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Pilot of plane that crashed in Colorado mountains, went undiscovered for months blamed for fatal wreck

Jesse Paul, Colorado Sun
Quentin Aschoff, a 67-year-old from Bend, Oregon, died in the wreck of his single-engine Cessna 210 on April 4, 2018, near Alma. (Provided by the NTSB)

The pilot of an unmaintained airplane that crashed high in the Colorado mountains and went undiscovered for months last year did not adequately plan out his flight or anticipate the weather conditions, which likely brought his plane down, federal air crash investigators say. 

Quentin Aschoff, a 67-year-old from Bend, Oregon, died in the wreck of his single-engine Cessna 210 on April 4, 2018, near Alma.  He was the only person aboard andwas heading from Erie Municipal Airport to Richmond Municipal Airport in Utah.

The National Transportation Safety Board said that at the time of the fatal flight Aschoff lacked a valid medical or pilot certificate and had not flown for as long as two years. It called his decision to fly over the mountains “poor” and noted that his extensive health problems could have also contributed to this crash.



The 1960 Cessna hadn’t flown in as many as four years. The NTSB report says someone who thought about purchasing the aircraft declined to do so because it was in such a state of disrepair that they thought it would be best used for salvage. 

Additionally, the night before the fatal flight, Aschoff inadvertently retracted the landing gear while the plane was on the ground. Aschoff told a tow truck driver he called to help get the plane back on its wheels that he had “pulled the wrong lever,” the NTSB report says.

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