Records: Pilot in Sunday crash may not have been instrument certified

The pilot of a single-engine airplane that crashed near The Eastern Iowa Airport Sunday night may not have been certified to fly using airplane instruments, according to an airmen certification inquiry on the Federal Aviation Administration's Civil Aviation Registry.

If that's the case, flying in Sunday's dense fog may have put pilot Douglas Leon Tindal, 64, of Washington, Iowa, “in way over his head,” according to a Marion pilot and accident investigation instructor.

“If you're certified ‘instrument airplane' that means that you can fly in bad weather,” said Ed Wischmeyer, 60, of Marion. “It means you can fly when you can't see the ground and you can't see the horizon.”

Tindal declined to be interviewed Monday.

Wischmeyer said he wasn't on the scene of Sunday's accident, or of one that occurred nearby on Saturday night, and declined to offer an opinion on the cause of either crash. Both planes came down about 8 p.m. Wischmeyer said the foggy weather Sunday, however, was not conducive to flying a small craft. He said ceiling between 7 and 9 p.m. Sunday was about 100 feet.

“Those would have been challenging conditions for a pilot in a single-engine Cessna,” he said. “Those weather conditions were less than the minimums required to land with the equipment a Cessna that size would carry.”

In a check of the weather at the time of Saturday's crash, Wischmeyer said conditions were “at or above the required minimums” for a similar-sized craft.