Fact Checking Nelson's "Doors Of Death" light aircraft near death experience

[Doctor Steuss]

1) In the army I found the non-believers to be the one that struggled with the heat of combat. The believers were always pretty calm.

I look forward to the next installment of absolute BS pulled from his ass where he tells us that PTSD is only prevalent in sociopaths and atheists.

[dastardly stem]

oops

[dastardly stem]

1) In the army I found the non-believers to be the one that struggled with the heat of combat. The believers were always pretty calm.

I look forward to the next installment of absolute B.S. pulled from his ass where he tells us that PTSD is only prevalent in sociopaths and atheists.

OMG that dick.

[DrW]

Although the plane in the story was referred to as a "commuter", reading the story again, it sure sounds like a light twin with piston engines to me. These engines are more likely to catch fire than a turboprop, and piston engines are much more likely to "spew oil" onto the fuselage if they fail catastrophically ("blow out"). The Cessna 402 mentioned has piston engines and is popular for corporate aviation and for air taxi services, as well as a short hop cargo carrier.

If the plane was flying under FAA Part 135 (air taxi, unscheduled or on-demand commuter flight), it could legally have a single pilot (normally with an autopilot is installed). Back East and in the Caribbean, there are short haul carriers that use a lot of Cessna 402s.

However, I could find no reference to a charter or on-demand commuter airline operating out of SLC, or airports near SLC, that used these aircraft, or any light twins, for commercial passenger flights, now or at any time in the past. The closest 402 user seems to be Sunshine Airlines based in Los Angeles. These small carriers are opportunistic. They come and go.

Anyway, if the blessed one somehow got a ride in a 6 to 8 passenger piston twin "commuter", with a single pilot, then the story might make sense based on the description.

Can anyone living in Utah recall an air taxi service operating there in the 1970's?

[Lem]

1) In the army I found the non-believers to be the one that struggled with the heat of combat. The believers were always pretty calm.

I look forward to the next installment of absolute BS pulled from his ass where he tells us that PTSD is only prevalent in sociopaths and atheists.

Sam LeFevre said it, Doc was just quoting which I'm sure you know, but just clarifying because YES, sam L. pulled that BS from his ass .

[tapirrider]

Can anyone living in Utah recall an air taxi service operating there in the 1970's?

The incident report, or more importantly the lack of one is crucial here. Your looking at this as a pilot, I'm looking at it as an aircraft mechanic. But you know as well as I that if a pilot put an aircraft into a field, a document of that event will still exist in government archives. I'm confident in stating that no such document will ever be found and in this case, with the specific date being given by Nelson's biographer, that the absence of that incident document is damning to Nelson's tale.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I look forward to the next installment of absolute BS pulled from his ass where he tells us that PTSD is only prevalent in sociopaths and atheists.

Sam LeFevre said it, Doc was just quoting which I'm sure you know, but just clarifying because YES, sam L. pulled that BS from his ass .

It should be noted that DCP, the anonymous coward Kiwi who hides behind a moniker, and the Midge are unusually spiteful and personal toward gemli in the comments section. I'm literally shook to know just how mean they're being toward the person known as gemli. Will anyone go on SeN and call them out for their sustained and viscerally negative comments they're making about him?

- Doc

[DrW]

Can anyone living in Utah recall an air taxi service operating there in the 1970's?

The incident report, or more importantly the lack of one is crucial here. Your looking at this as a pilot, I'm looking at it as an aircraft mechanic. But you know as well as I that if a pilot put an aircraft into a field, a document of that event will still exist in government archives. I'm confident in stating that no such document will ever be found and in this case, with the specific date being given by Nelson's biographer, that the absence of that incident document is damning to Nelson's tale.

Agreed. And more than an incident report would result if an aircraft in commercial service suffered an engine failure in flight, especially if fire was involved, even if it landed safely with no personal injuries involved. Declare an emergency to the SLC Air Traffic Control Center, and you will spend the rest of the day doing paper work once you land, well before the NTSB investigation even gets started.

[Moksha]

The problem appears to me that there is no online database that reports all "incidents" in 1976. The FAA's detailed online database starts in 1978. The NTSB doesn't investigate all incidents, and so absence from their database isn't conclusive. I tried to find a database of digitized paper copies of the accident/incident reports from 1976, but no luck.

Maybe we could give Nelson the benefit of the doubt and assume it was in a biplane sometime between the Wright Brothers' historic flights at Kitty Hawk and before 1976. Any documentation of this incident could have been taken up to heaven by an angel toting a drawn M-16. The angel wished to avoid any cumbersome paperwork. So there.

[Res Ipsa]

But the earliest version of the story we have doesn’t state the detail the way you did.

No, none of the detail is mine. That a close personal friend of his current living wife and the chief executive officer of Deseret Book, an LDS owned corporation, that she wrote it makes that detail carry some weight.

Here's the bottom line. If an aircraft engine catches fire, there will be an incident report. If an aircraft lands in a field, there will be an incident report. And because Ms. Dew has tied this to a specific date, it is not unreasonable to hold some accountability to Rusty for his tale. The burden of proof falls on him and his cronies because it can be proven there was no incident report covering that Dixie college event date.

Each lie told by Nelson and his supporters only digs the hole deeper into Paul H. Dunn territory.

That may be your bottom line, but it's not mine. Tracing the regulatory history of aircraft accident/investigations is a nightmare. Under the current NTSB regulations, which were issued in 1988, not all "incidents" required that a report be filed. If Nelson remembers the incident correctly, the owner of the commercial company would have been required to file a report because the flight involved an in-flight fire. However, loss of power to one engine, without a fire, would not require a report. Landing in a field, in and of itself, is not a reportable incident.

However, because of all the organizational shuffling that was going on at the time (the NTSB was removed from the Department of Transportation in early 1975), finding the applicable regulations before 1988 is difficult. No predecessor regulation is listed in the CFR or Federal Register, even though the FR says that the 1988 regulation is a modification to the existing section.

So, I can't determine whether an incident report was required under the regulations as they existed in 1976. So, I can't say that "there will be an incident report." If there is, it's in the National Archives, although initial reports should have been filed with the NTSB and not the CAB, so who knows without looking.

Failure to meet the burden of proof you are imposing is not evidence of lying. Few of us have documentary evidence for the stories we tell from our pasts. That doesn't make us all liars.