FAA issues narrative for Adams County plane crash

       ADAMS COUNTY — The FAA said a commercial pilot who died last year in a field near Thornton was taking “a couple of thousand pictures” of residential properties for business when the plane crashed.
       Salil Sinha, 41, of Marshfield, Wisc., was the only person on board. The plane exploded on impact.
       The FAA released its findings of fact on the crash of the Cessna R182 earlier this month, but it did not indicate why the plane crashed. Witnesses said the airplane was maneuvering over the Thornton area at a low altitude at the same time that high wind suddenly occurred on the surface. One witness said he saw the airplane’s wings “dipping” up and down, and the airplane suddenly banked steeply to the left before impacting the ground. Several witnesses told the FAA after the airplane impacted the ground, it exploded and the fire started.

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Crews begin the process of investigating last year's plane crash in a field in Thornton. The pilot died.

        The plane took off from Watkins about an hour before the crash. Sinha did not file a flight plan. The pilot’s wife said she spoke with him just before takeoff for about 10 minutes. Sinha told her he was going to go up and “shoot a couple of thousand pictures” but voiced no concerns about the weather or how the plane was performing. Sinha’s wife said her husband “was in good spirits” and “in good health.”
       The FAA’s report said a few days prior to the accident, Sinha pilot spoke to another pilot based at Front Range Airport. The pilot told him that he was taking photographs of residential and commercial real estate from his airplane with a digital camera. The pilot told him that he had business in Colorado and had been in the area for about a week. The report went on to say the pilot told him how he flew the airplane and took photographs out of the pilot window at the same time. The pilot told him he had been doing it for some time and was pretty good at it.
      The pilot also told him of a time when while he was taking pictures, his airplane struck a guy wire. The pilot told him that it hit the wing just outside of the strut, but he was able to fly his airplane back and land it without incident.
      The National Weather Service’s report for Denver International Airport at 3:34 p.m. included southwesterly winds at 15 knots gusting to 21, 10 miles of visibility, a thunderstorm in the area and scattered clouds at 8,000 feet, or about 2,700 feet off the ground. The closest reporting facility to the accident scene was at Rocky Mountain Regional Airport in Jefferson County. Its report was recorded shortly after Sinha took off, and it expected winds from the north at nine knots, visibility greater than six miles, scattered clouds and expected thunderstorms by 4 that afternoon.
     The weather service also issued a forecast discussion earlier in the afternoon, about three hours before the crash. It talked about high-based thunderstorms with winds gusting to 35 knots. A meteorological impact statement, valid at the time of the accident, said low-level wind shear and microburst potential between 1 and 6 p.m. that day was “moderate to high."
     Sinha flew at an altitude between 5,800 and 6,300 feet (about 600 to 1,100 above the ground), according to the FAA report. The plane’s speed was 110 knots. For the last eight minutes of the flight, Sinha was just south of E-470 at 6,000 feet and made several orbits around 138th Court and Boston Street. He turned west for almost two minutes, then turned south for 2 ½ minutes until he reached 104th Avenue.
     At that point, the FAA said the plane turned northeast for almost five minutes before heading north. The FAA said Sinha flew just east of Quebec Street at 5,500 feet until he reached 123rd Avenue. There, he turned to the south and disappeared from radar. The report said Sinha’s last recorded altitude was 5,300 above sea level.
     The FAA said Sinha had a commercial pilot certificate license with single- and multi-engine land instrument airplane ratings. He renewed his pilot insurance policy six months before the crash. He had flown for 18,000 hours and 8,200 hours in the Cessna. The FAA said it couldn’t recover pilot logbooks from the airplane. It suspected they were destroyed in the fire.
      The flight instructor who gave Sinha his last review told the FAA Sinha was “a step above other pilots,” according to the report.
     “He said that the day the pilot came to him for his flight review, the pilot told him that this was a check ride for him and he wanted to do everything that was in the Practical Test Standards for a private pilot,” the report said. “The pilot performed departure stalls, traffic pattern stalls, slow flight, turns around a point, and patterns and landings. The flight instructor said the pilot showed good knowledge and although he was not sure, thought he had some professional flight training.”
     The plane’s last work order was in March. It showed the repair station was cleaned and greased. It cycled the landing gear system and adjusted the rigging on the right nose landing gear door.
     The report said Sinha’s plane crashed in a field and came to rest next to a horse pen, about 330 feet from a house. The debris field spread out over 112 feet. The first impact showed a 30-inch long scrape to the wreckage, followed by a spray of dirt that extended for 15 feet. A second point of impact was 43 feet east of the first impact point. It consisted of an 18-inch wide by 12-inch deep smooth strike in the ground, the report said. It produced a hole in the ground and dug up a 2-foot piece of dirt. The Adams County coroner said Sinha died from injuries in the crash, not from the fire. Toxicology tests were negative.