As you know from my earlier posts, I sold my Piper Archer III in 2014 and took her to Subang (KL) for a change of registration to the US register. That was the last time I saw her, and I will never see or fly her again. She crashed on the 15th of November 2015 near Senai Airport. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt; she protected her pilot while “sacrificing” herself.

Maybe I am bit melodramatic. But, to my defense, the two years flying her had been the happiest years of my life. We had many adventures, mostly flying solo, and while editing the old posts of my blog, I thought a couple of times “I really did this on my own?”

Anyway, you might wonder what happened. To be clear, I wasn’t there, and I haven’t spoken to anybody involved. I have access to the final “Accident Report” though. From what I can tell, there might have been water in the tank, which led to an engine power loss while “.. descending from 1,500 ft to 1,000 ft with intention to joint the Right Base of Runway 16.” The pilot decided to attempt an emergency landing on the golf course, which is right under the base of runway 16. The landing went well, but unfortunately the plane crashed into a tree on the last meters.

Well, as the saying goes, any landing you walk away from is a good landing.

I have no idea whether the new owner was able to recover some of his money from the insurance, but I imagine loosing such a nice little airplane must have been quite a blow.

If I ever get to own another airplane, I would take another well preserved Archer III. The two things, however, I would want that the Archer does not have: a glass instrument panel (Garmin 1000) and longer endurance (maybe around 1000 nm).