Epic E1000 N98FK Crash at Steamboat Springs: LNAV+V Advisory Glidepath Trap

Now let's dive into our main topic.

Today we're talking about November 9-8 Foxtrot Kilo, an epic E-1000 which crashed near Steamboat Springs, Colorado early on Friday morning.

And first, let me extend my condolences to the friends and family members who lost loved ones in that crash.

It was truly a tragedy, and I'm sorry for those of you who have lost loved ones.

And of course, the reason we talk about crashes is to try and help prevent future crashes.

As pilots, we can learn a lot from what happened in other accidents.

And so that's why we talk about these things.

Now it's early in the NTSB investigation, yet we already know much about what happened from the ADS-B data.

And the lessons we can learn are bigger than one airplane and one airport.

It's about something a lot of instrument pilots are a little fuzzy on, which is the plus V that you sometimes see in the title of an approach as you load it into your avionics.

We'll talk later about advisory glide slopes, what they are, how to use them, and most importantly, how not to use them so you don't get in trouble and possibly into an accident.

First, what I'm calling an advisory glide slope has many names.

Garmin calls it advisory vertical guidance, but they don't spend a lot of time explaining it in their documentation.

You may also see it called an advisory glide path because glide slopes are associated with ILSs and glide paths are associated with R&F GPS approaches.

Since there are lots of names, I'll just pick one and continue to call it an advisory glide slope as that's what many pilots call it.

We'll get back to advisory glide slopes in a few minutes, but let's talk about the accident.