BY DAN HILDEBRAN
The National Transportation Safety Board said the pilot of an aerobatics plane that crashed on November 8 at the Keystone Heights Airport was attempting a controlled inverted spin when he lost control of his EA-330.
The federal agency said in a preliminary report that Warren Chillers flew from his hometown of St. Augustine to the Keystone Airport to practice for an upcoming aerobatics competition.
Once he landed at Keystone, the 46-year-old refueled and completed a laydown figure eight, then climbed to 3,500 feet.
Chillers then executed three additional maneuvers with no problems. However, when he attempted the upside-down spin, things began to go wrong.
The first step in the advanced maneuver is to invert the plane into an upside-down position. However, according to witnesses, the EA-330 continued to rotate after the cockpit oriented to the ground and continued to turn another 90 degrees. In addition, the plane’s nose pointed down around 30 degrees.
One witness, who told investigators he watched the entire flight, said Chillers appeared to have gained control of the plane, but by then he had lost velocity and was too close to the ground to recover.
The plane hit the ground and burst into flames on impact, killing the St. Augustine resident.
