Aviation News Talk – Pilot Stories, Safety Tips & General Aviation News
Jan 11, 2026 · 1 hr 10 min · 14 segments
Max talks with Mark Waddell of the Cirrus Owner and Pilots Association (COPA) about how Cirrus pilots can reduce accidents by focusing on the places where the accident chain most often begins…
Mark WaddellGuest
Max TrescottHost
Now, last week in episode 409, we talked about the altitude reporting errors in the Citation crash that killed NASCAR driver Greg Biffle.
I received the following message via X from Scott Manley, who has quite a large following there.
He wrote to me, replying to at Max Trescott, Max, you're correct about the pressure altitude readings being stuck.
You can look at the data from this and compare them to show the GPS altitude rising while barometric value was stuck.
And he shows a plot of the GPS derived altitude versus the barometric altitude, and you can clearly see that initially they were the same, but then while the GPS derived altitude continues to climb, the barometric altitude flattens out and remains unchanged until suddenly it spikes up and becomes nearly identical again to the GPS altitude.
So this confirms what I said, which was that the aircraft was certainly having problems with their altitude reporting capabilities over ADS-B, and they may have seen this reflected in the cockpit on one or perhaps more of their altimeters.
But in my opinion, this was unlikely the actual cause of the crash, because as pilots, we can certainly land safely even with inaccurate altimeters.
And if all this proves to be true, this will become yet another example where some type of anomaly caused a pilot to return to the airport, but then they crashed for some other reason.
So please keep that in mind any time you experience a system failure or an emergency.
You still need to focus on flying the airplane and landing and not getting distracted while trying to land.
And again, our condolences to the family and loved ones who were lost in this terrible tragedy.
Now, last week in episode 409, we talked about the altitude reporting errors in the Citation crash that killed NASCAR driver Greg Biffle.
I received the following message via X from Scott Manley, who has quite a large following there.
He wrote to me, replying to at Max Trescott, Max, you're correct about the pressure altitude readings being stuck.
You can look at the data from this and compare them to show the GPS altitude rising while barometric value was stuck.
And he shows a plot of the GPS derived altitude versus the barometric altitude, and you can clearly see that initially they were the same, but then while the GPS derived altitude continues to climb, the barometric altitude flattens out and remains unchanged until suddenly it spikes up and becomes nearly identical again to the GPS altitude.
So this confirms what I said, which was that the aircraft was certainly having problems with their altitude reporting capabilities over ADS-B, and they may have seen this reflected in the cockpit on one or perhaps more of their altimeters.
But in my opinion, this was unlikely the actual cause of the crash, because as pilots, we can certainly land safely even with inaccurate altimeters.
And if all this proves to be true, this will become yet another example where some type of anomaly caused a pilot to return to the airport, but then they crashed for some other reason.
So please keep that in mind any time you experience a system failure or an emergency.
You still need to focus on flying the airplane and landing and not getting distracted while trying to land.
And again, our condolences to the family and loved ones who were lost in this terrible tragedy.
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