On July 17, 2017, the skies over Phoenix, Arizona, were crystal clear—the kind of weather pilots call “severe clear.” For 53-year-old Allan, a successful business owner and experienced pilot, it should have been a routine flight to California for a company event. Seated next to him was his 22-year-old secretary, Christa, a young woman just two weeks away from celebrating her first wedding anniversary.
They never reached their destination.
The Omen
The tragedy didn’t actually begin on July 17th. It began three days earlier.
Allan had recently purchased a Lancair Evolution, a high-performance, experimental aircraft. It was a “beast” of a plane, much faster and more complex than the rugged Husky he had been training in. On a test flight just days before the accident, Allan had drained his batteries by sitting on the ground with the electronics on. Once in the air, his screens went dark. He panicked.
He nearly stalled the plane while texting his mechanic from the cockpit. He couldn’t even figure out how to put the landing gear down, pulling the parking brake by mistake. He survived that day only because his mechanic literally coached him over the phone. The mechanic gave him a stern warning: “You don’t understand these systems. You need more training.”
Allan didn’t listen.
The Point of No Return
Three days later, Allan and Christa took off. As they climbed through 12,000 feet, the nightmare repeated itself. A warning light flickered on: Low Voltage. The generator wasn’t charging the battery.
In aviation, there is a golden rule: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.
Aviate: Keep the plane flying.
Navigate: Turn toward the nearest airport immediately.
Communicate: Declare an emergency.
Allan did none of these. Instead of landing at one of the three major airports he passed over, he insisted on flying all the way back to his “home” maintenance hangar—a 30-minute journey on a dying battery. Even worse, he kept the air conditioning running, bleeding the last drops of power from the aircraft.
The Silent Cockpit
By the time Allan reached Falcon Field, the cockpit was a “dark house.” The radios were dead. The GPS was black. He was flying a high-performance machine by instinct alone.
He managed to find the runway, but for reasons no one will ever truly know, he chose not to land. Perhaps he wasn’t sure if his gear was locked; perhaps the stress had clouded his judgment. He performed a “go-around,” circling back for one more try.
It was a fatal mistake.
As he banked the plane into a sharp left turn to line up with the runway, he was flying too slowly—likely reverting to the habits of the slower Husky aircraft he had flown the week before. The Lancair, demanding and unforgiving, reached its critical limit. The wing dipped, the nose dropped, and the plane stalled.
The aircraft plummeted into a golf course just moments away from the safety of the runway. Both Allan and Christa were killed instantly.
The Lesson Written in Blood
The investigation later revealed that the aircraft itself had no mechanical flaws. The tragedy was a “Swiss cheese” chain of human errors: a skipped checklist, a refusal to acknowledge lack of proficiency, and the fatal decision to prioritize convenience over safety.
In the world of aviation, “Checklists are written in blood.” This story serves as a haunting reminder that the most dangerous thing a pilot can bring into a cockpit isn’t a mechanical failure—it’s overconfidence.
