTuber Jenny Blalock, 44, and her non-pilot father James Marvin Blalock, 78, suffered fatal injuries in the crash of their Beechcraft Debonair single-engine airplane on December 7, 2023. An investigation of the accident is ongoing, but there many warning signs and red flags could be seen in the videos of the pilot's flights.
I wanted to share an analysis of one of the videos that was on her channel that she posted almost a year prior to the crash. A lot of things went wrong on a flight that should have been a very easy flight for any pilot. She titled that video, "Funniest Flight Moment - What I Discovered About a Garmin 430 in a Beechcraft | Debonair short flight". It had only approximately 800 views when it was removed.
Unfortunately, she did not appear to make much progress since that video was posted, as more recent videos showed many of the same problems in her performance that she displayed here, despite the fact that she had accumulated over 400 hours of flight time by fall of 2023 (it is unknown how much flight time she had on this flight from January of 2023, but it was maybe in the 200-250 range).
I recommend watching with subtitles especially if you're not a pilot. They have been manually transcribed by the author.
CHAPTER INDEX:
00:00 Boilerplate Disclaimers
00:19 Introduction
01:44 Flight Analysis
19:53 Conclusion
ERRATA:
1. I accidentally say that the crash occurred in southwestern Tennessee. The accident site is near the southern TN border, but near the middle of the state, not the western part.
2. There are multiple ways an autopilot can be connected to an airplane's other avionics. My discussion on that topic is based upon the most likely setup.
3. I say she probably had flown at these two airports before. She definitely had, and she had "probably" flown between these airports before on the same route.
4. Several viewers have commented that the Garmin 430 is in VLOC (VOR/Localizer) mode. Thus the autopilot may have been trying to intercept a VOR radial. For the nonpilots, a VOR is a ground-based radio navigation transmitter. It does not work like GPS and it is clear her intention was for the autopilot to follow the GPS track to DKX, so the Garmin 430 is not set up to do that.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:
A number of viewers believe she was holding the yoke left during takeoff due to a tendency to "steer" with the ailerons. I did not show a portion of her video during which she states there is a left crosswind (though it's actually a right crosswind) as she is lining up on the runway. However, both can be true. I think she turns it left at first because of the crosswind, and then proceeds to try to steer with it from there. In either case, her use of the ailerons during takeoff is improper.( I will also note that the wind was actually very light, but she did say "left crosswind" in a cut portion of the video when the wind is from the right.)
CHANNEL UPDATES:
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07 February 2024:
New video coming on Thursday February 8th. It will look at an accident that occurred a few years ago with a surprising cause. I believe no other YouTubers have covered it, so it should make for an interesting and original story.
