This story was a crash course in just how brutal and unpredictable flying over rural Northern California can be. A veteran JetBlue pilot with a spotless record flew his plane straight into a Mendocino County mountainside, and no one can fully explain why. The skies were clear, the weather was calm, and Vaughn Porter wasn’t a reckless flier. Still, decisions like taking off toward a mountain, making an aggressive turn, and possibly starting his takeoff from halfway down the runway left investigators baffled. Even worse, the FAA’s official guidance for the airport left out a critical detail: the massive mountain right at the end of the runway. That warning was only added after the crash.
Reporting this felt like diving into the wild west of aviation. Out here, there’s no radar, no control towers, and sometimes not even complete charts—just pilots, their instincts, and whatever they can see out the windshield. It’s a harsh reminder that flying in places like Round Valley and Shelter Cove isn’t just risky, it’s often a guessing game. The FAA claims the missing warning was a one-off mistake. But for Kyle Porter, who lost both his dad and grandfather to plane crashes, that doesn’t cut it. As he said, “it just seems kind of wild.”
Read the whole story at SFGATE.
There are actually several inconsistencies in the reporting on this incident.
I have pointed some of them out before and asked for comments.