The National Transportation Safety Board says a plane crash was the direct cause of an “improper decision” by the pilot.
Howard F. Guthrie, 55, of Rio Rancho, N.M., was warned not to fly to the Archuleta County airport because of intense winter weather, the NTSB found. Instead, he told an airport operator he was a professional pilot and would be heading into the airfield, federal investigators said.
The NTSB, in a released this week, found “the non-instrument-rated pilot’s improper decision to fly to the destination airport and into known instrument meteorological conditions … resulted in his controlled flight into mountainous terrain during a snow storm.”
The killed Guthrie and Melissa Watson, 42, of Albuquerque. Their plane, a Mooney M20C, is believed to have gone down on Nov. 14, 2014, and was .
Guthrie’s obituary said he loved flying his plane and taking ski trips to Colorado. The death notice said Watson was his girlfriend.
According to the NTSB report, Guthrie tried flying into the airport despite low visibility and snow with a winter storm warning for the area having been issued. Airport operators could hear the plane in the area approaching and circling before hearing the pilot call out, “I need to get out of the weather.”
No further communications were received, the report says.
New Mexico State Police said the airplane was unable to land in Pagosa Springs, due to inclement weather, and turned back toward New Mexico where it had departed. Federal air crash investigators say Guthrie and Watson were on a trip to go skiing.
The NTSB says the Mooney collided with trees in mountainous terrain and crashed.
