NTSB squarely blames pilot’s judgment for 2015 plane crash

All four aboard died in the wreck near Silverton.

Federal air crash investigators have squarely blamed a California pilot’s judgment for causing a twin-engine plane — one that he was not certified to fly — to crash into a mountain near Silverton in 2015, killing him and the three others aboard.

The National Transportation Safety Board, in a final report on the Cessna 310 crash released last week, said 71-year-old Harrold Joseph Raggio’s bad decisionmaking and lack of situational awareness led to the wreck. Officials also said he was on track to fly to the wrong airport — one possibly in rural Montana instead of his intended destination in Amarillo, Texas — when the plane slammed into the ground during rain showers.

“The wreckage was found in rising mountainous terrain, and the accident wreckage distribution was consistent with a low-angle, high-speed impact,” the NTSB report said. “Given that post-accident examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation, it is likely that the non-instrument rated pilot did not see the rising mountainous terrain given the (instrument conditions) and flew directly into it.”

The NTSB identified the crash’s probable cause as “the non-instrument rated pilot’s improper judgment and his failure to maintain situational awareness, which resulted in the flight’s encounter with instrument meteorological conditions and controlled flight into terrain during cruise flight.”

Raggio and Steven Dale Wilkinson, both of Newberry Springs, Calif., were killed in the Sept. 5, 2015, crash. Rosalinda Leslie of Hesperia, Calif., and Michael Lyle Riley of Barstow, Calif., also died.

Raggio had acted erratically in the hours leading up to the crash when he stopped to refuel at an airport in Flagstaff, Ariz. He nearly struck another aircraft while taxiing at the airport and knocked a ladder near a fuel pump.

He also forced a commercial airplane to abort its landing by being on a runway without permission and then “really didn’t register” what had happened when confronted, according to the NTSB. Raggio had raised other red flags as a pilot, according to the NTSB — generally breaking federal air regulations, flying a multi-engine plane when he was only certified to fly a single-engine aircraft and flying the Cessna even though it lacked a current airworthiness inspection.