Page:CAB Aircraft Accident Report, Panagra Flight 9.pdf/11

 reporting then in use was developed in place of a predetermined flight and constituted the filing of a brief flight plan at each check point. Information furnished by the company indicates that Arequipa had been designated by Panagra as a control airport; that all pilots prior to departure from such a control airport should inform the local control of the route they expected to follow within the airport control area (30 mile radius). According to Panagra, Gardner did not make this report. At the time of departure from the (30 miles), the pilot was required to file a message indicating his altitude, course, and whether on instruments, estimate or contact. Gardner made this report in detail by radio telephone to Arequipa at 2:25 p.m.

It is apparent that the subject flight left Arequipa at 2:09 p.m., contact, and entered the overcast on instruments at the time of, or before, it reported leaving the airport control zone at 2:25 p.m. It was evidently still on instruments when its estimated positions were reported by CW to Lima at 2:30 p.m. and at 2:54 p.m. However, the dispatcher at Lima had no way of determining whether the pilot was proceeding on top of the overcast, as he would be permitted to do, or in the overcast, which was against company flight procedure. According to the statement of the surviving passenger, the flight probably never did break out of the overcast. The accident occurred at approximately 3:15 p.m. It is evident, therefore, that the flight had been proceeding on instruments in the overcast, contrary to Panagra's flight procedure, for about 50 minutes. Coincidental with the subject accident, investigation disclosed that a Peruvian pilot of Faucett Airlines reported that he flown from Arequipa to Lima about an hour earlier on the same day and had encountered bad weather in the vicinity of the accident. However, he changed his course from 285° to 270° (West) proceeded to the coast line, and then resumed his headings toward Lima.

On January 9, 1943 and on one other occasion, about a year prior to this